The Speed of Stone

Consciousness: state of being conscious; totality of a person's thoughts and feelings, or of a class of these; perception.

"A lazy bunch, these Oxford people," thought Sarkon the Prophet, closing the voluminous book. "They really could have gotten into a little more detail."

Sarkon the Prophet was somewhat distressed. As usual, he had refused to be ordered around by General Kwar, the Welgon Age's one and only Dictator, this time calling upon his free will. Kwar had haughtily remarked that he had no free will anyway, not to mention a complete lack of consciousness. When Sarkon had retorted that he always made his prophesies very conscientiously, General Kwar had just laughed at him in a despising way before walking away.

All this had made Sarkon the Prophet decide that he really needed to find out more about consciousness and free will.

He put the dictionary back into the shelf, and wondered if maybe Dr. Qworm, the Welgon Age's Mad Scientist, could help him further.

* * *

Dr. Qworm was unsuccessfully trying to measure the speed of stone when Sarkon entered the Welgon Age's research center.

"I've been trying to measure its progression for days now, but this stone doesn't seem to get anywhere! Considering the speed of sound – not even to mention the speed of light! – the hard-headedness of stone not to move is barely believable!" Upset, Dr. Qworm gave it a kick, making it move a few centimeters and making himself cry out and hold his foot.

Speed of stone: proportional to experimenter's angriness, Sarkon wrote down in Dr. Qworm's scientific logbook.

"Do you know anything about consciousness?" Sarkon asked after Dr. Qworm had calmed down a little. "I mean, anything at all?…"

Dr. Qworm gazed at him with a proud and hurt look. "Why, consciousness happens to be my speciality! I know all about it! What do you need to know?"

"Umm… Everything?" ventured Sarkon the Prophet.

"Hm. That's… a lot," Dr. Qworm stroked his chin. "To start with, consciousness is the action of being conscious…"

Sarkon cleared his throat. "The fact that consciousness is consciousness is something I could have deduced myself," he interrupted with a sigh. "Actually, I would need…" and he paused a moment to think, "…a more physical description of consciousness. Could you maybe tell me what the physical, the material manifestation of consciousness is?"

Dr. Qworm stroked his chin. "That's a tricky one," he admitted.

"Why?" asked Sarkon the Prophet.

"Because consciousness is widely believed to be immaterial by definition," explained Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist.

"Immaterial?" Sarkon suddenly wondered if the cloudy mists of the spiritual paths he used to roam would be more helpful than a scientist who was, after all, mad.

"Of course, believing is not my business," Dr. Qworm went on haughtily. "I leave that to people like you. As a matter of fact, I do have a material definition for consciousness. Consciousness," and he took a deep breath, "is the difference between a being alive, and a being dead!"

"And what is this difference?" asked Sarkon the Prophet.

"More than a beating heart, in any case," stated Dr. Qworm. "But without going into the details, the difference can be defined as the presence or absence of exchange of information – of substances - between organic tissues."

For once, Dr. Qworm's words seemed to make sense to Sarkon the Prophet. "We seem to be getting closer. According to you, then, consciousness would be the exchange of information between organic tissues."

"That's the physical manifestation of it, indeed," agreed Dr. Qworm. "According to this definition, consciousness is indeed an action and not a state, and the first act of consciousness of a being would be the exchange of information between the egg and the spermatozoid - which happens to be the being's conception, too."

"That's fine enough with me," agreed Sarkon, who thought that these Oxford bunch were not only lazy, but also not as bright as their work required them to be. "Now… could you tell me how this exchange of information takes place?"

"Sure. Since you focus on consciousness, I'll skip all the exchanges that happen in various parts of the body just to make consciousness work and focus on the brain, where consciousness takes place. I'm actually going to focus on a certain category of cells in the brain that are called neurons. There are about one hundred billion in a human brain.

"Those cells are small batteries which have an inside electrical potential of –65 millivolts compared to their outside; this is caused by a slightly higher concentration of anions (negatively charged molecules or atoms) inside the cell membrane and a comparatively slightly higher concentration of cations (positively charged molecules or atoms) outside.

