Dogmatic brain – consciousness concept of Science: Time for a reverse paradigm shift
Science will have to grapple with Consciousness and try to come to terms with it. The common contention of Science that Consciousness emerges from the brain will be increasingly difficult to explain. How could the soft squishy content of the cranial box create Consciousness is something of a challenge to solve. The brain is a complex organ with trillions of nerve connections formed by nearly 100 billion neurons. The trillions of functional interconnections can at best explain the physical activities of the body and behaviour. However, it cannot explain how abstract experiences of emotion, joy, anger, fear, disgust, pity, anxiety and embarrassment can be manifested or brought about. There is an intentional component associated with them. How do we explain pain sensation by mere electrical impulses and chemical signals between neurons and neuronal connections?
Can conventional scientific methods ever be able to decipher these? The answer is a definite ‘NO’. Alternate techniques or approaches would be needed to solve the mystery of Consciousness and brain connection. Mainstream scientists never thought of Consciousness as a serious science; it was very taboo to mention Consciousness’s inner world. In the 21st century, things are changing. An increasing number of pragmatic scientists consider mind over matter and accept that those investigations into Consciousness are a serious scientific issue.
Non-matter Consciousness: A Challenge to Science
How the brain produces Consciousness? The answer to this is an enormous challenge for those working at the physical level of the brain. This is a myopic malady and an approach that would never lead to solving the mystery of Consciousness. Probing Consciousness would be a much more complex problem compared to any other scientific problem. Consciousness is not a physical entity and hence very much unobservable. Would it be possible to get inside someone (or, for that matter, into the brain itself) and understand his/her feelings and experience, much less how thoughts and emotions get generated?
How do we know about the existence of Consciousness? Consciousness is unknowable through experiments. It can be known only through innate awareness of our feelings, emotions and experiences. In this scenario, science can never explain Consciousness.
The non-observable, a challenge to the science of observables
Science is used to dealing with observable data and has an appropriate methodology. The standard method, however, meets its waterloo when confronted with unobservable data of Consciousness.
At best, scientists can try and correlate unobservable experiences with observable processes such as brain scans and relying on what individuals talk about their conscious experiences.
This methodology would be highly wanting as it cannot help explain Consciousness and its functioning. It may be possible to correlate the invisible feeling of hunger with visible activity in the brain’s hypothalamus. But does this explain Consciousness? The answer that we seek would be how or why conscious experiences could be correlated with brain activity? Why does the brain show an activity along with the feeling of hunger?
Our existing science and methodology are grossly inadequate to explore and understand Consciousness. It was Galileo who made a vague reference to Consciousness with a disconnect with the physical world. Galileo believed in the quantitative science of the physical world with the qualitative aspects of various perceptions (colour, smell etc.) being related to Consciousness and an aspect stipulated to be outside the domain of science.
The backdrop of science rests on this worldview even to this day. Such a worldview can at best establish correlations between the quantitative brain activities and processes that neuroscientists and psychologists observe and the qualitative experiences that are not observable. Within this framework, there is no possibility of explaining why they go together.
Physicists can explain the externalities of matter but not its inherent nature
Physical Science tells us so much about matter, mainly related to the behaviour or properties of matter like mass, charge, attraction, repulsion, resistance to acceleration, etc. But Physics cannot tell us about the intrinsic nature of matter or what matter is per se? Philosopher Bertrand Russel and Scientist Arthur Eddington had opined as early as the 1920s that Physical Science could not tell us what matter really is! The big gaping hole in the worldview of science is that Physics leaves us in the dark about the above query. The unanswered enquiry of Russel and Eddington would in all probability be to fill the gaping hole, the unknown, with Consciousness.
Ancient panpsychism viewed Consciousness as a fundamental ubiquitous feature of the physical world. But the new wave of panpsychism views Consciousness’ as all-permeating. No doubt, Consciousness is a feature of all subjective experience of humans, but it also forms the backdrop of Cosmos present in all matter. Material physicists believe in the existence of matter alone, and physical science describes matter from the outside in terms of behaviour and properties. But a description of matter from the inside constitutes forms of Consciousness. It means that matter in its even most elementary particles has forms of Consciousness.
The Living: Levels of expression of Consciousness
There is also a scientific view of the varying complexity of Consciousness. What it suggests is organisms with decreasing complexity, or increasing simplicity have Conscious experiences of reducing complexity. For example, the Conscious experiences of an elephant are much less complex than those of humans, and those of a rat or rabbit are even less complex than those of an elephant and so on and so forth. Organisms like bacteria in this context have the lowest level of conscious experiences.
Our material science approach offers no theory at all regarding Consciousness, at best only correlations. At the other end is the alternate claim of Consciousness being in the soul, suggesting a distinct mind and body. Panpsychism is an in-between concept between the two extremes. Some leading neuroscientists accept it as the best framework for a science of Consciousness. Science would get revolutionized someday soon by creating a science of Consciousness and in-depth study of the same. Only well-informed Spiritual Science can link and explain the two alternatives of Consciousness.
*Please look for another blog on two types of Consciousness in the Cosmos.
Science still can’t explain consciousness but that might soon change.
Panpsychism scientists discover everything – from rocks to molecules- is conscious.
