Hard Problems of Consciousness
Abstract
Modern scientific research of consciousness has
evolved into an interdisciplinary effort involving both physical and social
disciplines, such as neuroscience, biophysics, quantum physics, cognitive
science, computer science and even eastern and western philosophies. As yet, no consensus has been reached about a
solution to the “mind-body problem”. In this article, we point out some of the difficult
questions which modern consciousness researchers are attempting to answer. Consciousness, the mind, the body, and their
relations were thoroughly analyzed in the Indian philosophy (Vedanta) of
ancient times. We will describe how each
of these questions is dealt with in Vedanta and find that Vedanta contains many
concepts which can lead to scientific answers to these questions.
1. Introduction
Modern scientific research of consciousness has
evolved into an interdisciplinary effort involving both physical and social
disciplines, such as neuroscience, biophysics, quantum physics, cognitive
science, computer science and even eastern and western philosophies. There has
been an explosion of research and results in neuroscience over the last three
decades with emphasis on understanding and explaining consciousness. Some
neuroscientists believe that the “hard problem” (Chalmers 1996) is not hard any
longer and some computer scientists believe that they are very close to
building a conscious computer. In spite
of the many seminal and outstanding accomplishments in this field, it seems
that there remain some fundamental questions which need to be addressed when
one tries to provide a scientific explanation of consciousness.
Consciousness, the mind, the body, and their relations
were thoroughly analyzed in the Indian philosophy (Vedanta) of ancient
times. In this article, we suggest that
Vedanta contains concepts which can lead to answers to some of the questions which
modern researchers who try to explain consciousness in scientific terms are
wrestling with. Vedanta asserts the existence of a Supreme Consciousness (God) that is
omnipresent, omniscient, and
omnipotent and the association of every
living being with its own soul (Jiva) which is a part of that infinite
Consciousness. Being part of the eternal Consciousness, the soul is eternal
also and survives the death of the physical body. The soul is said to be distinct also from the
mind which is a collective name for cognitive, psychological, and behavioral
aspects such as ego, intellect, thoughts, desires, and experiences of living
beings. According to Vedanta, the mind,
although subtler than the body, is also part of the insentient Nature (called Prakriti)
and not conscious just like lifeless matter. A major difference of Vedanta from
Western philosophies is the principle of reincarnation which states that some
of the subtler contents of the mind survive physical death and are carried by
the individual soul (jiva) into another life. Although these views are seemingly
counterintuitive, in this article, we suggest that Vedanta’s
descriptions of Consciousness, mind, and body can throw light on answers to some
of the difficult questions that modern scientists pursuing consciousness
research are concerned with.
2.
Brief
summary of what Vedanta says about Consciousness, the mind, the body, and their
relations
Bhagavadgita (BG) says
that God is the Ultimate Consciousness
and the Ultimate Personality. He is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent,
and a great ocean of infinite, immeasurable, mercy and compassion. By His own
will He manifests Himself as innumerable cosmic universes by projection in the
material substratum. He is the
Self (Atma) and Consciousness seated in the hearts of all living beings. Gita describes jiva, the embodied being and the individual soul, as an
infinitesimal spark from God Himself and therefore eternal as well. Jiva
draws to itself the senses and the mind that are constituents of prakriti, the insentient Nature. Being
eternal, jiva survives physical
death. The Self which is confined to the body-mind complex is sometimes called Jivatma to distinguish it from the unattached
and unbounded Self which is called Paramatma.
Chapter 13 of BG called Shetra Shetrajna
Vibhaga Yoga describes the distinctions between the body mind complex and
the one who ‘knows’ them (shetrajna). The Field of activity (shetra) consists of the five elements, the ten organs, sense
objects, the ego (ahankara), desires,
aversion, emotions, experiences (manas
and chitta), and intellect (buddhi). The five elements are the
earth, water, fire, air and the sky. The five objects of the senses are sound,
touch, form and color, taste, and smell.
