One names Conscience the impression which the living beings have " to feel exister". This Phénomène was a long time neglected on the scientific level fault of conceptual and experimental tools while it was the subject of intense debates in the spheres of the Métaphysique or of the Religion. At the present time (2006), if there does not exist yet of complete explanation relating to this phenomenon of the Esprit, the cognitive Sciences provide information more and more on this subject. A philosopher, Daniel Dennett, was until entitling one of his books the explained Conscience .
Note : This article tries a scientific approach of the phenomenon called conscience. The people interested by a philosophical approach can consult the article: Conscience.
Position of the problem
Several approaches exist.
One, resulting from the Materialism, does not postulate a divine or different project in the Conscience. This approach is well represented by Richard Dawkins.
Another, in various alternatives, the existence of possible a immaterial world, or of a " admits; world of the idées". It is that of Denys Turner, Sir John Eccles, Roland Omnès or Alain Connes.
A third is that of Daniel Dennett.
To be complete, it is advisable to also quote that of Roger Penrose, for the originality of its sights which are dissociated from the three preceding ones (he admits the existence of a world of the ideas, while inserting it in a physical/mathematical framework, therefore in fine materialist).
The approaches except pure materialism remain considered to date, 2006, like marginal.
Context materialist
In this paragraph, we place ourselves in the Hypothèse where all that is observed in the Univers can be explained without calling upon a divine or spiritual intervention (Matérialisme). All that exists is made of Matière. The human being reached the level of evolution which it currently has thanks to the play of the Natural selection. One can then logically think in this context that the Conscience belongs to the mechanisms of natural selection. Indeed, the conscience will undoubtedly have been necessary for one moment or another of its evolution to ensure its Survie in a hostile environment.
The scientist, trying to explain the conscience, defines it as being a function of the Cerveau. But to this level, two possibilities are offered to us:
- the brain being regarded as a Supercomputer, the conscience would be then a Logiciel.
- There exist Propriété S of the matter which the scientists did not discover yet and who can explain the phenomenon of the conscience.
Conscience as a software
This possibility is very with the mode in films of Science-fiction where one presents to us Ordinateur S which absorb during a certain time the conscience and the Connaissance S of some Nobody S whose body remains inanimate lasting all the time of the transfer.
Many scientists imagined very seriously that one could in the future ensure the survival of the human being by transferring the unit from his mental contents in networks of artificial neurons. They hope by doing that the conscience will follow. The conscience is very clearly perceived in these scenarios as a software which can possibly leave the body to be transferred on another support, Ordinateur or artificial body.
A question comes to the Esprit: a software can be quite simply recopied. What will it occur if one recopies the software conscience on several supports in several specimens?
If the conscience is a software, should be able to us to create conscious computers (as example, the novel: Destination empties). Let us consider this possibility within the framework of the Artificial intelligence. Let us suppose that one asks for largest the Programmeur world to program the most powerful known computer of the men so that this one is conscious. What will it make? A Computer program is a succession of instructions. How a succession of instructions can it make so that the computer is really conscious of sound Existence. One can, of course, make so that the Ordinateur simulates the conscience while making him reproduce the behavior of a to be conscious. But if it is wanted that it is really conscious, how to imagine the continuation of the instructions of the program in question?
This approach poses a certain number of fundamental problems, raised in particular by Roger Penrose. In the same way that a formal Système is basically limited in the proposals which it can show (see Théorème of Gödel), a Machine of Turing (on which a software is carried out) is also basically limited: an important whole of problems or proposals will be inaccessible to Logiciel given. However the human Esprit is characterized precisely by its capacity with constantly exceeding its limites.De more, always with the image of a formal system where any theorem is brought back in last analysis to an axiom (and thus, with this one, to a Tautologie), a software cannot " créer" or " inventer" another thing that what is contained in its initial data or its rules of logical Inférence. Such does not seem to be the case (quite to the contrary) of the human Esprit.
One can also note the recurring failures of the Artificial intelligence to emulate a conscience, even elementary, in spite of computing powers always in exponential growth.
