Science as we know it won’t explain consciousness
…Over time, humans went from an anthropocentric to a geocentric to a heliocentric and eventually to a more universal view of the world, and each step constituted scientific progress.
Yet the crux is that there is at least one important phenomenon that resists such objectivization or “de-perspectivization,” and that is consciousness itself. If we accept that the core of consciousness is subjective experience, then consciousness is the ultimately subjective phenomenon. The core of my consciousness lies in the fact that I find myself in a world in which there are first-personal facts. I am conscious, I have certain experiences, I am in a particular perceptual state, and so on. First-personal facts are irreducibly subjective. They are “centred” around my perspective as an experiencing subject, and unlike objective facts, they are not invariant under shifts in perspective.
Crucially, each of us is inextricably tied to our own conscious perspective. I can reflect about your experiences and empathize with you; I can hypothetically try to place myself in your shoes; I can try to simulate in my mind what things must be like for you. But I cannot literally leave my own conscious perspective. It is an essential fact about me that I experience the world from my perspective and not from anyone else’s. To be conscious, one might say, is to have a subjective perspective around which some first-personal facts are centred.
…The lesson, I think, is that the attempt to “objectivize” consciousness – to represent it as an ordinary property that can be found in the objective world, like gravity and electromagnetism – fails to do justice to the irreducibly subjective nature of the phenomenon. Physicalist theories of consciousness are not alone in running into that problem; standard versions of dualism face the same problem too. We will better understand consciousness only if our scientific and philosophical theories fully come to terms with the existence of first-personal facts and recognize that reality may not be captured by a single objective book of the world, but only by a library of subjective ones.
This is a good essay. It provides an overview of consciousness studies to frame the worthy assertion that: ‘We will better understand consciousness only if our scientific and philosophical theories fully come to terms with the existence of first-personal facts’. This kind of thinking fits well with Buddhism, and especially well with the Buddhist emphasis on samadhi states, which are deeply subjective. A Buddhist might say samadhi is describable and sharable with someone else who knows it. Or a Buddhist might not say that. The full essay is 2,578 words long and worth reading because the point is well made and the overview fits it very well. It’s quality information briefly stated. ABN
American Buddhist Net 