consciousness is a sequence
of discrete moments
that sometimes blur together,
commingle, and even crash
into one another —
it’s our awareness of the outside,
confronting our experience
of the inside,
our fears of the other side
and our assumptions
about the underside…
it’s reality cracked ’n torn apart
— so that the past, present,
and future run completely
open-wide
before us, between us, and so on…
when we put ourselves to sleep
where is it we’re going?
consciousness…
is it a dirty word?
well, it’s just sort of nebulous
and, I think, not as amenable
to measurement
as, let’s say, memory
or language or how we make
routine decisions…
tell me,
what’s it like to be a bat?
or to mistake someone
for a hat?
can I understand what it
feels like to be my cat?
sure, we can share a world
and a space —
but to what extent
are these minds the same?
you say you like the truth,
but you want it to be so harsh…
life is fragile
and brains, bodies, and selves
remain forever
in a delicate balance,
always searching
for that which does not exist
Garbage Notes:
I was just reading this article about how back in 1994 a neuroscientist named Christof Koch made a bet with philosopher David Chalmers that within 25 years scientists would have discovered the neural underpinnings of consciousness.
Well here we are in 2023 and I’m a little sad to say that the scientist lost the bet. The fact remains that we still do not clearly understand how subjective consciousness emerges from brain activity.
I’ve always been interested in how the brain produces consciousness. Ever since I took Evo Psych back in college, I’ve wondered what the hell causes us to be self aware. It’s a question that’s bothered me for a long time.
So, in this poem I’m wrestling with that curiosity—this hard problem of consciousness. How measurable neural activity somehow gives rise to subjective experiences—what philosophers call qualia. In other words, the redness of a rose or the wetness of water.
As human beings we’re capable of many creative things. We’re writing sonnets, publishing epic novels, putting on elaborate plays, writing scripts for blockbuster movies—doing so many highly improbable things. But what role does subjective consciousness even play in all of this stuff?
I know I tend to be a pretty self-conscious writer. Much of my prose is unabashedly meta and painfully self aware. So much so that I often feel like my work reads like thought itself spewed out onto the page, in all it’s raw, propulsive, first-person glory.
So, I don’t know. It certainly feels to me like my self awareness is important for some things. But as for what causes it, well, it’s all still a big mystery.
Maybe I just enjoy the eerie unanswerability of the question—an animal capable of thinking about its own thought—it’s so weird. There’s a frustrating irony and circularity to the idea of having to use the very faculty you’re studying in order to study it.
Anyway, back to the poem. For all you psych undergrads out there, I’m sure you caught the reference to Thomas Nagel’s paper What’s It Like to Be a Bat. And the lesser known Franco Amati variation: What’s It Like to Be My Cat?
And then there’s the call-out to Oliver Sacks’ renowned book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which alludes to the fact that it’s so easy for things to go wrong in the brain, throwing the delicate balance of human behavior out of whack. This leads to a wide range of trauma and psychoses. Which, as fucked-up writers, we all know quite well.
Franco Amati 2023
Great poem. It was a wonderful exploration into the elusive nature of consciousness.
That last stanza hits hard emotionally!