Question: what is the biological basis of consiousness

Mark Burnley answered on 20 Jun 2011:

I’ll give this a quick go! The *biological* basis of consciousness is very simply a lot of brain cells (neurons) all working together. One of the very special things about nature is that when lots of similar things act together, patterns that weren’t there before suddenly appear. You can see this in flocks of birds or schools of fish, where the whole flock seems to create a pattern in the sky that looks like it is being conducted by something. In fact, it is simply individual birds reacting to other nearby birds, all of whom are trying to land. Scientists would call this flock a “system” whose individual components (the birds) are following simple rules (e.g., 1. stay close to other birds, 2. don’t crash into other birds), with feedback (how close the birds are to each other). We think the brain works in the same way; the individuals this time are neurons, each interacting with other neurons. The rules, too, are equally simple. Neurons receive signals from other neurons and if enough “excitatory” signals are received, the neuron receiving those signals will “fire”. And that is the biological basis. When you have 100 billion neurons all interacting, this can result in consciousness, which is an “emergent property”. Emergent properties are those which cannot be predicted by studying the individual parts in isolation. Just as studying a single bird cannot help you understand the flock, so understanding an individual neuron cannot explain consciousness. I don’t know how consciousness works, I just know what its components are!