All contents of the Field, namely, the body, its environment, and the
mind are not conscious. Mind is called the eleventh sense
(five senses of cognition: seeing, hearing, touch, taste, and smell and five
senses of action: speech, grasping or working, moving, excretion,
reproduction). The knower of the Field is Consciousness who has
projected Himself and assumed this function within this body. As to the interaction of the body and the
mind, in the chapter called Karma Yoga,
Gita says that the senses influence the body, and manas and chitta
influence the senses; buddhi
influences the manas and chitta, and jiva influences buddhi.
If
the mind is not conscious, how is it that we have conscious experiences in our
lives? Vedanta’s answer to this question is a phenomenon called chidabhasa meaning “appearance of
consciousness” and explains it by means of the following analogy: When sun light
falls in a pot containing water, the light is reflected by the water creating
an image of the sun. The image has some brightness but its origin is in the sun
light and not in the pot nor in the water. If the pot is broken, water is
scattered, the reflection is gone but the sun and his rays are all still there.
In this analogy, a living being is a body with a mind and similar to a pot
containing water; the mind is like water and the body is like the pot. The
consciousness appearing in a living being is like the image of the sun in
water. If there are more than one pot with water, images of the sun appear in
all the different pots. The Supreme knower, the Ultimate Consciousness who manifests Himself as consciousness of each
individual living being
is like the sun light; sun light is just one but the reflections are many and
distinct. One may say that the finite knower, the soul situated within the
higher whole is like the beam of rays which fall in a single
pot. Just as there is no reflection in an empty pot, there is no
appearance of consciousness in lifeless matter but only in living beings
because they have minds. Again, just as the water needs a pot to hold it, and
the reflection is gone if the pot is broken, the mind cannot exhibit the
apparently conscious behavior after the death of the physical body although some of the subtler
contents of the mind may still survive like the scattered water. Vedanta says that
the subtlest aspects of the mind, the accumulated latent impressions of all past
experiences, and desires called vasanas are carried by Jiva
who survives the death of the physical body and enters into another physical
body for fulfilment of desires. The new
life gives vasanas another chance for
expression.
3.
Defining consciousness in modern science
Science as it is
understood today, does not postulate the existence of the Supreme Consciousness
as Vedanta does, but scientists want to explain the perception of consciousness
in living beings (which Vedanta is able to do as described earlier). Since
science requires precise definitions, they would like to define consciousness
but find that it is not easy. The modern
philosopher Chalmers (1996) puts it: “consciousness is an ambiguous term,
referring to many different phenomena”.
Chalmers (1997) points out that experience is central to consciousness
but “trying to define conscious experience in terms of more primitive notions
is fruitless”. Acknowledging the difficulty of arriving at a scientific
definition, another modern philosopher Searle (2000) recommends working with a
“common sense definition” sufficient to
identify the target of the investigation. A few examples from our daily experiences can
show how confused our “common sense” can be about what consciousness is. We think that rocks and all other lifeless
things are not conscious. We think that birds, animals, and other living beings
have various degrees of intelligence and of course, that a human being is more
intelligent than all the other species because for example, people do
arithmetic whereas animals usually cannot. Interestingly, our packet
calculators can do arithmetic always accurately and much faster than we can.
However, we do not think calculators are intelligent! At the same time, if a
person does arithmetic like a calculator (and we hear about such people
occasionally), he/she would be called a genius! Do we know what we mean by
intelligence or consciousness?
In fact, because of the
same confused common sense, unscientific thought sometimes seems to
inadvertently creep into scientific analysis by even well-known researchers. An example is the
argument of Crick and Koch (2001) that consciousness is a puzzling
state-dependent property of certain types of complex, adaptive systems and that
the best example is a healthy and attentive human brain because consciousness
ceases if the brain is anaesthetized.
