Mystery of Consiousness

I subscribe to Time magazine, and I was thrilled when I pulled the new issue (Jan. 29) from my mailbox on Thursday and saw across the top, "Mind & Body Special Issue." The main feature, in bold letters on the cover, is titled, "The Brain: A User's Guide."

Call me a nerd--I'll admit to it without hestitation--but I love reading about how the brain works. And the magazine issue generally lived up to my expectations. But I must express my frustration with some of the ideas put forth in the first feature article, which focuses on consciousness.

In "The Mystery of Consciousness," Steven Pinker discusses, in a way that ordinary people can understand, some of the most prevalent scientific theories. On the bright side, he does present different points of view. But he concludes the piece with the view most prevalent among scientists, which is this: while they have not located a part of the brain or figured out how, exactly, it creates this sense of individual consciousness, the sense that we exist, most of them are fairly certain that we'll solve this mystery within the century.

I've got no problem with this. In fact, I think it's pretty exciting. But Pinker should have ended the article there, because I'm irritated by the direction Pinker takes this in: the old, tiresome science-religion debate.

After pointing out that there is a consensus among scientists that they will indeed locate consciousness in brain activity, Pinker goes on: "For many nonscientists, this is a terrifying prospect" because it "strangle[s] the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies."

Does it, really?

To me, Pinker's argument sounds similar to one that the theory of evolution destroys the notion that we might have been created by a higher power, which I'll call God here for purposes of simplicity, but by all means, call it what you want. Who says God wasn't behind all the science? And who says this higher power isn't behind consciousness as well?

Let's advocate for relgion for a moment. Let's just say for the purposes of argument that we do have a soul of sorts that survives death. This soul, in a human body, is restricted. It is subject to all the limitations of the physical world. Religion doesn't deny this, and in fact usually has some sort of explanation as to why (whether these explanations are plausible or not, we don't need to debate here). From this point of view, can't we view the brain as a sort of liaison between the physical world and the spiritual world (for lack of a better term)? How about this: the brain is a sort of translator, that processes concepts that are beyond our capacity to understand while we are in physical form, and breaks them down into simplified ideas that our human bodies can comprehend, at least to some extent.

This would be consistent with the view, not unpopular in religionk, that the soul has some sort of greater consciousness after death. So if the brain produces our sense of self, does that prove that we have no form of consciousness after physical death? Maybe. But maybe we do, and without the limitations of the physical world, we don't need the brain as a translator either. In this greater consciousness that we achieve outside our bodies, maybe the concept of the "self" as we know it becomes outdated entirely.

There are a million possibilities. I don't claim to know what happens to us after we die. My point here is not to argue that we have a soul that survives our death, but simply to point out that proving that our sense of self, in this world, at least, comes from the brain, proves nothing about any afterlife, and I'm annoyed with the conclusions that science loves to jump to.

I like science. I'm a fan of science, especially when it comes to the brain. I'm also religious, and I'm sick of advocates for both sides who try to argue that the two are incompatible. On the contrary, I think they need each other, fill in each other's gaps, balance each other out, and in an ideal world would have an open dialogue concerning all these issues that they instead try to take exclusive ownership of. Einstein once said, "Science without relgion is lame, religion without science is blind." Of course, he was only Einstein, but maybe he was really onto something there.