The nature of the connection between the Conscious Mind and the Physical Body is a famous philosophical and scientific problem that involves determining the interactions and causal relationship(s) of two very different entities: the conscious or mental mind that comprises the totality of our experiential existence and the underlying physical mechanism of the brain-nervous system and any other possibly relevant physical components such as the bodies hormonal system. This boundary connection problem has arisen as a result of the division of the world into subjective and objective portions. The nature of the objective is derived from the nature and properties of our own subjective, mainly sensory, experiences combined with those of other percieving beings. From the total intersubjective set of mostly sensory based experiences subjected to the ordering of reason, an objective world is concieved, existing independently of the sensory perceptions of any one percieving being and with its own law following properties. Science in the last few centuries has mapped out the properties of the objective world in great detail by ignoring the individual subjective component of experience as much as possible and concentrating on exploring and understanding the physical properties of experience. Now the question becomes what is the place and relationship of subjective experience itself to that objective world?

Introduction

Is it possible to explain the existence and nature of consciousness in terms of the objective, physical world view that modern science has constructed at present (i.e. circa 2000 ACE)? The answer to this question is not guaranteed to be affirmative but that answer won't come unless it is pursued diligently and thoroughly. If the answer is negative then that will require a fundamental expansion of our current scientific understanding of reality. By consciousness, I mean not that restricted form called self-consciousness which refers only to having a sense of oneself as a seperate entity in the universe, but to consciousness in its most general form: all the thoughts, feelings, memories, visual images, sounds, smells, bodily sensations, dreams and so on that form our existence. Indeed, we are in a very real sense, nothing but consciousness. To begin our examination of this question let us take a hard look at the present view of reality as seen through the eyes of modern science and see what implications and restrictions exist for creating a possible theory of consciousness.

The Arising of the Idea of an Objective, Independent Reality

How has the idea arisen that the reality in which we are immersed consists of objective, physical phenomena? At the most basic personal level most people believe in an objective reality that includes us but exists independently of ourselves or any conscious observer. We can easily imagine a time when no conscious life existed anywhere on the Earth, or indeed in the entire universe. Likewise we can imagine a future time when all life has died and only a sterile physical universe remains. On a more personal level we can remember a vague beginning to our individual consciousness and we are told by older people about times before we were born. We are also aware of other's peoples deaths, when their consciousness apparently ceases to be or at least be present to us while our own continues. On an everyday level, the overall stability and continuity of the objects and phenomena that compose our ordinary consciousness, regardless of periods of sleep or other episodes of discontinuity, creates a powerful argument that the world is indeed independent of us. So powerful is the stabilty of this subset of our individual consciousness (as opposed to our thoughts, dreams, etc.) that we learn to believe in an independent and stable world which is merely percieved by our senses. After a while we forget that this independent, stable world is a deduction from the properties of our own consciousness. We must keep in mind that our consciousness comes first when we talk about the properties of reality and that all properties of reality are in a strict sense properties of our consciousness.

To make this fact clearer, consider the old philosophical question of whether the fall of a tree in a forest makes a sound if no one is around to hear it. If you asked the typical person if the tree made a sound, the answer would most likely be an unqualified yes. If you have experienced trees falling in a forest then you know they make noise when they fall. Just because one is not present is no reason to believe that a sound was not made when all witnessed cases of tree falling involve sound making. Of course the key issue here is that we only know with certainty about things we actually witness directly, i.e. are consciously experienced. Now since it is so plausible that a tree falling without any witnesses actually made a sound it is hard for us to believe otherwise although we can only test the idea for witnessed falls. To make this seemly trivial point clear, let us also ask whether deaf elves danced on the trunk as the tree fell while the tree turned various shades of blue before returning to its earlier color. In this case the answer is most likely a big No! since trees turning blue is not known to spontaneously occur in nature. Now since we believe that elves are only creatures of our imaginations and are not real then we cannot imagine a realistic case of a tree falling with elves actually being present. Now if we put in the further condition that no evidence of sound making was left behind for later investigation, so perhaps the particular tree we are discussing fell millions of years ago, then in actuality the hypothesized sound is also purely a product of our imaginations. Now the key difference is that although the elves and the sound of a particular falling tree are both purely imaginary, the postulated sound is similar to events we have actually experienced and so we give the sound a higher "plausibility" of having occurred than we do to the sudden appearance and disappearance of dancing elves.

It thus is from the observed properties of consciousness that we deduce, collect and assemble a whole range of ideas about the nature of reality. Now every idea we have has a certain "plausibility" associated with it. This associated plausibility determines in a large part how we view the world to "actually" be, including the very basic idea of an independent, objective world existing independently of our conscious selves. As young children it was much easier for us to believe in monsters hiding in our closets than it is as an adult. Long experience has shown us the implausibility of the idea that the closet monsters are real in the same sense as people or animals are real. We simply have to open the closet door anytime we suspect monsters to be present to test the idea. Now we cannot so simply test whether the idea of an independent, objective reality is really true. To do so would require us to cease to be conscious and yet be aware of the world, a feat that does not seem possible. It is not enough to become unconscious and then conscious again, because during the period of unconsciousness we do not personally know whether the world actually exists independently of us during this time, or even whether we exist during this time. However we can be told by other people what happened to us during the break or discontiniuty in our waking consciousness, and we can watch other people go through a similar process, e.g. we or they might get completely drunk and pass out.

This illustrates two things once we have accepted the plausibility of other independent observing consciousnesses besides our own: our ideas about reality are linked to those of our felllow conscious beings and in this expanded sense, our ideas about reality are deduced from the properties of this linked set of consciousnesses. The linking puts more restrictions on the ideas we can have about the nature of reality than that due to our individual consciousness. Now with the entire linked set of consciousnesses we still cannot perform our experiment of seeing whether the world exists independently of the entire set, since their would be no external witnesses during periods when the group consciousness has ceased to exist. Still, having examined many properties of the world from a scientific point of view we know two things: First we see that the world must exist independently of any individual consciousness, including our own, since we see the processes of birth and death occuring all around us. Secondly, our entire species and ultimately that of all life seems to have evolved and thus at some point in the past it did not exist and thus the consciousness of organic life did not exist. However since we are here, and we see the process of evolution occuring, we can deduce that there MUST have been a universe in the past devoid of the consciousness associated with organic life and thus that the universe can and does exist independently of our consciousness and probably will at some future time in the objectively observed world. Of course such universes that are devoid of any such consciousness are as completely inacessible to us as elves or any of thousands of imaginary universes ( like Never Never land from the story Peter Pan, for example) that we could conjure up in our imaginations. Again, our ideas about reality and its independent objective existence are derived from the properties of our consciousness and are not open to independent testing. All we can do is assign a range of plausibilites to the various ideas that we have.

Let us now look how at how plausibility is assigned to various ideas by science and how our conception of reality is constructed from a network of plausible ideas. I will ignore the very interesting problem of how ideas arise in the first place. First keep in mind that ideas are themselves a part of our consciousness and thus have the double function of being a subset of our consciousness while at the same time refering to other parts of our consciousness including possibly themselves. They have both a form in our consciousness and a "meaning" that we understand. Now this is trivially obvious to anyone reading this essay, but it is important to remember that the ideas that we accept as indisputably true, such as "all people will eventually die", have the same form as ideas that we accept as indisputably false, such as "the Chicago Cubs will someday win the World Series". Thus it is necessary to establish the plausibility or truthfulness of an idea. It is not inherent in the expressed form of the idea. Although an idea has a meaning, its truthfulness has to be assigned by us, including the truthfulness of the idea of truth itself.

