Consciousness Makes a Comeback

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Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

You probably didn't notice. But we humans lost our minds some while back.

Thought leaders (mathematicians, scientists and philosophers like Galileo and Descartes) took it away—for our own good. They structured and compartmentalized the future world of hard-science knowledge so that OBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT was the Pole Star.

Because of that, human consciousness (relegated to SOFT science at best) was voted off the island— for a couple of centuries now.

So understanding this thing; this state; this just-is-ness called consciousness is said to have hard and an easy problem.

The “easy problem” of consciousness has limped along, benefitting from PET scans and other non-invasive tools. They allow us to watch neuron patterns while the awake subject is sensing, remembering and reacting, so we can see some of what happens during consciousness. But the map is not the territory.

And then the HARD PROBLEM is the nut. Why do we have (subjective) EXPERIENCES as a result of brain activity? How to quantify beauty, love, grace, justice and such qualities found in our thoughts? Maybe Newton’s physics will not go there after all.

Hard Problem of Consciousness By David Chalmers who coined the term.

Are you nothing but the sum of your parts?

Over my half century as a biology watcher, I confess I have not been comfortable with "nothing buttery" of reductionism, too rigidly applied. Lord Kelvin stated boldly that measurement is the basis for all knowledge. Yep.

The “Cut it into bits and measure it” approach to me seemed to put limiting blinders on our quest to KNOW the Whole.

FORGIVENESS: I tend to share the personal backstory when I put words in public, from long years of visible photo-journaling and commonplace public writing among familiar visitors.

And So A brief personal aside:

I have not been a True Believer that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its separate and measurable parts. Granted, many have found legitimate power for the good in the method that has shown us reproducible facts about falling objects, careening billiard balls, expanding gases and planetary orbits. Good on ‘em. But for my own education, I wanted immersion, experience, and stories were the facts would weave understanding; empathy.

Excited about the sexy new field of ECOLOGY as a possible topic for grad school, I sadly learned that most ecologists never got their boots muddy, and their work was modeling food webs and such under fluorescent lab lights.

And So, Where are We Today?

There have, all along, been contrarians (like British physicist and mathematician, James Jeans) who believed that consciousness/mind was fundamental to the universe—maybe like energy and matter; time and space. I’m just dipping my toe into those waters. Meanwhile…

Post-Newtonian understandings of brain events (maybe especially things like quantum entanglement, which I can barely wrap my head around) are shaking things up. QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS/MIND seems increasingly to be a thing.

The story of our return to consciousness as a valid topic of informed conversation is complex and incomplete. My comprehension of it might not fill a thimble. And yet, damning the torpedos, from time to time I will share what I consider to be interesting or perplexing puzzle pieces, at least to my own fragmentary understanding of this most important and relevant topic for anyone will to admit to having had a consciousness experience in this life.

Stay tuned!