A letter in Physics Today offers,
Surely, not only the question of the origin of life, which Keith Schofield raised in his letter ( Physics Today, August 2012, page 12), but questions of consciousness and of free will may be beyond the bounds of science. For instance, what measuring devices, other than human beings themselves, can we use to detect human consciousness? Clearly, purely physical data cannot penetrate the mystery that is the human mind.
That’s not to say that consciousness evades study. Quite the opposite; it can be studied on its own terms. Recently, researchers offered an assessment that “Self-talk takes up one quarter of conscious experience.”
Whether that number proves useful or not, the researchers would seem to be on the right track. That is, they are beginning by studying what consciousness is, rather than trying to club it into submission, to force it to be something else.
Clubbers want to study consciousness the way they are used to studying things of a different nature. Then they complain because they are not getting anywhere and demand acceptance of substandard ideas that—under the circumstances—could only ever have been substandard.
By comparison, an attempt to look at the relationship between human language (self-talk) and human consciousness can seem like light in a dark tunnel.
In short, materialism itself creates the mystery around consciousness, by insisting on ways of studying it that mainly guarantee clumsy news words, not new insights (cf perceptronium).
In somewhat the same way, the prophet Darwin really messed with our understanding of forest ecosystems. His religion demands that organisms that share data be advance their selfish genes’ survival, whereas the organisms themselves had never heard of any such requirement.
If just about everything materialism has contributed to science in the last century were thrown out, the science would be way better.
A forest ecosystem is primarily about converting as much inanimate matter as possible into animate matter or materials suited to the use thereof. Individual survivals are sought within that context because there is no survival outside it.
– O’Leary for News
Denyse O’Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
Materialism itself creates the mystery around consciousness
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