Wednesday 19 December 2007

Mental phenomena. Questions in need for an answer:

How could any real progress be achieved towards solving the mysteries of how mental phenomena fit in with the physical universe?

Do we need some important changes in our picture of physical reality?

A picture of physical reality that includes and explains mental phenomena.

Can physics provide a theory of consciousness?

Physical laws that describe the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a physical function.

Is quantum mechanics relevant to understanding consciousness?

Can we explain the mental phenomenon of consciousness as a result of quantum functions?

Can we imagine a theory in which "consciousness" finds some place within the purely physical descriptions of the world?

Is a self or "I" necessary for consciousness or can consciousness exist independently of selves?

If the mental phenomenon of consciousness is a physical phenomenon and we have explained it, we can then visualise how an act of consciousness can be performed without being associated with an "I", a self.

Do we need an expanded science which includes subjective experience to understand human consciousness?

Since subjective experience is the base of the mental phenomenon of consciousness, subjective experience should be the field that science should include in order to be able to provide an explanation of consciousness as a physical process.

What are the attributes of subjective experience that science can deal with?

Any investigation for any subject of knowledge starts by evoking on our subjective experience first, then we feel compelled to assume an objective stance to make sure that what we experience, is what others experience. To verify its occurrence, the reasons for its occurrence, to accumulate subjective reasonings and built a body of evidence, we behave showing a lack of faith on our own reasoning, our own subjective experience. We do not trust our own subjective experience and in the process we loose perspective. In order to become objective we forget our own subjective experience, to the point that we treat our own subjective experience as an illusion, and try to assimilate our subjective experience into a collective objective experience, the whole process becoming a statistical exercise.

Must a new science that we perhaps need, be so different from the science of today that the evoke and explain issues with regard to mentality may finally find natural explanations?.

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