2002, Number 5
Salud Mental 2002; 25 (5)
El estudio de la conciencia: estado actual
Fuente R
Full text
Language: Spanish
References: 27
Page: 1-9
PDF size: 371.91 Kb.
ABSTRACT
Consciousness is the most familiar and most direct experience humans have, but it is also the major mystery pondered by psychiatrists, biologists and philosophers. There is no doubt that consciousness sits in the brain. To initiate the scientific approach to the subject, it has been necessary to overcome traditional philosophical obstacles and methodological problems. The main difficulty lies on the fact that consciousness is a personal and private experience.For most scientific researchers, consciousness can be approached in terms of the global activity of large clusters of interactive neurons and, its neural mechanisms implicated are assumed liable of being elucidated. Other scholars have concluded that consciousness is in its essence a process impossible to be elucidated.
The concept of “altered states of consciousness” is related to phenomena in the borderline normality, generated in processes such as trascendental meditation, trance and ecstasy, “revelation” or “possession” experiences, and in hypnosis and disociation. These states might be founded on common neurophysiological mechanisms modeled in their expression by situational and cultural contexts where they rise. In the field of psychopathological and neurological clinics, the alterations of self-consciousness appear often in several mental disorders and sometimes constitute their essence. The better understanding of the neural substrate of these normal and pathological varieties of conscious experience can contribute to the knowledge of consciousness and of our experience of being the agents of our thoughts and actions. In fact, a great part of psychopathology is expressed by alterations of consciousness.
Consciousness could not escape from the evolutionary process, because consciousness is an adaptive function which is not an exclusive property of man, notwithstanding that man has the unique capacity to be conscious of being conscious. The human consciousness differs from the brain activity of superior primates. It appears that superior animals have consciousness even though they do not have the capacity of reasoning about their own experience.
Psychology has contributed to the study of consciousness since 1920 when William James approached it with a naturalist focus. Even today his observations and concepts are of interest for theoretical and experimental researchers. In recent years, cognitive psychologists have defined their concepts, and joined their colleagues in the fields of neurobiology, computation and linguistics, and are constructing step by step a science of the mind.
In turning to philosophy, the controversy between two expert philosophers on consciousness studies, David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett, is presented. The latter claims that the issue of consciousness can be reduced to a set of problems that can be managed at a neural level, and only the details have to be understood. Chalmers argues that in the study of consciousness there are “easy problems” and “hard problems”. Easy problems are not more challenging than most of other problems of psychology and biology, while hard problems are as yet a mystery.
In the field of neurobiology, it may be said that the knowledge of human brain cortex is increasing. Aspects of the mind, like attention, perception, memory, learning, as well as consciousness, are being experimentally approached. The author refers to the neurobiological explanation of consciousness provided by Antonio Damasio, which embodies affective states and the self as subject and agent; he thinks that the basic format of consciousness is not thought but emotion, and he distinguishes two levels of consciousness: the basic consciousness and the extended consciousness. F. Crick suggests that consciousness rises from a process which combines attention with short term memory. The author also refers to the most spectacular breakthrough in the neurobiological study of consciousness, the work of Rodolfo Llinás, who proposes that electric signals give rise to consciousness; oscillations generate in neurons of the thalamus and link it with all the regions of the brain cortex, and so conscious images are integrated. Being conscious is a state that corresponds to the external reality, but it does not have an objective reality. Computational scientists astonish us with the construction of machines capable of remarkable activities. In comparison with the modern computers, the brain works very slowly. However, computers cannot do functions made by an animal brain, since the brain has the properties of a biological organ.
It is possible that the veil of ignorance which has covered consciousness vanishes as we achieve a better understanding of the intimate mechanisms of the brain’s activity. If consciousness is subject to the laws governing other functions of the organism, it could be explained by brain activities which have not yet been discovered. It is possible that neurobiology, with its fine techniques, will reveal in the future the neural foundations of consciousness and so the explanatory gap will be reduced. We are just beginning to understand the mystery of consciousness.
REFERENCES