The Difficulty of Defining Consciousness ‘Scientifically’

Why is studying consciousness such a complex task? Let’s delve into a fundamental question this time. Is consciousness itself even a suitable subject for scientific inquiry in the first place? Science always assumes the existence of an objective world, an objective system that is separated from subjectivity. The subject of scientific inquiry is usually something objective, like nature. But, strictly speaking, human consciousness is always subjective, isn’t it? It’s quite curious how humans can communicate their thoughts to one another, using both verbal and non-verbal expressions. How is it possible for different living beings to communicate? As humans, we might answer that we can infer each other’s minds because we share the same physical mechanisms. (Is this why analogy is the core of consciousness?) In any case, since such inferences are often quite accurate, humans sometimes even say they understand each other’s minds. However, by this reasoning, is it possible to infer the minds of non-human entities like bats or cats? Humans have binocular vision that can only perceive the visible spectrum, and we have neither tails nor wings—how close can a human get to knowing what it feels like to have a tail or wings or to see ultraviolet light? It might be almost impossible. This could be the essential problem of ToC. In the end, the basis for the assumption that an objective world exists is limited to human experiences—things we see, feel, touch, and hear. This is why science is sometimes called an empirical science. However, if human experience itself is subjective, then assuming an objective world exists based on the information we gain from seeing, hearing, and touching might be a case of circular reasoning… Nagel’s argument and Chalmers’ Hard Problem of Consciousness may be related to this issue. There is also an argument that all things humans declare are merely models and not representative of the system itself. This is a problem worth contemplating, as it arises in various areas related to cognitive science (e.g., the P-NP problem, philosophical interpretation of the Rabin-Scott theorem). It is indeed quite a headache. At least now we know that the theory of consciousness is far more complex than it seems; since diving too deep yields no answers and only leads to endless speculation, perhaps the best approach at the moment is to focus on the phenomenal aspects. We need to return to perspectives 1) and 2). After much contemplation, it seems to converge to the question of How do humans think? This field, no matter how deeply explored, offers no clear answers and only leads to more conjecture.