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Authors: Michio Kaku
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allows them to discriminate between colors that look identical to the majority of us with a mere three types of color photoreceptors.”
Clearly, the more we understand the mechanics of thought, the more questions arise. Precisely what happens in the command center of the mind when confronted with a rebellious shadow command center? What do we mean by “consciousness” anyway, if it can be split in half? And what is the relationship between consciousness and “self” and “self-awareness”?
If we can answer these difficult questions, then perhaps it will pave the way for understanding nonhuman consciousness, the consciousness of robots and aliens from outer space, for example, which may be entirely different from ours.
So let us now propose a clear answer to this deceptively complex question: What is consciousness?
The mind of man is capable of anything … because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
—JOSEPH CONRAD
Consciousness can reduce even the most fastidious thinker to blabbering incoherence.
—COLIN MCGINN
2 CONSCIOUSNESS—A PHYSICIST’S VIEWPOINT
The idea of consciousness has intrigued philosophers for centuries, but it has resisted a simple definition, even to this day. The philosopher David Chalmers has cataloged more than twenty thousand papers written on the subject; nowhere in science have so many devoted so much to create so little consensus. The seventeenth-century thinker Gottfried Leibniz once wrote, “If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness.”
Some philosophers doubt that a theory of consciousness is even possible. They claim that consciousness can never be explained since an object can never understand itself, so we don’t even have the mental firepower to solve this perplexing question. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker writes, “We cannot see ultraviolet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience.”
In fact, for most of the twentieth century, one of the dominant theories of psychology, behaviorism, denied the importance of consciousness entirely. Behaviorism is based on the idea that only the objective behavior of animalsand people is worthy of study, not the subjective, internal states of the mind.
Others have given up trying to define consciousness, and try simply to describe it. Psychiatrist Giulio Tononi has said, “Everybody knows what consciousness is: it is what abandons you every night when you fall into dreamless sleep and returns the next morning when you wake up.”
Although the nature of consciousness has been debated for centuries, there has been little resolution. Given that physicists created many of the inventions that have made the explosive advancements in brain science possible, perhaps it will be useful to follow an example from physics in reexamining this ancient question.
HOW PHYSICISTS UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE
When a physicist tries to understand something, first he collects data and then he proposes a “model,” a simplified version of the object he is studying that captures its essential features. In physics, the model is described by a series of parameters (e.g., temperature, energy, time). Then the physicist uses the model to predict its future evolution by simulating its motions. In fact, some of the world’s largest supercomputers are used to simulate the evolution of models, which can describe protons, nuclear explosions, weather patterns, the big bang, and the center of black holes. Then you create a better model, using more sophisticated parameters, and simulate it in time as well.
For example, when Isaac Newton was puzzling over the motion of the moon, he created a simple model that would eventually change the course of human history: he envisioned throwing an apple in the air. The faster you threw the apple, he reasoned, the farther it would travel. If
Clearly, the more we understand the mechanics of thought, the more questions arise. Precisely what happens in the command center of the mind when confronted with a rebellious shadow command center? What do we mean by “consciousness” anyway, if it can be split in half? And what is the relationship between consciousness and “self” and “self-awareness”?
If we can answer these difficult questions, then perhaps it will pave the way for understanding nonhuman consciousness, the consciousness of robots and aliens from outer space, for example, which may be entirely different from ours.
So let us now propose a clear answer to this deceptively complex question: What is consciousness?
The mind of man is capable of anything … because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future.
—JOSEPH CONRAD
Consciousness can reduce even the most fastidious thinker to blabbering incoherence.
—COLIN MCGINN
2 CONSCIOUSNESS—A PHYSICIST’S VIEWPOINT
The idea of consciousness has intrigued philosophers for centuries, but it has resisted a simple definition, even to this day. The philosopher David Chalmers has cataloged more than twenty thousand papers written on the subject; nowhere in science have so many devoted so much to create so little consensus. The seventeenth-century thinker Gottfried Leibniz once wrote, “If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness.”
Some philosophers doubt that a theory of consciousness is even possible. They claim that consciousness can never be explained since an object can never understand itself, so we don’t even have the mental firepower to solve this perplexing question. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker writes, “We cannot see ultraviolet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience.”
In fact, for most of the twentieth century, one of the dominant theories of psychology, behaviorism, denied the importance of consciousness entirely. Behaviorism is based on the idea that only the objective behavior of animalsand people is worthy of study, not the subjective, internal states of the mind.
Others have given up trying to define consciousness, and try simply to describe it. Psychiatrist Giulio Tononi has said, “Everybody knows what consciousness is: it is what abandons you every night when you fall into dreamless sleep and returns the next morning when you wake up.”
Although the nature of consciousness has been debated for centuries, there has been little resolution. Given that physicists created many of the inventions that have made the explosive advancements in brain science possible, perhaps it will be useful to follow an example from physics in reexamining this ancient question.
HOW PHYSICISTS UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE
When a physicist tries to understand something, first he collects data and then he proposes a “model,” a simplified version of the object he is studying that captures its essential features. In physics, the model is described by a series of parameters (e.g., temperature, energy, time). Then the physicist uses the model to predict its future evolution by simulating its motions. In fact, some of the world’s largest supercomputers are used to simulate the evolution of models, which can describe protons, nuclear explosions, weather patterns, the big bang, and the center of black holes. Then you create a better model, using more sophisticated parameters, and simulate it in time as well.
For example, when Isaac Newton was puzzling over the motion of the moon, he created a simple model that would eventually change the course of human history: he envisioned throwing an apple in the air. The faster you threw the apple, he reasoned, the farther it would travel. If
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