Pysical and Spiritual: Consciousness

A problem that bedevils modern science is the nature of consciousness. Along with the nature of creation (Big Bang) it may be one of the few problems for which science may never possess an answer or an explanation in principle and for which invoking a supra-rational reality will not invoke the objection of the "God of the gaps".

There are different definitions of consciousness but here we will define it as our first-hand internal experience and its radical difference from what science claims it is.

Adam Zeman lays out the problem of consciousness very nicely in the introduction to his book by describing a languid rainy afternoon first as he truly perceives it and then as a series of sound waves, electromagnetic disturbances and synaptic activity. Although, hobbled by a neuroscientist's bias, he never resolves the conflict, he grasps the very essence of the problem. Our inner experience of “are sitting on your comfortable chair on a rainy day with hot and tasty coffee with the sound of music in the background” has nothing, nothing at all in common with sound waves, molecular motion impinging on membranes and electrical and chemical synaptic activity. The fact is that what we perceive as happening in the world is remarkably different than what science tells us actually takes place. Here we again experience the dissonance of holding as true a description of reality that is in marked variance with our own experience. As noted in previus posts, we live in the world of abstractions, the universe of Ideas and the supernatural but do not admit it> So also we perceive a very different universe than science tells us surrounds us, but do not admit it. Isn't it strange that we experience one thing but beleive that experience to be nothing more than neuronal activity. In other words, we think that because we can experimentally describe what we experience in scientific language, what we experience is not ‘really’ what happens. Many approaches to understand consciousness have been offered. There is the Quantum approach (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/). There are also those who take the illusion approach – our inner experience is just an illusion (Epiphenomenalism). But this approach is ultimately self-defeating. If the thing that is most real to us-our inner experience- is just an illusion then we have no standard to judge anything in the world. Nothing is real and the retreat into Buddhist-like "Reality is Illusion" follows. We must then walk in the middle and find a way that keeps both inner experience and experimentally derived description of it as both being real.

Let us return to the Kabbalistic approach to reality that we have previously discussed. To review, the spiritual rides the physical and the spiritual is both within and beyond the physical. We can posit that Consciousness, a spiritual nonmaterial entity, 'rides' and is enjambed within the physical substance of the brain in such a amnner that each can affect the other. In this vein, Sefer Yetsirah (1:7) when discussing how the sefiros function within our world says: "The beginning is stuck into the end and the end is stuck into the beginning". It is now fashionable in physics to speak about strings - vibrations and waves. One can analogize the physical and the spiritual as being two ends of a wave, so that vibrating either end also vibrates the other. When the brain is stimulated by neural activity (made up of matter), the consciousness (the spiritual) is stimulated. One can stimulate certain parts of the brain and produce a religious experience. However, one can also undergo a religious experience and locate activity in the same location within the brain. One does not disprove the other. It is a two-way street between the spiritual and the physical, top-down and bottom-up.

The assumptions of Cartesians (and all Cristian philosophers were pre-cartesian Cartesians) is plain wrong from the Jewish perspective, for they view the spiritual as something distinct and separate from the physical world. However, as we have previously explained, there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual. It is one string and vibrating the string on either end will move the entire string. Activity in both worlds is contemporaneous from the material perspective; in the spiritual perspective which is beyond time, it is co-causative. We can extend this principle to explain why mystical experiences can be mapped within the brain [physical processes in the brain can cause a mystical experience) as well as why direct contact with the Divine will cause movement in the brain. They are one organic whole. The whole problem of consciousness vs. neuroscience is only a problem if the two are separated. The Kabbalists, however, teach that they are intricately connected and interwoven.

For example, the same emotions might occur through viewing beauty (looking at mountains) and drinking whiskey. In the first case the emotion comes through one’s mental state - a spiritual source. The soul is vibrated and it provokes the brain. In the second case of drinking whiskey the brain is ‘directly’ affected which in turn affects one’s consciousness.

Question: Do animals also have consciousness - don't they also experience?

Response: I believe that the attempts to equate human and animal consciousness are fundamentally ideologically driven. I also point out that no one would ever think of equating the two, had there not been in existence a theoretical construct that demands this equivalents - the theory of evolution. The fact is that animals and humans are radically different, even if some form of animal cognition is true. An animal that could talk, would never be able to tell a story of what happened or recognize the future through language. It only knows the present. Even if animals have some form of rudimentary consciousness it may not be a problem for us because we still have much higher faculties. They have nefesh, we have ruach! (At first glance this would be a difference in quantity, not quality, but as Zeno already pointed out - this distinction is dependent on a paradox).

Comments

[NORMAN]

Having been an epiphenomenalist since I first heard about it (over 50 years ago), I can say that I do not regard consciousness as an illusion. It is a reality of supreme importance to us but it does not itself cause any change in the brain - change is caused by its neural correlates only. Consciousness is an end in itself. However, it is an illusion of consciousness that colour and sound are out there in the world whereas in fact they are produced by our brain activity - out there are only colourless photons and silent vibrations. The physical world of primary qualities is revealed by science, which does not make use of the conscious qualities (qualia) in its explanations of physical processes. So you are wrong about evolution. Evolution makes no reference whatever to consciousness because consciousness cannot have any effect on evolution. Nor does evolution assert the equivalence of humans and animals. We should (as J.Bentham said) treat animals as if they could feel pain ie give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are conscious.