Of the subjects addressed by both science and philosophy, it is consciousness that remains the most challenging and intractable. Questions regarding consciousness in all its forms (human, animal, vegetable, mineral) have vexed thinkers and researchers since before the time of Socrates. Salient problems include:
- How do we assemble our varying sensory inputs into mental experience?
- For that matter, what is it in each of us that does this? If our very intercourse with the world is unconsciously mediated and regulated outside of our deliberate control, how much can it be said that we possess a “self” with “free will”?
- Is our personal, inner experience (the so-called “qualia” problem) unique to each individual?
- What is the difference between “knowing” something and “remembering” something if one is a zebra? If one is not a zebra?
- Are carrots particularly smart, or not really?
- Does a slab of granite have the slightest awareness that it is a slab of granite, or does it think it’s something else?
Such conundrums might seem the stuff of idle speculation, unanswerable imponderables akin to wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But recent developments in both fMRI lab research and artificial intelligence have propelled the inquiry into consciousness to the forefront of modern scientific investigation. What a century ago might have seemed to be fanciful musings, barely worth thinking about, have become essential topics of research, and very much worth thinking about — certainly more worth thinking about than what one actually does think about, i.e., Donald Trump, that fucking asshole, and his idiot army of followers. Because let us be candid: Regardless of the near-infinite range of cognitive experiences available to the human mind, the overwhelmingly predominant experience of millions of human minds these days is to think about Donald fucking Trump.
Why? Because it’s unbelievable. Literally. It is impossible to fully comprehend. You want to ponder, in the vastness of your private contemplation, the nature of the self, and whether it can plausibly, at this late date, still be considered a unitary phenomenon. But all you end up really thinking about is what a towering douchebag Trump is. Who can focus on “qualia,” when every day delivers another slap in face concerning how much Trump’s “handlers” and “spokespeople” are obviously, obviously scumbags and liars, and how very, very stupid someone must be to actually plan to vote for him — a hypothesis amply proved, over and over, with each new waking day.
Where were we? Right. One finds oneself wondering, does Descartes’ famous dualism — that “mind” and “brain” (or, if you prefer, mind and body) are made of two distinctly different kinds of “substance” — still have cogency? At least, one wants to wonder that. But what one in fact finds oneself wondering is, are we in fact actually witnessing the rise and possible victory of an American fascism whose adherents are, literally and by definition, incapable of being reached by reason, truth, evidence, and fact? That, no matter how valid and legitimate their political and cultural and economic grievances, they are loudly and proudly going to vote for a total shit-head who will bring about the destruction of their own world — never mind ours? Can it truly be the case that people who would direct narrow-eyed suspicion at a man who wants them to buy a used car, merrily and unhesitatingly cheer a patent fraud, liar, and cheat, who wants them to vote him into the most powerful office on earth?
Let’s take a breath. It was Descartes who famously established an axiom of modern existential ontology when he announced, “I think, therefore I am.” Over the centuries the authority of that statement has been questioned, and the formula has been amended and moderated. Many prefer the more precise variant, “There is thinking, therefore there is a thinker.” But as a founding statement of Epistemological Idealism, the assertion retains its legitimacy. But who can think about legitimacy, Epistemological Idealism, or fuck-all, when everyday on tv and online we have Trump’s followers? They do not think, but there they fucking are. Ten million (or more!) Americans rise up as one and, in bleating “Make America great again” and “Build that wall!” and “Lock her up” declare, in a sense, “Fuck you, Descartes.”
So, in a very real sense, given the inadequacy of our current knowledge about the relationship between brain and mind, how the self in each of us is formed and how it functions, and how many of us are unable to manage the processes of thought and cognition sufficiently to not think twenty hours a day about what a hideous pumpkin-dyed shitgibbon Trump is and how unbelievably stupid his followers are, fuck consciousness. What good is consciousness if it can’t kick its owners inside their heads and tell them, “HELLO? ARE YOU LISTENING? TRUMP IS AN ASSHOLE. HE’S AN ASSHOLE IN TERMS EVEN YOU UNDERSTAND”?
Neuroscientists, epistemologists, experimental psychologists, “strong A.I.” computer scientists — can’t they do something about Trump? Somebody has to. If we know nothing else — if we can know nothing else — we know that. Otherwise, I just don’t know.
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