CONSCIOUSNESS

INTRODUCTION

I am here. I am listening to a professor discuss the figures on the board, watching as her laser pointer highlights certain symbols. I know these symbols will be incorporated into my memory, they will mesh into the vast web of thoughts and feelings and moments that make me who I am. I feel a breeze from the window, and think about what I might want for lunch. All of these thoughts and feelings are simple and ordinary. Eventually though, my mind will zoom out from the thought itself and focus on a question that is not so simple: how do these thoughts come about in the first place?

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My curiosity into meta-analysis of our thoughts is not something unique to me. For hundreds of years, thinking about thoughts has fallen within the realm of philosophy and religion. In the last fifty years with the rise of technology, it has begun to be reanalyzed through the lens of of the relatively new field of Neuroscience. As I became more interested with metacognition, a concept kept appearing that seemed so shrouded in ambiguity that the more I researched, the less I felt I knew. This concept was consciousness.

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Consciousness is a ubiquitous term. We use it to describe our current state and, in a larger sense, we use it as a term to differentiate our existence from that of beings further down on the food chain. We believe consciousness to be the unique trait that makes us human. But what is consciousness? How can it serve to define so much without having a singular standard definition itself? How does the idea of consciousness differ between its many different interpretations, and when did the split occur between a view of consciousness as a solely spiritual concept into both spiritual and scientific? What are the different levels of consciousness according to various definitions? Where in the timescale of evolution does the development of consciousness lie? And finally, is consciousness even a concept that we can fully understand?  Because of the ambiguity of consciousness within and outside of Neuroscience, these questions are impossible to holistically answer by exploring merely one interpretation of consciousness. In order to see the full picture of consciousness, we must investigate it's conceptual origin as well as the many different ways it is defined today.

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The modern colloquial use of consciousness comes mostly from a neuroscientific interpretation as a state of being and awareness, however, the term takes many different meanings.  The neuroscientific view is not wholly separated from the spiritual view however. Instead, it is a derivation of it. At some point the exploration of consciousness began to split between the spiritual and scientific view.

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This split was not entirely divisive as neuroscience still relies heavily upon outside interpretations of complicated topics to formulate theories behind  brain function. As a relatively new field, neuroscience is largely speculative.  This is an aspect of neuroscience that I feel is generally disregarded by most outsiders. Neuroscientists do not have all the answers. In fact, studying neuroscience has made me realize the relative enormity of things we do not know about the mind compared to the few, basic things we do know. In lieu of complete understanding, neuroscience relies heavy on conjecture. The necessity of speculation and creativity within neuroscience in order to devise new theories on brain function means that neuroscience is a field that benefits greatly from holistic investigation of topics like consciousness. By understanding it's historic definition and its many different definitions, neuroscientists can build off of what is already known and formulate research around this information. 

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When it comes to the concept of consciousness, I believe there is some validity within each of its many definitions and interpretations. It is through the hybridization of the many understandings of consciousness, scientific and beyond, that I believe a more comprehensive interpretation of consciousness as a whole can be reached. I want to find an answer to the question "What is Consciousness?" that fits within my understanding of neuroscience, spirituality, and lived experience. I want to understand the enigmatic idea of consciousness through my own research and within my own terms. The current flexibility in the definition of consciousness allows much room for interpretation, and this is exactly what I hope to do. Interpret consciousness through my own exploration of the overlap between its many different definitions and interpretations.