The great and central idea of science is that of taking guesses, suspicions, assertions, insights, etc. about the nature of a known or observed phenomenon and creating a model of that phenomenon. The model is then tested by comparison with observed phenomena using controlled experiments when possible and/or further observations. Then the model is either accepted or rejected depending on the how well the model predicts the results of the experiments or further observations. In cases of clearcut confirmation or disagreement the process is fairly straightforward, but in practice it is often not so easy. If the predictions are off but not so badly that the model is rejected outright then model is refined. The process is then repeated with the new or improved model until errors in the experiments or observations become larger than any discrepancies between the model and the phenomenon under consideration. A proposed model must also be more or less consistent with the relevant body of previously well established facts and this consistency should be built into a good model before it is exposed to experimental testing. The model must also be specific and clear enough to make real predictions and often, but not always, this requires mathenatically based models.

A crucial feature in deciding on the plausibility and reliability of a proposed model is the abililty of the model to predict future phenomena or to lead to the discovery of previously unsuspected phenomena. The predictive ability of well tested scientific models, such as that of the quantum theory of the atom, is striking but easily explained by assuming that the model is an accurate description of real objects in an objective universe. And conversely, the reliability of behaviors predicted by the well tested model or theory reinforces the belief that an objective, law-following universe really exists. The quantum model of the atom has lead to so many discoveries in physics and chemistry and applications in modern technology that we are essentially forced, unless we are very obstinate, to consider the modern ideas about atoms fundamentally different from ideas about elves.

The investigation of the universe via the scientific process described above cannot cover all possible phenomena but only those phenomena that consist of stable features that interact via law following processes, i.e. phenomena that are capable of being subjected to modeling and testing. Science depends on the process of induction and the repeatability of phenomenon in order to make its characterizations and models. Transient, unique and nonrepeating phenomena are not capable of being subjected to scientific investigation even if they exist. Phenomena must thus be capable of some type of observation either directly with the senses or with measuring instruments or indirectly through its effects on known observable phenomena. Unwitnessed anomalous events or phenomena that are only weakly coupled or not coupled at all to the law following phenomena, do not fall within the power of scientfic investigation. This was pointed out in the case of the sound of the tree falling versus that of elves dancing on the falling tree trunk. Such phenomena as the sudden appearance of dancing elves could very well be happening, but they are not capable of being incorporated in a scientific or stable view of objective reality, unless the elves could actually be witnessed and observed repeatedly by reliable witnesses. Phenomena that are witnessed or reported by a few people but uncapable of any further reliable confirmation form borderline cases that may or may not be true depending on how how much credence one wants to give anecdotal reports. These type of phenomena makeup much of what is reported in "fringe" science such as UFO sightings that cannot be readily explained as misidentification of known phenomena, or Yeti sightings or sightings of the Loch Ness monster, etc. Sometimes these reports do turn out to be true and are confirmed by later scientific investigation, such as early sailor's reports about a monster dubbed the Kraken attacking ships that turned out to be based on sightings of giant squids. The Viking Sagas told of visits to a mysterious land in the West called Vinland and encounters with a people the Vilings called Skraelings. Although long considered myth, these turned out to be based on real historical accounts of encounters between Norsemen and North American Indians.

Some Basic Philosophical Considerations about the Nature of Reality: A Middle Way between Absolute, Independent Existence and Nihilism

Before getting deeper into the principles of modern science let us consider some basic philosophical principles about the nature of underlying reality that have long been part of our prescientific culture and are still relevant.

1. Something cannot come from nothing. Nothing is really nonexistence and nonexistence cannot produce existence since nonexistence is truly nonexistent and whatever does not exist, does not exist. So the idea of creation ex nihilo (from nothing) ismeaningless. Nonexistence has no causal power.

2. Reality is one and all existence exists, so things cannot truly cease to exist or come from nonexistence.

3. There are no truly self-existing, independent parts of knowable reality, since such self-existent entities would be independent, unchanging, non-interacting things that would not be part of the existence we know, i.e. no means would exist to discover their existence.

4. Only the overall totality of reality exists as an independent thing. However it is not really independent in any meaningful sense since nothing else exists from which it can be independent or separate.

5. Although the totality of reality is one, within that continuum or background we can distinguish a multiplicity of interacting entities or existents. Although perhaps not truly independent in the deepest sense, our experience shows that we are faced with a multiplicity of existents within the total reality.

6. Each thing that exists consists of parts which are themselves composed of parts and so on ad infinitum in both the upward and downward direction of scales.

7. A thing that exists does so only as a projection of the mind on a collection of parts which is given a name, but that named 'thing' does not truly exist as an independent entity and that includes the 'parts' themselves. It's existence as a discrete thing is only nominal and not absolute.

8. Reality is a changing flux of existents, so that change comes in the form of changes to prior existing things. What comes to be can only come from prior existents and hence consists of rearrangements. And what ceases to exist can only be another rearrangement.

9. In the physical world, "things" tend to exist as bound entities that are held together by forces that exceed any nearby surrounding forces. Small things are tightly bound and larger things are made from these smaller things but are bound together more loosely than the small things themselves. Thus we have quarks bound together to form neutrons and protons, which in turn can bind together more loosely to form a nucleus which in turn can bind with a cloud of electrons to form an atom and then atoms can bind together to form molucules, etc. Large collections of atoms can be bound together by their mutual graviatational attraction to form planets and stars, etc.

Some Principles Regarding the Nature of Objective Reality

[The Uniformity of nature, reign of law, every event has a cause, induction principle. ]

Now we can state in more detail some of the general principles in regard to the nature of objective reality that humanity has deduced. Some of the main underlying principles and assumptions used in scientific models are that nature is uniform, that nature follows laws, that every event has a cause and the induction priniciple. The uniformity of nature is the belief that laws that work in one place, also work in every other similar place in the universe. Thus science assumes that the laws of motion, electro-magnetism, atomic properties, etc. that apply here on Earth also apply to the distant stars. This assumption has made astronomy possible and so far no reason to doubt this assumption has arisen. Before the advent of modern astronomy people often assumed in the old geocentric model of the Cosmos that the laws that worked on Earth did not apply to the spheres of the fixed stars or the heavens that were assumed to exist beyond that. The notion of uniformity also applies to uniformity in time, so that laws that are observed to work today are assumed to have worked in the past and will work in the future. The consistency of the traces of past events with known laws, such as the laying down of strata in the geologic record, so far has given us no cause to doubt this principle. Likewise, many predictions about future events are routinely confirmed, for example the movements of the planets in the solar system can be predicted quite precisely, so that has given us some confidence in this assumption, although the longest term predictions are at best only a few centuries old.

The uniformity of nature is clearly tied to the principle that natural phenomena do follow laws, i.e. that they exhibit stable behaviors. If phenomena did not follow laws or changed properties with time and place in unpredictable ways, then the whole concept of identifiable phenomena would break down. One could know little about the universe with any certainty except that it is unpredictable. We are somewhat in this position with respect to the content of our dreams which are rarely coherent from night to night (unlike our day to day waking experience). Dream events are mostly unpredictable, although the style of the dreams (i.e. as mental visual and aural imagery usually with rather faded colors and subdued sounds compared to waking sensations) and the fact that they will occur when we sleep are stable and predictable.

A time honored belief is that every event has a cause. Each phenomenon that is observed is believed to arise from interactions that depend on and result in changes to prior existing conditions. No phenomena are believed to spontaneously appear ex nihilo without any relationship to existing conditions. Such phenomena would be randomly appearing miracles if they occurred. Now if spontaneous and anomalous events are observed to happen then it is still assumed that a cause exists, but the cause may be hidden from view in a deeper level of reality than that currently accessible. If new independent phenomena did arise spontaneously in the universe then the properties and the nature of the universe would cease to be coherent or predictable or subject to laws. As mentioned earlier, if such completely independent phenomena do occur then they fall outside the purview of modern science to explain them in any coherent fashion since they are not connected with any law following parts of the universe.

Now the principle of cause and effect has been proven to work very well from thesubmicroscopic scale to the great scale of the universe at large. Only at the very largest and smallest scales do we have cause to wonder seriously whether our notions of cause and effect are not in full operation. With regard to the appearance of the contents of our consciousness there may be some doubt as well. At the smallest scales where the quantum theory operates, the positions and momenta, and the energies and durations of particles are truly unpredictable in detail but do follow statistical laws on the average. Within the vacuum of space, virtual particles appear and disappear suddenly on a regular basis but which particles will appear and where is indeterminate except that they follow known conservation laws and that their energies and their duration of appearance fall within the constraints of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So at the atomic and subatomic scale, individual events can be relatively unpredictable but as one averages over greater spatial and temporal scales, statistical stability begins to hold sway. Extreme quantum fluctuations at large scales can take place but they are assumed to be, statistically speaking, extraordinairly rare. The true nature of the quantum probablity function and its relation to other phenomenon such as that of consciousness is a source of great speculation and concern at the moment.

At the largest scale of the universe we have to explain the appearance and sudden expansion of the universe itself. Now perhaps the universal creation is a one time miracle and since then the universe has been following an evolution guided by laws. Or perhaps there were prior existing conditions and our universe is simply a new or local manifestation of phenomena within a much greater universe than the one we can see. The question of the origin of the universe is still wide open and is a great generator of speculative theories and popular level books.

With regard to the content of our dreams, we have another case where the rules of strict cause and effect and coherence seem to break down. The contents of our dreams or the visions seen in a near dream state or even in quiet meditation arise spontaneously before our conscious eye without any volition on our part and often consist of full blown scenes or landscapes or visions of people we don't know, etc. These images can arise in rapid succession and in a completely unpredictabe manner. So here is a real case within everyone's experience, or at least within that of people conscious enough to remember their dreams or access the near dream state, where what we consciously observe does seem to consist of independently appearing, and often surprising phenomena, with little apparent relationship to each other. The dream contents seemingly come into existence from nowhere. There is some coherence in that dream visions tend to be somewhat related to our waking lives but this is not always so. Now although the source of dreams is not really known at this point, one could argue that the reason for the seeming incoherence and independence of our dream content is similar to the case of watching cable TV while another person randomly flips the channels. The dream contents themselves may be formed elsewhere within some mechanism(s) that follow cause and effect rules but the manner in which we percieve the dreams introduces the elements of incoherence and independence, much as the TV shows on different channels may have little to do with each other. However the origin of dreams is in reality a complete unknown at this point, so we will have to simply put aside the issue for the time being of whether dreaming points to a part of the universe that doesn't follow the simple principles given above or whether dreams are the manifestation of unknown, but coherent and rule-following mechanism.

The last important principle in the assumptions of science is the induction principle, which is related to the qualities mentioned above and in many ways is the parent principle. When we observe the same event repeatedly occurring, such as the sun rising everyday or the fact that if we throw a ball in the air it will come down again, if it is not obstructed, we tend to form an idea that the same thing will happen again if conditions repeat. There is no way to prove that the same behavior will follow again based on observations of repeated occurences of prior behavior but that is what experience shows is most likely to happen and what we come to expect. Thus it may turn out that the sun will not rise tomorrow but the experience of many successive days with the sun rising leads us to expect that it will. This expectation is called the induction principle. Now the vast number of phenomena that do follow the induction principle leads us to the belief that the cause for this lies in the operation of underlying laws that follow cause and effect rules and are uniform in nature. All the principles mentioned above are based on inductive observations of the workings of the universe and are formalizations of our basic experience in exploring nature. As already mentioned, if new events and phenomena appeared suddenly and unexpectedly contrary to our inductive expectations, such as a day without a sunrise or if water suddenly stopped satisfying our thirst or gravity ceased to operate and we all flew off the Earth, then the basic working assumptions and principles of physical science that have been successful for centuries, would have to be changed or at least modified. But so far, we have no reason to do that.

The accumulation of the great number of well tested and reliable models of natural phenomena under the name of modern science has created a powerful collective argument that we live in an ordered and objective universe that we call in brief the physical universe. When we look out at the universe at large we see planets moving in known pathways, sunlight scattering off molecules in the atmosphere, rocks forming through the slow process of sedimentation, etc. All these various phenomena are studied under the indvidual branches of science such as physics, chemistry, biology, geology, astronomy, etc. In essence the physical universe consists of objects that behave in known or knowable ways. The job of science is then to elucidate what objects are present in the universe through their observable properties, whether direct or indirect, and to describe their behaviours in relation to all other objects in the physical universe. The challenge facing modern physical science is to see if it can incorperate consciousness within this framework of physical objects, properties and behaviours or has to expand that framework in relating consciousness to the physical world in a coupled, casual manner.

An important assumption in modern physical science is that the constituents of matter, i.e. the set of elementary particles and their interactions, are entirely described by their physical properties such as rest mass, kinetic energy, electric charge, spin, momentum, etc. These particles are assumed to be "dead" and devoid of consciousness. A collection of hydrogen atoms in a gas cloud is nothing but that: a collection of dead, lifeless, consciousless atoms. Complex forms of matter can of course be built from the elementary particles. We can characterize the form and the changes of state of these more complex matter conglomerations just as we can do so for the elementary particles, although the complexity is often so great that this can only be done in a statistical and low resolution manner. Since modern physical understanding only allows particles and collections of particles to assume physical states described by such parameters as position, energy, momentum, spin, charge, etc. when referrring to small groups of one to a few hundred particles and qualities such as temperature, pressure, chemical composition, hardness, elasticity, viscosity, etc. for larger collections, we can look upon matter and its changes of state as something like a machine: i.e. a collection of lifeless parts whose configuration can change with time in a relatively predictable manner. Now the challenge of modern physical science is to see how or whether certain forms of matter i.e. human beings or the higher animals, can be conscious entities simply by shaping matter in the proper form and properly changing its configuration with time. This approach has worked well in explaining the properties of life but consciousness so far seems to be a much more difficult problem. A basic working assumption in this approach is that individual atoms and molecules don't possess consciousness but at some level of organization matter becomes "complex" enough for consciousness to exist.

Modern Science and the General Nature of the Connection of Consciousness with the Physical

Let's briefly review what has been discovered so far in the current modern or Western investigations of consciousness and its connection with the physical domain. The physical location of our consciousness seems to be within our own bodies. Our physical bodies are the only parts of the universe that are under the direct control of our consciousness, at least to a partial degree. Our bodies are also complex collections of objects with various behaviours that we can characterize physically from without and experience consciously from within. We now know that the heart functions as a pump for blood, the liver eliminates wastes from the blood and so on. The physical location of consciousness has been narrowed down mainly to the brain, a collection of roughly 10¹¹ special cells called neurons. The neurons interact with each other via transmssions of complex proteins dubbed neurotransmitters across an intracellular gap and by electrochemical transmissions along thin individual cellular fibers. Sensory organs collect information from the environment and transmit that information via nervous signals to the brain and spinal column. Neural transmissions generated in the brain are output to the bodies muscles and thus stimulate and coordinate muscle based movement. Neuroscience has begun the task of understanding the behavior of this vast and complex network of cells.

At this point we can ask a very important question: assuming that we can completely understand the physical configuration and behaviour of the brain and nervous system, would this give us an a priori understanding of our consciousness? In other words, if we did not know of the prior existence of consciousness already in the brain could we deduce its existence and properties from the brain itself? In short, the answer at the present time appears to be no. All that can be studied directly are neurons and chemicals and neural impulses, etc. but the feelings, thoughts and sensations we all experience and that may be associated with some particular portion of the brain are entirely invisible and undectable with any current instruments. Thus understanding the brain's physical properties and behaviors will not give us an a priori understanding of the origin of consciousness anymore than understanding the workings of an automobile will allow us to understand the consciousness of automobiles. Of course in the case of automobiles, we simply assume that no consciousness is present and thus there is nothing more to understand. In the case of our own brains we can't make this assumption so easily, unless we wish to deny our own existence. So apparently consciousness already seems to be something more or apart or special with regard to the underlying physical machinery with which it is associated.

Although we have no a priori way of predicting the conscious properties of matter or even whether any given configuration of matter has any consciousness at all, for the specific case of ourselves, we can make a mapping between our conscious states and associated behavioral and physical states of the brain. It is only by knowing that we are already conscious that science can make progress by studying such correlations at the present time. As far as other species are concerned, we are in the position of having to interpret their behaviors and associating them with their brain states since we cannot ask them what they are experiencing. This is a very active area in brain-psychological research at this time. One frequently hears news announcements about how some neural state was observed to be associated with some particular behavioral or mental state and thus the brain center of activity X has been discovered and hence "explained". On deeper reading one finds that there is usually no clear conception at all of how the brain state really produces the given behavior or mental state, but at least this is a start.

Now if we make the assumption that our current ideas about the physical universe form a correct and complete description of reality, such that all the properties of a given physical system are based on underlying propeties of its components (e.g. life is based on complex molecular chemistry) then the physical brain must produce the conscious mind in its entirety. In the brains complex dance of neural transmissions we must find ourselves. Now if the changing states of the brain entirely encompass our consciousness, then everyhing we see, feel, hear, touch, imagine and dream are all neural transmissions within our skulls. Our entire experience and thus all that we are, are nothing but physical states of our very physical brains. This is a working assumption in much of the modern investigation of the brain and consciousness.

Consider some interesting implications if this assumption turns out to be true. Our consciousness, as I argued earlier, is all that we are. We deduce the properties of reality from the nature of our consciousness. It is impossible for us to truly test whether the universe exists independently of consciousness. Now however, if we take the physical view of reality to its logical conclusion, we see that our consciousness is a product of a physical state of matter. Our brains states model an external, independent reality that is perceived via our senses. When we touch a flower, that "touch" is really a state of our brain. We cannot really "know" external, physical reality directly but only in a secondary sense as represented in our brain. Our consciousness is therefore not an experience of "direct" reality, but only a representation thereof, albeit a good one. We have thus executed a strange loop in which the properties of reality as deduced from our consciousness, lead us to the belief that our consciousness is not "real" but merely a representation of those same deduced properties. The deduced underlying properties of reality are therefore considered more "real" than the consciousness from which they are derived! Yet ultimately these deduced properties are nothing but ideas or models that we have created to describe reality and hence actually exist as only a subset of our consciousness like any other idea or set of ideas we possess.

The real power of ideas lies in the actions they lead us to undertake that in turn change our experience and lead us to new experiences that we could not have had without those ideas. For example, following certain complex instructions with the proper parts available would allow us to assemble an airplane, with which we could then fly through the air. Likewise the set of ideas we have will determine what actions we will undertake and thus to a certain extent determine what new ideas, if any, we will pick as a result of those actions. Is the idea of a complete physical reality a good one? What actions are we prevented from perfoming by taking this idea seriously? Are we missing out on other courses of action, which may make no sense within the context of our present views of physical reality but might lead us to profoundly new insights and experiences?

We thus seem to have two complete systems of reality, the conscious and the physical, that are joined together by correlations between their states. If we are going to have a real theory of consciousness then we are going to have to explain how this coupling occurs rather than merely drawing correlations between the states of two very disparate systems, although studying the specifics of individual correlations and connections is very important. Let us look at the current set of constraints on such a theory in more detail now.

The Mind-Body Connection: Basic Facts and Considerations

1. The brain and nervous system is undeniably physical - it is composed of chemicals, neurons, glia cells, etc. connected together in a great network of hundreds of billions of cells that communicate with each other via electrochemical signals. Each neural cell is connected to dozens to hundreds to thousands of other neural cells. The entire ensemble of cells is affected by the time varying chemical background in which it is immersed and by the stimulation of sensory cells in the various sense organs. It's physical properties can and have been examined in great detail. But when this is done, nothing other than the physical is found.

2. We are also undeniably mental. We experience thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires, intents, dreams, memories, etc. We are mental creatures.

3. The central importance of the brain-nervous system to our mental life has been proved by cutting up the brain in certain ways and then observing the affects on our mental state and our mental capacities. Removing and replacing organs such as the kidneys or the heart or losing an arm or leg does not affect our mental capacities in a like manner, so the brain and associated nerves are the key physical system intimately associated with our mental existence.

4. The ingestion of certain chemicals, such as caffeine, nicotine, LSD, alcohol, etc. affects the nervous system and causes changes in our mental states and capacities This is undeniable. So the chemical background affects our mental states and hence chemical states and mental states are interrelated. It is important to keep this fact in mind.

5. Now mental states are very real and are really connected to the physical machinery of the nervous system, yet do not appear to be physically visible. Thus the brain - nervous system has a real internal mode of existence that cannot be acessed or measured by any currently known physical means.

The presence of internal mental states in other beings is often assumed based on their behavior patterns and our own intuition, but it must be made clear that there is a real difference between physically observable behavior and consciousness or awareness. We simply assume we can judge whether an entity is conscious or not based on an understanding of its behavior, but that understanding can be easily fooled. A physical machine such as a complex enough computer, could be made to produce externally observed behavior that appears intelligent. A computer could be programmed to mimic human behavior or mental processes and thus its behavior could be interpreted as intelligent. But it presumeably does not have to have any internal mental states at all, just as a pupper does not. It would not mean anything to be such a computer anymore than it would mean something to be a rock, a cloud, a book or a movie on video tape. It is the mental human that interprets whether any observed behavior is labeled intelligent or not. In fact, the mental human is critical in interpreting any externally observed behavior or structure as information. But that can simply be an interpretation that we project onto an external object and not an indication of the existence of any conscious intelligence.

This can be seen clearly when instead of looking at active machine behavior, one examines a book. A book is a physical thing with pages and ink and so on. It does not mean anything to BE a book. Yet a literate human can examine a book and extract intelligent information from the book by interpreting the printed symbols. But a book can not read another book, no more than a computer could interpret the behavior of another computer (or a human) although it could physically interact with another human or computer just as a book could physically interact with another book. Thus physical structure and physical behaviors are not mental structures or mental behavior, but some physical structures clearly can interact with the mental, at least in human beings and other beings possessing consciousness (such as cats). But at present we have noobjective way of determining whether any physical system has mental properties or not based purely on its physical structure and behavior, no matter how intelligent it may appear to be. Behavior is not proof but only leads to plausible guesses. Conversely, the lack of behavior that is intelligble to us is not proof of a lack of consciousness or awareness either. In fact, it may turn out to be the case that trees, clouds, rocks and falling rain do possess consciousness or awareness of some sort but we can not really tell one way or another now.

To highlight these points philosophers have invented an entity called a zombie. It is possible to imagine a brain-nervous system that is simply a complex machine producing observable behavior, as animals have been postulated to be in the past. A zombie is simply a human simulcrum having no internal mental states although its neural states are indentical to that of a human being. The zombie would talk, walk and behave just like any other person we know, when in fact, it has no internal conscious states at all. We know that WE are not zombies since it certainly means something to be us. But a zombie could easily fool people into believing that it is a conscious entity.

Thus the physical brain-nervous system must be more than a machine producing certain physical behaviors since there are associated internal, interactive mental states. Again we are at the point of noting that there is an external or outside physical aspect to the brain-nervous system and an internal or inside mental aspect to the brain-nervous system. We are thus put in a very different position when studying the nervous system than we are with respect to studying a purely physical phenomenon such as phase transitions in a solid, since there the physical properties, presumeably, completely describe the system. Water can be reduced to a collection of hydrogen dioxide molecules interacting via electromagnetic forces, but seeing the nervous system as a complex set of interacting cells with known structures and physical mechanisms of interaction does not allow one to even get a hint that there is also a very real mental aspect that exists as well. Thus it is simply not possible to reduce the mind-body problem to one of knowing only the purely physical characteristics of the brain and simply relabeling mental states as physical states as the philosophical position of eliminative materialism has claimed in the past.

Since mental states are very real and the physical machinery of the brain is very real and there is a very real interaction between the two systems, yet not in any obvious or physical manner, that means that the mental is something real, but not physical in an ordinary sense. Being real, the mental must be some type of substance or entity that exists beyond the current taxonomy of substances in the physical sciences, although it is completely familiar to us all. It must be another type of substance or entity that can interact with the brain or is somehow produced by the brain. It may be that the mental substance exists as some sort of additional property of physical objects in addition to properties such as mass, momentum and electric charge. The mental substance need not be a simple or a single thing considering the differences between our experiences of sight and hearing or thoughts and emotions and bodily sensations, for example. So it must be capable of taking on many complicated and differing aspects. Thus it may be a variety of different things and be flexible enough, like matter built from the set of 92 naturally occuring atoms, to take on many different forms. Perhaps there are "atoms" of mental substance so that some type of chemistry and physics of the mental substance exists that can account for the complex properties of our mental existence.

Examining the conscious self - brain connection in more detail, it is now known that much processing in the brain occurs at an unconscious level. We are only aware of a small amount of the total processing on going in the brain at any one time. Apparently only a subset of neural activity at any one time is dircetly connected with conscious experiences so there is not a simple one-to-one correspondence between neural states and our state of awareness. This implies, in an interactionist model of the mind-brain connection, that the mental interacts with only a subset of the brain and that part of the brain's activity IS equivalent to that of a zombie. Another point to note is that the neural processing in the unconscious part of the brain is not qualitatively different from most of the processing that goes on in the body at a mostly subconscious or unconscious level, such as the functioning of the immune system. Nor is it apparently different from those parts of the brain that ARE directly connected with conscious awareness at any given moment. So the brain does not produce mental states in any obvious manner that depends on simply having nervous tissue present and active. Only a subset of active nervous tissue is associated with our conscious awareness at any given time but how is that subset determined and how does it change with time? Which parts of the brain are more associated with actual conscious experience and which are less associated?

About 6 billion neurons may be active within us at any given time out of a total of 100 billion or so in the brain. The sum total of the set of our conscious experiences at any given time presumeably correlates with some of these roughly 6 billion neurons, if we assume that only active neurons are related to mental states. Very roughly, our conscious experience consists of perhaps hundreds of discrete qualia at any given time, where an individual qualia would be part of our visual field, say a particular dot, a host of sensations scattered over the body, our general mood and several shifting emotional states, a thought in progress, etc. Thus if we roughly assume that there are 600 qualia elements active at any given time (surely an underestimate), then very roughly, an average of 10 million active neurons are associated with each specific qualia element. And each qualia element only lasts for 10's of milliseconds to a second or two at most. A very good thing to explore is the number of qualia elements that we experience at any given time, e.g. how many discrete bodily sensations, how many individual emotional elements, how many thought elements, how many visual elements, how many aural elements, etc. The idea of breaking down qualia into simpler qualia elements seems to work well for the visual field and perhaps for bodily sensations but seems more difficult in the case of thoughts and feelings. To make some progress in this area would require detailed self-observation and would require a great effort to "know oneself" since it seems difficult, if not impossible, to approach a qualia decomposition from an external viewpoint.

Representation and Mental States

Let us now consider the nature of the coupling of qualia and physical states in more detail. In the objective, empirical and scientific study of nature one typically divides the properties of an object into subjective and objective components and only concentrates on explaining the objective part. Thus the color red is now known to be produced by photons of electromagnetic radiation over a set of frequencies that impinge upon the eye and strike the retina, where they interact with nerve cells that produce neural impulses. Those impulses undergo processing in the retina and are sent to the brain where the incoming impulses affect other neurons and at some point are correlated with an experience of the color red. Now neurons and neural states are purely objective, they can be seen, touched and manipulated by the proper instruments and we can directly study the neurons as little machines with certain objective, material properties just as any other material thing is studied. But the real mystery is how do specific neural signals become our experience of the color red?

One idea is that the neurons represent information or are symbolic of information just like the states of the banks of transistors in a computer represent information. Thus one avoids having to postulate any additional properties to the neurons other than the known material ones. We can consider two types of information. The first is in the capacity of an active controlling state. The second is representational. An active state is simply that in which one active state can cause or effect another active state which is just what neurons do when they interact with each other. Thus certain patterns of neural firing can activate muscles to contract or relax. But this type of active information does not seem to be relatable to conscious awareness as we have briefly considered in the case of the zombie. Interactions or information of this sort are purely physical and lead to machines but not to consciousness.

One kind of very important process in the body using active controlling states in information processing involves the DNA and the production of proteins and cellular control. (Expand on this theme).

The only way we know that material things can act as information, or symbols or be representative of something else is for an external perceiver to project the informational, symbolic or representational properties onto the material substrate. Consider, for example, the words you are reading right now. The real meaning resides in the perceiver. However, in the neuronal matrix of the brain, there presumeably is no other perceiver present other than the neurons themselves. So how can the neurons act as symbols or information carriers for other neurons? This is somewhat similar to saying that a rock on the ground could symbolize a 'tree' to the ground it lies on. Material things simply cannot act as anything other than material things with respect to other material things. In the purely objective, material picture of nature there is no information or symbols or representations present because there is nothing for material things to be information or symbols or representations to. Thus neurons simply cannot "represent" information the way the states in a computer do. Any meaning of the states in a computer is simply provided by human beings projecting meaning onto these states. In the brain there likewise only appears to be neurons and more neurons present and a host of other equally material cells and a background of chemicals as well.

So the main problem with a purely symbolic view is simply that symbols need a symbol perciever to be present to interpret the symbols and that perciever cannot simply be a symbol itself. So if neural states do symbolize different qualia then there must be a nonneural observer present to percieve and interpret those symbolic neural states.

One might say that the neurons can and do affect each other in such a way that they know or relate to each other and function as if a particular neural state means a certain thing, such as a certain color in the visual field. This may very well be the case, but the only way we know what the states may represent comes about because we either infer that from external behavior or we can ask the owner of the neurons what they are experiencing and make a correlation between their experience and the neuronal behavior. The brain has presumeably decided upon some type of encoding, but when observing the neurons directly, we see only neurons engaging in typical neural behaviors and not the relevant information directly. The information content is something that we either have to project onto the neural states or infer from a correlation with a concurrent mental state. We are somehow "inside" the neurons, but we don't see anything else present except their material aspects, at least currently. Thus there is a real mystery here. If the neurons act "as if" they are information, then that system of information processing is one that is closed to the outside. We only seen neurons and neural signals traveling here and there, but these signals are "information" to each other. They form a closed interacting set of material things that are "symbols" unto themselves, using a form of coding and interpretation that is inacessible to outside observation. Likewise, our conscious experience forms a closed system that is a set of subjective states that exist apart from the objective reality we infer to exist. So unfortunately the best we can do at present is catalogue the existent correlations between the mental states we experience and the neural states we observe and hope that some insights can be obtained from these correlations.

How could different internal neuronal codes and experiential percepts be joined? There might be specific neurons coded for "red" and others for "blue" or certain neural firing patterns could be for "red", others for "blue". But how is the experience of "red" or "blue" actually connected to these particular states? It seems almost absurd that it could be purely a convention, in the manner in which words are assigned to meanings by convention, thus giving rise to the multitude of human languages which use different conventions and symbols for the same meaning, e.g. "chat" or "cat" depending on whether you speak French or English. Thus the experience of red is presumeably not tied to underlying neural states or patterns in a conventional manner. What or who could establish and maintain the convention? For the more hard wired aspects this is a bit understandable, such as the system of rod and cones in the retina for light intensity or color detection, but the conscious experience of light and color as light and color and not as sound seems to be purely unrelated to this hard wiring, since neurons within the brain in the sensory processing areas seem to have little difference from each other unlike the specialized sensory cells in the sense organs themselves. Why could we not not have the experience of sound associated with visual images and color and visual experiences associated with hearing sounds? Indeed there do seem to be people that occasionally get "cross-wired" so that does indeed happen at times. So this must be telling us something important about the encoding process.

An analogy that may be useful for stimulating insight here is the notion of false colors used in map making. When a map is made, such as a contour map, a color scale can be assigned to a range of heights such that different colors represent different heights. The map is then colored using the chosen scheme. Now that scheme is arbitrary and can be changed by the map maker. With regard to sensory information provided by sensory organs and the mental experiences associated with them such as the experience of sound that is associated with signals coming from the ear, it seems that our subjective experience could in some sense simply be a chosen scheme of "false coloring". For example, the experience of the color red seems in reality, to have nothing to do with photons with wavelengths of around 6000 Angstroms anymore than blue should be associated with photons with 4000 Angstrom wavelengths. Our experiential color scheme could easily be changed by the interchanging of colors such as blue for red without any loss of information or inconsistency. What are the implications of this?

(Much more needs to be written here.)

The Argument Against Machine Perception

In modern form (as in Searle's Chinese room argument) the argument against machine perception (as opposed to machine intelligence which is a different issue) goes like this:

1) Assume one has some material things that don't possess any intrinsic properties of perception. They are just dead in the way we normally think of dead matter.

2) The material things can be moved around.

3) The material things, being material things, have their own intrinsic properties such as mass, position, size, temperature, electrical charge, electrical conductivity, etc.

4) The material things can act as symbols to a perceiver, i.e. a perceiver of the material thing can project meaning (symbolic or otherwise) onto the material things, e.g. ink marks on a written page or a set of transistor states in a computer memory can be the word "dog", which means something to a perceiver.

5) Arrangements of material things that can be considered symbolic (e.g. letters, words and sentences in a book or memory states in a computers RAM) have no perception. Books cannot perceive or read other books.

6) The motion and tranformation of material things itself does not cause perception. Cars cannot perceive other cars, humans, toasters or animals just because they can move or because they can transform gasoline and air into heat and mechanical energy, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water.

7) Hence moving material things around that could act as symbols does not cause perception anymore than moving or rearranging any other material things.

8) Given a mechanism to move symbols around and rearrange them in new patterns, if that mechanism itself doesn't have perception, then neither does the combined system of moving symbols + symbol mover.

9) If we introduce the capacity to percieve in the the symbol mover but without the capacity to understand the symbolic meanings of the symbols moved about, then the set of symbols have a relationship to the symbol mover no different from the relationship of any other dead matter to the symbol mover. And it remains true that the dead matter itself cannot perceive simply by being shifted and rearranged.

10) Even if the symbol mover does know what material symbols are supposed to represent, the only meaning present resides in the perceiving symbol mover who projects meaning onto the material things that act as symbols and not in the symbols themselves.

11) Hence a system consisting only of moving material things (or symbols to a perceiver) cannot itself perceive. This is not a profound point but something obvious within the context of the materialistic view of reality of the current modern scientific paradigm.

12) Mechanisms to manipulate symbols, that purely follow mechanical laws, cannot perceive anymore than any other machine or part of nature acted upon by external forces, since these mechanisms themselves are just dead material parts being rearranged that can act upon and rearrange other dead material parts. Hence a thermostat cannot perceive nor can a cloud and the ground below it when connected by a lightning bolt, assuming all material parts follow 1).

13) Hence computers can never be made to perceive if they just consist of programs of instructions for mechanisms to manipulate and rearrange dead material things such as electrical states of a mass of transistors. Hence no perception is going on when two chess playing computers play each other, anymore than when two TV's are placed facing each other or a CD player plays a CD or when a microphone and recording device record that played music or when a printer prints out a document.

14) Computers can certainly be designed to construct symbol patterns that external perceivers can find meaningful but the computer itself contains no more ability to perceive than a book does.

15) Of course this has major implications for the brain and us if we want to think of neurons as just little nonperceiving machines.

Functionalism and the software - hardware distinction

Mental states consist of basic awareness, information and something that can interpret that information. Since mental states are real they must be in some sense physical - i.e. composed of a substance, a substance that can be molded into complex states. Now even if this mental substance is not a physical substance it still must be something. But a mental substance that holds information, the information of which we are currently aware, itself must be percieved by the observing I - which implies that there is a still more refined form of consciousness that simply percieves a subset of available mental states. Clearly we can focus our attention on a subset of our current experiences and pick that subset out such that it fills the processing capacity of the observing I. Thus the observing I appears to be only a subset of our total conscious field and is in a sense separate from that field.

Two fundamental boundaries exist - that of the senses and that of the observing "I", the outer and the inner boundaries. The outer boundary of the senses has been well explored by modern science through physical experiment, observation and the construction of sense enhancing instruments such as microscopes, telescopes, particle detectors, etc. combined with careful reasoning and often mathematical models to infer many of the properties of the physical world. The process works by focusing on the "objective" or inter-subjective public properties of experience and hiving off or ignoring the subjective component. For example, we know that the color purple is produced by electromagnetic waves in certain possible combinations of wavelengths impinging on the retina of the eye, composed of two types of receptor cells, rods and cones, with the cones being the color receptors, which create a neural signal that is transmitted to the brain. What we don't know is how the mind interacts with the brain to produce the subjectively percieved sensation of "purple".