However, it looks like a healthy brain (or some other living being) is
the only example. Can anybody name a
complex and adaptive lifeless system that exhibits consciousness? In other
words, being adaptive does not imply the ability to produce consciousness. Another
example of unscientific common sense is the following statement by McFadden
(2006; p.390), who developed an Electromagnetic theory of consciousness:
“an
unconscious mind cannot read, write, or do arithmetic”; of course this is our
daily experience because for example, we cannot do arithmetic while sleeping. The
implication of his statement is that these functions require
consciousness. However, as seen earlier,
the calculator, which does not even have a mind, clearly does it all! So why does the brain require consciousness
to do them? It does not. That is exactly why the calculator is able to
do them. While sitting by
the side of a lake and enjoying the sight of birds flying over the quiet
waters, one may express admiration saying "how full of life these little
birds are" because the thought that a dead bird cannot fly is also there
in the back of one’s mind. However, not
only birds, but an airplane can fly too; so flying is not something that
distinguishes life from lifeless matter.
In this age of robots, the so-called drones fly in enemy territories
without human pilots. Nowadays, machines can see, hear, talk, walk, and even
solve mathematical problems! They play music as well! Herbert Simon's statement
that there are no discernible limits to the range of things that computers can
be programmed to do (Simon, 1983) has come true. So, today's machines perform
many activities of intelligent and conscious human (living) beings but of
course, the machines are not conscious.
If so, what is consciousness?
We are able to prepare
a computer to PRETEND such intelligence because information residing in our
brains (at least some of it) can be mapped into languages, then words can be
mapped into the states of some hardware units, and therefore mappings of
information from the brain can be stored in the computer’s memory. The computer
is then able to carry out all the operations of receiving input data, storing,
retrieving, and processing them, and finally giving some answers to questions,
solutions to problems, results, or judgments but none of these activities
clearly requires consciousness because the machine does them all! Sometimes, the computer’s abilities to do
these functions are collectively referred to as “intelligence” (short for
“machine intelligence”), in the computer science, artificial intelligence, and
engineering disciplines. The above examples show that an intelligent behavior
of human beings such as reading, writing, doing arithmetic, learning, etc. has
two components: one that does not
involve consciousness and the other, which does. The computer performs the
former. The latter component has two aspects: (1) initiating the whole
process, which is done by an external command in the case of a computer but by
the brain itself (by its mind) in the case of a wakeful
brain, and (2) create the experience of accomplishing the
task (Hari 2012).
Hence without actually
defining consciousness, researchers assume that consciousness is something associated
with various mental activities such as experiencing, paying attention,
executive control of action (free will), and sense of self. Interestingly, although it is difficult to
define consciousness, it is possible to precisely define awareness of an object
(physical or mental); we will do so in a subsequent section.
2.
3.
4.
Is information or meaning inseparable
from the means of its storage or communication, or is it identical with the
means?
Chalmers (1996) and Searle (1980) answered the above
question eloquently, each in his own way.
The answer can be seen from the following observations: A word in any language is not identical with
its meaning because the same meaning may be conveyed by different words in
different languages. Sometimes
language is not even used to communicate information. For example, a right
signal flashing from a car is an indication to others that it is about to make
a right turn. Animals also convey some feelings by making sounds or movement of
their bodies. Thus information can be conveyed in many ways: in the form of
words, sounds, electrical signals, and so on, but in any means of communication,
meaning or information is assigned by human (living) beings to structures of matter
or material energy. A language is a
mapping of information into words (symbols) which become sound energy when
pronounced, particles of matter when written on paper, and become electrical
energy when transmitted over a telephone line, and so on. A
computer stores only a mapping of some information that exists in the
programmer’s head. The digital computer
has a bunch of memory cells, each of which can exist in either of two states
denoted by '0' and '1'. What information
is represented by bytes of '0's and '1's is decided by the programmer and not by
the computer. In a quantum computer, the
representation is in terms of states of qubits which are quantum objects;
still, meaning is assigned to the qubit states '0' and '1' by the computer
programmer. Thus, information is different from the language or
energy signals that are used for its storage and communication just like water
is different from its container without which it cannot be taken from place to
place. Note
that this is the same analogy quoted earlier from Vedanta explaining
Consciousness-mind-body relations. It
works here because mind is nothing but an accumulation of thoughts, meanings,
experiences, or “real information” called “phenomenal information” by Chalmers
(1996).
