During the course of this lesson, you will:
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics (such as von Neuman-Wigner’s and QBism) assert the crucial importance of conscious observers. Prof. Carlo Rovelli, on the other hand, tried to formulate an interpretation which could disentangle the complexities of quantum mechanics from the complexities of consciousness. His hope, in doing so, was to bring some clarity on the nature of quantum phenomena as being something independent from human consciousness. This relational interpretation does not confer a superior role to human consciousness: any physical system can be the ‘observer’ relative to which the properties of another physical system emerge. In this lesson we will explore if this relational interpretation can help reconcile the scientific understanding with our 1st-person, lived experience of the mind.
As previously discussed, some interpretations of quantum mechanics (such as von Neuman-Wigner’s and QBism) assert the crucial importance of conscious observers. Prof. Carlo Rovelli, on the other hand, tried to formulate an interpretation which could disentangle the complexities of quantum mechanics from the complexities of consciousness. His hope, in doing so, was to bring some clarity on the nature of quantum phenomena as being something independent from human consciousness. As previously explained, the relational interpretation does not confer a superior role to human consciousness: any physical system can be the ‘observer’ relative to which the properties of another physical system emerge. Can this relational interpretation help reconcile the scientific understanding with our 1st-person, lived experience of the mind?
Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett (1942-), have argued that consciousness is simply an illusion produced by our brains, or otherwise consciousness could possibly be an ‘epiphenomenon’: not an illusion as such, but still ‘something’ that lacks any substance or influence, alike a shadow. This is the ‘default’ view taken by many neuroscientists today, who very often assume a philosophical position of ‘physicalism’ (also called ‘materialism’). This is the philosophical view that everything in reality can ultimately be described in physical terms (and therefore described by the laws of physics). As a consequence, consciousness is seen as ultimately describable in physical terms, in particular by the physical workings of the brain.
However, it is important to remember that such reasoning is an assumption, not an experimental observation, and can therefore be legitimately questioned. When correlations are observed between mental states and brain states, physicalists assume that the brain causes those mental states, but this is not necessarily the case – correlation is not the same as causation. Whilst it may be possible to isolate certain regions of the brain that activate when we see the colour ‘red’, for example, this neural correlation does not explain the subjective experience of the ‘redness of red’ (also known as ‘qualia’) or indeed many other kinds of subjective experience. There is no known theory of how unconscious brain matter could even give rise to the subjective experience that we all feel in every moment, but physicalists hold out hope (rightly or wrongly) that such a theory will be devised one day.
An alternative view, known as Metaphysical Idealism, asserts that consciousness is not only an intrinsically existing entity, but the very foundation of reality itself. In other words, proponents of this philosophical view argue that the nature of reality is, ultimately, mental. All experience arises within consciousness itself. Our minds abstract certain properties of experience as the physical world and label them as ‘matter’; the laws of physics, in this context, are not inherent properties of an existing physical reality, but regularities within the patterns of experience that can be described through mathematical laws. This position has much in common with the Yogācāra school of Mahayana Buddhism discussed above.
‘Idealism’ has long been out of favour in Western Philosophy, since Bishop Berkeley first pioneered it in the eighteenth century, but it is starting to find backing again from thinkers such as Bernardo Kastrup. Kastrup’s view is that there is only one cosmic consciousness and that individual human (and animal) minds are ‘dissociated alters’ of this cosmic consciousness, surrounded by its thoughts. The inanimate world we see around us is the extrinsic appearance of these thoughts, not a separate substance. Philosophically, this is an example of a ‘monist’ position, meaning that it sees reality as ultimately made up of only one kind of ‘stuff’, namely consciousness. Physicalists are also monists, but at the other end of the spectrum: they also maintain that ultimately reality is made up of only one kind of ‘stuff’ but, in their case, this ‘stuff’ is matter. Various other positions in-between these two ‘monist’ positions have been proposed.
A middle ground between these two positions views consciousness as a dynamic process that is correlated with brain activity, but not completely determined by it; at least, not in the way that a reflection of an object in a mirror is determined by the object itself. According to this view, mind and brain are different ways of describing the same complex phenomenon, but the ‘mind aspect’ and ‘brain aspect’ remain ontologically distinct. It is difficult to indicate which specific view in Western philosophy of the mind most closely represents the ‘Buddhist’ position, but an ‘in-between’ or ‘middle way’ approach would be the best candidate. A purely physicalist account would not work from a Buddhist perspective, given Buddhism’s understanding that reality is deeper than mere physical matter and its corresponding belief in rebirth or reincarnation. However, a purely idealist view could be questioned as contradicting the reality of an external physical world.
