Cogito ergo sum. Most of us encountered this dictum by scientist and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650), the father of modern philosophy, as schoolchildren. Already back then I disagreed: how could I think at all without a brain? Or without a body?
This leads us to the much more difficult question of what consciousness actually is. I won’t pretend to have the answer. However, neuroscience increasingly assumes that consciousness is not a prerequisite for perception, but rather a consequence of it. Before we form a thought, we must become aware of our surroundings and engage with reality through our senses. We share this with all sentient beings. Animals and other life forms may not think like us, but they are conscious enough to survive in an often hostile environment, and they are often better adapted to life than we are, having become largely alienated from nature – including our own.
While thinking is linked to neural activity in the brain, consciousness can also occur without understanding, as in meditation or in babies before they learn to speak. The same applies to patients in a coma or on the operating table, who perceive what is being said and done around them without reflecting it. It applies to the cat enjoying a ray of sunshine, or the mouse perceiving the rustling of the grass around it, to the bird dancing in the wind, and the puma prowling through the jungle.
Could it be that we have misunderstood Descartes? Perhaps he simply wanted to tell us that thinking was his raison d’être and that without intellectual engagement with the world, he felt like a fish out of water. Does our human dignity really depend on our ability to analyse and produce, rather than springing from our being, the feeling of ‘I am’? Our perception arises from our lived experience of the world. We should use both our hearts and our minds to engage with it. Consciousness is more than thinking!
Thoughtfully Yours,
Susanne G. Seiler