What is consciousness for?

Treading where many have trod before, and where many others have feared to tread, I here propose that the point of consciousness is to provide its host (hereinafter ‘H’) with a proper place in which to take important decisions and in which to manage the execution of those important decisions – processes from which other conscious activity is largely excluded, consciousness being a place where only one thing is done at a time, in an orderly fashion. So I might be running along while making a decision about something, and in order to be doing the running I do need to be conscious in the ordinary sense of the word (except in rather rare & extraordinary circumstances) – but I do not need to be paying any conscious attention to the running, which is not quite the same thing. Indeed, could not, if I was to have a reasonable stab at making the decision.

In a contemporary human, part of this ‘one thing at a time’ is the fact that we can only have one word in mind at a time. In order to have a word in mind it seems that we have to activate a good part of the machinery which would be needed to say that word out loud – and we only have one copy of most of that machinery. Just try thinking two words at once and you will find that the best you can do is to flicker between them. So, in so far as we think in words, we can only have one thought at a time.

Two qualifications are needed here. First, what I offer here is not the whole story, not a story about how or why we have subjective experience, rather a story about what it is that is useful that seems to be provided along with that subjective experience. Second, it is a story about what consciousness evolved for, the behaviour which it enabled and which was selected for. But that is not to say that there might not be all kinds of additional benefits on the side. That having evolved for one purpose, it then went off and did all kinds of other stuff.

So, the subconscious, from time to time, projects stuff into consciousness about which it thinks a conscious decision is needed. It is taking decisions, doing stuff, all the time without bothering consciousness, but sometimes it thinks that a conscious decision would be better. Sometimes it thinks that there is time and space for H to make a conscious decision.

At a lower level, the subconscious might be concerned about a flicker of movement in the bushes in the jungle, which it thinks that H ought to take a more careful look at. Is there any need for either flight or fight?

At a lower level still, the subconscious might project stuff into consciousness which it thinks needed H’s undivided attention. It wants H to attend to this stuff, to give priority to the myriad decisions which need to be made, perhaps micro decisions about, for example, exactly where to place the chisel in the mortice and how hard to tap the handle of the chisel with the mallet. In this particular case, the vision system will also need to attend if the brain is going to come up with the right judgement, the right commands to the motor system. And while the unconscious may have several things on the go at once, that does not work very well for the eyes; if you want a decent job done, they need to attend to it.

But for the moment, we suppose that the need for a decision about A has been projected into consciousness.

One possibility is that the need just sits there in a rather blank consciousness until the answer B pops up, which H then accepts. The value added by consciousness is that H now feels that he owns that decision and will stick with it. He will have written it to memory. Maybe activating program P which will carry it out. I associate to the way, commented on in this blog before, that once we have come up with a solution to something, we lock onto it, often without being too clear on why the solution was a good solution. Television detectives do this all the time when casting around for a story to fit around the facts, casting around for a perpetrator of the dirty deed. They lock onto a story and run with, as far as it goes, and it takes a good hard push to get them off it.

Another possibility is that the subconscious offers H a short list. Should he turn left here or right? Or neither? Or taking a lesson from Ian Fleming’s C, should he take bourbon or branch water with his stilton?

Once again, the conscious mind just waits until an answer pops up from the subconscious for ratification. One of the key words here is wait, with adult humans being much better at this sort of waiting than children or animals – from where I associate to the term delayed gratification. And while a cat might sit and wait for hours for a mouse to come out of the mouse-hole, and be much better at this sort of waiting than most humans, it is not the same thing at all.

Another possibility still is that the decision will seem so tricky that the next thought in consciousness is the need to invoke overt decision making machinery. Maybe to start listing the options. Maybe going further and listing the pros and cons of the various options on a whiteboard. Breaking the problem down into sub-problems to which the subconscious can be trusted to provide the right answer.

The brain does do machinery. It can remember and carry out plans. When it is very young it can only do sequences. Do this and then do that. When it gets a bit older it can do ‘do until’: for example, keep polishing that table until there is a nice even gloss all over. Then you can start putting the cutlery out. When it becomes an adult, maybe it will be able to do choice, thus completing the triad of constructions needed for effective programming – as described at reference 2. Generally speaking, only new or tricky plans need to be executed consciously. Stuff which is old-hat doesn’t need that.

So my point is that the first thing that the brain can do is make decisions about the options thrown up by the unconscious. Decisions which are supported but not determined by the value system expressed in our feelings and the emotions. The flow of feelings and emotions, partly keyed to the state of the body, partly to the context and partly to particular thoughts and objects, sometimes offers an instant judgement on these options: this or that option is good, bad or indifferent. This judgement will be a big input to unconscious decisions and a rather smaller input to conscious ones. The backdrop against which decisions are taken – with part of the point of conscious decision making being that it can do better than just go with the feelings and emotions, probably an old system in evolutionary terms, built deep into our psychology, but not terribly reliable for all that. Better to stop and think, to let the subconscious ruminate for a bit.

The second thing that it can do, or at least that the adult brain can do, is to retrieve & execute execution plans for decisions, plans which can be reasonably thought of as simple computer programs, programs which could be nicely illustrated with a box diagram on a white board, or a Powerpoint, like that illustrated above. And sometimes, just to be on the safe side, we do exactly that.

Like a computer, the brain needs to be able to keep its place in the program. So it reads off step N from the program, goes and does step N – which might take a while – and can then come back to the program to get step N+1. It does not, usually anyway, lose its place.
And like older computers, these programs only try to do one thing at once. The simple way that they are put together almost, of itself, eliminates the possibility of requiring a hand or a foot to be in more than one place at any one time. The process understands that a lot of the resources of which H has charge can only be in one place at any one time. While the unconscious, with its many processing threads (in the jargon of reference 1), quite possibly incoherent, is less particular.

That apart, what thinking amounts to is waiting for the subconscious to pop something into one’s mind. Any whirring away that is going on is going on there, not in the conscious mind.

And if we believe the story about consciousness supporting decision making and planning, it does at least give us somewhere to look for the solution to the hard problem. That is to say, what, apart from single threading, does subjective experience bring to the party? Or will it turn out that subjective experience is no more than a by-product of insisting on single threading?

I am grateful to Michael Geddes, principal consultant, for his program for the execution of the decision to make the tea. A little more complicated than what I had in mind, and there is at least one spelling mistake, but hopefully it gives the idea.

PS: while it is true that consciousness can only do one thing at a time, it is also true that it can flicker very quickly from one thing to another. But when it comes to making decisions it is best to slow down a bit.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/describing-consciousness.html.

Reference 2: http://www.jacksonworkbench.co.uk/jsp.htm. In the days when I used to know about this sort of thing, making the tea was an example which often popped up in the training school. It is left as an exercise to the reader to translate this example to that of the pre-historic wife suggesting to her husband that he pop out and get an elephant for lunch.