The Function of Consciousness

The Function of Consciousness: Integrating the Two Worlds

How, without consciousness, would you know how you feel& That is the function consciousness. It is not only intrinsically introspective, it is also evaluative. It imparts value. It tells us whether something is “good” or “bad”; and it does that by making things feel good or bad (or somewhere in between). That is what consciousness, feeling, is for. (And that is why psychiatrists are interested in modifying the chemical outputs of these core brainstem nuclei.)

The evaluative function of our conscious “state” has its roots in the visceral monitoring structures of the core brain. This function of consciousness is therefore intrinsically biological. Its evolutionary survival vale is obvious: How long would we survive if we did not have a way of monitoring the delicate economy of the internal milieu of our bodies? The organ systems of our bodies can only function effectively within a very narrow range of set-points – with respect to temperature, blood-sugar level, and so forth. The most basic function of consciousness, then, is to monitor the state of these homeostatic systems and to report whether they are “contented” or not.

But bodily self-monitoring is only the most basic function consciousness. All our vital inner needs can only be met in the external world. The inner state of consciousness (which tells us, above all, what our current needs are) therefore has to be brought into connection with the current state of the world around us. Although, as we have seen, it is not necessary to be conscious of the external environment in order to perceive it, it is nevertheless useful. It is useful to able to say things like, “I feel like this (hungry), so I want to eat that thing over there,” or, “I feel like this (upset), because thing over there bit me.” In this way, consciousness – that is, value – is imparted to objects, and objects come to be known as “good” or “bad”. Consciousness is not only what you feel, it is what you feel about something.

The similarity between Freud's model and Damasio's is very striking. Photo by Elena.

Thus, even if the evolutionary “dawn of consciousness” was purely introspective, in a rudimentary biological sense, it probably quickly generalized, and our external perceptual modalities, too, became imbued with feeling (with consciousness). In this way, our external perception was transformed from being a set of (unconscious) information-processing channels into being the generator of the rich texture of perceptual qualities (conscious sights, sounds, smells, etc.) that we are now able to experience. This is consistent with the anatomical fact that the output of the core brain nuclei in question is broadcast very widely to the forebrain, and with the psychological fat that such “bottom-up” activation is necessary before higher cortical processes can become conscious.

Damasio therefore concluded that consciousness consists of more than mere awareness of our inner states; rather, it consists of fluctuating couplings of the current state of the object world. Each unit of consciousness forges a link between the self and objects. These momentary “units” of conscious time are probably generated by the rhythmical oscillations (the 40-hertz oscillations that characterize visual awareness). The oscillations are generated by pulses of activation of cortex, emanating from deep “reticulate” thalamic nuclei, thereby coupling the two varieties (or sources) of consciousness with one another many times per second. This is how we generate “the feeling of what happens” that provided the title of Damasio's book. Consciousness thus consists of feelings (evaluations) projected onto what is happening around us. Or, to put it the other way round, consciousness consists of awareness of what is happening around us, grounded in a background medium of self-awareness. Note especially that this explanation of consciousness solves both the binding problem and the homuncular problem. The various “channels” of consciousness are bound together by the grounding “state” of consciousness, which is itself the homunculus; the little person in your head is literally a projection of your bodily self.

Damasio calls this coupling mechanism “core consciousness.” Some further complications of consciousness exist.

There are many points of contact between Damasio's neuroscientific theory and those of other psychoanalytic theorists. Photo by Elena.