There is coming a complete paradigm shift in science. Science has made its mark in almost every field of life from human body to human cells, from stones to mighty buildings, from wires to complex circuits. But still there are some questions that are unanswered by science. Here we discussed how does the brain generate consciousness?
Science would never be accomplishing to find out what is consciousness? Western scientists have a remarkable performance in exploring the materialistic world. Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astrophysics etc. almost all of the outer world sciences have been explored by science. But when it comes to the inner world, science has very little to say about it. Some call consciousness a philosophy. Centuries ago, consciousness was a debatable subject by philosophers. In the 17th century, a French philosopher René Descartes, said that body and mind are composed of entirely different materials. But on the other side, body exist in both time and space but mind has no dimension. Science can’t explain this world view this is called paradigm shift according to Thomas Kuhn. How does all that electro-chemical phenomenon in the physical part of the brain can give rise to conscious experience? We live in our inner world we can feel our feelings, thoughts, impulse, gut feelings, intuition. But where does intuition comes from? Where does our feeling and impulsiveness comes from? How can our gut feeling roar that there is some fishy in the matter? Science is still like a dumb child for these questions. These questions were first ignored by science but now science is touching these areas. Like near death experience most of the western scientists are unleashing this phenomenon. There are many reasons why scientists ignore this anomaly of consciousness. Primarily, consciousness can’t be observed and can’t be experimented. Secondly there was a lot of stuff initially that scientists have to work on like big bang, electricity, space, gravity etc. Scientists had to prove many Universal Truths. Thirdly, there was no need to explain consciousness as the functioning of brain was much tangled subject to explain.
How Does the Brain Generate Consciousness?
However, scientists from various fields are now thinking that consciousness cannot be so easily ignored. Quantum physics suggests that, at the atomic level, the simple act of observation affects the whole scenario. In medicine, a person’s state of mind can have significant effects on the person’s body for its healing. Neuropsychology also deepens its roots to understand the functioning.
However, the anomaly can’t be ignored further and scientists tend to explain this from their own school of thoughts. Chemists believe that the deeper understanding of brain’s chemistry would unveil this answer. Quantum physics explains that minute microtubules are present inside the human brain create quantum effects that lead towards consciousness. Some look towards quantum computing. While some blame chaos theory for this.
My fundamental premise about the brain is that its workings – what we sometimes call mind – are a consequence of anatomy and physiology, and nothing more. -Astronomer Carl Sagan
[A] person’s mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make up and influence them. – Nobelist Francis Crick.
Science has a grudge against consciousness. As one of the Tufts University Cognitive Scientist Daniel Dennett says,
We’re all zombies. Nobody is conscious.
Some scientists suggest that the mental states like love, hate, greed, hunger these are all just electrochemical brain fluxes. That exactly shows how science has ignored consciousness. It is being said that it is the part of brain but how brain manifest there is still a debatable topic. This can be hardly imagined.
The first modern thinker to endorse an outside-the-brain view of consciousness was William James, who is the father of American psychology. In his 1898 lecture at Harvard University, James took a courageous stand against what he called “the fangs of cerebralism and the idea that consciousness was produced by the brain.
Experiments at present generally address only parts of the consciousness puzzle, and very rare directly address the most mysterious dimension of the conscious human mind. The sense of own self. But the experimental work has been started, and if the results failed to provide a blinding insight into how consciousness arises from tangles of neurons, then at least they should refine the next round of questions. However, some clues have come from observing neurological patients whose injuries have damaged their consciousness. Damage to certain unfolding ancient structures in the brain stem deprives people of consciousness entirely. Letting them live in a state of coma.
Eventually, scientists would like to understand not just the biological premises of consciousness but also why it exists. What selection pressure led to its development, and how many of our fellow creatures share it? Some researchers feel that consciousness is not extraordinary to humans, but of course much depends on how the term is defined.