Consciousness: Presents A Huge Challenge To Modern Science
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Is it Possible That Science Can Explain Consciousness?
The advancement of science has endowed us with an unparalleled comprehension of the material universe in which we live.
However, when it comes to the problem of the human mind, development has been sluggish and fraught with problems.
The goal of the materialist school of thought in science is to demonstrate that consciousness is nothing more than a side effect of the intricate workings of the brain and is inextricably linked to the material body.
To put it in more layman’s terms, your “thinking” is just the end product of the process that occurs when neurons in your brain fire, nothing more and nothing less.
Unfortunately, there is no genuine neurological data to support this theory.
Furthermore, many researchers who are carefully examining the subject of the mind believe that these experts are neither looking in the correct location nor employing the appropriate methodologies.
The concept of non-local consciousness is advanced by alternative theories.
This refers to the notion that our brains are only the physical channel for the mind and are not the source of its genesis.
These theories often investigate anomalous situations, including near-death experiences, precognitive abilities, and paranormal occurrences, in the expectation that doing so would allow them to present a more comprehensive picture of the human mind.
Obviously, the vast bulk of this data is not quantifiable to the level that the majority of conventional, materialist scientists would agree with.
In response to eyewitness claims that described experiences of being very close to death, Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated:
“Give me something that does not have to flow via your senses,” the professor said, “because your senses are among the poorest data collection devices that exist, and contemporary science did not attain maturity until we developed instruments that either expanded our senses or replaced them.”
It is in fact inconceivable to imagine scientific progress occurring in the absence of devices of this kind, ranging from the smallest microscope to the largest hadron collider.
But if our senses are seen as unreliable when used as scientific instruments, how should we think about the mind that we use to evaluate and interpret the information that has been gathered?
Because we know so much less about the mind than we do about the senses, we have little choice but to see human consciousness as being just as unreliable as our other senses, and it’s even possible that it’s much more unreliable.
How can we research the human mind if the only instrument we have available to us is the human mind itself?
This seemingly contradictory fact poses a significant challenge for the scientific community.
Alex Tsakiris, a scientific podcaster, encapsulates the issue in his book titled Why Science Is Wrong with the following statement:
“If my consciousness is more than my physical brain, then awareness is the X-factor in every science experiment.” It is the asterisk in the footnotes that says, “We got as near as we could, but in order to make our statistics work, we had to leave out awareness.”
Does Consciousness Extend Beyond the Bodily Limits of the Brain?
The “observer effect” is a hypothesis that states that just viewing a situation or phenomenon inevitably modifies that situation or event.
This idea is a component of the “awareness issue” that is present in scientific research.
On a quantum level, researchers discovered that even non-participatory observation of quantum processes may modify the measured outcome.
This led to the widespread notion that a conscious mind can directly influence reality.
The theory of quantum mechanics suggests that our observations of reality have an effect on the way it develops, as theorized by the scientist John Wheeler.
We live in what is known as a “participatory universe,” which means that the mind plays an equally vital role as matter.
It’s feasible that our faith in what’s possible will really bring those possibilities into existence, as well as further strengthen the material basis of the whole cosmos.
In the event that we do, in fact, co-create a shared consciousness, then it is inevitable that our beliefs will have an effect on our scientific endeavors.
Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, has contended for decades that while seeking to comprehend the mind, we cannot just look inside the brain.
“I realized that if someone asked me to characterize the coastline but insisted, is it the water or the sand, I would have to respond that the coast is both the water and the sand,” Siegel explains.
“The coastline is both the water and the sand.” “I got to wondering—perhaps the mind is like the seashore,” she said. “I don’t know.”
Whatever you experience in this subjective world, including your thoughts, emotions, memories, and attention, are all components of your mind.
Those who are interested in pushing the boundaries of research on consciousness are prepared to take this concept a significant step farther.
One of the many intellectuals who suggest the concept of a cosmic consciousness is Ervin Laszlo, PhD, who describes this awareness as a network that links everything in the cosmos.
The fact that this field seems to be localized in the human brain suggests, at least in theory, that the human mind is able to communicate with the collective awareness of the cosmos.
He borrows the phrase from ancient Hindu philosophy and uses it to refer to this profound aspect of awareness.
He names it the Akashic Field.
Numerous case studies of near-death experiences, contact with the afterlife, and memories of previous lifetimes are presented by him as evidence in favor of this idea.
Laszlo writes as follows:
“We are starting to understand everything in the cosmos to be a holographically interconnected web of energy and information.
We, along with everything else in the cosmos, are non-locally linked with each other and with everything else in the universe in ways that are unrestricted by the boundaries of space and time that have been traditionally understood.
These “known boundaries of space and time” are the boundary walls of materialist science, and in the past century, quantum physics has started to pull down that wall, one brick at a time.
In other words, materialist science is on the verge of being demolished.
The phenomenon of quantum entanglement demonstrates that very small particles are capable of instantaneous communication, in contravention of the conventional principles that regulate the relationship between space and time.
As Laszlo and others have predicted, many people have speculated that the whole cosmos is inextricably linked together if it is possible for these very small particles to stay connected in the absence of traditional physical mechanisms.
When it comes to the quantum implications of the mind, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what we don’t know yet, despite the fact that this theory may one day be shown to be correct.
Even though there is a wealth of evidence supporting the concept of non-local consciousness, it is rarely accepted by the scientific community as a viable theory.
This is primarily due to the fact that it is impossible to measure non-local consciousness with the technology that is currently available.
Acceptance of non-locality entails the rejection of a strictly materialist worldview, which presents a significant challenge to the dominant mode of thought in the contemporary scientific paradigm, which centers on the manner in which we make sense of the physical universe.
The investigation of consciousness, on the other hand, is gradually compelling materialistic science to acknowledge that it may not be capable of explaining everything.
According to a popular quote attributed to Nikola Tesla, “The day that science starts to examine non-physical phenomena, it will make more advance in one decade than it has in all of the hundreds of years of its existence.” The investigation of the nature of the conscious experience of human beings may serve as the driving force behind our progress into that new frontier.