Neural signals and experience. Active nervous system vs. inactive. Can we sense the inactive portions of the nervous system? Does the nervous system have to be active to be mental? How could a pulsing set of neural signals be connected to mental states? Pulsing signals can contain information related to the external environment, which could certainly cause behaviors in a machine-like manner that is totally unconscious, and much of the bodies processing does indeed seem to work that way, but where does the process of conversion of pulsing neural signals to information that is consciously perceived take place?

The inner boundary of the observing I has been explored by mystics and sages throughout time by means such as introspection and meditation, i.e. by simply paying attention to themselves and how they actually work.

Pure conscious energy penetrates into the physical and creates conscious experiences and is gradually dissipated and used up in the process. There can apparently be passive mental structures created from conscious energy and? a physical component? and components made purely from conscious energy itself.

The Subject-Object Divide

The subject-object divide is another, even more fundamental, boundary problem that takes place within the subjective or experiential realm. This has to do with the subject of perception and being itself, in which we sense ourselves as a center of perception possessing a point-of-view from which we percieve the world around us. In this case there is a dualism and relationship between the percieving self and that which is percieved. Now that which is percieved includes all percievable and experiencable contents of our consciousness including our thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories, intents, desires, instinctive reactions, intuitions and so on that comprise our "inner" personal experience, as well as our sensory perceptions of the outer and public "objective world". As one moves away from the percieving center there is a feeling that the contents of our experience become less and less "us", i.e. that there is a gradient in the degree of "selfness". Thus we most strongly identify the percieving center as our true self, and then in an approximately increasing order of distance or not-self, follow our focused attention, nonfocused attention, will, desires, emotions and feelings, thoughts, memories, then bodily sensations and sensory impressions of sight, sound, smell and taste. Finally we percieve that parts of our body, such as our arms and legs, that are part of the objective world, are less essentially us than our senses or that part of the body associated with the mind - the brain and nervous system. Finally, moving beyond the skin, we have our own clothes and personal properties and then the outside public world that is peripheral and the least "us", but is itself divided into those portions that are closer to us such as our friends, family and home environment and more distant, remote and unfamiliar people, cultures, territories and so on, finally terminating in the solid and largely unknown Earth beneath our feet and the vast depths of space unfolding in the sky over us. So we ask: What is the percieving self? How does the hierarchical identification of the components of our consciousness as degrees of "selfness" arise? The second question is related to our habit of dividing a portion of our experience into the objective, outer, public, physical world and the subjective, inner, private world (the outer and the inner) and then trying to explain the relation between them. The first question concerns that fundamental duality that gives rise to conscious being and perception itself: is it a real duality and if so what is the true self? We are beings stuck between the mystery of our inmost self and the great mystery of the universe at large. Between these two great mysteries lie the mysteries of the nature of the subject-object boundary and the mind-body boundary.

How does the impression of a gradient in selfness or not selfness arise that we all sense? Clearly one of the main factors involves the degree of control we can exert over our percieved world and clearly that involves a gradient of control. Over the distant stars or the deep Earth beneath our feet we have no control over whatsoever. Over the near Earth environment we have the most minimal degree of control, we can fly in the atmosphere in planes and cross oceans in ships, even travel into the near low Earth orbit in rockets, but our control over the weather or what rains down upon the Earth in the form of light or cosmic radiation or space debris is almost nonexistent. The cumulative effects of man's activities has started to effect the global environment and weather system, but so far in a completely uncontrolled and haphazard fashion. Over the large scale social processes of human society the average individual has very little control although we can now learn about many of the events of present life through newspapers, television, books, internet communications, word-of-mouth communication, satellite data and imagery, etc. Even the most powerful leaders have only the smallest amount of control over global society and its course but can make some impact within limited domains such as the actions of particular governments, business decisions, formation and direction of organized movements, allocation of funding, etc. On the level of our ordinary social existence, we have little control over the great majority of the people around us or the state of the local environment - we cannot order people to perform any arbitrary actions we desire or simply chose to go wherever we want unimpeded or build or destroy at will without suffering swift consequences. Within strict limits of society we can travel to public locations, friendly private envoirnments or wilderness areas. With our fellow citizens we can exert some degree of control through social interactions, buying and selling, following or not following the laws of the land, etc. Over people with whom we are loosely acquainted through our jobs, or social activities, chance encounters, etc. we can only engage in slight perturbations of their activities most of the time. The degree of control increases within the circle of our family, friends, pets and home environment. And finally we come to our own skin and ourself within where we experience a great increase in our sense of selfness. But there the control we actually have is often much less than we would generally like to believe. (Go into Gurdjieffian ideas here?)

Body, Mind, Spirit, Skepticism and Physical Science

Skepticism and exceptional experiences.
Basic explanations offered by scepticism for exceptional spiritual experiences.
1. It is all in their mind. As dreams are for example.
2. They are hallucinations. As dreams are for example.
3. Cultural projections onto ambiguous phenomena.
4. Personal preferential projections onto ambigious phenomena.
5. Shared brain states.
6. Brain chemicals.

The scientific materialistic point-of-view
1. There is no spirit world.
2. There is no soul.
3. There is no part of consciousness that can exist independent of the brain.
4. The brain-nervous system causes consciousness.

Our actual current state of understanding of consciousness
1. The phenomena of consciousness are not well understood.
2. Brain states and neural firings do not explain consciousness at all.
3. At best there is a correlation between brain states and conscious states.
4. What is the link between brain states and conscious states?
5. The fact that there is a link is not much disputed.

6. Brain can effect mind. That is not in dispute.
7. But can mind affect brain?
8. Can consciousness exist independently of the brain?
9. Is consciousness a fundamental component of reality on par with energy?

A conservation of energy argument has been used to argue against the existence of an independent interactive mind substance. How well known is the energetic content of the brain? If mind energy and brain energy are in thermal equilibrium, then no net exchange of energy would be noticeable. Would pure mental structures require energy as well to function? They must if consciousness can exist in various phases.

The linkage between other phenomena in science is, in reality, not well understood either. This is a lesson that is often forgotten. For example, in Einstein's gravitational theory, the General Theory of Relativity, the stress-energy tensor and the space-time tensor are coupled together such that the configuration of the stress-energy warps space-time and space-time determines how energy and matter can move. But the casual relationship between these two very different entities is stated merely by connecting them with an equal sign and some coupling constants for the strength of the interaction. The actual manner in which they effect each other is not understaood at all, no more than in Newton's theory which stated that mass is somehow the source of the gravitational field. How and why this is so is totally mysterious and we have a coupling problem in many ways almost as severe as the mind-body problem. Likewise the same kind of coupling problems exist with respect to electric charges and electric and magnetic fields and all other similar phenomena. Or how mass is connected with electric charge in particles like the electron? It is often forgotten or not really appreciated that science is for the most part phenomenological and statistical with little real understanding of casuality at the fundamental levels. But progress in understanding does come at the grosser levels of reality that build on the underlying fundamental phenomena. For example, the 29.5 day lunar phase cycle is easily understood as the result of observing sunlight scattered off the lunar surface in a manner that varies in a simple and predictable way with the changing Earth-Sun-Moon geometry as the Moon orbits the Earth. The lunar orbital period with respect to the stars is 27.3 days, and the extra 2.2 days in the lunar phase cycle is caused by the Earth's orbital motion around the Sun.

The Brain and neural firing.

1. There is little difference between neurons and other cells in body as far as basic cell structure is concerned.

2. Neurons are different from other cells in that they communicate with each other through their receptive dendrites and transmissive axons.

