How Many Levels of Consciousness Exist?
How Many Levels of Consciousness Exist?
It is stated that consciousness operates on four distinct levels.
Conscious – Awareness of oneself, thoughts, sensations, and the external world.
Unconscious – A state of unawareness, such as being asleep or unresponsive.
Preconscious – Memories that aren’t instantly present but easily accessible.
Nonconscious – Brain processes that occur without conscious awareness.
The term subconscious, originally coined by Freud, is less commonly used today. We now favour the unconscious. The subconscious referred to the part of the brain that records and retains information without conscious effort.
It’s a well-established medical and neuroscientific fact that our brains never stop functioning. They are active 24/7 throughout our lives, including during sleep, “unconsciousness”, and even in a coma. However, it is not an established medical fact that the brain’s continuous activity implies constant consciousness.
But I want to propose something radical. I say we have only one level of awareness, and that is that we are conscious all the time—yes, even when we are asleep or knocked out.
I can only show you the arguments that support my assertion and my reasoning. Then it’s up to you to decide what you believe.
There is no single area of the brain that we can specifically point to that says there is an anatomical or neurobiological region explicitly identified as the “unconscious.” Brain imaging studies and neuroanatomical research have not pinpointed any particular neural area uniquely responsible for unconscious processing.
If we have unconscious processing, it is done over different areas of the brain. I assert that “unconsciousness” is just reduced consciousness, like when we are sleeping.
However, the Integrated Information Theory (Tononi, Koch) proposes that “unconsciousness” is not an independent state but merely a lower level of information integration in the brain.
Freud's idea of the subconscious was based on clinical practice, observation, and theoretical reflection. It was a worthy, well-researched idea, but that didn’t make it true. It consistently fails rigorous experimental validation, which is a pity because I like the idea. It certainly led to many great movies, music, and paintings.
For me, herein lies the problem of the unconscious. It fits the category of ideas that humans have been creating since day one. These ideas begin like this: we create something, and then we apply an explanation or theory to it. We try to justify the idea after we create the concept. What we should be doing is creating things that can be explained and understood first. It’s a fundamental flaw with us; we often create things we can't easily explain.
Take the idea of the soul. While the notion of the soul was present in various forms in different cultures and philosophies long before Plato's contributions, he helped to popularise the idea of the soul about 2500 years ago. However, there’s not one shred of evidence for it. Yet, every day, you can still hear that word and idea used as though it is factual, and we use it to offer a reason for whatever circumstance we want to apply to it, such as the soul being the immaterial essence of a human being.
The problem with these unproven ideas is that we spend so much time and effort trying to explain, justify, and figure them out. Then, when we think we have them figured out, we apply these ideas to our lives. And all the time, they are fake and meaningless. They are not real, and instead of inventing things that can help us, we waste our time on unproven ideas that do not help us create a better world or make us better people.
But should ideas be defined before development and naming?
Abstract thinking has led to many useful concepts. Putting the idea before the explanation has helped to produce a variety of concepts that have built better medical treatments. But when it comes to explaining how life works, this putting the cart before the horse thinking has created more confusion. From most of these ideas, we are left with rigid concepts that divide humanity, such as the soul, a god, free will, and one of our most divisive concepts ever: race. There is only one human race.
If we have only one level of consciousness, I say it is proven by how we know what we are doing all the time. We are always aware of our own nature. No one wakes up thinking they are someone else unless they have a psychological condition. Delusional misidentification is suffered by people who believe they are someone else.
Unconsciousness could just be a less aware state, not a different part of the mind. If our brains never stop functioning, then neither does our awareness, only its depth and clarity change. Focusing on ideas grounded in verifiable reality could help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.
Anyway, we humans might not be able to explain the human brain accurately. To paraphrase Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles (1903-1977), Australian neuroscientist and philosopher, it will take more than a human brain to figure out the human brain.
Good start to the morning - perfectly poached eggs on sourdough toast, magic coffee, and a Rob Kennedy read 🥰
Interesting ideas Rob.