The Mystery of Human Consciousness

To an extent, neuroscientists and philosophers appear to be having a tough time defining the mind and consciousness. We all experience them—in a sense, we are them, yet in another sense, they do not exist in any tangible way. Contemporary scientists, unfortunately, tend to focus their definitions on the neural activities of the brain, though in reality, it seems that we are more than just some nervous responses. Many scholars have argued that consciousness is simply self-awareness, a feeling that accompanies brain activities, subjectivity, or wakefulness while the mind is the sum of all these awareness. Since the time of Descartes and Locke, Western philosophers have grappled with the issue of consciousness and its nature. Some of the major questions that arise in this debate are whether or not the concept of human consciousness is fundamentally coherent, whether the concept can ever be mechanistically be explained, and whether or not non-human conscious exists.

In attempting to address the above problems, many theories have been advanced. Most brain scientists look at the human consciousness from a material, or physical perspective—this statement only means that they make material assumptions when stating their explanations. They point out to the deterioration of mind and consciousness caused by a deteriorating brain and argues out that consciousness results from brain activity and not from the outside of it. For them, the mind and consciousness are emergent from the brain activities, and for that reason, every other thing about it can be explained by physics. Materialists, therefore, postulates that our self is just an illusion, and that, we often feel as if we are a unified individual living within us but, when in fact, we are not. This perception of the consciousness, however, poses two fundamental problems that David Chalmers categorizes as either easy problems or hard problems. The later concerns how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how does the brain generate its sensational experiences. Easy problems concern giving explanations on how the brain reacts to stimuli, how it controls our behaviors, and how it categorizes its information. For these, scientific approaches offer good explanations with various organs responsible these functions being highlighted. Philosophers, especially the dualists and non-material monists have, however, presented excellent non-empirical explanations on our self-awareness and subjectivity.

Dualists hold that there is a mind, and self, beyond just the physical brain. Although this argument cannot be proven or disapproved scientifically, it can be argued philosophically. The first influential philosopher, Descartes, proposed that consciousness resides in an immaterial domain he referred to as res cogitans—the realm of thought, and not the material domain he called the res extensa—the realm of extension, his Cartesian dualism. The interactions between these domains occur within the brain and are responsible for consciousness. Dualism to some extent is an article of faith that many Christians ascribe to, believing that sentience was created in us by God, and makes us superior to other non-humans. Nonmaterialistic monist, however, suggests that consciousness or experience is a fundamental fact of the universe, just like gravity or magnetism, and the matter is not all there is. Some philosophers and scientists are, however, neutral about these widely accepted viewpoints, and are rather concerned with developing arguments either in support or against them. More and more evidence supporting dualism and free will are, thus, coming up.
Other questions raised regarding the human consciousness are the problem of other minds and whether or not animals and artifacts are self-aware. Many people still ask themselves why we believe that other people are conscious, whereas trees and rocks are not, given that consciousness is subjective and not visible from outside. The notion of philosophical zombies also is a contentious problem, since these entities look and act just like us, though not considered conscious. We only believe that people of our kind are self-aware merely because they behave and look like us. The same problem arises when dealing with other non-human animals which have been found to hold the necessary substrate of consciousness and to exhibit intentional behaviors but lacks in physical and behavioral semblance to humans. These questions remain challenging, and both philosophers and neuroscientists have remained vague and inconclusive about them. Current studies on the human mind also reveal that there are some states of the brain in which consciousness is absent. These states include sleep, coma, and death—though dream sleep is believed to exude some consciousness in an individual. Researchers in the physiological changes in the activities of the brain during yoga and other meditational practices have, however, been heavily disputed as potentially distinct states of mind.
It is quite clear from the above discussion that the mystery of human consciousness is just beyond the scope of any one given explanative approach. No one definition advanced can cover the mystery of consciousness with entirety now or at any particular time in future. Perhaps the most logical explanation around this discussion is that conscious is God-given and that no amount of personal knowledge can ever disclose this mystery.

By Erickoh