Has neuroscience shown that there is no inner seer?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yeah, so now this idea of the inner sphere or the inner screen, is this model viable with the latest developments in neuroscience, which talks about how the brain has modules which start functioning, and they make us think or feel or act in particular ways? Yeah, there has been phenomenal advancement in neuroscience, especially in the last 34 years. And this advancement has been largely in terms of correlating human experiences with brain phenomena. But correlation is not causation.
Correlation is not causation. Correlation means when A happens, B happens. But that doesn’t necessarily mean A causes B. A could be a cause of B, but A may not be a cause of B also.
So, I’ll give you an example. It’s found that people who say service their cars regularly, their cars last for a longer time. So we could say this proves that servicing cars helps you to preserve, increase the longevity of the cars.
Now that may be true, but it may also be that people who service their cars, they also drive the car more responsibly. They also maintain the car well, not just apart from servicing, and that’s how their cars stay longer. So, A correlates with B does not necessarily mean A causes B. Similarly, with respect to our brain functions and brain phenomena, there is now significant development in understanding which emotion correlates with which brain area, which sensation correlates with which brain area.
But is correlation causation? On the 125th anniversary of Science magazine, they published 125 questions that science hasn’t yet answered. The first question was, where does the universe come from? The second question was, where does consciousness come from? So, I have written a book on demystifying reincarnation, where I talk about it elaborately. But suffice it to say that the neurological phenomena, they correlate with conscious experience.
They are not the conscious experience. To explain this, I just have to get a little technical. Say, I send you a note, and you read it.
You say in that note, it’s written, you are a fool. You see that? You get angry. How dare this person is calling me a fool? Now, actually what has happened, there is a white paper, and there are some black patterns of ink on it.
Now, the black patterns of ink, they themselves don’t contain any emotion. Otherwise, the paper would be burning with anger. The paper, whatever is the pattern of ink on the paper, that has to be interpreted by some observer.
And it is the observer who feels that emotion. That emotion is definitely, we could say, connected with whatever is happening on the paper. Whatever is written on the paper.
But the two are not the same. The observer has to be separate. Similarly, when we say that certain brain areas are correlated with the emotion of anger, what exactly is happening in the brain? Ultimately, no matter how sophisticated the brain’s functioning is, it’s ultimately biochemicals that are there.
And there are just electrical signals pulsating through the brain. The synapses happen between the brain cells, neurons, and that leads to certain electrical signals going a particular way or a particular different way. So, when we have habits, that means the synapses are formed very strongly, and our thoughts and emotions go in a particular direction, very forcefully.
So, for example, if a person is alcoholic, and as soon as they say alcohol, then the desire for alcohol becomes very strong, because the brain synapses connected with consumption of alcohol are very strongly tied together. However, ultimately, what is happening in the brain? The brain is basically containing a pattern of electrochemical signals. So, we could say the brain, in a sense, is the replica of the paper.
So, on the paper, there are ink patterns. In the brain, there are electrochemical patterns. There are signals, basically electrical signals going up and down, but they themselves are not conscious.
They themselves, with similar electrical signals, can go through a computer, can go through a television. There is no consciousness over there. There is some higher observer who interprets those neurochemical signals and thereby experiences some emotion.
So, the brain, no matter how elaborately we analyze it, all that we can come to know is which part of the brain is activated. But there is a first-person experience of emotions. This is called in consciousness studies as the hard problem of consciousness.
The soft problem of consciousness is how there is correlation between different areas of the brain or different modalities of brain functioning and different conscious experiences. But what are those conscious experiences themselves? They are fundamentally different. Because the brain just contains biochemicals.
And moving of electrical signals does not itself comprise emotion. Who is the experiencer of the emotion? Say, I see a rose. Now, when I see a rose, certain areas of the brain may get activated by which I get a sensation of seeing a rose.
But who is actually experiencing that? Now, we may say there is no experiencer. But the fact is that we do respond consciously. This is the emotion that is coming and this is how I am responding to it.
There are well documented experiments which talk about how we humans, we are at one level products of our brain functioning, but we are also distinct from that. Einstein was himself very troubled. Of course, at that time neuroscience had not advanced that much.
But the idea was prevalent at that time also that basically we are biological machines. Robots are digital machines. We are biological machines.
He said that if we are simply biological machines, that would mean that we have no free will. There cannot be any sense of responsibility. So, he was Jew who was persecuted by the Nazis.
And he said that the Nazis can’t be held responsible because their brain was wired in a particular way. And that’s how they acted in that way. So, that would mean there would be no sense of morality, no ethics, no accountability.
All systems of justice would collapse. If we were simply our brain, then the brain is basically biochemicals. It does not have free will.
If I take this jar and drop it, I won’t drop it. But if I drop it, it does not have a free will whether to fall or not. It will fall down.
But we human beings can choose how we act. Einstein said that gravity explains the falling of objects, but gravity can’t explain people falling in love. So, there is a categorical difference between the brain phenomena and the electrochemical signals that are associated with the brain phenomena and the conscious experience.
First of all, it’s in terms of quality. Brain chemicals, they are just basically signals. They are like patterns of electrochemical, just like patterns of ink on a paper.
They themselves don’t embody any conscious experience. And secondly, if we were that, then there would be no free will, there would be no accountability. And our whole system of society would collapse.
So, we all experience that we consciously choose certain courses of action. Now, if A goes and slaps B, why did you slap me? My brain chemicals told me to slap you. And B will say, my brain chemicals told me to slap you.
Now, we would just, all society would collapse. So, there is Arvind Schrodinger who made the famous Schrodinger’s equation. He said famously that there are, that science helps us to put our experiences in a remarkably consistent way.
Now, why does this object fall down? What field will fall down? But he says when it comes to emotions, pain and pleasure, when it comes to joy and sorrow, when it comes to right and wrong, for these, science itself has no answers. The answers that science attempts to give are so trivial, so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. Einstein said we can talk about the scientific foundation of ethics.
We cannot talk about the ethical foundations of science. Sorry, we can talk about the ethical foundation of science. Is science being used ethically? We can’t talk about the scientific foundation of ethics.
Ethics is something which guides us how to act properly. So, there is, science has its, neuroscience included has its valid jurisdiction. But when it goes beyond its jurisdiction and makes claims which are not actually based on the data, that is not science, that is scientism.
And scientism is basically scientific imperialism. Science enroaching on areas where it does not have any valid jurisdiction. So, our personality itself, our conscious experience is something which is distinct from the brain phenomena.
It is correlated, no doubt. But there is a significant amount of difference between the two. Thank you very much.