3. So are neurons associated with consciousness because they communicate with each other?

4. But why are only a subset of neurons associated with active conscious experience when there doesn't seem to be any real difference between those neurons associated with conscious experience and those that aren't?

5. And why is only a subset of active neurons associated with active conscious experience? For example, the neurons in the retina are generally active but not directly associated with our conscious visual experience which is associated with neurons deep in the brain.

6. So active neurons do not correlate on a one-to-one basis with actual conscious experience. This implies that there must be some mechanism that selects that special subset of active neurons that are associated with actual conscious experience whether that experience is visual, auditory, thinking, feeling, etc.

Consciousness as a field that interacts with the brain.

1. There is a subjective sense of "I", a conscious field, and the brain.

2. There may be an external source of conscious energy that interacts with the brain through a network of mental structures that coexists and interacts with the brain and body.

3. There must be different degrees of conscious materiality. But it must be material in some sense in order for the mental to interact with the brain.

Key problems:
1. How does structure interact with consciousness to produce conscious information? This is a major puzzle whether or not consciousness is produced purely by the brain or via conscious energy interacting with a mental/physical structure. There must be a subjective that somehow eludes materiality in any form and yet can interact with the material.

2. In OOBE's and NDE's the consciousness (apparently) leaves the body, yet the ability to percieve and think is not grossly impaired but can even be greatly enhanced in some cases. So consciousness can exist separately from the body and must have its own power source, percieving capabilities, memory capabilities, etc. Why the need to interact with a body then? Karmic lessons?

3. The basic sensory organs react to physical phenomena such as light, sound waves, pressure, heat, electrical stimulation and molecular composition (smell and taste). Some organs make more complex measurements, such as the inner ear that produces our sense of balance. The nervous system itself responds in a neuroactive way to chemicals in the blood.

The conscious field itself must respond to a subset of the signals produced by the sensory organs and the nervous system. The conscious field can respond to the field produced by other beings. Perception can take place directly via the conscious field. But how does this occur? The conscious field itself must be relatively contracted in most beings, or at least in human beings, since we have to rely upon our senses for most distant sensing. It highly developed individuals, their conscious field can expand significantly beyond the body and they can sense directly with the conscious field, producing what are known as psychic or paranormal abilities. But this must be the exception rather than the rule, otherwise their would have been no reason to evolve or develop the sensory apparatus.

Considerations for a spirit-consciousness-brain interaction model.

1. Brain and nervous system are real and important to the manifestation of consciousness.

2. Consciousness is not physical in the way that observable matter is physical, but it may exist in an analogous way, which would tie into how they can interact. Or it may be that all matter has conscious properties to a degree.

3. The mental and the brain-nervous systems actually do interact.

4. Chakra's, consciousness exapansion, astral journeys, the light emanating from the heart, black karmic deposits, consciousness as a gas or fluid that can flow through one (chi), etc. are readily experiencable or observable by meditators.

5. Conscious energy flows into one's being like a fluid coming down a pipe and the level can vary with time (also readily observable).

6. One can give conscious energy to others or recieve it from them, emphasizing its objective, fluid-like quality.

Given such facts we postulate the following model:

1. Conscious energy flows from an external source to one's being and energizes a conscious machine made of both mental and physical parts.

2. The mental parts are composed of conscious energy congealed into various shapes.

3. Conscious energy is a substance that exists in various phases with increasing density and closeness to the physical: nothingness or space-like, light-like, gas-like, light liquid, viscous liquid, gel-like, plastic solid, crytalline solid. This seems to imply that conscious substance exists in a manner very like physical substance. Are there particles of consciousness?

4. The mental machinery encloses the neurons, which form a skeletal substrate upon which the mental machinery is formed and along which mental energies flow.

5. The mental also exists between neurons as well. The most dense mental parts are congealed around the physical neurons.

6. Mental machinery also exists apart from the physical, as in the spiral tubes along which conscious energy flows to one and the vortices one can shoot out from oneself.

Basically a physical-brain nervous system exists that recieves neural signals from the senses and is supported and given physical energy by the body. A mental machine system also exists that is consciously energized from an external source (the oversoul) and exists in intimate connection with the physical-brain nervous system and uses it for support. Mental or conscious energy is another form of substance that can interact with the physical but is not physical. In fact, the mental substance actually interpenetrates the entire physical universe and so is a fundaMENTAL component of it.

However this so far is relatively empirical, combining neuroscience with meditative insights but does not answer questions such as:
1. How are neural signals translated into interpretatable sensations, thoughts, feelings, etc.

2. What is the manner in which the conscious machinery actually interacts with the neuronal machinery? It must be a two way cause-effect relationship. Is quantum mechanics involved?

3. Where and what is the observer, other than a ring around the tube of inflowing conscious energy?

4. How does the active will arise? Is there a real sense to being conscious and making decisions or is everything due to random perturbations in a complex machine involving both sensory inputs from the external environment, neuronal firing subject to small random perturbations and an inflow of conscious energy that can be subjected to random perturbations in the direction of its inflow into various parts of the mental network.

5. Why are some sensations repulsive to the attention and others are attractive and others neutral? Is this related to different types of neuronal signals?

6. How close are the chakra's and different structures in the brain? Are they intimately connected?

7. What is the structure of the chakra's like in more detail, other than patches of buzzing colored activity aligned along the spine or offset from the spine?

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Karmic and conscious energies and patterns.

The karma is a congealed form of consciousness that combines consciousness with energy. Thus it appears to "smoke" when melted by the attention. The filaments and tendrils observed are also part of the conscious energy system and part of the conditioned consciousness. The chakra's are an operating part of the conscious energy system that produces our thoughts, feelings, sexual drives, etc. These must be combined with the brain - nervous system - body in some manner, since they must interact. The conscious energies and formations form a "fine material" system that is apparently real yet not observable with ordinary physical intstruments that can only detect "gross material" substances. Perhaps in time, "fine material" measuring devices will be developed. In the meantime, one must rely on developing one's own "inner eye" by meditation and concentration in order to observe the inner mental system of the chakra's, karmic deposits, conditioned consciousness, etc.

Something to think about:
What does not exist, does not exist. A thing cannot come into existence from non-existence. It can only come into being from some other being. Thus there is no true creation or destruction, only rearrangement, separation and mixing. Thus we have conservation laws. So was the point the Greek philosopher Parmenides made.

Now what does this imply for one's, thoughts, feelings and indeed subjective experience, which is constantly coming into being and then vanishing? Mind can only come from some other source and then vanish? Does the percieving "I" also continually come into being from another being? How does information come to be and vanish? What about mathematical entities? Seemingly, truly novel ideas? How do conservation laws impact these entities? Is there such a thing as conservation of information? How does money come into existence? Is the a law for the conservation of conscious energy, such that consciousness could be considered a conserved substance?

States of consciousness.

1. Sleep: Deep sleep, light sleep, ordinary dreaming, lucid dreaming, astral dreaming

2. Ordinary Awake: near awake dream/meditative, drowsy awake, alert awake, dull awake (Alert, Dull), (Expanded, Contracted), (Focused, Defocused), (Together, Scattered), (Identified, Detached), (Excited, Aroused)

3. Drug Affected Awake: Drunk, High, Tripping, Tranquilized, Stimulated, etc. Elevated Awake: Self-Remembered, Meditative, In Love, Consciously Energetically Elevated

So, will modern physical science in its current form be able to explain consciousness some day?

In its current state ... probably not.