A Hypothetical Conversation on Consciousness with a Materialist Scientist

Posted by Olly Robinson on 14 October 2008 | 2 Comments

Tags: Consciousness

So you, as a materialist science would state that consciousness is a product of the brain. Am I right?

Yes.

So can you tell me how the biological brain and the conscious experience are related?

The biological brain causes the mind, so causes all conscious phenomena.

Can you prove that?

Yes, by showing that the brain functions in a specific way during a mental event.

That shows correlation and not causality, it merely implies a relationship.

It is clear that there is causality.

How?

For physical reality is the primary reality, experience is just a product of it.

OK, but that is an unproveable assumption. It is a faith, a bit like saying God exists. I simply want to make you aware that what you are saying is based on basic ontological premises that are not absolute. It is wholly as possible to argue without contradiction that the brain is in fact a product of the mind. A product of the conceptual mind.

That’s just ridiculous.

Only if you assume a materialist ontology – which is fundamentally flawed in itself, given the subjective world of every human being.

I think you had better explain what you are talking about.

Ok, I will try. The brain is a product of the conceptual mind, not vice versa. The brain is part of biological continua within the body, but not distinct and separate, like the conceptual mind tends to twist it into. There is no division between the brain and the central nervous system, there is no discreet boundary between brain and circulatory system, and in fact there are significant divisions within the brain, such as cerebellum and hemispheres, or limbic system and hemispheres, which might mean it would be entirely appropriate to get rid of the generalisation “brain” altogether. Concepts are not absolute, but are convenient chunks into which to carve an unbroken world. We impose breaks where there are no breaks. Brain is a product of mind, not vice versa.

Well if all things are mental interpretations, there is no objectivity! So we may as well give up science, from your perseptive.

Well I am a great believer in the efficacy of science, so evidently that is not my opinion. From my perspective the basic problem is that objectivity is not understood correctly. Objectivity is currently understood as that which can be proved as ‘unarguable’ in the realm of experience. Those things that are objective are seen to be a property of the object of perception, not of the perceiver. However therein lies the problem – every object is contingent on a perceiver. The concept of object as defined from all things around it is a product of the divisive conceptual mind, working within consciousness, that cuts the world into discrete chunks or ‘gestalten’ rather than seeing it in continua. So an object emerges out of an interation between an observer and the observed – between the experiencer and the experienced. Reality is thus seen as participatory, not dichotomized into subject and object; it emerges out of the interaction of both. Instead of objectivity, there is at best is consensual agreement on what takes place within experience. If we can agree that a thing is present, it is. Then it becomes a fact. Only then is it not a hallucination. If I saw it but no-one else did, then because there is no consensus, its ‘objectivity’ would be questionable. The fact that people consensually agree that something exists, whether it be gravity or an orange, does not negate the fact that it is experienced first within the subjective field, through the veils of conceptual cognition, memory, cultural norms and expectations.

But its quite clear that something like weight is objective and beauty is subjective. Surely some properties are objective and some subjective? Without this distinction, we lose our footing on what we can argue and what we can’t. I can argue that a person is 10 stone objectively, but I couldn’t argue that she is beautiful objectively, could I?

Well let’s look at this. You say that she is 10 stone, and that that is objective, but what about a person who was born prior to the imperial measurement system being invented who weighed the same. Were they 10 stone? or is 10 stone just a convention to refer to the gravitational pull on her, which actually has nothing to do with her physical mass, but to the forces acting on her? And what if everybody agreed that she was beautiful – there are cross-cultural universals that define beauty – would that mean that her beauty was inherent in her – an objective property,? Or would it still be your interpretation - a subjective view? In truth, both weight and beauty require an interaction of observer and observed, Reality is not inherently subjective or objective, but is always emerging out of the interaction that occurs when consciousness places itself on an internal object such as a thought, or an external object, such as a tree.

So who is the subject?

Well the term subject literally means ‘under (sub) movement (jecto)’ – ie it implies an entity to whom things are done. It has a passive quality, ie if you are ‘subject’ to a problem, it implies that you are not participating in it, but it is being done to you. The subject implies an inert receiver of the world. But from my viewpoint we participate in reality, we are not subject to it. I say lose the term subject, and replace it with participant.

It sounds like silly semantics to me. So how do we know what ‘true’ is? If you undermine objectivity, there is no truth. Were the empiricists barking mad?

In my view, real empiricism is the stripping away of mental baggage that creates a distorted view of reality, and perceiving the world fresh, like a child. Good science is fuelled by childlike wonder. I say, controversially, that ‘truth’ is not in a generalization, such as E=mc2, but is in the immediate experience. Theory functions as a map to chart the territory of internal and external reality and is best judged in terms of accuracy, rather than ‘truth’. Truth implies absolute, undoubtable reality. Immediately experienced reality is the only undoubtable. This is what Descartes meant when he said “I think therefore I am”; the only thing he couldn’t doubt was his subjective experience. The only undoubtedly real thing for anybody is the fact of subjective awareness. This is the only TRUE thing, the only ultimately verifiable thing. So the closer we get to the ground of our own awareness, the closer we get to the Truth. When we realise that time and space occur within the space of consciousness, we start to see that this truth must be outside of time and space. The truth, which only you can realise first-hand, is that you are consciousness and consciousness is you. You are the world and the world is you. In truth, ALL divisions are insubstantial, and ultimate identity with all is the hidden secret that emerges when boundaries dissolve in the depth of consciousness.

OK, now you’ve lost me.

Point taken, I almost lost myself.

You realise that your point of view contradicts the entire scientific establishment?

You realise that much of the scientific establishment is operating on a hopelessly outdated 19th century mechanistic philosophy?

It works. Look what has been found out under what you call ‘hopelessly out of date’ philosophy – the genome, bridges, radiowaves.

It works with the material world very well. But look at what has been lost too – no adequate science of the interior, a radical dehumanisation and desacrelisation of the world that has culminated in the destructive tendency of the modern collective. I don’t want to remove mechanistic, atomistic, analytic science, I just want to place it in context – in the context of the whole, and in the context of the ground in which all this fiddling about makes sense. I want science to be aware of being itself – of the ground on which it places all its nice neat figures and equations, the ground which is consciousness itself, in its clear, luminous, unsullied glory.

That sounds very woolly, romantic and mystical.

Well I think it is both romantic and logical. One of the extraordinary consequences of placing consciousness back to a prominent position in ontology and epistemology is an immediate reconciliation of beauty, romanticism, ethics, truth and a host of other issues that are currently thought to be nothing to do with each other. All have their roots meshed in consciousness.

I’m sure there must be a logical flaw to your argument, because it goes against what I fundamentally believe.

That all is matter and mechanism?

Yes.

Perhaps you could set up the Church of Matter and then you would never have to change your mind.

Now you are just being facetious.

No I am being serious. The good scientist should always seek for errors in his or her worldview, never uphold their personal paradigm as the unequivocal answer. That is the only way to prevent fundamentalism creeping into science.

So therefore you must accept that I could be right!

Absolutely.