Mr. Owen, one of the world's probably most reputadet neuroscience researchers (see http://www.owenlab.uwo.ca/), gave an intriguing Interview in the „Süddeutsche Zeitung“ (german) of November 4th/5th. There he gave an insight into his kind of neuroscientific conclusion, what consciousness really is. This conclusions might also be of deeper interest philosophically. But I’m not quite sure, if his argumentation is not – in part – contradictive (as fast as I may receive a response of him, I will update this post). What's it all about?
He said (translated with my own words), that somewhere in-between the insemination and the age of 10 the human consciousness arrives. When and how, is a miracle. Therefore he argues, that only strong religious people
might think, that a protozoon has consciousness.
The religious argumentation let away (I’m far from being religious):
His inspiring examinations show, that the consciousness is located in the regions of attention in the brain. Attention needs – somehow – the ability, to register sensations. Beside the sense of seeing, there exist
also the senses of feeling and especially smelling.
On the other hand, nowadays it is well known, that sperms have obviously a great ability of smelling. They might also have some sense of feeling, how could they otherwise “know” where to swim and where to dock. Something similar is obviously valid concerning the inseminated cell: She might not be able to smell, but she too needs some sort of feeling
sensation to find the right place to develop in the uterus.
This replicated to his kind of definition of consciousness: Couldn’t this mean, that an entity, who is obviously able to register some sort of feeling, maybe some further sort of sensation, and “conclude”, what to do with this gained information, isn’t that just enough to speak of (a maybe low case of) consciousness?
As far as I understood him correctly, he said: No.
This is true, if we take the human perspective. Related to the human consciousness, much more is indeed needed. But then there is a great lack, how to explain the origin of consciousness at all (what is the contradiction, which I see in his argumentation).
What, if we argument contrariwise, if we say, there has been consciousness ever since. Then we could argument, that from the beginning (the inseminated cell) there has been some (low) sort of consciousness. With the ongoing development (inseminated cell, embryo, newborn baby etc.), the consciousness has cumulated (cause of augmented
sensory ability). Then we could guess (what he indicated), that also an embryo has already consciousness, so that the undisputed consciousness of a child has indeed not to be explained ex nihilo.
With my suggested argumentation the other way around surely rests unsolved, where consciousness “ever since” came from. But in relation of the developed human consciousness (and furthermore in relation to all earthly creatures) we might already be a step wiser.
Thanks in advance to the upcoming well arguing steemians, who may show the failure of my suggestion or eventually do confirm me, maybe even from a neuroscientific viewpoint.