grumpyThe Problem of Consciousness
January 4th 2008 11:13
The parameters and philosophic limits of physical science guarantee, within its own purview at least, that locating and understanding the origins of experiential consciousness will always be a “hard problem”. Outside of its correlation to brain states, there also remains the question of whether consciousness is only a subjective result of physical conditions or if it arises within an objective and separate state of being. How we attempt to answer these questions is entirely contingent upon how we structure and interpret the world around us. Thus physical science has one viewpoint, whilst psychology, religion and various metaphysical and spiritual philosophies each have another.
By projecting consciousness as a physical entity, that is, a phenomenon arising from physical attributes alone, such science then tries to climb above its own ability to perceive. Instead of using the physical world as a mirror which perhaps might reflect something of the nature of consciousness, it attempts, like Alice, to see through the mirror, into a beyond which exists only within its own postulates, a beyond it clutters with endless and circular explanatory images, all of which merely recreate at another level, the very problem it is trying to solve.
To be continued…
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