‘Cartesian Dualism’ is in-between these two poles, but this view sets out a very rigid distinction between matter and mind. This contrasts with the Buddhist view, which sees these as much more closely related and intimately interacting with each other. Also, from a Buddhist view, neither matter nor mind are solid ‘substances’ in the way Descartes envisaged, but are dynamic, evanescent processes that lack any autonomous ‘self’ of their own. In this sense, the best description, at least from an early Buddhist perspective, would be something like a very dynamic form of ‘process dualism’. But since Mahayana philosophy sees ultimate reality as non-dual and empty, there is also a sense in which the Mahayana Buddhist view could ultimately be seen as closer to ‘Dual-aspect Monism’. There are other ‘in-between’ possibilities as well as different forms of dualism, such as non-reductionist emergentism and panpsychism, each of which shares some similarities with Buddhist thought, particularly a wish to avoid the ‘extremes’ of physicalism and idealism respectively.
One of the great aims of modern neuroscience and the cognitive sciences is to bridge the gap between subjective experience (our mind as seen from a 1st-person perspective) and the dynamic changes in the physical nature of our brain, which can be measured through the 3rd-person perspective of science. However, the profound difference between our understanding of matter and experience (which seems to be of a completely different nature than matter) make this ‘explanatory gap’ a major scientific and philosophical challenge.
This ‘hard problem of consciousness’, as it was labelled by David Chalmers (1966), can be stated as follows: if matter is the fundamental nature of reality, and consciousness is purely a by-product of neural activity, how can physical interactions give rise to experience? This is the same question discussed above and, as we have seen, there are a number of possible responses to it. All of these responses, apart from physicalism, take the reality of consciousness seriously and try to incorporate its reality, one way or another, into our overall picture of the universe. It may well be that consciousness is fundamental to the universe in some sense (similar to the way that ‘space’, ‘time’, ‘energy’ and ‘matter’ all seem to be fundamental) and is therefore not just an illusion or an accidental, ineffectual by-product of physical brain activity.
Such a conclusion would fit well with a Buddhist understanding, although mainstream neuroscience remains largely wedded to physicalist models and mainstream science generally operates on materialist assumptions (at least in public!). However, Prof. Carlo Rovelli’s approach to the hard problem again resonates with the Mādhyamika Buddhist approach outlined above. Fundamental to Rovelli’s understanding is the idea that neither mind nor matter are concrete entities in their own right, but are relative conditions that arise relationally. Consciousness is not a ‘thing’ but a complex process. Cognitive scientists and neuroscientists are discovering this in relation to the mind/brain just as physicists have discovered it in relation to matter. Since both mind and matter lack ‘concrete’ substance (or ‘self’ in Buddhist terms), the hard problem ‘softens’ to a large degree, although it might not completely evaporate. It is only when matter and mind are thought of as separate, concrete substances that a seemingly irresolvable conflict between them arises.
In fact, Rovelli does not think that the mind and the brain are separate but rather sees them as different ways of describing the same richly multifaceted mind-brain reality, though he acknowledges that the exact relationship between them is extremely mysterious. Moreover, from the perspective of Mādhyamika analysis, the moment-to-moment changing process-nature mind and matter respectively means that, despite having different properties, they share much in common at a fundamental level – an understanding which also helps to ‘bridge the gap’ presented by the hard problem.
Research into mind-training and meditation shows that it is possible for the mind to physically change the brain (as observed with respect to the phenomenon of neuroplasticity) just as it is the case that the physical brain supports the mind. So, whatever kind of distinct ontological status may be accorded to mind, there is certainly a ‘two-way traffic’ at work. This is clearly in accord with the general Buddhist approach to mind-training and shows that various Buddhist practices are correlated with real neurophysiological states.
There is a debate in the philosophy of science as to whether the so-called ‘laws’ of nature are prescriptive or descriptive. The first implies a law-giver or designer (such as the Creator God of the major monotheistic religions), i.e., a being who set up the laws in the first place so that, in a sense, they are imposed from the ‘outside’, and are also immutable or ‘written in stone’. By contrast, the second sees the term ‘law’ as a human misnomer, the use of an anthropomorphic term (think police forces, judges and parliamentarians) to describe something which is really just an observed regularity in nature, onto which humans have imputed their own idea of ‘law’ with all of its associations. In this view, things are not ’set up’. Instead, they just exist in a regular, rather than irregular, way and this regularity can be approximated by law-like propositions that humans impose for their own convenience.
In addition, many such ‘laws’ turn out to be only approximations of deeper underlying laws or regularities. A very famous example of this is the way that Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation was usurped by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which gave a more detailed and comprehensive description of the phenomenon of gravity. Newton’s laws still work well at the everyday level, but no-one today doubts that Einstein’s description is the more accurate of the two. Moreover, we should reasonably expect our current understanding of physics to change again and, in fact, we know that our current models, or understanding of physical laws, is not the final picture and, sooner or later, will give way to a deeper and more complete understanding. It is therefore questionable whether we can even talk about a law existing in the first place with any certainty: there is a law only for so long as it is not ’trumped’ by an even deeper law.
From the perspective of philosophical idealism, it is possible to take this idea even further and ask: do the laws or regularities of nature exist at all or are they literally just products of mind? Most physicists would see this as an extreme view, but lots of outlandish sounding ideas are common currency in modern physics. This also relates to the question in quantum physics of ‘realist’ interpretations (like David Bohm’s ‘hidden variables’, Carlo Rovelli’s relational interpretation or the ‘many worlds’ interpretation), which take mind or consciousness out of the picture, and ‘anti-realist’ interpretations (like ‘Copenhagen’ and ‘QBism’), which make mind or consciousness integral to their understanding of quantum systems. But even if full-blown idealism is not correct, there still may be compelling reasons for thinking that mind or consciousness is more than just an illusion and that it plays an important and active role in the workings of the world.
Buddhism itself posits the existence of laws that govern our lives and experiences. These are not physical laws but relate to human experience. They primarily operate at the level of mind, but also impact the material world. The Buddha did not invent these laws but is seen to have been the first (in our era at least) to have discovered them and taught them primarily for the benefit of human beings. The main law-like principle in Buddhism is that of karma, or ‘cause and effect’: simply speaking, how intentionally positive actions ripen into positive results and intentionally negative actions ripen into negative results (in each case both for the doer of the action and for others who are affected by it). No such action is ‘wasted’ but will eventually bear fruit, even if it might take a long time for such ‘seeds’ to ripen, even if their results are modified or muted (including by other intervening intentional actions) along the way.
The above can also be expressed in terms of karmic ‘information’ which is never lost, but rather accumulates a ‘potential’ or ‘probability’ of manifesting or ‘ripening’ at an appropriate point in the future. It is important to note that the operation of karma is seen as very complex, subtle and sophisticated, such that only a fully enlightened being is thought to be able to decipher its workings; it is not the only determining factor in bringing about particular conditions but rather exerts a contributory influence on future circumstances and events. Karma is far removed from the idea of ‘fate’, but is instead a natural process at work, much like physical laws such as gravity or electromagnetism.
Given the central importance of karma to the Buddhist worldview, a lot of effort has gone into understanding and describing the mechanism by which it is seen to operate – how the ‘ripening’ happens, in effect – and different philosophical schools within Buddhism have articulated different ideas. The key question is: how do karmic ’seeds’ get passed from one life to the next, especially as there is no ‘soul’ or ‘self-essence’ or ‘substance’ to carry them? This is closely connected to the perennial question in Buddhism of what it is that gets reborn in the process of rebirth. Some schools have posited that there is a real ‘continuity of the mind’ that carries karmic seeds like a conveyor belt. Others see the whole collection of aggregates that make up a person as carrying over from life to life, while still others restrict this to just the subtle mental consciousness (but no other aggregates) which passes. As briefly mentioned above, the Yogācāra school came up with the idea of a deeper level of ‘storehouse consciousness’, beneath our ordinary level of consciousness, that acts as a ‘repository’ of karmic seeds and carries them both during and between lives.
However, the (Prāsaṅgika) Mādhyamika school views such ideas as too essentialist and running contrary to the underlying principle of śūnyatā, the self-emptiness of all phenomena. Under analytical scrutiny, they insist, no essential ‘self’ of any kind can be seen to exist, it is only useful as a relative designation or label to apply to a bundle of impermanent attributes that combine to make up what we think of as a ‘person’. However, even karma and karmic ’seeds’ are similarly empty of self-essence. So, the Mādhyamikas articulated the idea of ‘zhig-pa’ or ‘disintegratedness’ to describe the process by which karma is passed from life to life. Since (as most Buddhist schools would agree) things arise, abide and cease simultaneously, rather than in a sequential order, everything in every moment is always ‘ceasing’. This means that, in a sense, everything is ‘imprinted’ with its ‘having ceased’ (which is the logical indication of its ‘having been’). This ‘having ceased-ness’ is what is meant by ‘disintegratedness’.
Hence, just because an action ceases does not mean that there is nothing left after it has ceased; instead, a disintegratedness remains. Of course, that disintegratedness also immediately ceases, which gives rise to its own disintegratedness, and so on in an unending process. Therefore, disintegratedness can be seen as a kind of energy that connects an action with its result, although the result will not come to fruition until all the necessary causes and conditions have come together in the right way to enable it to do so.
The Mādhyamika school does not see this as a negation, or as nihilistic, but actually the opposite, since this process is what enables an interconnected reality to operate and exist at all. In other words, the ‘production’ of a disintegratedness by the ceasing of an action implies that the action had an existence (or at least that it didn’t not have an existence). In the language of philosophical logic, this highlights the difference between an affirming negative and a non-affirming negative. Hence, from such a perspective, there is no need for a ‘storehouse’ consciousness, because there is nothing to be ‘stored’. The benefit of this Mādhyamika approach is to completely eradicate any substantial locus that encourages our tendency to cling to things – which is seen, according to this philosophy, as the ultimate cause of our suffering.
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