Being accustomed and forced to use physical means to
communicate information, often, we only recognize the inseparability but not
the distinction between the meaning and its vehicle of exchange. There is often an inclination to confuse
inseparability with identity as seen from the following excerpt from Bohm
(1989): “Meaning is inseparably connected with information. The Operative
notion here is that information has to do with form. Literally, 'to inform' means ‘to put form
into' something. First, information has
to be held in some form, which is carried either in a material system (e.g. a
printed page) or in some energy (e.g.,
a radio wave). - - - - what is essential for a form to constitute information
is that it shall have a meaning. For example, words in a language that
we cannot read have no meaning, and therefore convey no information to us.” - Not quite. A Chinese word conveys meaning
to a person who understands Chinese although it does not convey any meaning to
others who do not know Chinese. In the
minds of the latter, looking at the word creates the thought “I do not know
what this pattern of symbols means”, which is the meaning of the word,
nonsense. Does it not? In the above quote, the unknown word is
unable to convey a meaning which is already known to the reader. Once the reader is told what that word means
to a Chinese person, the same reader will get the correct meaning of the
Chinese word whenever he/she reads it again. Thought is only in the brain of
the reader. No form of matter or energy outside the brain (or living being) has
meaning when it is created. We assign some meaning to it. Even then the meaning does not become a part
of the form used to convey the meaning.
4.
5.
The Hard Problem named by Chalmers
That the mental and the
physical are inseparable although distinct is the basic axiom of the so called dual-aspect
theories in modern consciousness research. The dual aspect theory of the well-known
physicist Bohm says that the brain is a quantum system and that thought and the
brain’s quantum potential are dual aspects of one reality like for example, a
quantum particle and its associated wave are. Bohm (1990) proposed: “the
quantum potential is active information that is simultaneously physical and
mental in nature …. These two sides are inseparable, in the sense that
information contained in thought, which we feel to be on the 'mental' side, is
at the same time a related neurophysiological, chemical, and physical activity
(which is clearly what is meant by the 'material' side of this thought)”. This
proposal however, does not address the question: there is no mental aspect in any
physical process in which the brain (a living being) is not involved. There is
no mental aspect in any lifeless quantum system as the dual aspect of its
quantum potential. Why should there be a mental activity inseparable from its
physical activity in the brain? Why does the brain’s physical activity not
require somebody else to assign some meaning to it? Another dual-aspect
theory is that of well-known neuropsychologist Pribram who claims (Pribram 2004):
“Gabor function provides a good description of the architecture of activity in
cortical dendritic fields to sensory stimulation. Thus, the same mathematical
formulation describes an elementary psychological process, communication, and
an elementary material process in the brain.
The Gabor quantum can, therefore, serve the same function for the
wetware/mind relationship that the bit serves for the hardware/software
relation.” - It is true that the bit in a digital computer or the qubit states in
a quantum computer are both software elements and they are both mapped to
hardware units in the respective computers but we already saw that they are not
the same as their meaning in the programmer’s head because the programmer
assigns meaning to the bit/qubit.
Similarly, in the brain, the Gabor quantum may be associated with an
elementary wetware process but that does not necessarily imply that the
elementary wetware process is the same as an elementary psychological
process. For example, in the design
of an optical hologram, Gabor function describes a material process but it does
not describe any psychological process and there is none in the optical
hologram. Hence the Pribram’s theory does not answer the question: why does a
Gabor description of dendritic activity in the brain have a corresponding a
psychological activity?
Chalmers
(1996) sums up the existing inability of science to answer questions such as
mentioned above in a single phrase and calls it “the hard problem”. Although
he recognizes that consciousness is an ambiguous term, referring to many
different phenomena, he thinks that experience is central to consciousness and
conscious experience is a primitive notion which cannot be defined in terms of
more primitive notions. Hence his clarification (clearly not a definition) is
that “An organism is conscious if there is something it
is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is
something it is like to be in that state” implying that conscious experience is
subjective. Conscious experience of one is not known to others and not
accessible to others by any physical means. Chalmers asked: “How can we explain why there is something
it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is
widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good
explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give
rise to a rich inner life at all?” Chalmers called this problem the ‘hard problem’.
