Page - 134 - in Cyborg Mind - What Brain–Computer and Mind–Cyberspace Interfaces Mean for Cyberneuroethics

134 • Cyborg Mind difficult to verify theories about how consciousness emerges from the brain of a person, since only this individual is aware of such an experience.145 Because of this, it is very likely that conscious beings will never be able to fully understand consciousness.146 Maybe a greater or deeper conscious- ness will lead to a better understanding of the concept, but perhaps human beings are actually limited by their own consciousness in understanding consciousness. This enigmatic aspect of the concept is also related to its very existence, something that the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins noted in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene when he wrote: ‘The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.’147 Interestingly, it is easier to determine the lack of consciousness than to understand its presence. Moreover, since it is already possible to reduce consciousness, an increase in consciousness may well become feasible. For example, in the same way as some amphetamines and other psychotropic medicines can enhance awareness and awaken the brain, it may be possible in the future to enhance the consciousness of a person through a direct interface with cyberspace. In this regard, Greenfield writes: We can, then, think of consciousness as a phenomenon that deepens or light- ens, expands or contracts, is more or less from one moment to the next; it would be a phenomenon that is essentially variable and ranging in quantity from the here and now, the ‘booming, buzzing confusion’ of an infant or the flimsiness of a dream or a drunken moment to the deep self-consciousness of introspection of the adult human. We could then see how such ever-changing levels of consciousness match up with an appropriately changing landscape in the brain. But what might the something be, that we could measure, that was ever changing in the brain?148 In short, many questions remain unanswered with respect to the concept of consciousness and some may even be unanswerable. Primacy of the Mind over the Body Interestingly, some individuals (including many young people) already seem to be so absorbed by their laptops, with their earphones in both ears, that only their bodies appear to be present. In a way, their minds are so far away in cyberspace that it becomes difficult to communicate with them in any traditional manner, such as using gestures or speech. Therefore, a kind of dissociation may be taking place between the mind and the body (a form of 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.