Scientific Research into Consciousness

Abstract

The following few chapters are concerned with the problem of consciousness. Their authors do not subscribe to the conventional view that consciousness is ‘just another problem’, to be tackled in a somewhat similar way to the way that science has tackled problems in the past. They believe, and argue in the following, that including conscious experience within the scope of science will involve much more radical changes. Science so far has been based on ‘objectifying’ the world, and conscious experience has also a ‘subjective’ aspect. As Beverly Rubik observes in the first of these chapters, conventional science has explored only certain aspects of consciousness, and in so doing has asked only limited questions, leading to limited understanding. It excludes for example from its considerations experiences such as those of a spiritual, mystical or psychic nature, and the so-called ‘near-death experiences’, all of which “have the power to change people’s lives” Conventional science (as Towsey and Ghista note in their chapter) does not handle the meaning of information, whilst our consciousness does. In the section entitled ‘Obstacles to a Scientific Exploration of Consciousness’, Rubik discusses the factors (such as emphasis on reductionist methods of analysis and investigation, and adherence to Descartes’ unjustifiable assumption of a fundamental split between consciousness and the material world) which lead current science to have difficulty with consciousness, and sketches in its place proposed outlines of a scientific epistemology that will not exclude consciousness. She notes that ‘mind-body medicine’ (a field of study concerned with details of the influence of consciousness on the body) provides already an instance of a field of scientific study where the conventional assumptions break down.