In an earlier section we saw
that there is a certain component of a human being’s intelligent or talented
behavior which does not involve consciousness and another which does. The latter is experience, desire to do
things, initiating appropriate action, and awareness of doing them besides
simply doing them. Today’s machines can realize the former component, which is
to perform actions but not the latter. Chalmers recognizes this distinction
between performance of a function and the accompanying experience. (However, he
does not talk about initiation of the performance). He then coins the term ‘awareness’ as being
different from ‘consciousness’ by
introducing ‘easy problems’ as opposed to the ‘hard problem’. Easy problems of
consciousness are those in which the phenomenon being
investigated is usually associated with consciousness but can be explained in terms of computational or neural
mechanisms. So
what is awareness? Chalmers says that
awareness is a functional notion different from subjective experience but it is nevertheless intimately linked to
subjective experience. Actually,
what is explained in the ‘easy problems’ of a phenomenon by means of neural and
computational mechanisms turns out to be its functional aspect whereas why
subjective experience accompanies that/those function/s is the ‘hard problem’
and not solved. Since one experiences something only when one is
aware of that something, below, we define ‘AWARENESS OF AN
OBJECT (PHYSICAL OR MENTAL)’ IN TERMS OF THE SPECIFIC FUNCTION OF CREATION OF
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL RECORDS OF INFORMATION. What does to be aware of something
or to know something whether physical or mental, or briefly, awareness of that
object mean? Nowadays, while working with computers we often use
expressions like "the computer knows", or “it does not know”, “it
remembers”, "it understands", "it thinks", etc. In fact, we can precisely define what we mean
when we say any of these expressions.
A computer behaves as if it knows an object
(a data item or a program instruction), when a representation of that object
exists in its memory as bytes of "0"s and "1"s in a digital
computer or qubit states in a quantum computer, in other words, as a sequence
of states of some hardware elements (let us call it the hardware correlate of
the object).
Once
such a mapping is entered into a computer's memory, the computer can do almost
anything that a person can do with that object and behave as though it
"knows" the object without really knowing the meaning of anything it
stores or it does! On the other hand,
whenever it receives a sensory input, the brain not only creates a neural
record in its memory but also creates a meaning associated with that neural
record. Hence we expect the brain to be
aware of an object according to the following definition:
The mind-brain system is aware
of an object (which may be a physical object, or a past event, or a sensory
experience in the present, or a future goal) when a physical representation
(neural correlate) of that object and its associated
"meaning" reportable to the outside world, both exist in its
memory.
This definition
implies that for any conscious experience to occur, whether it is awareness of
a sensory stimulus or of a thought, emotion, desire, etc. both a neural record
or activity (a pot) representing the object, and the corresponding mental
record or meaning (water in the pot) should be present in the brain-mind system.
Indeed, in the
sensory-stimulus-and-response experiments by Libet et. al (1979), experience of
stimulus required acquisition of neuronal adequacy representing
the stimulus. In the case of volitional acts, cerebral activity started at least 350
msec before the conscious wish to act appeared (Libet, 1999), again suggesting
that neuronal adequacy representing the intention needs to be achieved for
awareness of intention to appear. Thus
these findings are consistent with the above definition of “awareness of an
object” and with Vedanta. While the
brain/body uses sensory inputs to create the neural representation of an
external object, for awareness of the object to occur, the mind should be
paying attention (to create corresponding mental representation). Paying attention involves what Vedanta
describes as mind’s influence on the senses.
6. Action
of the mind on the brain
Actions of human beings are often initiated by desires,
purposes, needs, and goals, which are all closely associated with future states
in our lives. (Activities of other living beings have purposes too). As Baars
(2010) puts it, “The transition from mostly reactive to
mostly proactive behavior is among the central themes of the evolution of the
nervous system. We are able to form goals, our visions of the future. Then we
act according to our goals. But, in order to guide our behavior in a sustained
fashion, these mental images of the future must become the content of our
memory; thus the ‘memories of the future’ are formed. Human cognition is forward-looking, proactive rather than reactive. It is driven by goals,
plans, hopes, ambitions, and dreams, all of which pertain to the future and not
to the past. These cognitive powers depend on the frontal lobes and evolve with
them. The frontal lobes endow the organism with the ability to create neural
models as a prerequisite for making things happen, models of something that, as
of yet, does not exist but which you want
to bring into existence.” Neuroscience (Libet et.al. 1983, Haggard
2001) confirms that in
goal-achieving processes, a neural record of the goal is actually created in
the brain followed by an action plan and then executed.
