Die Jagd auf den Regenbogen

^{Foto: Burks 2008}

Alles Irdische ist eitel. (Die Bibel, Prediger)

Ich empfehle den intelligenten und des sophisticated Englischen kundigen Leserinnen und den klugen und an Wissenschaft interessierten Lesern den Artikel „Chasing the Rainbow: The Non-conscious Nature of Being“ (verdammt schwierig). Vielleicht vorher noch einen kurzen Abstecher zum Spiegeltest und zur Binokularen Rivalität.

Despite the compelling subjective experience of executive self-control, we argue that “consciousness” contains no top-down control processes and that “consciousness” involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it.

Das ist natürlich Gift für die Moraltheologie. Ich habe mir Wikipedia über Bewusstsein durchgelesen. Wenn man es auf den Punkt bringen will: Wir haben immer noch keine Ahnung. (Die Frage müsste auch sein, was eigentlich die richtige Frage dazu ist. Eine Zwischenüberschrift lautet denn auch: „Anthropomorphism and the Search for Meaning“.)

In our account, we take this argument to its logical conclusion and propose that “consciousness” although temporally congruent involves no executive, causal, or controlling relationship with any of the familiar psychological processes conventionally attributed to it.

Au weia. Jetzt wird es hart. Gefällt mir aber, in dem Sinn: Alle anderen Wissenschaftler hatten bisher Unrecht.

A key feature of our account (…) is that it does not set out to offer an explanation for the subjective “experience of consciousness” but rather to highlight what we consider to be the fundamental misconception rooted in everyday experience and embedded in the powerful folk-view of the nature of “consciousness.” Central to our view (…) is the simple proposition that all neuropsychological processing takes place independently of the experience of “consciousness.” This is not to deny the powerful and ubiquitous existence of “conscious experience” but rather to claim that all executive psychological processes irrespective of how quickly and intuitively causally they might appear, actually reflect background neuropsychological activity that takes place in non-conscious systems. As noted earlier, to avoid unwanted associations embedded in traditional accounts of “consciousness” we have choosen to use the terms “personal narrative” and personal “awareness” in our account in place of “contents of consciousness” and “experience of consciousness.” (…) We describe the process of generating this personal narrative as Internal Broadcasting.

Die neurophysiologischen Prozesse, die im Gehirn ablaufen, haben also nichts oder nur wenig mit dem zu tun, was wir als „Bewusstsein“ bezeichnen. In der Zusammenfassung heißt es:
We take no issue with the experiential primacy or reality of personal awareness and the related powerful sense of agency and self, that we all feel. We argue, however, that central to the traditional domain of “consciousness” is a personal narrative created by and within inaccessible, non-conscious brain systems where personal awareness is no more than a passive accompaniment to this process. In this view, both the personal narrative and the associated personal awareness are end-products of widely distributed, efficient, non-conscious processing that arrives too late in the psychological process cycle for there to be a reason to infer the necessity of an additional independent executive or causal capacity to either of them.

Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob ich alles richtig verstanden habe, aber wenn ja, dann könnte man das Ergebnis wahrhaft in die schöne Metapher kleiden: Was wir meinen zu sei, ist so real wie ein Regenbogen.