An Essay on Human Consciousness

Asher Katz
Mrs. Brantley
English Comp I
June 17, 2013
The Evolution of Human Consciousness
Consciousness is defined as, "the awareness of ones own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, and etc." It is, therefore, likely that the first inklings of human consciousness began when the first humans were born. Burial practices of Neolithic humans appear to express spirituality and provide early confirmation of reflective thought about human consciousness. (Kalton) Most modern philosophers, however, consider the beginnings of the modern concept of human consciousness to have occurred during the Protestant Reformation period in the 1600's. For hundreds of years, philosophical theory remained the dominant source from which we drew conclusions regarding the human consciousness. However, as science has progressed, psychology and neurology have taken the forefront of this field of research.
In order to understand what human consciousness is, one must first have at least a basic understanding of the progression of theories regarding the subject. Exactly when and with who the modern concept if human consciousness began is up for debate, but the majority opinion is that when René Descartes wrote The Principles of Philosophy in 1640 and famously stated, "by the word 'pensée' ('thought'), I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating us," human consciousness already existed as a topic of philosophy, but emphasis had yet to be placed upon its study (Gulick). Descartes' definition served as a solid foundation upon which philosophy would progress the concept of human consciousness for many years to come. In 1688, John Locke, in An Essay on Human Understanding, wrote that one cannot, at any given point in time, think and not be aware of his or her thoughts. Therefore, so long as a person has thoughts, he or she is conscious (Kalton). In Discourse on Metaphysics, written in the early 1700's by G.W. Leibniz, it was written that perception and apperception exist as two solitary categories of thought, meaning that one can perceive a situation via somatosensory response, and one can also perceive a situation based upon reflection of events of the past, but the two are separate types of thought (Gulick).
The next noteworthy name is that of Immanuel Kant, who, in 1787, updated and expanded upon Descartes' definition, claiming that "at minimum, phenomenal consciousness is the experience of a conscious self in an objective world with respect to space, time, and causality" (Gulick). Though this definition remained the primarily used definition of consciousness for many years, philosophy began to take a back seat on the issue in order to make room for the field of psychology. In 1865, John Stuart Mill, an associationist psychologist, fostered the idea that the combination of two or more ideas may generate ideas and concepts that are greater than their parts (Kalton). This serves as an early example of the concept of emergence, the idea that every resultant is caused by two or more forces either acting together, and therefore providing the sum of the parts, or against each other, and therefore providing the difference.
For many years, psychological examination of the human consciousness continued. In the early 20th century, however, consciousness, due primarily to the increasing interest in Behaviorism, began to fade from relevance. In the 1960's, cognitive psychology emerged as a field, examining topics such as memory, language comprehension, and perception. Consciousness, however, remained out of the spotlight until the 1980's, when cognitive psychology and neurology had advanced to the point that people began to question the neurological origins of consciousness. Francis Crick, more famously know for his co-discovery of DNA, and David Chalmers are two of the more notable names in regards to their revival of the study of consciousness, now a research field of its own. As technology and media had advanced for many years without study in this field, human consciousness, in a sense, raced to catch up with the formation of specialty journals, professional societies, most notably the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC), and annual conferences (Frye).
Human consciousness is a unique field blending philosophy, psychology, and neurology in order to define what exactly it is that gives man thought and makes him aware of it. It is, therefore, the principle of the neurobiological approach to examine the precise association of human consciousness and the electro-chemical interactions within the human brain and body. The somatosensory system depends upon the brain's ability to interpret information gathered via the various senses. As human consciousness, as defined previously, is dependent upon our senses, it was the logical next step for neuroscientists to link the human conscious to the somatosensory system. The principle of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC) was, therefore, created and defined as, "the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept (a stimulus of perception)" (Crick and Koch) Therefore, by isolating and manipulating a single sense, neuroscientists are able to identity the NCCs involved in the recognition of a single percept.
Of the five senses, vision, primarily due to the ability to easily and precisely manipulate the sense, has become the standard modality by which neuroscientists examine consciousness. Psychologists have discovered several techniques to separate the stimulation of a sense and the awareness of said stimulation, allowing an isolation of the NCCs involved in the stimulation aforementioned (Crick and Koch) For example, in the case of the visual sense, psychologists have learned that the recognition of a visual stimulation can be suppressed for minutes at a time, allowing the isolation of the NCCs involved in visual consciousness. Similar techniques can be and have been used in each of the senses, largely mapping out the NCCs throughout the human brain (Tononi).
Although the concept of the Neural Correlates of Consciousness is, by far, the most commonly ascribed to neurobiological theory for the origins of human consciousness, NCCs are not entirely responsible for consciousness as a whole. Serotonin, one of the major four neurotransmitters, is responsible for a wide range of regulatory activities throughout the human body, including mood, hunger, and sleep. It has long been thought that serotonin is key to human consciousness for several reasons. Most notably, the change of serotonin levels within the brain occurs naturally with the change of metal state, awareness, and wakefulness. Serotonin is also associated with many mental disorders, especially depression, caused by a relatively low level of serotonin within the brain, and schizophrenia, a mental disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and other extreme changes in perception. In addition, serotonin is structurally related to and directly acted upon by most psychedelic drugs, substances that alter ones consciousness via sensory hallucinations, accentuations and empathogenic qualities (Mishlove). Undoubtedly, serotonin plays a large role in the human experience.
Although the leaps and bounds made in neurobiological in the past two or three decades have been astonishing, society is far away from understanding human consciousness and its origins in its entirety. However, the progress made within the field is promising to say the least. The eventual and inevitable progression of the study from its philosophical origins to its modern psychological and neurobiological status has provided the public with a much deeper understanding of the human psyche, despite how much more there is to discover. The elusive truth behind why it is that a person is aware of his or her existence has been a key question to humanity for, quite possibly, thousands of years, and as each stone is lifted off of the truth, two more appear underneath. In 1866, T.H. Huxley, a highly esteemed English biologist, made famous a quote still quite applicable to humanity's understanding of the human conscious: "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness came about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp" (Gulick).

Works Cited
Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. "Consciousness and Neuroscience." Koch Laboratory. California Institute of Technology, 1997. Web. 15 June 2013. .
Frye, Cheryl A. "Origins of Physiological Psychology." University at Albany Faculty Database. U at Albany, 1999. Web. 18 June 2013. .
Gulick, Robert van. "Consciousness." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, 18 June 2004. Web. 15 June 2013. .
Kalton, Michael C. "An Essay on the Origin of Consciousness." University of Washington Faculty Database. U of Washington, Aug. 2000. Web. 15 June 2013. .
Mishlove, Jeffrey. "The Biological Perspective." The William James Bookstore. N.p., 2005. Web. 18 June 2013. .
Tononi, Giulio, and Christof Koch. "Neural Correlates of Consciousness: An Update." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1124 (2008): 239-61. Print.





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