March 10-16 is Brain Awareness Week for 2025.
Seeking to solve consciousness is to seek the components [closest to] responsible and how they [might] mechanize consciousness. This means that as evidence advances in brain science, updating the components that might be responsible and how—would better represent research in the science of consciousness.
The science of consciousness
This should rule out the use of analogies to theorize or explain consciousness, when advances in neuroscience should update and streamline the options. It is often said that there are several theories of consciousness. But what theories use components in the brain and how they work to explain consciousness?
In more than a century of neuroscience, the centerpiece has been neurons. But, in recent decades, all the functions that are ascribed to neurons often involve their electrical and chemical signals.
So, there could be a neuron theory of consciousness, which would be incomplete without the key roles of signals, or there could be a theory of consciousness by the electrical and chemical signals.
This means that however consciousness is described, subjectivity, experience, attention, awareness, intent, memory, feelings, emotions, what it is like to be, can be explained by the—electrical and chemical—signals.
What, instead, is obtainable in the science of consciousness are vague theories, heavy on philosophical terms, skipping components of the brain that are responsible. It is often said by some that consciousness is in parts of the cortex and not in some other parts, and that consciousness is not in the cerebellum or spinal cord because the loss of the cerebellum or spinal cord does not affect consciousness.
The cortex, cerebellum, and spinal cord have neurons—which have electrical and chemical signals. So, why would they be different? It is possible to theorize that [sets of] electrical signals continue their relay [across clusters of neurons] and get terminated [at the set] where their configuration fits, into [sets of] chemical signals.
So, when it is said that some functions are available somewhere [and not in others], it means that configurations or assemblages of [sets of] electrical and chemical signals that structure the functions are available there, so electrical signals have to travel through the peripheral and central nervous system to terminate at that set, conceptually.
Also, the functions and whatever makes them conscious are in the same set [of signals]. So, the function for pain and what makes it conscious are in the same set. If that area is lost, the function and consciousness are lost, not that consciousness is in one part [of the brain] and not in the others. For the functions of the cerebellum [movement, balance, and so on] their consciousness is also present there, so while the cerebellum may not be responsible for certain functions, its functions can be conscious.
Since there are functions [memory, feelings, emotions, and regulation of internal senses] and their subdivisions [thoughts, intelligence, pain, thirst, hurt, delight, digestion, respiration, and so on], what makes them conscious at any moment can be described by the accompanying attributes.
Simply, functions are theorized to be produced by the interactions of electrical and chemical signals [in sets], to access the configuration or formation specific to that function [which could be the memory of a smell, the interpretation of a sight, a touch, and so on]. The attributes [measure or graders] that result in making them conscious are the states of [sets of] electrical and chemical signals, respectively, at the instance of interaction.
This means that the volume of chemical signals, the splits of electrical signals, the intensity of strike of electrical signals, the volume variation of chemical signals from one end of the set to the next and so on, determine the grades or measures to which the functions are made [into experiences]. So, subjectivity [volume variation], attention [volume quantity or electrical signals intensity], intent [space of constant diameter between volumes], awareness [lower volume quantity] and so on, determine what is conscious or not, conceptually.
This, at least, can be used to explain consciousness [as well as addiction, mental health, human intelligence and so on] within the evidence that electrical and chemical signals are present in all functions of neurons. Human consciousness can be defined, conceptually, as the interaction of the electrical and chemical signals, in sets—in clusters of neurons—with their features, grading those interactions into functions and experiences.
This is not the use of analogy, metaphors, philosophy, or some extensive complexity. It can also be used to look at what corresponds to the attributes—attention or awareness, subjectivity or intent—if AI can have some, for its major function, memory [mostly language-based]. This may not mean AI is conscious, but can it have a fraction compared to human consciousness? Several consciousness theories are not evidence-predicated along functional and measured extents for the components within the cranium.
“Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms”
There is a recent comment [Published: 10 March 2025] in Nature, Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms, stating that, “Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from consciousness, which is subjective, and accounts for its presence and quality in objective, testable terms. Attempts to label as ‘pseudoscientific’ a theory distinguished by decades of conceptual, mathematical, and empirical developments expose a crisis in the dominant computational-functionalist paradigm, which is challenged by IIT’s consciousness-first paradigm.”
There is another recent comment [Published: 10 March 2025] in Nature, What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific? stating that, “Theories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open debate. Here we discuss the case and argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.”
There is a new comment [Published: 10 March 2025] in Nature, A science of consciousness beyond pseudo-science and pseudo-consciousness, stating that, “The scientific study of consciousness was sanctioned as an orthodox field of study only three decades ago. Since then, a variety of prominent theories have flourished, including integrated information theory, which has been recently accused of being pseudoscience by more than 100 academics. Here we critically assess this charge and offer thoughts to elevate the clash into positive lessons for our field.”
There is a recent perspective [Published: 10 March 2025] in The Transmitter, The limits of neuroscience, stating that, “Truly understanding the brain requires a set of conditions we’re unlikely to meet: that knowledge about the brain is finite, and that we have both access to that knowledge and the means to understand it. That would mean one of three possible outcomes, depending on which was not true: Neuroscience will never end, because knowledge is infinite.”
“It will end, but we won’t fully understand the brain because of the physical limits to what we can access. It will end, and we will have accessed everything we need in principle to understand the brain, but we simply lack the ability to understand it. In none of these do we get a complete understanding of the human brain. But perhaps that was never the goal.”
“A reasonable alternative might be grasping the link between brain activity and behavior sufficiently well to fix it when it goes wrong. We can achieve that with prediction, without complete understanding: We can predict behavior from activity and vice versa; we can predict the effects of interventions on both.”
This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize the human mind with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, and he did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.
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