Abstract
The chapter on ‘The problematic of consciousness’ presents the major questions that the book addresses alongside their neurological and philosophical contexts. Biology and philosophy are the two disciplines that raise fundamental yet provoking questions about human life. The central question that these disciplines ask are centred on the notion and experience of the self of the person. Brain and the self are the two phenomena that today everyone, from the common person to the scholar, is looking at to unravel the puzzle of consciousness. In this chapter an elaborate background is given so as to lead to the fundamental questions in the rest of the chapters. Primarily, this chapter asks and responds to the question: how do we approach the self and the body in ways in which there is more sophistication in our methods and better depth in our conceptualizations? This chapter also gives a synopsis of the key theses developed in the rest of the chapters, and in the book as a whole.
This body is known as the object of knowledge, Arjuna; and the knower of the body is the self.
—Bhagavad Gita: 13.2
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- 1.
David Chalmers divides the problem of consciousness into two: the easy problems and the hard problem. For discussion on this topic, see Sect. 3.2.1 in this volume.
- 2.
While the ‘hard problem’ is about ‘conscious experience’, I would suggest that the ‘harder problem’ is about the ‘conscious experience’. For discussion on this topic, see Sect. 3.3.2 in this volume.
- 3.
Neural correlates of consciousness are the minimal neural mechanisms jointly sufficient for producing a specific conscious percept. For further elucidation, see (Crick and Koch 1990).
- 4.
Traditionally, life sciences recognize ‘consciousness’ not as a qualitative entity but as a function of brain and its processes. Hence, consciousness is a biological entity. For the past two or three decades, the rising number of works in neuropsychology and cognitive sciences encourage a shift in this perspective. Consciousness and brain cannot be viewed merely as physical and biological entities. The brain is guided by the cognitive and mental processes and therefore is situated within a culture and within the individual’s life experiences.
References
Chalmers, D. (1995). The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American, 273, 62–68.
Crick, F., & Koch, C. (1990). Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness. Seminars in Neuroscience, 2, 263–275.
Humphrey, N. (2006). Seeing red: A study in consciousness. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primacy of perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Metzinger, T. (2009). The ego tunnel: The science of the mind and the myth of the self. New York: Basic Books.
Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press.
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Menon, S. (2014). The Problematic of Consciousness: An Introduction. In: Brain, Self and Consciousness. Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality, vol 3. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1581-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1581-3_1
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