The Atman, Part 1
Part 1 of 10: Consciousness is Beyond Science
Have you ever wondered about the question, “How is it that I’m me and you’re you?” You might not think about that question very much as an adult, but as a young child, you probably thought about it quite often. In this series of essays, I will bring it back to the forefront of your mind. I will bring you back to the questions that perplexed you when you were a toddler. And I will try to answer them, by using concepts which I maintain are beyond the realm of science.
At some point during your early childhood, you came to realize that you are you. That is, you came to realize that you and your mother are two different people. You realized that you experience life as you while your mother experiences life as her. Psychologists refer to this realization as the “theory of mind”.
When you first came to this realization, it probably seemed like a very strange idea. You probably wondered aloud, “How come I’m me and you’re you?” You knew that it was true, but you could not conceive of how it made any sense.
And you were right: it is a very strange phenomenon. Most people occasionally wonder about it even as adults, and personally, it blows my mind all over again every time I think about it. It is truly a mind-blowing question: “How come I’m me and you’re you?”
There are a series of other ways you can phrase the question. Examples include:
1. How come my life is my universe while your life is your universe?
2. How is it that out of all the people in the world, I got to be Matthew Gliatto, and you got to be you?
3. How is it that if I cut my finger, I feel the pain and you don’t?
4. How is it that I have only ever experienced life as me, while you have only ever experienced life as you?
5. How is it that you can only see the world from your own perspective?
And if you wonder about these questions for long enough, it may lead you to another mind-blowing question: “how does consciousness exist at all?” There are several ways to phrase this question too:
1. How is it that my brain contains me and isn’t just a physical object?
2. How is it that I experience the sensations of life (e. g. the experience of seeing the color red)?
3. How is it that the physical processes of my brain constitute actual thoughts that I think?
4. Why does the universe contain conscious beings, rather than just being a bunch of matter and energy?
The first-person experiences of life are known as qualia, and consciousness is the state of having qualia. So I guess this second “mind-blowing” question could be phrased as, “How do qualia exist?”
In summary, the two mind-blowing questions are:
Mind-Blowing Question #1: How is it that I’m me and you’re you?
Mind-Blowing Question #2: How (and why) does consciousness exist at all?
The philosopher David Chalmers refers to this second question as “the hard problem of consciousness.” (I will mention Mr. Chalmers quite a few times over the course of this series.) Most of the literature about these debates focuses on the second question. And while the second question is indeed very important, I think there should be a little more discussion about the first question, and not just the second. (And the philosopher Richard Swinburne agrees with me on this point.)
Anyway, I contend that it is impossible to answer either of these questions using science alone. No kind of science, no matter how novel or advanced it is, will ever be able to answer either question. The answers to these two questions, whatever they are, are simply beyond the realm of science.
You might wonder why I am so convinced of this.
First of all, let me remind you that most people would agree that some questions are beyond the scope of science. Examples include, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” “What’s the point of life?” “Does God exist?” “Do we have free will?” “What makes something right or wrong?”
Most people would agree that at least some of those questions are beyond science. All I’m saying is that the above two questions are also in that category.
But more importantly, the reason I think that science can never answer those two questions is that science is the study of things, and human consciousness is not a thing; rather, it is you.
Science is the study of things. Mass, energy, light, electric charge — those are all things. They are all third-person phenomena. But human consciousness is very different. Human consciousness is you. It is your own whole universe. It is your first-person experiences. It is not merely a thing. As such, consciousness is beyond the scope of science.
This has been expressed more eloquently by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who wrote a famous essay entitled, “What is it like to be a bat?” in which he argued, essentially, that you can never know what it’s like to be a bat. No matter how much you might learn about bats from biology, you still wouldn’t really know what it’s like to be a bat, because you aren’t a bat.
Nagel’s point is that neuroscience alone cannot explain the subjective nature of our lives. It can tell us what’s going on in our brains, but it can’t explain how it is that we subjectively experience it. It can’t answer the second mind-blowing question.
A similar argument was made by the philosopher Frank Jackson, who proposed a thought experiment called Mary’s room. In this thought experiment, Mary has been forced to spend her entire life in a black-and-white room (and I guess her own body is black-and-white, for some reason). She has never seen the color red. However, she is an expert in neurophysiology, and she knows all about the scientific processes by which a human brain perceives the color red. But she herself has never seen it, and therefore, she doesn’t know what red looks like. While the scenario in itself is absurd, it makes a perfectly valid point: Mary doesn’t know what red looks like. In other words, neuroscience can tell us what goes on in our brains, but it can’t explain what it’s like to have a certain experience. Jackson ultimately made the same point as Nagel.
