The Mystery of Consciousness

The subject of consciousness is an interesting one since we use it all the time yet it remains completely mysterious. Science holds that consciousness arises from matter, while religion holds that matter arises from consciousness.

Science began the first time one of our ancestors gazed up into the stars and wondered. Yet, in spite of the way our telescopes have been able to see nearly back to the big bang, and our microscopes and particle accelerators have been able to probe into matter's heart, how consciousness works, what it is, and how it could arise from matter, remains unfathomable. 

Scientific ignorance about consciousness underlie the claims of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Biologists, who believe that consciousness depends on the human brain alone—consciousness arises from matter—have been arguing against consciousness in animals at the same time that computer scientists have been claiming that they are about to build conscious machines (again believing that consciousness arises from matter). Some (see Dennett 1971) have even enthused that their thermostats are conscious.

But what is consciousness? Mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, of Oxford University, has shown that the world that we access through our consciousness appears to have an independent existence where the laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry, music, and conceivably other absolutes including ethics and beauty, exist outside of space and time.  Since it was Plato who first described it, it is called Plato's world—a place that can only be accessed by the intellect and that reveals itself to each of us through conscious reflection. Mathematical ideas unfold when we reflect upon them and they have also been found to underlie the physical world.

Consciousness appears, it reflects and finds Plato's world, and the truths found there lie behind the manifestation of the physical world. An example to illustrate this remarkable idea was presented by Penrose in his book The Emperor's New Mind. Though the idea that the number -1, minus one, could have a square root may be thought of as nothing more than a mathematical joke, since the squares of all numbers are positive, the square root of minus one, (√-1) has turned out to play a basic role in the operation of our universe at its tiniest scales. This argues powerfully for the reality of Plato's world--that place where things that are fundamentally true exist in an absolute sense. The illustration below shows the graph of an equation involving the square root of minus one: the Mandelbrot set. The second part shows it magnified a million times—the outline does not change with magnification, which is one of the characteristics of a fractal. The strange beauty of the graphed Mandelbrot set was always there, unknown to us, outside of space and time, until the calculating power of the computer allowed us to see it. There are many amazing images of it on the Internet, if you are interested and many other such intriguing graphs.

Roger Penrose also crafted a mathematical argument that machines would never be conscious, no matter how big or complex they might become, because consciousness lies in the region of non-computable things. He wrote that animals are likely conscious, and that consciousness likely involves the actions of sub-atomic particles—quantum mechanical phenomena—which do not follow the expectations of classical physics.

This could explain how fish and birds can be so intelligent, in spite of their small brains—the miniaturization of the animal has not resulted in a loss of intelligence. Brain size, it seems, is unrelated to intelligence, implying that consciousness does not depend on mass.

There are other ways to access Plato's world. Though music is just vibration at different frequencies, pitch, and speed in the physical world, we respond to it sub­jectively and perceive it as beautiful. We all agree on the qualities of its different styles—slow music played in a minor key is sad, fast music in a major key is cheerful or rousing, and so forth. That this response is shared among us, provides further evidence of the independent reality of Plato's world. 

Other animals respond to music too. Birds use some of the same harmonies, rhythms, beats and scales as human musicians, (though their music may be performed many times faster than ours), which suggests that birds can also access Plato's world. A hermit thrush's song, when played at one-­quarter speed, sounds like a human composition that has between forty-­five to one hundred notes and twenty-­five to fifty pitch changes. It approximates a pentatonic scale with all the harmonic intervals.  

Depending on the species, each individual bird creates his own songs, and some compose hundreds and perfect them single-­mindedly. Occa­sionally one achieves an aria. 

Birds seem to enjoy singing and will sing in duets and groups. A singing flock will at times be joined in their tree by other flocks, of other species, who add their voices to the symphony.

As in humans, the artistic ability seems to be partly hereditary, and partly due to the efforts of the bird to improve his performance in comparison with an inner concept of the musically beauti­ful, which he or she found, presumably, in Plato’s world.

Animals seem to be aware of visual beauty, too. The bowers of bowerbirds resemble art. They are created by the males, who search out a variety of coloured objects with which to decorate them, and proceed like a human artist, alternately placing the coloured pieces, then standing back and surveying the effect, as if guided by an inner idea of the most attractive arrangements. I was lucky to have observed this in Australia.

Animals including elephants and apes have learned to paint pictures and seem to enjoy doing so. Apes and bears have been reported to go to a lookout to watch the sunset, and one of my jungle­ fowls spent each evening on the beach, intermittently looking across the shimmering sea towards the setting sun. When he was dying, his last act was to get up from his bed, stagger to the window, and gaze out across those glowing waters one last time.

The spotfin lion fish (Pterois antennata) is plumed in patterns of red and white, and presents a flower­-like, lacy beauty that is thought to have evolved to attract the crustaceans upon which it preys. What does that tell us about crustaceans?

If intricacy, rather than beauty, was selected for in order to produce a disguise, why is it of such loveliness? The surpassing beauty of so many animals suggests that the most beautiful ones had the most offspring. Therefore the appreciation of beauty could be wide­spread throughout nature, and not confined to vertebrates, providing further evidence that animals, too, can access Plato's world and are conscious.

Reflection on life's processes suggests other curious facts.

In nature, each instance of animal behaviour always presents as an individual in a specific situ­ation. This is the essence of the evolutionary process, as a population of a given species, depending upon the ingenuity and resilience of its individuals—especially its unusual individuals—adapts to changing surroundings. It is the choices and effort of each individual that drives evolution, as they succeed or fail to reproduce and pass on their special genes to their descendants. As in human communities, unusual animals can have a powerful influence on others and on the culture, as anyone who observes wild animals and their communities soon finds. 

The flight capabilities of birds have been documented through the fossil record to have evolved slowly as each generation tried to stay in the air as long as possible. Con­sider what must have taken place. At first, just the ability to hop higher, with the fore­limbs reach­ing up, must have begun the transition as the creature fled from increasingly nimble predators. Gradually, gliding developed, as only those who were able to leap the highest reproduced. At last, over aeons of strife by each individual trying to survive, wings evolved.

Thus, birds have wings because they fly—the behaviour comes before the structure—and in this sense it is consciousness that gives rise to matter. Following this line of reasoning leads to a picture in which the species have created themselves, each being a manifestation of all of the efforts of all of the individuals down through the abyss of time since life appeared. Even those who were eaten by predators had their role, for they helped others to survive.

Now, evidence of cognitive capabilities has been found in bacteria, amoeba, paramoecia, and plants, as well as those we consider to be the “higher animals.” Awareness in a one celled animal suggests that it might be an intrinsic aspect of life itself, and not dependent on the complexity of the animal's nervous system. It could be a long time before the phenomenon of consciousness is understood, but as long as its source remains unknown, no conclusions denying it to animals can be drawn. 

This brings us to the general subject of wild animal behaviour, which is what I created this blog to write about. These first three articles are meant to provide some background—to set the scene—before we move on to accounts of what some specific wild animals are doing. I hope you enjoyed them and will join me as we go on to yet more intriguing things!

(c) Ila France Porcher

Author of Birds are Impossible: The Supernatural Ways of the Fliers.