The Mystery

Our consciousness is the inner semantic space where the signals coming from the physical world, both inside and outside the body, are 'processed' by the brain and take the form of feelings, sensations, and meanings, i.e., of qualia. Qualia refer to what 'it feels like' when a sensation or a feeling emerges within our consciousness. Note that the nature of feelings is completely different from the nature of physical events. A physical event happens in spacetime and is accessible 'from the outside' through our physical senses and instruments. This produces a so-called third-person experience shared by all observers. A feeling is instead a private, first-person experience accessible only 'from the inside' by the owner of consciousness. However, the interiority I am speaking about is not a physical dimension. Let’s consider, for example, how a rose is recognized by its scent. A rose emits particular molecules with unique three-dimensional structures. They ca...

The idea of the ‘extended mind’ has become increasingly popular within philosophical discussion. We can see this view presented in the work of British philosopher Andy Clark, who has written a book called Supersizing the Mind. In addition, Alva Noë has written a book called Out of Our Heads, subtitled ‘Why you are not your brain, and other lessons from the Biology of Consciousness’. Their argument suggests that the mind is in fact an interaction between the brain and its environment, also known as the ‘inactive theory of the mind’. Today, we are seeing more people who are drawn to this way of understanding consciousness and the mind. When we turn to individual and collective experiences, our conscious awareness of the world certainly extends beyond the confines of our head. Instead, our mind is something we experience in direct symbiosis with our surroundings. What stands out about this view is its emphasis on consciousness as a playing field which extends out into the world beyond our...

This question and the wider study of consciousness has captivated philosophers and scientists for the past 3,000 years. In modern times, and especially from the eighteenth-century onwards, the most pervasive position within scientific discourse has been the theory of materialism. Put simply, this is the view that everything that actually exists is material or physical. The materialist dogma ultimately reduces everything to unconscious matter — in fact, it implies that since everything is made of unconscious matter, including our brains, that the phenomenon of consciousness and 'minds' should not exist at all. However, given that we are conscious, this poses a dilemma for the materialist: how does inert, physical matter give rise to consciousness and the capacity for subjective experience? In philosophical terms, this is known as the 'hard problem of consciousness'. In the materialist’s eyes, we ought to be unconscious — but we are not. This ultimately leaves the materia...

Quantum-biological effects in the brain, a frontier of quantum biology and neuroscience, are the subject of ongoing research, with emerging evidence suggesting quantum phenomena like superposition and entanglement may influence neuronal activity and cognitive functions. While long dismissed due to the warm, noisy brain environment, new studies on molecules like tryptophan and the protein tubulin within microtubules show potential for quantum effects, such as photoprotection and information processing, to occur in brain cells. However, it remains to be seen if these microscopic quantum events can scale up to affect neuronal computations or consciousness. Evidence for Quantum Effects in the Brain Microtubules : These protein structures within neurons are hypothesized to act as quantum computers, processing information through quantum superposition and entanglement.  Tryptophan Networks : Large networks of tryptophan, an amino acid found in neurons, exhibit quantum superradiance, effi...