What consciousness is for

Being conscious is about more than being awake, it also feels like something to
be awake.
And these feelings give us a clue about what consciousness is for. The reticular
activating system is the brain structure responsible for consciousness. It is
connected to and activated by other brain structures that monitor your vital signs
- such as heart rate, temperature and glucose levels. These brain structures are
called need detectors and they convey the state of your body through feelings.
These feelings tell the organism - you - how it is doing on a biological scale of
values for surviving and reproducing. If it feels good, you are motivated to
continue; if it feels bad, you want to stop.
Please note that I am not suggesting that you should do more of everything that
feels good. What I am saying is that from an evolutionary biological perspective,
feeling is the mechanism our consciousness uses to ensure the survival of our
body and maximize our chances of reproducing. So when something is good for
our survival, it feels good. However this does not mean that everything that feels
good is good for our survival. That is why more complex mechanisms are also
required. These will be introduced later.
Another important point about consciousness is that it is about you, your own
body, how you are feeling. In other words, consciousness is subjective in nature.
WHAT IS A MIND?
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
WEEK 3 CONSCIOUSNESS
STEP 3.3 WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS FOR 00:00:00
Identifying the parts of the brain that's necessary for consciousness is really
powerful knowledge. By studying that part of the brain physiologically and
anatomically, looking, for example, to what it's connected to, we can ask
deeper questions about the mind. We
can ask, for
example, what is
consciousness for? Why do we have consciousness at all? This is a really
basic question about, ultimately, what the mind is for, because I'm arguing
that consciousness is one of the two defining properties that I've introduced so
far as to what the essential ingredients or constituents or components of a mind
are. If we look at the reticular activating system, which is the part of
the brain that's essential for consciousness, we observe something really
important about it. One of the many structures which make up the reticular
activating system is called the periaqueductal grey. This is the smallest part
of the brain, which, when damaged, leads to a loss of consciousness. It is, in
a way, the most condensed consciousness generating piece of anatomy that
there is.
Remember, all vertebrates have a periaqueductal grey. This is a structure
which is about 525 million years old. This, in humans, is about the size of a jelly
bean. Think of it. You damage this part of your brain-- yours or mine-- the size
of a jelly bean-- and you are gone. All consciousness is obliterated. Let me
tell you some of the things we've learned about the periaqueductal grey. The

most important thing is that if you stimulate the dorsal columns-- the back
part of the periaqueductal grey-- it generates not just consciousness, but
very unpleasant consciousness, pain, distress. The person in whom this part of
the brain is being stimulated or any other animal wants nothing more than for
you to stop the stimulation, and they want to get away from you.
Conversely, the front part, the ventral columns of the periaqueductal grey,
when that part is stimulated, exquisitely, delicious,
delightful, orgasmic
sensations of consciousness are generated. When you stimulate this part of
the animal, it really likes you and wants you to carry on. These are the sorts
of predictions that one makes. In humans, we know that it does this. It causes
feelings of pleasure in the front and feelings of unpleasure in the back. So we
predict that if we stimulate the front part in other vertebrates, they're going
to want us to carry on. And conversely, the back part, they're going to want to
get away from us. That prediction is confirmed so we provisionlly hold to the
conclusion that the periaqueductal grey does in those creatures the same
thing that it does in us. The important point that I'm wanting to make is that
this condensed, most central consciousness generating structure in the brain
doesn't just switch on the lights. It's not just a quantitative turning up the
volume of consciousness. It doesn't just make you awake. Being awake feels
like something. There's an emotional tone to it. There always is. Pleasurable or
unpleasurable states accompany all of consciousness. In fact, this is the
conclusion that we've reached in recent years on the basis of research on this
part of the brain, principally by Antonio Damasio and Jaak Panksepp. We've
reached the conclusion that the essential characteristic of consciousness is
feeling, emotion. Emotion doesn't come from our eyes, and our ears, and our
noses. It comes from within us. Feelings, the core of consciousness are about
us. They're subjective. Now we can go further. The periaqueductal grey and
the whole of the reticular activating system-- all of which has this feeling
tone attached to it-- just the periaqueductal grey that's the sort of most
intense version of that truth about the reticular activating system. It, in turn, is
activated by other nuclei in the brainstem, which you're looking at now.
These nuclei have one thing in common. They all monitor the state of the
body, the internal milieu of the body, how you're doing in terms of heartbeat,
breathing rate, sugar levels, salt levels, core body temperature, and so on.
It's absolutely crucial for your survival that these parameters stay within a very
narrow range. And those brain structures are busy monitoring and making
sure that you are staying within that range. The summation of what they're
finding out is broadcast to the reticular activating system as feelings. That
seems to be what feelings are for. Feelings tell you how you're doing within
this biological scale of values. If you feel good, that means carry on doing this,
because this is good for your survival, and as it happens, your reproductive
success. If it feels bad, stop doing it, because it's bad for your chances of
surviving and reproducing.
So when we say that there was a dawn of
consciousness 525 million years ago, this is what consciousness added to what
the rest of the body was capable of doing. It enables the creature to-- us
included-- to know how we're doing biologically speaking. And please note, it's
connected to the interior of my body, which is an explanation for why
consciousness is subjective. It's about to me. It's about how I'm doing. After
that, the consciousness is broadcast upwards to the rest of the brain. That's the

