Can contemporary science tell us if Shepherd was right to think foetuses are capable of a consciousness of sorts?

Continuing from my previous blog, here I will explain some of what I have found out thus far in my research about the science of consciousness in general and how it applies to the possibility of foetuses having a type of consciousness.

What I find remarkable about Shepherd mentioning foetal consciousness back in the early 19^th century, is that science today still doesn’t have a good grasp of what consciousness is, and even less so when it comes to foetuses. In the New Scientist published as recently as the 13^th May 2017, Homes states that “We don’t even fully understand what consciousness is” and that the question of how it evolved and “what is it for?” has “Until recently, …. been largely ignored”¹. So I think it is all the more fascinating that Shepherd doesn’t ignore the possibility of foetal consciousness back in the 19^th century². Homes³ tells us the latest shift of focus in science of consciousness is that scientific researchers have broadened their focus now by analysing the historical evolution of consciousness, including consciousness in animals, rather than restricting the question to what it is and applying it only to humans, and thereby furthering our knowledge of the “nature of consciousness” by approaching it from a different but related research question.

Homes⁴ outlines the differing, competing theories and accounts of consciousness which take this different research angle. There is still no one agreed scientific view on it and much ignorance in this field remains⁵. The important key concepts in this article by Homes which relate to my focus in this blog post are that there are various “kinds of consciousness”⁶. This means two things. One, that there may be different types of consciousness other than the ones we are familiar with as human beings⁷. Two, that there may be different levels of consciousness, ranging from “minimal consciousness” to more complex ways of being conscious⁸. Homes wonderfully sums up this message at the end of his article when he says “consciousness is not clear cut” and that, by looking at the animal world, we appreciate what the neuroscientist Anil Seth means when he says “there is not just one single way of being conscious”⁹.      

This, I think, matches up well with Shepherd’s hypothesis that consciousness can be simple early on in life, then be more complex when we are adults before returning to a simple kind of consciousness after death. So I wonder whether what Shepherd had in mind when writing about consciousness, including “consciousnesses (simple or complex)”¹⁰, and “mental capacity” being “simple”¹¹ is something akin to what we would now term minimal consciousness.

However, there can be a fine line in determining the difference between very minimal levels of consciousness and unconsciousness and this difference is not always clearly understood. Block¹², in his entry on ‘consciousness’ in ‘A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind’ highlights that the philosopher Searle puts forward and explores “petit mal epilepsy”¹³ as described by Penfield. I shall put aside the criticisms and rebuttals of Searle’s approach to consciousness and instead try to bring out how this type of epilepsy really illustrates the difficulty of untangling different types of human conscious and how to accurately delineate between consciousness and unconsciousness. Penfield observed that his patients with petit mal epilepsy were able to do things like walk around busy streets, drive a car and play a musical instrument despite being described as “totally unconscious”.¹⁴ This raises two points. One, as Block highlights, that this may be because, while they lack some types of consciousness, such as “phenomenal consciousness”, they still possess others, such as “cognitive and functional consciousness”¹⁵. Two, Block questions the phrase “totally unconscious” in an earlier work of Searles’ and explores the idea of whether what is really going on is related to attentiveness¹⁶. On this picture, when we say sufferers are unconscious yet managing to be up and about and navigating their way through the world, it is more akin to being conscious but “on automatic pilot” rather than actually being completely unconscious¹⁷. Not only does this impact on how we want to demarcate and define the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness, but it also has implications for how we talk about different kinds of consciousness.¹⁸

The relevance of the similarities and differences between conscious states and unconscious states is that some scientists / paediatricians maintain that foetal consciousness is a type of unconsciousness and that foetuses are in a sleep-like state until birth¹⁹. This claim, I think, is of particular interest when assessing how close Shepherd’s suggested hypotheses are to contemporary scientific knowledge because in a different section in her 1827 treatise she calls sleep an unconscious state²⁰.

So how should we draw on all this when examining the concept of foetal consciousness in Shepherd? At first glance, it might seem that foetuses are not strictly speaking conscious, but rather, unconscious. However, considering that this unconsciousness is likened to a sleep-like state and that people can sleepwalk and petit mal epilepsy sufferers have sometimes been considered unconscious despite being up and about and capable of doing tasks, should we think of foetal unconsciousness as a type of very minimal consciousness, akin to sleep and certain types of so-called unconscious behaviours? Are foetuses unconscious in some ways but not others, making them seem unconscious? Would Shepherd have refined her terms of simple consciousness and unconsciousness in relation to foetuses had she known they may be in a sleep-like state? How should we accurately interpret Shepherd’s notion of foetal consciousness and how she meant it? How should we assess and compare it to the deeper knowledge we now possess in philosophy and science about levels and types of consciousness? These are some of the research questions I’m asking myself about Lady Mary Shepherd and sharing with you to enjoy thinking about too.

¹Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13^th May 2017, p29

²Shepherd, M. (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected

with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

³Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13th May 2017, p29

⁴Homes, B., ‘Why Be Conscious?’ (cover story), 13th May 2017, p29-31

⁵ibid

⁶ibid p31

⁷ibid p29-31

⁸ibid p31

⁹ibid p31

¹⁰ Quote from: “What then remains as given data? Nothing but our sensations, mental consciousnesses, (simple or complex,) arbitrarily named, and their relations” in Shepherd, M. “Essay II Upon the Nature of the Five Organs of Sense, and their Manner of Action with Regard to External Perception” p221 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt

¹¹ Quote from: “But the inquiry should be, whether when the organs which are in relation to any individual capacity, undergo the change called death, if the continuing mental capacity become simple in its aptitudes again, or, whether it remain so far in an altered state by what it has gone through in the present life, that it continues as the result of that modification?” in Shepherd, M. “Essay X, The Reason Why We Cannot Conceive of Sensation as Existing Necessarily, and Continuously by Itself” p379 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt)

In other words, Shepherd (1827) thinks that either our mental capabilities go from being simple to more complex in adulthood before becoming simple again after death or that our mental capabilities continually change in some way throughout.    

¹² Block, N., (2004) ‘Consciousness’ entry in ‘A companion to the Philosophy of Mind’ ed, Guttenplan, S., Backwell companions to Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing pp210-219

¹³ibid p217

¹⁴ibid

¹⁵ibid

¹⁶ibid p218

¹⁷ibid

¹⁸ibid. In addition, Block (2004, p218) argues that “The main error here is to transfer by conflation an obvious function of access-consciousness to phenomenal consciousness”. For an overview and explanation of these terms see http://protoscience.wikia.com/wiki/Phenomenal_and_Access_Conciousness  

This terminology also shows that there are even different terms for various levels and types of consciousness between philosophy and science.  

¹⁹ p255 in Lagercrantz, H., and Changeux, Jean-Pierre, (2009) ‘The Emergence of Human Consciousness: From Foetal to Neonatal Life’, Pediatric research, 65 (3), p255-60

²⁰ from quote where Shepherd uses sleep as an example of an unconscious state: “when unconscious, (as in sound sleep)…” in Shepherd, M., Chapter VII “Application of the Doctrine Contained in the Preceding Essay to the Evidence of our Belief in Several Opinions.” p155 in (1827) Essays on the Perception of an External Universe and Other Subjects Connected with the Doctrine of Causation (first edition ed.). Piccadilly, London, London, United Kingdom: John Hatchard and Son.
Available at: https://archive.org/stream/essaysonpercepti00shep/essaysonpercepti00shep_djvu.txt