Conscience as a property of the matter
If one does not manage to imagine the conscience as a software and if one wants despite everything to try to explain the conscience in a Contexte purely materialist, one is then obliged to accept the Hypothèse which there exist properties of the Matière that the scientists did not discover yet. These properties would allow the matter, in a certain configuration, to generate the Phénomène conscience. The quantum Mécanique at the present time seems to be the Théorie most favorable to the birth of an assumption being able to explain how the matter can generate the phenomenon of the conscience because:
- the quantum phenomena make it possible to plan to implement " algorithmes" who would be not implémentables on machines of Turing, which have the limitations underlined in the preceding paragraph (see also quantum Ordinateur).
- the aspect not yet completely elucidated quantum Décohérence makes it possible to imagine that this one could be influenced by hidden parameters, which could cause conscience (the state of the neurons would be thus influenced by these hidden parameters)
Johnjoe Mac Fadden thinks that the conscience is a property of the electromagnetic fields generated by the human brain (see).
Roger Penrose explores the possibility that the conscience can be generated by quantum superpositions with large scales, in particular located in the Microtubule S constitutive of the Cytosquelette of the neurons.
Let us suppose that the conscience is due to properties of the matter and analyze what that implies. The biologist S established that it is necessary approximately seven years so that all the matter presents in the Human body is renewed. The conscience being a property of the matter, it must also consequently be entirely renewed every seven years. At a certain moment of our Life, we remember our Enfance and we believe to have lived these moments whereas we do nothing but observe the contents of our memory. The Atome S which were there at the time of our childhood were eliminated and replaced by others. We are new a to be which took the place of old and we have the Illusion to have lived since our birth because of the identification to the unceasingly recopied contents of our memory. We should not worry us for our physical Mort because if this one takes place in more than seven years we will not know it because we will be replaced by another being which will take our place and which will believe being us because he will inherit the recopy of our memory. And it is this being which, perhaps, will undergo physical death and not us, unless it is not its successor.
Spiritualistic context
The difficulty of explaining the conscience in a context materialist naturally leads us to put forth the assumption that the conscience is, perhaps, the Caractéristique of something which leaves the material context.
This news Conception makes it possible to avoid some of the difficulties encountered in the context materialist, but opens a whole world of enigma S because it implies that there exists a a whole part of existential which was not approached yet by the Physique. It is not, of course, question of trying here to know which Religion holds the Vérité. It is quite obvious that if there exists a spiritual world, the laws which control it are likely all to exceed in difficulty all the most elaborate Théorie S of the Physique.
The advantage of such a design is to think that if the conscience does not belong to the physical body, it can thus survive the material renewal mentioned above. And if the conscience survives the material renewal of the body, there are chances that she survives the final destruction of this one which is the physical Mort. One can as suppose as the conscience after death reinstates another body since certain hypnotists claim to have led some Nobody S to remember their preceding lives under Hypnose. The large question mark in this case consists in wondering why a doubt remains on the Réincarnation whereas it is enough thanks to hypnosis to make a serious study on a great number of cases to be able to determine the Réalité scientifically Phénomène.
One of the problems raised by a design Spirituelle of the conscience is of knowing how this one communicates with the physical body. How the will can it act on the body by inducing Nerve impulse in the Nerf S. Sir John Eccles, Nobel Prize of physiology in 1963, calls upon the quantum Mécanique by postulating the Hypothèse according to which the Esprit would intervene by modifying the Probabilité of emission of the chemical transmitter. The field of probability in Quantum physics by the indetermination which it generates at the physical level would make it possible the spiritual world to control the physical world. (see )
Other considerations
Relationship between the conscience and the flow of time
Everyone most probably noticed the following fact:
- When one saw a unpleasant Expérience, the Temps seems to run out more slowly.
- When one saw a pleasant Expérience, the Temps seems to run out more quickly.
This observation carries out us to raise a fundamental question to us. Since the flow of the Temps appears so different to us according to the moments, that in is real flow of the time independently of us?
We have a feeling of the flow of time, but this feeling being different according to the moments, we can think that the flow of the Temps which we believe real is perhaps only a Illusion, a feeling programmed in our Cerveau. With which Speed time can it pass if ourself have a so variable Perception of its flow?
Frank Tipler introduces a concept of time Subjectif which is distinguished from time Physique. According to Tipler, a unit of subjective time corresponds to a Information treated (the Esprit being regarded as a Computer program). The feeling of flow of time would be thus different according to the quantity from information that the human Esprit is able to treat and thus would depend on the stage on evolution on this one.
Considerations in Théorie of the cords bring to think that physical time does not pass. The conscience would traverse the time which is solidified, a little as a car traverses a road.