Prior to taking an action, one first thinks about what
one wants (called volition, passion, desire, etc.) and then figures out how to
get it by reasoning. The search for an
appropriate course of action and the action itself depend upon some information
pertaining to a future state; for example, if I want to go to New York (NY) I
will take a bus to New York but not to Philadelphia. Therefore, action at
present depends upon information belonging to a future state. Note that the goal
in my al in my present imagination is
not the same as the future physical state of my body because I am not in NY
yet. The imagined goal is a mapping of the future physical state (different
from the present physical state, otherwise no action happens), into my present
memory. So, the present memory content
does depend on a not yet realized physical state. How does the brain create in its present
memory, a mapping of a possible future physical state (PFS) of itself? – “possible future state” because the goal
may not be achieved if something happens before completion of the action.
In goal oriented actions such as taking a bus to NY to be in NY, our perception
is that the future state of being in NY is the reason or cause for taking the
bus earlier because we would not take the bus if we do not want to go to
NY. Some argue that the physical state
of actually being in NY is not the cause for the action but only the goal of
being in NY in our imagination is the cause of the action. To support their argument they would modify
the example as follows: I did not take
the bus but drove in my own car. On the
way, I got a call from home because of some emergency. So I turned back. They argue that the already
existing neural correlate (NC) of the PFS
that is, being in NY later is the cause of my leaving home but not the PFS itself. True. Still, how did the
brain get the information to build the NC of the PFS? If I had already seen or even heard about NY, then the information
could come from the past memory (called episodic memory). Even if this is the
case, still, the following question remains unanswered: how does the brain
assign to the NC the label “future state” as opposed to “past” or
“present”?
Our computers simulate goal-oriented
behaviors very well. A chess playing program for example, plays chess very cleverly and beats
most chess players. It chooses every move from a set of moves
available at the time in order to beat its opponent. To choose a move, it needs
to remember the positions of all king, queen, rook, etc. of both players as
well as its goal and it does that. It also figures out a strategy in each step
until the game ends. The program is able
to do it all because the required information, namely, the definition of the
goal and rules specifying how to choose the moves are all already present in
the computer. Somebody outside of it has
already entered the required information into it and initiated the program to
pass from its present state to the future goal state. When the opponent's move is entered
and go-button hit, it causes execution of some stored instructions and the
program generates a strategy for win. It is as though the go-hit has told the
program that its goal (future state) is to win and take action accordingly and
immediately. The program would not have run without the go-hit; the chess
playing program makes no move by itself. In
the case of the brain-mind system, the physical brain is made up of matter
(though organic matter unlike an electronic computer); therefore, how does the
required information enter into its memory, who tells it what its future state
should be? Who provokes the material system to move towards the future state?
Whoever does it is called the mind. Since the mind is inaccessible to the
physical senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting), is it
unphysical? If so, how can it act upon
the physical matter without violating the physical laws such as conservation of
energy? These are all hard problems which modern scientists from various fields
have not found solutions yet.
What does Vedanta say about the above
questions? The sunlight-and-pots-with-water
example does not model the interaction between the mind and the body. But let
us recall the roles of the soul, the mind components (manas, chitta, buddhi, and ahankara), the senses, the body, and the outside world
in the life of a living being summarized in the very beginning of this article.