"To make those batteries work, channels are built in the cell's membrane. When the cell becomes active, these channels open and let a flow of ions through, which changes the polarization of the cell. The addition of all these changes in all neurons would be consciousness."

"Now how does a neuron cell become active?" asked Sarkon.

"By receiving a signal from another cell. Such signals are carried out by neurotransmitters, molecules that are synthesized inside neurons when its change of polarization I mentioned earlier reaches a certain threshold. These neurotransmitters are carried from one neuron to another by connecting channels that are called axons, and are processed by what could be defined as the neuron's 'sensors', its synapses."

Sarkon tried to make sense of what Qworm was telling him. "So a neuron gets a signal, changes its polarization, synthesizes a molecule, and sends a signal. But where does it start? Where does it end?"

"Starting signals are given by excitatory neurotransmitters; ending signals by inhibitory ones. The signals may start with the input gotten either from the senses, or from various parts of the body (the propagation of a molecule signaling a lack of liquid somewhere to certain neurons may result in a feeling of thirst, for instance). This is passive consciousness, where the neurons just wait for information from outside the brain to react to it. Awareness to the world around us and of the body's needs fall into the category of passive consciousness.

"Then you have motor consciousness, which is involved in muscular action and in the body's movements. Motor consciousness is often the result of a 'round trip' of neurotransmitters, where a part of the body sends a signal, and the neurons send back an 'action order' in response to this signal.

"Sometimes also the signals may start in the neurons themselves. This would be active consciousness, or thinking. Neurons involved in storing memory or knowledge start sending signals to each other, thus connecting to form a thought."

"And how do we do that? Why do they start sending signals?" Sarkon asked once more.

"How, why, how, and why again! Will you never stop, Prophet?" sighed Dr. Qworm. "Now why a certain thought 'happens' or 'is decided', how we can start making certain neurons in our brains synthesize neurotransmitters and change polarization without their getting a signal to do so, is still a mystery to science, and answering this question would be to break the mystery of the human will. Right now, the closest to a scientific explanation we have is that these 'self-activations' of neurons could be the result of all previous activations, which would make the human will the result of the human's current passive consciousness signals, the result of all his previous deeds, feelings and thoughts, and, through his genes, the result of all his ancestor's lives. This would make the human will's complexity almost equal the complexity of the universe; however, since it would still be the result of something, there would be, according to this definition, no free will, but only complex will."

Sarkon bit his lip. Could General Kwar have been right?

Unaware of Sarkon's qualms, Dr. Qworm went on. "Fortunately, we have proof that it is not so."

Sarkon let out a sigh of relief.

"Scientists have discovered, indeed, that some neurons suddenly become active with no apparent reason. Such neurons are instable – in a far-fetched comparison, we could say they are a bit like uranium atoms, but instead of being radioactive, they would be 'thought-active'. During sleep, this may produce dreams. During waking time, a thought or an idea may occur out of nowhere, without you having even tried to think of it. I," and Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist proudly put his right hand to his breast, "placed this into a fourth category of consciousness that I named 'random consciousness'."

Sarkon still felt uneasy. "Now, is free will only hypercomplexity and randomness?" he wondered.

"Maybe. And maybe randomness is just another form of hypercomplexity," Dr. Qworm said darkly. "But maybe randomness is the one concept that makes the human mind as well as the universe free…" he added, his eyes dreamily lost in the Welgon Age's slightly cloudy sky. "Anyway, I've got to go back to my experiment now. No, you don't need to thank me. Glad to have helped. Bye!"

On these words, he pushed the Prophet out of his way and went back to his stone.

* * *

After he had left the research center, Sarkon the Prophet wondered about the strange kind of hypercomplexity that was driving the Mad Scientist's thoughts. And, smiling, he realized that General Kwar was wrong after all: there was, indeed, no better proof of free will than somebody trying to measure…

…the speed of stone.

My thanks for this story go to the UNAM in Mexico City and their excellent site, http://ifcsun1.ifisiol.unam.mx/Brain/index