As I was taking my shower, some train of thought led me to an interpretation of the Greek myth of Prometheus. The fire he brought was consciousness, and the pain with which he was punished was the pain that is inseparable from consciousness.
Prometheus was the “fore-thinker.” The second part of his name comes, like mathematics, from the base of the verb manthanein, “to learn.” He was the nurturer and educator of mankind. Most vital of his cultural gifts was fire. He stole it from the gods, and brought it, in a fennel-stalk, to men, so that with it they could warm themselves, scare off predators, and cook and forge. The gods had not wished mankind to be godlike, so they bound Prometheus to a cliff in the Caucasus and set an eagle to tear at his liver eternally.
Prometheus Bound, by Thomas Cole
His rescue, like that of his brother Atlas from having to bear up eternally the weight of the sky, was attributed to Hercules.
Prometheus personifies innovation, whose good consequences can be entrained with undesired ones.
Awareness came into the world in three stages: sentience, consciousness, and selfhood. A sentient organism is one that has systems – senses – that respond to external stimuli; even plants, though without nervous systems, might be said to be dimly sentient when they turn toward the sun or curl at a touch.
The great mystery is the step into consciousness: how can it be defined, and how can it arise from the mere electrical networks that are brains? Two of its modes are pleasure and pain. Some have maintained that non-humans lack it, or even (Julian Jaynes) that humans acquired it less than three millennia ago, later than language; reactions that look like ours, such as behavior under pain, are mechanical reflexes. Darwin intuited that, in simpler form because of smaller nervous systems, consciousness reaches down to – that is, began as early as – worms, and my hunch is that he was right.
One could say that consciousness is the universe’s most important invention; it is the universe’s justification. Without minds conscious of it, wouldn’t the existence of the universe be pointless? In ethics, too, I think it has been said that what ultimately matters is states of mind.
On top of consciousness comes self-identity, awareness that you are a person. Chimpanzees, elephants, orcas, magpies, and, it has now been shown, at least one small fish, the cleaner wrasse, pass the mirror test of self-recognition. It used to be said that we are the only animals that know we are going to die, that is, our individual selves will cease to exist; I wonder whether that is still the belief.
Consciousness is, to say the least, as useful as fire and must have evolved because it was so adaptive. Conscious beings could plan and cooperate. And those two facets of it, pleasure and pain, are useful: we choose behaviors that lead to pleasure and try to escape those that lead to pain.
But pain itself, in its greater degrees, is an outrageous punishment. We wish there could be some dispensation in which it does not need to exist. Conscious that somewhere there is a moose being pulled down by wolves or a prisoner going mad in a cell – millionfold suffering, some necessary and some not – some adopt philosophies of the “lacrimae rerum,” the tears of things. When I was studying Arabic I had to read one of the texts of Islamic asceticism, in which hermit saints were admired for weeping hard enough to erode channels through their cheeks.
Prometheus brought the magic fire inside us that is consciousness, and he suffers the corollary that is pain.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I understand your point that consciousness is part of our evolution. I agree with evolution. I think we are witnessing evolution of the human species right now. For the first time, we now have all the knowledge of the world at our fingertips. Our future is bright.
I disagree that consciousness is solely a function of our evolution. I think our consciousness is derived from a universal consciousness rather than just evolving from a lesser consciousness. I use the following 3 points to make my case;
1) The Bible says that God is light. That would represent pure energy. If God wanted to create the universe, he could do so by converting some of his energy into matter.
2) I see consciousness increasing from plants to bacteria to animals to humans. I don’t think it would stop at humans especially when I see the order of the universe.
3) When I relax I get thought flashes that seem to be from a higher consciousness and when I act on that guidance it always makes life better.
THE PROBLEM OF PAIN by C. S. Lewis is an interesting reflection on the reality of pain. It is necessary. One could not avoid injury without its presence. Witness the problems of lepers who have lost the good of pain or children born without the capacity to experience it. Lewis also contemplates sentience, consciousness and self-hood in this text, as well as animal pain and gives consideration to attempts to conflate or aggregate pain.
The belief that plants are not conscious reflects our lack of understanding of them, rather than their lack of intelligence and agency.
Coincidentally, last night I started reading _The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World_ by the German forester Peter Wohlleben, English translation by Jane Billinghurst. The book includes nine pages of references, most of them from peer-reviewed scientific journals. I’ve only read a few chapters, but I would already recommend the book.
Anthony, my brother gave me a copy of that book to read in German, as a training exercise since my German is not very good, and agree with you that Wohlleben (which I think translates to “live well” ) offers some startling insights into just how blurred the “lines” between plants and animals probably are. Trees communicate, share resources, have a system of what we would call social welfare if humans were doing it, etc. Enjoy the rest of the book!
1It is hard to believe in the blindness of trees.”
http://www.universalworkshop.com/climbing-forty-feet-ground-madagascar/
However, I do not believe that wood feels pain when we saw it, or a carrot when we dice and pulvreize it for soup.
Thanks for sharing this story, Guy. I skimmed most of it, and I enjoyed the account of your trip up to the treetops, and also the description of the valiha harp. When was your trip to Madagascar?
We were in Madagascar in 2012, and there have been other political overturns since then. We keep in touch with Mohib.
One of the examples of social behavior that Wohlleben cites in the book is that when a particular type of tree in Africa (I don’t have the book handy right now to look up the exact details, unfortunately) senses that its leaves are being eaten by a giraffe, it begins, within minutes or less, to dispense a particular substance via its internal plumbing into the leaves that the giraffes find very distasteful. The tree also dispenses a chemical marker into the air which will be blown around by wind that neighboring trees will sense and cause them to preemptively dispense the same substance into their leaves. He states that giraffes can be observed to always go to another tree (maybe it’s the Acacia tree?) that is upwind of the first one, so they have learned of the trees’ behavior. If this behavior was exhibited by animals, we would probably say that the feedback mechanism from “being chewed on” to “take action to stop being chewed on” was a pain sensation. How would you tell the difference between an animal system for using electrical signals to alert the organism to take corrective action and a plant system for doing the same?
The acacia tree, I think. With great spines too, for protections.
I imagine it would be a joy to read Wohlleben in German. Even in translation his voice is quite individual and expressive. I’m now about halfway through the book, learning a lot, and looking at trees in a new way. I feel sad for the street trees in my city.
Best wishes for your German studies!