They suggest the following analogy: A living being is similar to a computer whose hardware is the
physical body. The body is made up of matter. The mind, being an accumulation
of experiences, desires, etc. i.e., an accumulation of information like a
computer memory containing data and programs. Just like a computer's hardware
and software do not know what they are doing, their own existence, and the
meaning of their memory contents, both the body and the mind of a living being
also do not “really know” anything but there is a certain Consciousness (apart
from the mind mentioned above) that "knows". Consciousness is like
the computer operator, as it were, and the one who "really knows"
everything that is going on in the living being’s life. A thinking process is
an interaction of the mind with the body’s matter and is similar to a running
computer program as opposed to a program residing in the memory in a passive
state. For a program to run in the machine and produce an output, it needs to
be activated by an external agent which may be an input entered by the computer
operator or another program. Similarly, any thinking process needs to be
initiated by an external agent, which is often, a
desire/purpose (thoughts), or sensory inputs but the soul being a part of the
omnipotent Consciousness can also intervene just like a computer operator can
intervene in the operations of the computer. Thus action of mind on the body is accepted in
Vedanta.
Vedantic theory of the mind is interactive dualism but NOT Cartesian
Dualism; it is similar to that of Sir
John Eccles (1994) who argued that there is a mental world in addition to the
material world and that our mind or self is involved in the functioning of the
brain at a basic level. What Eccles calls self may however, sometimes be
equivalent to ego and sometimes to Jiva in Vedanta. This philosophy is not Cartesian dualism
because it affirms the existence of supreme Consciousness and an individual Jiva who are immaterial and beyond the
mind and its ego (the I-feeling called ahankara),
which is not conscious. It asserts that not only the individual soul (Jiva) but the subtle mind also survives
physical death. Hence
neither Jiva nor the ego is the ‘I’ of Descartes who presumes that the mind,
the ‘I’, and soul are more or less the same thing and that it is
conscious. Moreover, not only does
Vedanta accept mind’s action upon the body as said earlier, but Vedanta accepts
also the converse that the brain/body creates experience; Sankhyakarika verse 40 (Swami 1995) states that the world
can be experienced only when both sthula
and sukshma sarira are present. Further, Vedanta claims that the senses and
the mind cannot perceive Consciousness, and no scientific theory can describe
Him (Kenopanishad), and therefore no scientific experiments can detect Him
either. The same thing is true about jiva,
the individualized Consciousness.
7.
References
Baars,
B. J., Gage,
N. M. Cognition,
Brain, and Consciousness. Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience. . Academic
Press, 2010.
Bohm D. Meaning and information. In The Search for Meaning, The New Spirit in
Science and Philosophy, ed. By P. Pylkkanen, Thorsons Publishing Group, Wellingborough, 1989; 43–62.
Bohm
D. A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter, Philosophical
psychology, 1990; 3 (2): 271-286.
Chalmers DJ. Facing Up to the Problem of
Consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 1996. 3(1), 4-6.
Crick
F Koch C. Neural Basis of
Consciousness. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences.
Elsevier Science Ltd. 2001. 2600-2604.
Eccles John C. How the Self Controls Its Brain.
Springer-verlag. 1994.
Haggard, P., Libet, B.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8, No. 11,
2001. 47–63.
Hari, S. A Few
Questions about Consciousness Suggested By Comparing the Brain and the Computer.
NeuroQuantology 2012. 10 ( 2), 286-301.
Libet B., Wright E.W.,
Feinstein B., Pearl D.K. Subjective Referral of the Timing for a Conscious Sensory
Experience. Brain, 1979.
102,193–224.
Libet, B. How does conscious experience arise? The
neural time factor. Brain Research Bulletin, 1999. Vol.
50: Nos. 5/6, 339–340.
Libet B., Gleason C.A., Wright E.W., Pearl D.K. Time of conscious
intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness
potential): The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain, 1983. 102, 623–642.
McFadden
J. The Emerging Physics of Consciousness. ed. Jack A. Tuszynski. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg 2006. 385-404.
Pribram KH. Consciousness Reassessed.
Mind & Matter 2004. 2(1): 7–35.
Searle
JR. Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1980. 3: 417-457.
Simon H.
Computer intelligence: unlimited and untapped.
Creative computing 1983. 9(8): 164.
Swami Shravananda. Kenopanishad. The
Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras. 1920.
Swami Virupakshananda. Sankhyakarika.
The Ramakrishna Math, Mylapore, Madras.1995.
