How can we know that we are conscious while tables are not conscious?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Second question. How can we know that we are conscious and the table is not conscious? Consciousness is primarily perceived in two ways. For that matter, if we just stick to entirely empirical methods or the strictly scientific or reductionistic method, there is no way that I can prove that you are conscious or you can prove that I am conscious.
To give an example for what I mean, scientists can nowadays know when a person is dreaming. If you put proper brain sensors, some sensors on the brain or on the head, then there is REM, rapid eye movement that happens and a particular kind of news is emitted from the brain by which you can know that a person is dreaming. But if you want to know what that person is dreaming, no matter how sophisticated the sensors may be, we can’t come to know about that.
For that, what is your dream? If you want to know, you have to wake up that person and ask that person. So there is an experiential aspect of consciousness that is not reducible to external measurements. So for example, the world’s best brain surgeon, suppose he goes home and he finds his wife is upset.
So will he tell his wife, come let me do a brain scan to find out why you are upset. He will say, you go and get your brain scanned, you are crazy. So the feelings, the emotions that we have, they are not reducible to material observations.
And that is why there is an experiential aspect to consciousness which may correlate with certain aspects of brain functioning. But those aspects of brain functioning don’t describe that experience. So now then how can we know? Like anyone is conscious at all.
So I am conscious because that’s my first person experience reality. You are conscious because that is your second person experience reality. Now we all operate with certain fundamental truths in life.
So there are certain givens that we all use. So for example, science. Sometimes people think science and religion are opposite because religion requires faith.
Science operates on facts. But that’s not exactly true. Because science also requires faith.
The fundamental faith that what we observe is reliable. When Newton observed the fruit falling, he had the faith that there was a fruit and it fell down. So any common sense knowledge that we do and any activity that we do and even sophisticated activity like science, there are certain given truths which are called axioms.
With those axioms we function. And similarly we all intuitively know that if you observe others that others have consciousness. Suppose in this world we made an extremely beautiful robot and that robot came and said to me, I love you.
How many people would be attracted by that? A living person and she says the same thing. We have a very different experience. How do we know it? We just know it intuitively.
We may know that the robot may also exactly use the same tone, may have the same facial expressions, whatever. But it is a machine. So just as this is something you know given, the experiential side of consciousness is something which needs to be experienced.
It cannot be reduced to any other measure. Another example for this point is the whole of medical science, one of its purposes is to free people from pain. But in the whole of medical science, there is no such thing as a pain-o-meter, a meter to measure pain.
If I have got a hand fracture, medical science can measure how much my hand is dislocated. But there is no way science can measure how much pain I have. What do I say? 10, 20, 30? Pain is non-quantifiable.
So our emotions are not quantifiable. Similarly, our consciousness, where our emotions are acquired, they are also not quantifiable or reducible to anything else. At the same time, there is another way in which we can infer the presence of consciousness.
That is, when consciousness is present in matter, consciousness comes from the soul. The sun is giving sun rays or that bulb is giving light. So the soul is one particle.
And from that soul, consciousness comes out. So now, when consciousness is present in matter, is present in any particular matter, that matter undergoes certain transformations that are different from the matter that does not have any consciousness present. So for example, this table, its existence has only three phases.
It’s created, it deteriorates, and it is destroyed. Whereas our existence, it goes through six phases. There is creation, there is growth.
If you were a baby, you grew up. This table was never a baby table and it grew up. So we exist, we grow.
After growing, we strive to maintain our existence. If my hand is cut, it will tend to heal itself. But if the table’s leg is cut, it won’t heal itself.
So we strive to maintain our existence. Fourthly, the fourth stage is we reproduce. A table doesn’t produce a baby table.
A heel table and a street table don’t come together and produce a baby table. We do that. So we reproduce.
And then the last two stages are the same. We deteriorate, our body also deteriorates. And we also get destroyed.
Our body gets destroyed. So when consciousness is present in matter, there are these three additional results of that consciousness. Presence of consciousness.
That matter, it grows, it strives to maintain itself, and it reproduces. So wherever these are present, wherever matter, instead of undergoing the normal three changes, matter goes through six changes, we can understand their consciousness is present. Does it answer your question? Yes.
Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah.