Philip Goff and Keith Frankish of Mind Chat on Why We Are Conscious?

The argument over awareness is one of the most crucial in modern science. Philosophers have fought to revise the history of this enigmatic occurrence for many years.

According to the dominant theory, known as functionalism, awareness is a byproduct of the brain’s interconnected information exchange. However, some people believe it to be more.

The word “consciousness” describes the emotions or experiences you have. Everything from the delectable flavour of chocolate mousse to the excruciating agony of a toothache is included.

Without awareness, mistakes and neural ruts could lead to the collapse of a complicated brain. By putting the brain under conscious control, the rise of awareness and the accompanying power of volition would have served to solve this issue.

The origin of awareness is the subject of numerous conflicting hypotheses. The global neural workspace (GNW) and panpsychism are two of the most well-known.

Whether awareness is intentional is one of the key questions in the modern theory of mind. There are two major schools of thought on this: phenomenal intentionality theory, which contends that conscious states are the result of consciousness, and naturalism, which maintains that intentionality is merely a feature of the mind.

Edmund Husserl is a philosopher of phenomena best known for his theory of intentionality, which regards first-person conscious consciousness as the most fundamental form of knowledge. He contends that a thorough examination of this awareness can profoundly affect several other philosophically relevant topics, such as the theory of perceptions, judgements, recollections, and the nature of aesthetic experience.

One of the most difficult issues in the theory of mind is frequently regarded as whether awareness is phenomenal. Philosophers have approached this issue from various angles, the majority of which can be categorized as “phenomenalism.”

Identity theory, or at least strict psycho-physical type identity theory (Hobson 1997), is the most popular solution to this issue. It links aware mental characteristics, states, and processes to physical ones, most frequently neural or neurophysiological ones. Qualitative, subjective experience is not taken into consideration by this reductionist strategy.

Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origins of consciousness, which remains a persistent psychological mystery. Materialism and dualism, or physicalism, are the two main conventional beliefs.

Both contend that awareness is partially non-physical. However, materialism and dualism each have important detractors and arguments.

The existence of physical awareness is one of the most fundamental issues it. Though many thinkers and scientists contend that it is not, it appears probable that awareness is, in some sense, a material reality.

Many reductionist theories make an effort to physicalize aware mental processes. While some are more focused than others, they all work to some extent to lessen awareness.

The issue of how awareness arises from the brain has been addressed by numerous scientists and philosophers in one way or another. Some have claimed that it is an inherent property of matter (akin to panpsychism), while others have claimed that it is a delusion that science will never be able to study in any significant way.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth contends in his book Being You from 2021 that our experiences of being and having a body are a controlled illusion created from a flurry of sensory stimuli. This is a crucial realization that also aids in our understanding of uncommon perception conditions like psychosis or psychedelia.

Philosophers and scientists alike have been interested in the issue of whether awareness is a science. The work of psychologists and neuroscientists has played a significant role in developing the empirical study of consciousness as a distinct discipline.

Many theories that attempt to explain consciousness scientifically invoke brain characteristics, usually electrical ones like spike rates. This is one method of comprehending the awareness of nature, but it is still unclear which characteristic offers the most fruitful explanatory groundwork.