Introduction to this blog

Consciousness can be generated by the process of computation! This is the claim of neuroscientists and computer scientists. However, the Vedic literature provides a clear idea that conscious by its nature is not a matter and hence it cannot be generated by any kind of complex computation that is due to matter. This blog is to explore the science of consciousness from Vedic perspective.

Saturday, February 25, 2023

The Hard Problem is Really a Harder problem

The hard problem of consciousness would remain as a harder problem of consciousness. Those theories which maintains that the subjective conscious experience arises from brain is not so hard problem as it was presented by David Charmer who argued for the problem. David also further argue that the problem consciousness belongs a altogether a different realm of reality which is completely different from the physical reality. With respect to the consciousness research, the physical reality is largely confined to the brain. Many theories has been around the understanding that everything that we experience or everything that we attribute to consciousness can be explained using the brain itself, there is no necessity of any third parameter to explain our conscious experience or consciousness. However, we have not been successful so far to explain any of the phenomena. 

There could be two assumptions: 

brain is physical whereas the consciousness belongs to a different reality which is unknown . 
In such situation the problem of consciousness can only be solved in conscious reality, it can't be solve in any other realm which are characteristically less than conscious domain. Therefore, it is impossible to solve or understand the problem of consciousness using brain. 




Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

A Step Beyond the Neural Pattern

My feelings and corresponding neural patterns are two different things. Some of the contemporary theories strongly suggests that the subjecting feelings are originating possibly from brain itself and there is no second thing beyond that. However recent findings make a different claim suggesting that the subjective feeling can't be explained just with the neural patterns. The finds suggest that there must be something beyond the neural patterns. The problem with the neural basis of explanation is that the pattern itself does not covey the feelings, to get the idea of feelings the subject has to be asked separately to get to know how does it feel. This how does it feel is what has been called as subjective feeling a part of hard problem of consciousness. 

What kind of experiment could be performed to confirm the presence of subjective element fundamentally a different kind of element than physical one? How do we perform experiment to test this? 

One possibility is to do the following:

    Let's consider two subjects and a large set of objects. Subject: A and Subject: B, and a large set of object.
    Let I = {i1, i2, i3, ..................in} where n -> very large number. 

    Let perform a series of operation of input and output. 
    i1 will be given to both A and B, and the output from each subject will be recorded using MRI or FMRI kind of technology. 
   i2 will be give to both A and B, and the the output from each subject will be recorded using MRI and FMRI. 

  Similarly, the experiment will be performed for all the inputs and the output will be recorded. Then the output will be compared for both the subjects to find out how are they similar or how are they differ. The same output will be used to figure out the processing in the brain and then that will be compared between the subject. How are these two data points, the output and the neural patterns correlates would indicate the existence of subjective element or the qualia element. 


Jaynarayan, Bangalore, India