Page - 132 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

132 • Cyborg Mind find a careful and precise definition of consciousness. You will be disappointed. Consciousness has not yet become a scientific term that can be defined in this way. Currently we all use the term consciousness in many different and often ambiguous ways. Precise definitions of different aspects of consciousness will emerge . . . but to make precise definitions at this stage is premature.136 This follows what the British psychologist Stuart Sutherland (1927–98) wrote in 1989 in the Macmillan Dictionary of Psychology: Consciousness  – The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible with- out a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness  – to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.137 However, philosophers have tried to understand some of the properties related to consciousness by asking the following questions: – Does consciousness really exist? – Can it be explained mechanistically? – Is there such a thing as nonhuman consciousness and how can it be recognised? – What is the relationship between consciousness and language? – Can consciousness be understood other than in the dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties? – Will computers and robots ever be conscious in the same way as humans? – Is consciousness an all-or-nothing concept? In other words, as soon as an individual is conscious of others or of self, is it difficult to be more or less conscious of others or of self? Many scholars also accept that consciousness is relational in some way and is dependent on interactions or communications;138 in other words, it is associ- ated with aspects that are self-relational and/or other person relational. In 1998, the British neurobiologist Steven Rose indicated that: My own view, however, is that the issue of consciousness lies beyond mere neu- roscience, or even psychology and philosophy. The point about brains is that they are open, not closed, systems, in continued interaction with their envi- ronments. And for humans, that environment is both the immediate present constituted by the society in which we are embedded, and the past, expressed in our individual and social histories. Consciousness is fundamentally a social phenomenon, not the property of an individual brain or mind.139 This open access edition has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale.