Viññāṇa, CogSci Support for “Consciousness Of”

Perhaps.

Regarding Viññāṇa, I first heard the phrasing “Consciousness Of” from John Peacock’s “Buddhism Before the Theravada” series (Part 5, 53:45): “…consciousness is always a consciousness of…” something. That is, Gotama spoke of consciousness always having an object. (MN 38)

“Consciousness is reckoned according to the very same condition dependent upon which it arises. 
Consciousness that arises dependent on the eye and sights is reckoned as eye consciousness.
Consciousness that arises dependent on the ear and sounds is reckoned as ear consciousness.
Consciousness… nose and smells… nose consciousness.
Consciousness… tongue… tongue consciousness.
Consciousness… body… body consciousness.
Consciousness… mind… mind consciousness.”

But that’s not how most of us think about consciousness. (And it’s clearly not how poor Sāti thought about it.)

Here’s a little Cognitive Science support of Gotama’s position from Michael Gazzaniga’s Who’s In Charge?. Speaking of Split-Brain Patients:

“A patient suffering from untreatable grand mal seizures comes in for surgery to have their corpus callosum severed. The corpus callosum is an approximately 10mm-diameter bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain. They come in to have the corpus callosum severed to reduce the severity and frequency of the seizures. The patient is given general anesthesia; the surgery is performed without incident. The patient wakes up, and you ask them, how do you feel? They say, “Totally fine. I don’t notice anything different at all.”

Huh.

Nothing different at all? That’s surprising. Let’s dig in a little. If you ask the person the question, “How do you feel?”, you are using language. Language is understood to be processed in the left hemisphere by most humans. So when you ask, “How do you feel?” the question itself is being received and processed by the left hemisphere.

After having the corpus callosum severed the left hemisphere looks at its experience and says, “Yep, everything’s okay here. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

Surprising because the left hemisphere, the part of the brain which has understood your question, and which answers you, has completely lost access to half of the visual field.

As Gazzaniga explains, “the patient … cannot describe anything in the left part of his visual field. The left hemisphere, which is telling you that all is fine, cannot see half of what is in front of him and is not concerned about it.”

Huh.

More from Gazzaniga, “If you woke up from most other types of surgery and couldn’t see anything in your left visual field, you would certainly be complaining about it, “Ahh, doc, I can’t see anything on the left—what’s up with that?”

The left hemisphere, the part that understood the question, and that speaks the answer, can no longer see half the visual field. And yet the patient reports everything is fine. Huh.

If you should administer a few cleverly constructed tests after the patient recovered from surgery, you would discover that this patient is similarly not aware of what their left hand is doing. If the left hand is drawing something or holding something, and the right eye cannot see the left hand, then the patient will report that they do not know what they are holding or what they are drawing.

And yet they continue to report that everything is fine.

Huh.

Gazzaniga understands the situation this way, “in order to be conscious about a particular part of [experience], the part of the cortex that processes that part of [experience] is involved. If [that part of the cortex] is not functioning, then that part of [experience] no longer exists for that brain or that person. If you are talking out of your left hemisphere, and I am asking you about your awareness of things in the left visual field, … That area simply does not exist for the left hemisphere.” (Emphasis added.)

Gazzaniga discusses loss of the left visual field in two other kinds of patients:

“Why do some people, who suddenly become blind in a large portion of their visual field complain about—are conscious of—it (“Hey, I can’t see anything on my left side, what’s going on?”) and others don’t say a word about—aren’t conscious of—their sudden visual loss?”

We have two patients, each of whom has lost awareness of their (for consistency, let’s say left) visual field. One person complains about it and the other does not notice it. What’s going on?

“The complainer’s lesion is somewhere along his optic nerve, which carries information about vision to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes this information. If no information is coming in to a portion of his visual cortex, he is left with a blind spot and complains.”

In the case that the visual cortex is functioning normally, but it is missing information from the optic nerve, the patient is aware of, conscious of, the missing information. They notice that they can’t see anything in the left part of the visual field.

“The noncomplainer, however, has a lesion in the [visual cortex] … itself and not the optic nerve. The lesion also produces the very same blind spot, but the patient does not usually complain. … Why not? The visual cortex is the part of the brain that represents, or assembles the pictures from, the visual world.”

“Each part of the visual field has a corresponding area in the visual cortex. So, for instance, there is an area that ordinarily asks, “What is going on to the left of visual center?” With a lesion on the optic nerve, this brain area is functioning; when it cannot get any information from the nerve, it puts up a squawk—“something is wrong, I am not getting any input!” When that very area of the associative visual cortex has a lesion, however, the patient’s brain no longer has an area responsible for processing what is going on in that part of the visual field; for that patient that part of the visual field ceases to exist consciously…”

In patients for whom the brain is no longer processing the left visual field, they do not notice the “missing” part. It’s not missing because their brain doesn’t “know” to look for it.

Gazzaniga explains the ramifications of this for understanding consciousness, “…phenomenal consciousness, that feeling you have about being conscious of some perception, is generated by local processes that are uniquely involved with a specific activity.”

Ie, “Consciousness is reckoned according to the very same condition dependent upon which it arises.”

Gazzaniga, “…the brain has all kinds of local consciousness systems, a constellation of them, which are enabling consciousness. Although the feelings of consciousness appear to be unified to you, they are given form by these vastly separate systems. Whichever notion you happened to be conscious of at a particular moment is the one that comes bubbling up, the one that becomes dominant.”

Ie, “Consciousness that arises dependent on the eye and sights is reckoned as eye consciousness…
Consciousness that arises dependent on the ear and sounds is reckoned as ear consciousness.
Consciousness… nose and smells… nose consciousness.
Consciousness… tongue… tongue consciousness.
Consciousness… body… body consciousness.
Consciousness… mind… mind consciousness.”

Huh.

With friendliness!

PS: Who’s in Charge? was published in 2012. Curious to see if Gazzaniga’s understanding has changed since then. In the meantime, one more provisional understanding to play with. :)))