The Brain Doesn’t Create Consciousness — It Constrains It.
Why we should reposition how we think of the mind.
The theory that consciousness is epiphenomenal is pretty much assumed by much establishment science today. In spite of the fact that no one has ever proposed the faintest inkling of a solution to David Chalmers Hard Problem that points out that even if we mapped every atom in the brain we would not actually arrive at consciousness, the view that we will inevitably stumble upon a feature of the brain that offers us an explanation for consciousness remains strangely persistent.
In spite of apparently banishing metaphysical speculation there are ironically metaphysical reasons for this, which is to say that science has siloed much of its work in a materialist position from which other kinds of solutions to the problem of consciousness sound far too much like spirituality to be taken remotely seriously.
The question though is still one that science has to have some role in considering. And there are some fascinating insights into which we can shed light into an alternative way of viewing consciousness.
The epiphenomenal view of consciousness essentially assumes that the brain “emits” consciousness. That is to say the material of the brain contains a set of processes that somehow conspire to…
