When our consciousness goes up and down regularly how is consciousness irreducible?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Thank you. So, our consciousness goes up and down at different times, say, in the day or sleeping. So, what does irreducibility of consciousness mean? See, when we are talking about reducibility or irreducibility, it’s not in terms of level of consciousness.
It’s in terms of nature of consciousness. See, reduction, say, if I have 100 rupees and I spend 50 rupees, I have 50 rupees left. That is reduction in quantity.
But reductionism is an ideology. The ideology of reductionism holds that things can be reduced down to their components. Now, at a physical level, that’s fine.
If my computer is not working, then okay, which part of the computer is not working? The computer is a functional combination of its parts which make the whole. But in the case of many things, such as our body, you know, in a dead body also, all the parts are dead. And if you consider just a few moments after the event of death, all the body parts are capable of functioning, but they are not functioning.
So, we are not just a combination of physical parts. So, reductionism means that the human being can be reduced to their bodily parts. This reductionism is different from reduction.
So, when we talk about reductionism as applied to consciousness, what it means is that consciousness can be reduced to interaction of brain cells and brain chemicals. So, that is wrong. Because this is, the changes in brain cells, they have a relationship with consciousness.
But that relationship is a correlation, not causation. Correlation means, for example, if I am happy, I may laugh, I may smile. So, now happiness correlates with laughing or smiling.
But the two are not equivalent. You know, if somebody gets a face twisting machine and twists my face, you know, make it into a smile. My face may be twisted into a smile, but am I happy? No.
So, happiness is not reducible to a smile on the face. A smile on the face can be correlated with happiness, but the two are not reducible. So, happiness is not just this.
So, when we talk about irreducibility of consciousness, what we are saying is that the brain is the tool through which consciousness manifests. It’s a tool and that’s why whenever there is some change in consciousness, there will be a corresponding change in the brain chemicals. So, if I am angry, a particular part of the brain will be activated.
If I am feeling calm, if I am meditating, another part of the brain is activated. But just the activation of the brain alone is not consciousness. Dr. Milter Penfield did a famous experiment in his book called Mystery of the Mind.
He had a subject raise his hand. When the subject raised the hand, he asked him, what happened? He said, I raised my hand. And then he observed a particular area of the brain connected to the motor nervous system.
He said that part had got activated. He said, put your hand down. He put his hand down.
The hand went down and then he found that part had become deactivated. He said, what happened? He said, my hand went down. He said, did you raise your hand? He said, no, I did, you did.
Then he deactivated that part of the brain. What happened? He said, my hand went down. He said, did you put your hand down? He said, no, I did, you did.
So, now what this means is that Dr. Milter Penfield is a Nobel laureate neurosurgeon. Considered Canada’s one of the greatest scientists. So, he did researches like this and then he concluded that actually in the first case it was, so the brain and the hand are one unit.
So, in the first, in the second case the brain and hand unit, they were activated by Dr. Penfield. He activated the probe. In the first case, who activated it? The brain is simply an instrument.
Say, if I have a print button on my computer and the printing hand starts moving. Who can press the print button? It will get activated. I press the print button, it will get activated.
So, the activation of the brain part is like the print button. But who pressed the print button in the first case? So, he concluded that after almost 40 years of brain study he concluded that the brain is like a computer but it is programmed from something outside of itself. John Eccles was another Nobel laureate neuroscientist that’s what we mean by irreversibility of consciousness.