Can’t future science explain consciousness?
The offenses thank you so when we say that science can't explain consciousness is it that current science can't explain and maybe as cutting edge neuroscience finds out more and more about the brain we will be able to explain things yes the science has progressed remarkably in the last 500 400 500 years and especially last 50 years we can say and certainly future scientific knowledge can tell us a lot more at the same time there is a particular method which science uses and that method it is called as methodological naturalism that means science uses science looks for natural explanations for natural phenomena natural science is in terms of physical or material you could say it looks for material phenomena and it finds material explanations for those phenomena so now this works remarkably well when material phenomena or material causes are all that are involved but if something non-material is involved then science just doesn't take them into account some people may extrapolate from that and say that there is nothing non-material existing only that is somebody says that there is nothing non-material existing that is not a scientific statement that is an ideological statement that is a materialistic ideology is making that statement so now as far as the applying this background of science looking for natural explanation for natural phenomena to the framework of brain study certainly the correlation between the brain states or activation of different parts of the brain the chemical states biochemical states of the electrochemical states of the different brain cells during states during during different experiences all that has been mapped a lot and it will be mapped much much more so there is a fundamental difference between correlation and causation so now correlation basically means that two events happen together so but correlation does not necessarily imply causation so there is a standard example that is given in scientific literature for this is that you know if somebody finds that cleaner cars last longer now the cars that are cleaned regularly they last longer now if this is a cleanliness and longevity these two factors are correlated an uncritical mind may think oh cleanliness made the car last longer but we may say you know physically cleaning the car that may not have anything to do with longevity there could be multiple type of explanations you know maybe people who are meticulous enough to clean the cars they are also meticulous enough to service their cars and because they service their cars regularly that's why the cars last longer so there is correlation and there is causality or causation there's definitely correlation between activation of different brain areas and emotions but whether that whether that correlation is of any causal nature that is a different question that means that to give this a couple of other examples or other points that scientists have tried to say people get depressed and there are anti-depressant pills there are tranquilizers which help people to calm down anxiety also now essentially what they do is the scientists have found out which are the chemicals which get increased in the brain when somebody feels anxious or when somebody feels depressed and they try to counter that chemical change through injection of appropriate chemical or through not injection but through pills or whatever taking those pills now this helps but the help is short-lived now how this happens and if somebody is very glum and depressed cheer up man smile just by smiling a person will feel better but just smiling alone will not make the person happy so normally smiling and laughing they are the results of happiness they are not the causes of happiness when I am happy naturally I smile and laugh but it is not simply by smiling and laughing I will become happy yes certainly smiling and laughing can improve my mood a little bit but that is that is not originally the cause the happiness is an inner state which expresses itself through smiles and laughs so if smiles and laughs could produce happiness then you know all of us could get you know some face twisting machines whenever I feel unhappy you know I could just make myself smile I will be happy it would not work like that or at a more graphic level sometimes you know some children are small some relatives may come and they just have fun with the child they tickle the belly of the child and they tickle the belly of the child the child may start laughing small child laughing like that now is that laughter happiness if that laughter were happiness and we all want to be happy then we could all get our perpetual tickling machines and you could be happy all the time by tickling that machine but that's not really happiness although physical stimulus has produced a physical reaction the inner element of happiness that is missing entirely so similarly there are certain chemicals which are associated with certain states but they are not the causes of those states so simply by manipulating the chemicals we cannot actually in a lasting way change people's emotions so there has to be people have to learn the art of managing their emotions and that involves managing their lives changing managing the chemical balance cannot manage their emotions and manage their lives in a sustainable way so there is there is some cause beyond the chemicals of the body which affects the chemicals of sorry there's some cause beyond the chemicals of the brain which affects the chemicals of the brain and that is our conscious experience is our conscious experience which is at the root and that causes certain changes in the brain so now then the if neuroscience works purely on a materialistic framework then it assumes that those chemical states those chemical imbalances they themselves are not just the cause of the emotion but they are also somehow connected with the experience of the emotion so there is in the study of consciousness what they call as a soft problem and the hard problem of consciousness soft problem is basically to correlate different chemical states or different areas of the brain with different emotions and that problem is being solved by the study of study of the brain in greater detail but the hard problem of consciousness that is actually where does conscious experience occur and who experiences that and more importantly why is conscious experience required what do you what do I mean by why is conscious experience required means let's say now we have many computers which can perform many of the functions which earlier machines could not some of the functions they do better than humans also say one of the incidents which is considered to be landmark in the history of artificial intelligence is when the chess champion about a decade ago Gary Gasparo was defeated by a computer that deep blue now all over the world in newspaper their headlines Casper was catching his head his disgrace to be defeated by a machine and now Casper was devastated and the makers of deep blue were delighted but what about deep blue itself now deep blue is no emotion over there deep blue did not even understand that I had won deep blue did not go through any of the excitement of playing a game no none of the thrill of winning the game all that it had done was it had simply processed the processed which moves in chess to make based on a database that it has so now this means that the chess computer or the computer chess playing computer it can do all the information processing that the human brain can do with respect to playing chess and it can do that information processing better than what we humans can do now if information processing is all that is involved over there then firstly who is it that experiences the computer is doing information processing better than us but it is not experiencing anything we are experiencing this question could be phrased in two ways who is it that experiences in our case who is it that is there in us who experiences who is there in deep blue who is lacking in deep blue because of which it doesn't experience or other way of phrasing it is that why is there an experiencer at