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The Mystery of Consciousness | Sam Harris
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Consciousness as sentience
Though the subject of consciousness is hard to define and varies from individual to individual, at the base level it can be termed as ‘sentience’.
To say that a person or creature is conscious is something to do with the present moment being complete, even if we disregard all memory, behaviour, sights, sounds and experiences. It is the one thing that cannot be an illusion.
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Beyond The Physical
Quantum mechanics and modern physics (like string theory) has made the concept of physical reality and the tangible, solid universe a fluid and slippery concept.
Those who are trying to find consciousness in the physical world are stuck in the past, as consciousness may have nothing to do with the brain or the subjective reality.
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The Paradox Of the Big Bang
The idea that about 13 billion years ago, everything including time, matter, space, laws, gravity, cause and effect, simply sprang out of nothing in a loud bang, seems to be a foolish thing to believe.
Nothing cannot suddenly give rise to everything. The very act of the big bang requires time and space as a prerequisite to even occur.
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Consciousness Out Of Unconsciousness
Just like the failed Big Bang Theory, the idea of consciousness emerging from or being identical to unconscious physical events sounds far fetched and hard to conceive.
The fact that this universe is illuminated by sentience is something to ponder, and we might be groping in the dark all this time because we have deliberately closed our eyes.
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
The Mystery Of Consciousness
For a long time, the question of consciousness itself has been kept off the table, and cannot be ignored any longer, as any breakthrough in science points to reality being subjective.
If we...
Life Is Unexplainable
The very things that are taken for granted or are overlooked hold the key to the understanding of life and consciousness. The things we find in nature cannot be imagined by us by any stretch of the imagination.
Example: A delicate, complex living organism, which can reproduce itself indefinitely.
Being Alive
Conceiving life while not being alive seems inconceivable, but as an analogy, how can vision be created from processes that are themselves blind?
The complicated chain of processes does point out that there is some higher intelligence/consciousness that operates on a different level, which may be out of our reach.
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The Hard Problem of Consciousness
Consciousness could be described as the feeling of being inside your head, looking out, or of having a soul.
How we learn, store memories, or perceive things, are easy prob...
Between Science And Philosophy
The problems of consciousness straddle the border between science and philosophy.
- Some argue that conscious sensations, such as pain, don't really exist, others, that plants and trees must also be conscious.
- A handful of neuroscientists have come to believe that the problem is about to be solved if we are willing to accept the conclusion that computers or the internet might soon become conscious too.
Ignoring The Problem
Science has been trying to ignore the problem of consciousness for a long time.
- In the 1600s, René Descartes declared that nothing is more obvious and undeniable than the fact that we are conscious. Your consciousness can't be a fantasy. At the same time, your consciousness does not obey any of the usual rules of science. It doesn't seem to be physical. It can't be observed or really described. Descartes concluded that it had been bequeathed to us by God.
- This Cartesian dualism remained the assumption into the 18th century. But it was unacceptable to the secular scientist that took the position that only physical things exist.
- As late as 1989, the British psychologist Stuart Sutherland declared that it is impossible to specify what consciousness is, what it does, or why it evolved.
- In 1990 Francis Crick and Christof Kock mentioned in a paper that most of the work in both cognitive and neurosciences makes no reference to consciousness because most don't know of a useful way of approaching the problem.
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Our sleep-wake pattern
Our molecular clock inside our cells aims to keep us in sync with the sun.
When we disregard this circadian rhythm, we are at a greater risk for illnesses such as diabetes, heart...
The lifestyle imbalance
Thomas Edison said that sleep is "a bad habit." Like Edison, we seem to think of sleep as an adversary and try to fight it at every turn. The average American sleeps less than the recommended seven hours per night, mostly due to electric lights, television, computers, and smartphones.
However, we are ignoring the intricate journey we're designed to take when we sleep.
Stage One Sleep
When we fall asleep, the nearly 86 billion neurons in our brain starts to fire evenly and rhythmically. Our sensory receptors become muffled at the same time.
The first stage of shallow sleep lasts for about 5 minutes.