One first distinguishes a deep layer, of the
mental, psychological languages, of senses, of geometry, of direct
physical nature and images. Next comes the natural language, that
can be given maximum preciseness or can be left more vague, more
embracing in order to envelop deeper realities and states. And
further one find the rigorous languages of logics and mathematics.
Between these layers there are, no doubt, various links, and all
have as a go-between with respect to the machine-like operation
of the brain, the integratory activity of the brain. Sensing
a discontinuous reality as a continuous line is an example of
the integrative activity of the brain; the man adds something
to the reality, via its macroscopic way of observation, by bringing
it to his level of organization. What is the property used by
man when doing this ? Man has a property of macroscopic interpretation
derived from a new, unknown quality; we guess that this quality
is connected, in some way, to his awareness, and hence to the
beingness phenomenon that we interpreted as a physical phenomenon.
Beingness itself appears as an integral phenomenon and hence we
can say that it is connected with integrative activity of the
brain. We have seen that beingness generates mental states that
in themselves have an integrative character in connection with
the neuronical machine*.
Thus we can guess that the operation of the brain machine plus
a certain property of beingness determines the integrative property
of the brain. Science will verify one day if beingness is a product
of the complexity of the nervous system as a new material manifestation
or if it manifests itself as a link with a supplementary material
ingredient.
The man appears tied between two realities
(Fig. 18): a social reality, using his thinking and the known languages,
and an other reality, through beingness, in connection with which
an other form of language might be found such that this link can
be further explored. There is nothing to stop us viewing communication
through other language from that science has so far not discovered.
Fig. 18
II. The Awareness Problem
Many works of psychology and neuro-biology
make no distinction between awareness and consciousness.
Thus awareness is understood as consciousness and is reduced to
brain activities that determine consciousness, with the essential
process of beingness lost on the way. But beingness is,
as we have seen, the support of awareness, a physical support
for that; it appears as the link with the physical reality and
as the singular integrative effect of our brain. Hence, in searching
for a deeper meaning of awareness we should in fact search
for a deeper meaning of the beingness phenomenon. This decoupling
between beingness, between its symbol "to be", and the
symbol "to know" (together they determine awareness)
allows us to avoid (based on knowledge that will become
objective when confirmed by further research) the search for
an awareness in itself, beyond us. But it still remains beyond
us something that requires new research efforts.
Let us see what is neuro-biology telling us and
how it proceeds. In 1963, Dean E. Wooldridge of California Institute
of Technology showed that for studying the brain mechanisms we
can use awareness only as an cockpit instrument. The problem of
awareness was considered more as a
philosophical6
problem:
"The subjective phenomenon of consciousness, the
sense of awareness that is more real to the individual than anything
else, has qualitative attributes that render it completely incapable
of being derived from or accounted for by any combination of physical
principles known today. This inadequacy of currently available
physical science to explain consciousness can be either catastrophic
or relatively insignificant in its implications as to the probable
pertinence of mechanistic models of brain
function"7.
D. E. Wooldridge uses awareness in explaining
brain mechanisms "as a sort of display device of unspecified
calibration and distortion-producing characteristics which is
connected in an unknown way into the complicated circuits we are
trying to understand, but which nevertheless provides clues that
may help us find solutions to some of the mysteries with which
we must deal"8.
Besides considering this "cockpit instrument" D. E. Wooldridge
thinks that all brain processes are based on known physical processes
and hence can be explained by existing science. He reviews the
dual concept according to which the most detailed description
of brains structure and operation will not be sufficient to explain
its psychic activity, awareness being something non-physical,
outside natural sciences. He observed that such a dual concept
has continuously retreated in front of the materialistic, neo-cybernetic
point of view, in front of the comparison made with electronic
computers and automata9.
The author tends to believe that the awareness phenomenon will
be explained through the complexity of brain organization, and
he favours the idea of the "machine
brain"10.
Repelling the dual concept, D.E.Wooldrige does not find, as well
as many other specialists in neurology and neurosurgery, any other
way out but to consider the brain as an automaton and awareness
as a product of its complexity. However he leaves an open gate
for further discoveries by using the idea of "onboard instrument".
Several other brain scientists such as Charles
Sherrington, John Eccles, A. R. Luria, Wilder Penfield, a.o. reached
the conclusion that there is something beyond the brain, with
which the brain is in relationship. John Eccles, 1963 Nobel prize
winner in Medicine, considers that besides the physical world
there is a world of awareness, hence it adopts the dual concept.
Observing that in neocortex the neurons are organized in column
packs (about 10,000 neurons each) having an autonomous function
or functioning, he considers that we know only imperfectly the
internal dynamics of each module, but we can suppose that due
to its complex organization and its intensive activity a module
could be a component of the physical world opened onto the conscious
world11.
W. Penfield also adopts the dual concept since
for him it seems sure that will be always impossible to explain
the mental activity using only the brain neuronic activity; and
since it seems that the mind develops and matures independently
during the lifespan of an individual, just like a continuous element;
and since a computer (just what the brain seems to be) has to
be programmed and operated by an agent with independent understanding;
then it seems that I have to choose the statement the our being
must be explained using two fundamental
elements12.
Michael A. Arbib, searching for a theory of
brain and of artificial intelligence with the science of cybernetics,
considers that human behavior can be explained on various planes:
cybernetic (organization of neuron networks), biochemical and
psychologic13.
He uses two metaphors when describing man, thus showing certain
prudence in relation to the classical, mechanician, point of view
embraced by neoro-cyberneticists. The first metaphor states "man
are machines" and it represents the cybeneticist's point
of view; the second metaphor "men are animals" leaves
open avenues not only in biology, but also in explaining awareness,
and especially beingness, a property that we expect to meet also
in animals. Regarding psychological activity, Arbib observes that
"there is no simple, one-to-one correspondence between neural
and psychological descriptions", although "many psychological
phenomena can be described in neurological
terminology"14.
* In recent years the neuronic machine is
considered as neuronic subsystem, the brain activity also
containing dendrito-dendritic connections, the liquid between the nervous
cells and the cell membrane.
Biology and Psychology in Relation with Awareness
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