Dualism?

Sometimes when I think about consciousness, it is very tempting to fall into the dualist ‘trap’.  Our sense of self, of being able to make our own decisions, of being somehow more than a bunch of hydrocarbons sloshing about in a whole heap of water, is very persuasive.  Rationally I think that it is all a clever illusion played on us by the part of our brain we call our ‘mind’, but I also feel that I am something more.  Of course, we may well be something more – just because science cannot measure something or suggest a way in which this unmeasurable ‘soul’ can interact with the physical world, does not mean that it doesn’t exist.  Just that it is not useful from the perspective of scientific investigation.

 

And this brings us to the issue of subjectivity.  It is argued that we cannot use introspection to investigate matters of consciousness because of the nature of that self same consciousness.  But everything we observe is processed by our brains, and throughout our lives we have modelled the world around us in order to be able to deal with the things we sense.  So all observations we make, whether about our own internal thought processes or about the time it says on the clock, are coloured by the sum of our experiences.  Every single observation we make is internally judged by an internal yard stick, and if it does not fit in with what we have learned about the way the world works, it gets either ignored or modified to fit in.  All part of a wonderfully complex feedback system, which for the most part provides us with exactly the tools we need to get on in life.

 

But it does mean that we cannot be truly objective about anything.  It just is not possible, and it is time, really, that the scientific community was man (and woman) enough to stand up and admit it.  What might be a start is if, instead of writing scientific reports in the third person, we took ownership, admitted our backgrounds and consequent biases, and see how our results work within the framework of our experience.  If we reveal the environment which has brought us to the point of publication, our work can better be judged by those with an interest in it.