The situation becomes complicated when one places oneself within the framework of the Théorie of Everett. Within this framework, the evolution of the world is not linear but arborescent. At every moment the evolution borrows simultaneously all the possibilities envisaged by quantum mechanics, and one can then legitimately put the question to know what it occurs of the individual conscience. Our does Conscience also divide to coexist simultaneously in parallel worlds? Paul Jorion answers this question negatively. According to him, the conscience would take the way of evolution which is most favorable for it. (see)
Levels of conscience
There would exist several levels of conscience:
-
primary conscience (consciousness), with the general direction, which would be the most primary state and basic of the phenomenon of conscience (representation conscious of the environment and the body of the subject).
-
the introspective conscience or reflexive, which would correspond to a Représentation conscious of the representations (to be conscious of being aware).
-
self-awareness (coil-awareness), which would be a higher state of conscience, where the Psychisme reaches a Connaissance clear and immediate, not only of its activity, but in addition to sound identity clean and singular, and such as the author of his own activity (capacity of the subject to be perceived as being the author of its thoughts).
State of consciousnesses
The conscience is not constantly present in the life of the individual. It seems to grow blurred in certain circumstances. It is in particular the case in the Sommeil, the Coma or the fainding.
Particular studies were undertaken by various researchers on different the state of consciousnesses. The most traditional states being the Day before, the Dream and the Sleep. It would seem however that there exist other state of consciousnesses.
Already, Freud spoke about a state of Rêve waked up. The studies on the daydream were resumed by Robert Desoille like by other researchers like Patricia Garfield and Frederick Van Ecden.
Certain researchers, as Bernard Auriol, defined a waking state paradoxical just as one defines the paradoxical Sommeil (see).
Other more advanced state of consciousnesses seem to be obtained by yogis. The doctor Herbert Benson, after having received the authorization of the Dalaï Lama, made studies on Moine S Tibetans which could, thanks to the Méditation, to put itself in particular state of consciousnesses (see).
The Sophrology, created by Alfonso Caycedo, is a science which would study the modifications of the human conscience.
Neurobiology of the conscience
History
About everyone seems of agreement to locate the conscience in the brain. Divergences appear if one seeks to locate in a more precise way the conscience in the brain.
Descartes located the conscience in the pineal Body.
Sigmund Freud located the conscience on the external layer of the brain. The internal layer, according to him, corresponded to the Inconscient.
More recently the Nobel Prize Roger Sperry, after having divided the callous Body and former commissure connecting the two hemispheres of the Brain with an aim of relieving the people reached of the epilepsy, noted a form of unfolding of the conscience. One of the two consciences was verbal and analytical and seemed to correspond to the left hemisphere of the brain. The other conscience, more subjective, seemed to correspond to the right hemisphere of the brain. Roger Sperry deduced from it that the conscience is not localized at a particular place in the brain. According to him, it is as if all the parts of the brain contributed to it in concert (see).
Current synthesis
The conscience would exist only at the Primates having a very developed nervous system and it appears gradually in childhood, consecutively with the development of the networks of Neuron S connecting between them the most complex areas of the Cerveau (associative surfaces polymodales). Under all reserves, the function of the conscience would be the higher control of the most complex cerebral activities.
It would seem, according to the currently available data, that the structures neurales whose specific organization would be at the origin of the phenomenon of conscience would be networks of one-way circuits, phylogenetically recent, located in the frontal areas (frontal Cortex) and in the posterior associative cortical areas (précunéus and gyrus cingulaire posterior) of the hemisphere dominating or linguistic (the left hemisphere at 95% of the people).
For the functional level, so that it can exist the conscience of a specific object, it would be necessary, at the same time, that the cerebral module which treats this object is intensely and durably credit (lasted higher than 250 ms), and, moreover, which the networks of one-way circuits localized in the posterior associative areas frontal and cortical of the hemisphere dominating or linguistic are also and simultaneously credit.
To give an example, the Vision conscious of an object would imply an activity intense and higher than 250 ms in the occipital cortex (which are the visual cortex) and also in the network implied in the conscience (the frontal cortex, as well as the précunéus and the posterior gyrus cingulaire of the hemisphere dominating).
The scientific data supporting this summarized court come, mainly, of a synthesis of work of Edelman G.M., Delacour J., Sperry R.W., Laureys S., Jeannerod Mr., and Gazzaniga M.S.
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