Nagel’s point about bats applies equally well to other humans. We can never really know what it’s like to be any human other than ourselves. No matter how well I might know you, I will never really know what it’s like to be you, because I am not you, and you will never really know what it’s like to be me, because you are not me. Even if you could somehow know every single thought that I think and every single emotion that I feel, you still wouldn’t really know what it’s like to be me, because I am living life as me, while you are living life as you.
And just as Nagel pointed out that neuroscience alone can never answer the second of the two mind-blowing questions, I would like to add that it can’t answer the first one, either. (Again, I think there should be more emphasis on the first of the two questions.) Seriously: out of all the people in the world, I got to be Matthew Gliatto, and you got to be you. How weird is that? I have only ever lived life as Matthew Gliatto. In contrast, you have only ever lived life as you. This is the first mind-blowing question: how is it that I’m me and you’re you?
When you think about this particular question, it becomes clear that the notion that science alone can explain consciousness is implausible. There is no substantive, qualitative difference between my brain and your brain, but somehow, my brain is me, while your brain is you. How does that make any sense? How did I get to be Matthew Gliatto? How did you get to be you? This profound mystery will never be explained by any sort of science.
That is the central thesis of this series. Physicalism, the belief that the scientific universe is the only thing in existence, has emerged as the dominant view among most of the academic philosophers today. The purpose of this series is to refute physicalism and present the concept of the Atman as an alternative (see Part 4).
Physicalism is also known as materialism or naturalism, and there are some subtle differences between those terms, but I will just use the word “physicalism”, which is the belief that the physical, scientific universe is the only thing that is real.
I think it would be helpful to provide an estimate of my degree of confidence in my thesis. I will say 95%. I am not absolutely certain of it, because I don’t think anyone can be certain of anything when discussing such mysterious and mind-blowing questions. But I am pretty confident. I am 95% confident that the mysteries of consciousness lie beyond the realm of science.
I also think it would be helpful to clarify that consciousness is not the same thing as self-awareness. For example, I often have discussions with people about the question of whether animals are conscious (or whether animals have “souls”). They often respond by discussing that an animal has a “sense of itself,” that is, it has self-awareness. Sometimes, they point me to experiments in which someone puts various animals in front of a mirror and watches how they respond. They fail to realize that that is not directly relevant to the issue of consciousness.
You could design a computer that could detect its own presence in a mirror, that could “learn” (as in machine learning) that it was something apart from its environment. But that wouldn’t mean that the computer is conscious, or that it’s actually alive. It’s probably not. Just because it’s self-aware doesn’t mean that it’s conscious.
Consciousness is the difference between being a living creature and a being a nonliving organism, like a plant or a sponge. It’s the difference between being awake and being asleep. Consciousness means having qualia, having first-person experiences. Meanwhile, self-awareness just means having some cognition that you are something apart from your environment. Clearly, consciousness is not the same thing as self-awareness.
In fact, you could theoretically have either one of them without the other. If you designed a computer that could detect its own presence in a mirror, then that computer has self-awareness but not consciousness. Meanwhile, if you do LSD and you experience “ego death”, then you have consciousness but not self-awareness. (Note: don’t do LSD.) Those are both unusual circumstances, of course, and under normal circumstances, the beings that are self-conscious are usually the same beings that are conscious. But these rare exceptions make it clear that self-awareness and consciousness are two separate concepts and should not be confused.
It’s important for me to make this distinction clear because if I were to give the false impression that consciousness is the same thing as self-awareness, then it would be only too easy for someone to refute my thesis by pointing out that self-awareness can be scientifically explained. Therefore, I need to clarify: yes, self-awareness can be physically explained, but that’s not the same thing as consciousness.
Finally, I would like to add that it is very difficult to express these concepts in words. It’s hard to find the right words for such mysterious concepts. I am convinced that science can never answer these two “mind-blowing” questions, but it’s hard for me to explain why I am convinced of that, because it’s hard to find the right words. But hopefully, you can grasp the points that I’m making, even if I’m struggling to find words for them.
In my next essay, Part 2, I will explore and critique some of the counterarguments: some of the attempts that people have made to justify the idea that consciousness can be explained scientifically.
Other parts of this series:
Part 2: Responding to Counterarguments
Part 3: We Need Not Fear Immateriality
Part 4: Definition of the Atman
Part 5: Brain, Soul, Self, Atman, Mind
Part 6: The Views of the Philosophers
Part 7: [under revision]
Part 8: The Atman is the Definition of Life
