In my personal opinion, I believe
consciousness is not physical. It is discussed throughout the course that
somehow our mind is related to our physical brain. Everything we sense and
feel, whether it is physical or emotional, all connect to our brain and somehow
to our sensory organs. This nature of our body being connected with our
thoughts and the very fact that our brain allows us to think and be aware of
our surroundings prove the how physical our consciousness is. “Why is it that
when someone clubs you in the head with a bat, your awareness (consciousness)
seizes?” (A Glorious Piece of Meat)
But how is it that our
consciousness is actually NOT physical? Although I just wrote a whole paragraph
devoted to proving how physical awareness is, there are other beliefs that have
convinced me to think consciousness nothing close to being physical. One great
example would be how non-physical experiences, such as visions and illusions
lead us into thinking and analyzing. How is it that without having any physical
interactions we are able to see and sense extraordinary visions within our
minds? A question popped into my head while reading an article written by
Professor Lane called “Is Consciousness Physical?” The article states this very
interesting fact: “Even the most profound spiritual experiences may themselves
be the result of brain processes of which we remain unaware.” How is it
that we are able to have such experiences that cannot be physically proven
through science? Only time will tell.
Another reasoning used to argue why consciousness is not physical is the
Knowledge argument. It was formulated by Thomas Nagel, Frank Jackson, and Saul
Kripke and goes like this:
“A standard presentation of the thought experiment is this: Mary,
a brilliant scientist blind from birth, knows all the physical facts relevant
to acts of perception. When she suddenly gains the ability to see, she gains
knowledge of new facts. Since she knew all the physical facts before gaining
sight, and since she now gains knowledge of new facts, these facts must not be
physical facts and, moreover, given Mary’s situation, they must be mental
facts.”
The last reasoning I would like to use to prove my point is that consciousness
has intentionality. What I mean by intentionality is consciousness is always
intentional while physicality is not. Here are some of the things you may take
into consideration regarding intentionality. (reasons.org)
1. When
one represents a mental act to oneself, there are no sense-data associated with
it; this is not so with physical states and their relations.
2. Intentionality
is completely unrestricted with regard to the kind of object it can hold as a
term—anything whatsoever can have a mental act directed upon it, but physical
relations only obtain for a narrow range of objects (e.g., magnetic fields only
attract certain things).
3. To
grasp a mental act one must engage in a reflexive act of self-awareness, but no
such reflexivity is required to grasp a physical relation.
4. For
ordinary physical relations (e.g., x is to the left of y), x and y are
identifiable objects irrespective of whether they have entered into that
relation (ordinary physical relations are external). This is not so for
intentional contents (e.g., one and the same belief cannot be about a frog and
later about a house—the belief is what it is, at least partly, in virtue of
what the belief is of).
5. For
ordinary relations, each of the relata must exist in order for the relation to
obtain (x and y must exist before one can be on
top of the other), but intentionality can be of nonexistent things (e.g., one
can think of Zeus).
6. Intentional
states are intentional (having to do with attributes), but physical states are
extensional (having to do with class members).
In the end, the question that we have to ask ourselves is not
whether consciousness is physical or not. The real question that we need to
focus on is, “Who is in control of our consciousness?” Is it our ego? Is it
ourselves? Is it our brain? “I know that my
consciousness is more than the sum of my neurons firing; or, at least I think
so while my neurons are firing.” (A Glorious Piece of Meat)
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