A few weeks ago, I recommended an exciting article by Michele Farisco. Now I wish to recommend another article, where Farisco (together with Steven Laureys and Kathinka Evers) argues even more thoroughly for a new concept of consciousness.
The article in Mind & Matter is complex and I doubt that I can do it justice. I have to start out from my own experience. For when Farisco challenges the opposition between consciousness and the unconscious, it resembles something I have written about: the opposition between human and animal.
Oppositions that work perfectly in everyday language often become inapplicable for scientific purposes. In everyday life, the opposition between human and animal is unproblematic. If a child tells us that it saw an animal, we know it was not a human the child saw. For the biologist, however, the idea of the human as non-animal would be absurd. Although it is perfectly in order in everyday language, biology must reject the opposition between human and animal. It hides continuities between us and the other animals.
Farisco says (if I understand him) something similar about neuroscience. Although the opposition between consciousness and the unconscious works in everyday language, it becomes problematic in neuroscience. It hides continuities in the brain’s way of functioning. Neuroscience should therefore view consciousness and the unconscious as continuous forms of the same basic phenomenon in living brains.
If biology talks about the human as one of the animal species, how does Farisco suggest that neuroscience should talk about consciousness? Here we face greater linguistic challenges than when biology considers humans to be animals.
Farico’s proposal is to widen the notion of consciousness to include also what we usually call the unconscious (much like the biologist widens the concept of animals). Farisco thus suggests, roughly, that the brain is conscious as long as it is alive, even in deep sleep or in coma. Note, however, that he uses the word in a new meaning! He does not claim what he appears to be claiming!
The brain works continually, whether we are conscious or not (in the ordinary sense). Most neural processes are unconscious and a prerequisite for consciousness (in the ordinary sense). Farisco suggests that we use the word consciousness for all these processes in living brains. The two states we usually oppose – consciousness and the unconscious – are thus forms of the same basic phenomenon, namely, consciousness in Farisco’s widened sense.
Farisco supports the widened concept of consciousness by citing neuroscientific evidence that I have to leave aside in this post. All I wish to do here is to point out that Farico’s concept of consciousness probably is as logical in neuroscience as the concept of the human as animal is in biology.
Do not let the linguistic challenges prevent you from seeing the logic of Farisco’s proposal!
Farisco, M., Laureys, S. and Evers, K. 2017. The intrinsic activity of the brain and its relation to levels and disorders of consciousness. Mind and Matter 15: 197-219
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