Consciousness (mechanism)
Pre-requisite
To study consciousness in psychology, it appears necessary to assume that any form of substance dualism is not true. Descartes, mind and body dualism cannot be studied scientifically, ergo through psychology, as it assumes that though the body can be measured, the mind is not measurable in space. Property dualism on the other hand assumes that body and mind are both made up of material and in the case of consciousness, the matter that it is made of, may simply not have been found yet. Of course there is also the view that there is no such thing as dualism, but considering that consciousness is a strange phenomenon and does not have a proven scientific explanation it appears rash to throw the whole concept of dualism, especially property dualism out of the window. However, there is a way to circumnavigate the problem of dualism and that is by distinguishing between easy and hard problems of consciousness, as suggested by Chalmers (1995). According to Chalmers, the easy problems deal with cognitive functions and abilities, e.g. reacting to environmental stimuli, attention and differences between wake and sleep where as hard problems are explaining experience and perhaps even conscious free will, which is essentially what dualistic religions and theories deal with. This is why psychology focuses on the easy problems.
Research into Consciousness
Psychological research into the area of consciousness concerns itself mainly with behavioural and neurological measurements such as EEG’s and tests with split-brain patients, neglect patients and other similar disorders. Such research focuses on the functions of consciousness that Chalmers would probably consider easy problems. However, altered states of consciousness are also studied within psychology and these altered states may produce valuable insight on how consciousness functions and also the experience it provides. Altered states include side effects of certain drugs as well as dreams and hypnosis, though some drugs have been said to induce hypnosis like states, as for example scopolamine. Interestingly, victims of the drug scopolamine, which is used similarly to rohypnol, become zombie-like in their behaviour; they follow the orders of people around them like robots and maintain they felt trapped by their own consciousness and lose all free will. It would be interesting to administer this drug whilst giving the patient a brain scan to determine which parts of their brain appear knocked out or over active. This may further enrich our understanding of
consciousness, especially if a certain area can be identified.
The future
Considering that humans are trying to build robots with the aim of producing consciousness, like for example Cog at the MIT, identifying exactly which brain areas are involved in it appears to be an inevitable step. If such a robot is accomplished, it will be proof that substance dualism of mind and body is definitely not true. Whether or not this also excludes property dualism would heavily depend on whether or not another form of matter must be discovered in order to first build this robot or not. If no other parts are necessary than we have already discovered in the brain, an exact copy of the brain should produce a conscious mind. Then one would have to question which organisms that already exist that function like robots, like bacteria or viruses have consciousness, by perhaps removing parts of the brain and checking whether the robot still has consciousness. The future research into the mind is incredibly broad and exciting and as a psychology student, I hope to contribute to the greater understanding (and maybe live forever by uploading my consciousness onto a laptop or cyborg).