second order of consciousness. I feel like this about that. These are the sorts
of things that we're learning about consciousness. By identifying the brain
mechanisms related to it, these are the things that we're learning about what
the mind is all about and what the mind is for. It also explains something
about qualia. It explains why your qualia are subjective-- why I can't see
yours. It's because your endogenous consciousness activates your perceptual
apparatus. So it's something from inside of you that sampling the perceptions.
They have to be subjective.

What is emotion?
Your feelings - or emotions - register the state of you. Emotions may be triggered
by external events, but they do not register the events themselves, they register
your reaction to them - your feelings. Your consciousness feels these emotions,
and it motivates you to do things that are biologically good for you and to avoid
things that are biologically bad.

The world is more complex than just good versus bad, and we have evolved
more subtle responses than just approach or withdraw. There appear to be
seven basic emotions that we share with all mammals, and they are all over 200
million years old. We share them, not only in reference to the behaviours and
feelings but also to the underlying brain anatomy and chemistries associated
with them.
Read this article that explains what emotion is for and elaborates on some of the
different kinds of emotion.
WHAT IS EMOTION?
What is Emotion? There are two aspects to the question of
emotion: what is it?; and how many kinds of emotion are there?
Lets start with what it is.
Emotion is actually a sensory modality,
akin to vision, hearing, smell and so on. It is surprising how few
people recognise this. If you could subtract all the classical sensory
modalities from consciousness, there would still be something left
this something is emotion. The most fundamental difference between
emotion and the other sensory modalities is that they register states
of the external world of objects whereas emotions register the
state of the internal world the subject. Your emotions register the
state of you. Emotions may be triggered by external events, but
they do not register the events themselves, they register your
reaction to them. That is why the same event may be exhilarating
to one person and terrifying to another.
But emotions are not only
felt, they are also expressed. This (motor) aspect of emotion is
what enables us to recognise the emotional states of others, and to
empathise with them. But not all the motor aspects of emotion are
expressed outwardly. Some of them, such as vasomotor changes,
are directed to the interior of the body. These changes too can
sometimes be perceived externally (e.g., blushing) and sometimes
internally (e.g., racing heartbeat) -- but it is important not to
confuse these somatic concomitants with the affective feelings
themselves. Anxiety, for example, is first and foremost a trepidatious
state of the mind. Conflation of this subjective keynote of emotion

