A widely accepted and coherent view of consciousness is that it is the most basic thing there is — any subjective awareness we have — yet figuring out how and why it exists remains a mystery.
Highlights
- The hard problem of consciousness, formulated by the philosopher David Chalmers, addresses knowledge gaps in how consciousness emerges and why physical beings are conscious rather than nonconscious.
- Neuroscientists and religious practitioners have applied their backgrounds to theorizing explanations for the hard problem of consciousness.
With an inception in the modern age starting in the 1950s, neuroscientists, philosophers, physicists, and religious gurus have strived to explain consciousness. In this regard, consciousness experts have aimed for a better definition and understanding of the connection between the so-called mind, where all of our thoughts and dreams exist, and the physical brain, composed of some 86 billion neurons — the mind-body problem. More recently, in 1995, the philosopher David Chalmers formulated the hard problem of consciousness to address consciousness, which seeks an explanation for why and how organisms like humans have conscious subjective experiences.
To address the mind-body problem and the hard problem of consciousness, experts have come up with intriguing theories. Through the application of neuroscience, philosophy, physics, AI, and religion, these experts are moving us closer to more comprehensive perspectives of how consciousness emerges and how it relates to brain activity. In a YouTube documentary, correspondent Kmele Foster of the media outlet Big Think interviews consciousness experts from various disciplinary backgrounds regarding their perspectives.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch Believes Consciousness Is the Most Basic Thing There Is
Christof Koch is a neuroscientist and the president of the Allen Institute of Brain Science in Seattle. With discoverer of the DNA double-helix Francis Crick, he has helped unravel the neurological basis of consciousness. As such, his pioneering research has helped identify brain activity associated with generating consciousness — the neuronal correlates of consciousness. Although he and Crick made these neural associations, it remains unclear how brain processes give rise the feeling of life itself — consciousness.
In that regard, Dr. Koch has helped to explain the contours of the debate regarding how consciousness emerges and how it relates to the brain. He says that in graduate school, future scientists learn that physics is fundamental, touching on everything that is in the known universe. Along those lines, students study topics from relativity theory to quantum mechanics and thermodynamics; however, there is nothing about consciousness in the curriculum.
He adds that how consciousness arises from physical processes like brain activity is still a mystery. To address this issue, Dr. Koch says many scientists do not doubt they are conscious, but they do not know how to study it scientifically.
In that regard, they leave the study of consciousness to philosophers; however, Dr. Koch says that we need to reach a better scientific understanding of the tools we use to comprehend the world — consciousness. For this reason, with Dr. Crick, Dr. Koch tracked the footprints in the brain behind consciousness, the neuronal correlates of consciousness. Despite having elucidated where consciousness likely occurs in the brain some thirty years ago, researchers still have not explained how consciousness arises from brain activity, though.
Since contemporary neuroscience lacks a definitive explanation for how consciousness emerges, Dr. Koch gets philosophical and says that the philosophy of mind is organized on two poles — physical and mental. To address that which is physical and mental, one consisting of all material matter and the other being the mind, respectively, Dr. Koch believes the panpsychism perspective. Panpsychism holds that the physical and mental exist simultaneously. He adds that from the outside, there are physical phenomena like the brain, but from the inside, there are conscious feelings. In other words, consciousness is exactly the way that a physical system, such as the brain, feels.
Panpsychism also says that consciousness is not only experienced by humans and some animals but may be an inherent characteristic of all matter. In that sense, all physical systems may have conscious subjective experiences to varying degrees. Complex things have complex minds associated with them, yet simple things like flies or protozoa have simple minds associated with them. Along those lines, it is still very difficult to experimentally address whether simple organisms like flies and bees have consciousness.
Hindu Monk Explains His Perspective on Consciousness
“I think human beings, wherever they are and whichever time we live, have always been fascinated by these big questions … Who am I really? What am I doing here? What’s the point of all of this? And what’s our destiny? And what is this?” says Hindu monk Swami Sarvapriyanda.
The Swami explains that his religious perspective looks at things from the inside out, studying everything from the perspective of awareness as a basis for all else that we understand. In that sense, the common thread through all of the experiences we have throughout life is that we are conscious.
He adds that the of all the Western philosophers, the one that came the closes to the Hindu perspective was Renee Descartes when he said, “I think. Therefore, I am.” The Swami says that consciousness is primary and that Descartes did not doubt his existence, because he had consciousness. According to the Swami, if we deny our consciousness by adopting a materialist worldview, where nothing exists but physical objects, we lose meaning, purpose, beauty, value, and goodness. In this way, according to the Swami, science differs from his religious views in that it researches the external world, while denying the importance of our conscious subjective experiences.
From Neuroscience to Consciousness-Focused Religious Perspectives, Definitive Explanations Remain Elusive
From Dr. Koch’s interesting perspective on consciousness called panpsychism to the Swami’s consciousness-focused religious views, these perspectives have one thing in common — they hold that we need a better understanding of our consciousness. While Dr. Koch along with Francis Crick have studied physical brain activity associated with consciousness, the Swami has used consciousness itself as the central means for understanding reality.
All the same, we may be bound to theorize on the nature of consciousness for the foreseeable future without concrete explanations for how consciousness emerges. This is because current ideas and theories on the matter, like panpsychism, remain outside of the domain of scientific experimentation. In other words, if we cannot test these theories experimentally, there is no way to know how true they are.
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