all if information processing could do everything if information processing could involve playing a game of chess why is there an experiencer at all from the materialist Arthur Schopenhauer he said that materialism is the philosophy in which the philosopher forgets himself that means materialism takes account of the observed world but it doesn't take into account the observer so digital circuitry and neural circuitry there are many models which find remarkable similarity not in structure but in function in concept digital circuitry and neural circuitry can be correlated in many ways so the digital circuitry can function without consciousness why does the neural circuitry need consciousness but there is consciousness we all have feelings so where do these feelings come from this just as sophisticated digital circuitry doesn't entail feelings within itself sophisticated neural circuitry doesn't entail feelings within itself there has to be someone some distinct conscious being who makes sense of what is observed or of what the patterns of biochemical states in the neural circuitry mean to explain what I mean this is that suppose if I write something and I give it to you and you look at it suppose you are a fool what is this? you may get shocked now actually you are a fool why is this person saying this to me now actually what is happening is on that paper there are simply ink patterns now if I write you are a fool the paper does not feel angry the paper does not feel angry why the ink patterns themselves do not contain the emotion of anger so the ink patterns are simply basically patterns of black on a white background there has to be some conscious being who observes them and makes sense of them if suppose I have written in English and I give it to somebody who does not understand English for them those patterns make no sense so just as we can have ink patterns on paper like that similarly we can correlate there are the patterns of electrochemical signals in the brain cells but there is someone just as the patterns of ink on paper themselves don't convey any emotion the emotion is experienced by someone who is observing those ink patterns and making sense out of them similarly the brain the electrochemical cells in the electrochemical states in the brain cells they have a pattern but that pattern is observed by someone and it is that observer who makes sense is observer who experiences emotions so science by its future progress can more and more exhaustively map the do the neural mapping of the brain more exhaustively but this hard problem of consciousness actually the more science advances whether it is in terms of neural mapping or it is in terms of digital replication of what we call as the functions of human intelligence both ways it will actually highlight more and more the distance between information processing and conscious experience and conscious experience is something separate from information processing and scientific advancement will deal with information processing but it cannot explain conscious experience because it is it is non-physical it is just it is a it is a undeniable reality for all of us but at the same time it is just not in the scope of physical science so when we say science cannot explain it it is not that we are limiting what science can do rather the method that science has chosen itself limits its scope just like if somebody uses a fishing net which is having holes of one inch by one inch then no matter how long they fish they will not be able to catch fish that are smaller than one inch in size so like that the methodology of science itself will find out more and more correlations of the brain with consciousness but will not be able to detect consciousness itself now when we say science cannot explain what how exactly the spirituality explains this spirituality explains it again by first of all postulating that there is a fundamental reality that matter and the material forces that are there they are one reality but consciousness is a fundamental reality it's a distinct reality from matter and now the consciousness itself is because it is non-material it cannot be understood by material means we can infer its existence through logic but whereas material science is experimental spiritual science is experiential it is when we subject ourselves to the experience that is brought about by the practice of spirituality in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says Pratyakshavagamam Dharmyam Susukham Kartumavyam he says in 9.2 that that the higher reality can be experienced Pratyakshavagamam Susukham Kartumavyam experience higher happiness by the practice of spirituality so essentially when we practice Bhakti Yoga by the practice of chanting of the holy names by the practice of studying the Gita by all this our consciousness rises consciousness rises means that the soul consciousness is currently caught in the body like a person watching a horror movie completely caught in the horror movie but if somebody comes in one year I didn't realize it so like that the Atma is inside the body and next to it the Paramatma is there but the Atma is so caught right now the soul is so caught in in material reality the soul has become unaware of spiritual reality so the more we expose ourselves to spiritual reality by study of scripture by chanting the holy names worshiping Krishna then what happens the Atma awakens and as the Atma awakens then spiritual reality becomes perceivable for us through our spiritually awakened spiritually activated senses so yatra paramate chittam niruddham yoga sevaya yatra chaiva atmanatmanam pashyan atmani tushyati krishna describes the state of samadhi in 6.20 to 23 and there is yatra uparamate chittam when the consciousness stops getting infatuated by material things niruddham yoga sevaya by the consistent practice of yoga then yatra chaiva atmanatmanam the consciousness turns inwards and the Atma perceives itself pashyan atmani tushyati one becomes delighted satisfied one rejoices in the self so this happens by the gradual practice of bhakti so initially we may not be able to perceive just like I'll conclude it's a long answer but I'll conclude with a practical example see when a child when a mother gives birth to a child for the person the child is not aware of anything even the mother breast feeds the child the child is not even understanding some nice thing from which some nice thing is coming out and the child suckles it but as the child starts growing then the child starts perceiving oh there is a person and this person loves me gradually this is my mother and that's how the child starts growing now suppose it's a very cold night and the child is shivering and mother says oh my baby is shivering and the mother puts a blanket on the child now in this case the child is sleeping the child doesn't understand what is happening but as the child starts growing and then again the child is there is sleep there is very thin awareness like a semi-sleep state and then there is something comforting something warm and then the child has grown sufficiently although the child has not opened the eyes, the child has not seen anything the child is able to connect oh that is warmth of the blanket is a sign of my mother's love for me my mother must be here to connect that peace and joy with Krishna's love for us and that's how we will perceive oh why okay when I chant why do I feel so good when I pray when I immerse myself in God why do I feel so peaceful because this experience is like the mother putting a blanket and when we connect it that way then God will become an experience reality for us bhakti is a process which gives us para isha anubhav the experience of isha God who is para who is non-material cannot be pursued by any material means that God is anubhav we get the experience of that God through bhakti and the result of that is virakti means that we are no longer infatuated by worldly experiences I crave for this I crave for that no yam labdhva chaaparam labham manyate na dhikam tatha yasmin sitona dukkhe na guru na bhakti isha god cannot be that God pursued by any material means that God cannot be pursued by that God.