with the bodily symptoms that are associated with it misled whole
generations of psychologists.
Before we consider how many kinds of
emotion there are, lets briefly reflect on what emotions are for.
What is the biological function of emotion?
At its most elementary
level, the biological function of emotion is identical with that of
consciousness itself. In fact, the dominant view among neurobiologists
today is that consciousness evolved only so that we could feel
emotions. At this elementary level, emotion is registered on a
rudimentary scale of feelingsfrom pleasurable to unpleasurable. Things
that feel pleasurable, by and large, are biologically good for you,
and viceversa. (Biologically good for you means they enhance your
chances of survivingand reproducing.) Furthermore, the more
pleasurable something feels, the more you want to do it. And this
is what emotional feeling -- consciousness -- is ultimately for: it
motivates you to do things that are biologically good for you and
to avoid things that are biologically bad. That is why it evolved.
But the world is more complex than just good versus bad, and
it requires more subtle responses than just approach or withdraw.
For this reason more complex and subtle forms of emotion evolved.
This brings us to the question of classification.
Affective
neuroscientists distinguish three broad classes of emotion: (1) sensory
affects, closely tied to motor reflexes like surprise or disgust; (2)
homeostatic affects, closely tied to the bodily economy, like hunger
or the urge to pee; and (3) emotions proper, which are situated
between the sensory-motor periphery and the bodily economy, within
the mind itself. In fact there is good reason to think of the
emotions proper as the evolutionary foundations of the mind. For
this reason affective neuroscientists tend to focus on the primary
natural kinds of emotion, as opposed to the secondary
affective/cognitive compounds that play so large a role in human
mental life. Social emotions like guilt and shame, for example, are
considered to be such hybrids they are not basic emotions.
There appears to be seven blue ribbon basic emotions, and they are
all over 200 million years old, because we humans share them
with all the other mammals and in fact some are even older, such
as PANIC, which we share with birds. (Affective neuroscientists
capitalise the names of basic emotion systems to differentiate the
systems from the feelings themselves.) When I say we share them,
I am referring not only to the behaviours and feelings but also to
the underlying brain anatomy and chemistries associated with them.
The defining feature of the basic emotions is that they are inborn
responses to situations of universal biological significance. They are,
in a sense, inherited memories of how to respond in such
situations, crucial for survival and reproductive success. Those of our
ancestors who did not possess the genetic sequences that pre-
programme these responses therefore tended not to survive and
reproduce which is why we do not resemble them.
Take FEAR, for
example, one of the seven basic emotions. If we had to learn what
happens when we walk off cliffs, that would be the only thing that
we ever learnt. Instead we are born with an instinctual aversion to
heights, and several other such things (which reappear in most of
the well-known phobias, which are oversensitivities of this system).
Rats, for this reason, freeze when exposed to a single cat hair,
even on the first day of life. The FEAR system, though, like all

basic emotion systems, is also open to learning. That is how things

that evolution had no knowledge of, like electric sockets, come to
be associated with fear.
The other six basic emotions are ANGER,
PANIC, SEEKING, LUST, CARE and PLAY. (There are significant sex
differences between some of these. ANGER, for example, is prepotent
in males, CARE in females.) I have space to discuss only two of
them.
PANIC is the name given to the emotional system that
makes us form attachments. The mother infant bond is the prime
example. It is opioid mediated and therefore highly addictive. (Love
is surely the primal addiction.) When young mammals are separated
from their caregiver they display separation distress, they cry, feel
panicky and look for her. This is the protest phase of the
separation response. Then they give up. This is the despair phase.
If reunion follows, opioid levels rise and they feel better; if it does
not, then they have to engage in the long, painful process called
mourning. The same applies to us all.
PLAY is the name given to
the emotion system that makes juvenile mammals indulge in rough
and tumble turn-taking. As they mature, their games become more
imaginative and more competitive. This seems to have everything to
do with finding social limits and establishing social roles, including
like it or not the pecking order. Once the limit is overstepped
the game is not fun anymore, then it is no longer play. This
defines the rules, and establishes social hierarchies. This too applies
to us all.
These ancient systems of value, encoded in our very
genes, provide the keys to many great mysteries about the human
condition, including the whole field of psychiatry. We will therefore
have many occasions to return to it.

The unconscious mind

To say a mind is consciousness is not sufficient to define the mental. Sigmund
Freuds great discovery was that theres a large part of the mind that operates
without consciousness, and today this is a widely accepted fact among
neuroscientists.

The mind operates unconsciously when we dont need to know about how we feel
about something; for example the route we take to work day after day becomes
an unconscious act. There are also parts of our mental life that we dont want to
be conscious of - such as repressed memories which we push out of our
consciousness because they are difficult to deal with (well hear more about this
last point in Week 6).
So the question as it pertains to unconscious mental acts is - what makes them
mental? This is the question I introduce here, and discuss in detail next week.