Dynamics of Consciousness- The Trichotomy of Mind, Body and Consciousness

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This book is a culmination of my attempt to understand myself. I was plagued by mental health issues for quite some time. Various problems arose repeating significant distress. I was then introduced to Dr Alok Bajpai whom I now consider as my guru. He gave my malady a different direction. I was fascinated by the fact that how certain medication could alter my way of thinking. Dr Alok guided me towards a research statement. This led me to explore the "hard problem of Consciousness". I then took his lectures on the brain and how brain creates the mind. I was so captivated by the problem that I left my IAS coaching and joined research at Banaras Hindu University. The institute is a pillar of education in all fields of knowledge. There I met my guide and my mentor Dr Grace Darling. She was such a pillar of support in my life and my research that I can never repay the debt all through my entire life. Professor Devendranath Tiwari, who always gave suggestions to improve my thesis, showered his love immensely on me.

This book is a culmination of my struggle with my mental health issues and a desire to understand myself better. In philosophy, the mind-body problem is a fundamental dilemma. The stems from the concept that there are two distinct domains or basic categories of substance which stand metaphysically separate. The problem of dualism main issue is divided into two camps: substance dualism and property dualism. Both dualism and monism may be accurate, necessitating a philosophical examination. The ontological mind-body problem is initially addressed in Samkhya philosophy, which resolves the issue through prakrti (matter) and purusa (energy) (consciousness).

According to dualism, the mind is irreducible to a simple physical entity like the brain. An alternative set of solutions comes in the form of specific philosophical commitments that may be classified as monism with two subcategories: physicalism and anti-physicalism. Physicalists hold that the mind is not a distinct entity from the rest of the physical universe for many, it is simply the brain. The brilliance of Indian, specifically orthodox Indian philosophical thinking, is that it is on a par with modern understanding regardless of its age. Many of our tradition's cognitive and psychological issues have paved the way for new concepts and theories. The Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy advocates a three-dimensional unity of consciousness: absolute, empirical and illusory. Existing quantum theories, particularly those proposed by Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, are addressing old metaphysical disputes.

Consciousness, the intangible part of human experience, has replaced the human soul. Neurobiological processes in the brain, higher-level brain features, are responsible for all of our "mental life". In spite of our progress in understanding human experience, the problem remains unresolved, and we face new challenges daily. We still do not know how the brain generates awareness, and the mystery will persist until we find a scientific explanation. One of the most evident realities is the presence of consciousness, although it appears to be buried in secret. The aim is to see consciousness as a biological phenomenon, similar to breathing or photosynthesis. However, we all have this inner subjective qualitative feeling behind the veil of physical phenomenon. This is the essence of the enigma. The present debate on consciousness is diverse, comprising contributions from philosophy, psychology, computer science, physics and medical sciences. Some criticize René Descartes, claiming that we now know more about the brain, but one truth cannot be denied: consciousness exists.

How do you perceive the world? How do you know that you are reading this book in your hand? You know it, because it has a parallelogram shape, it has a cover that is soft and has plastic on it. At the same time, the inner pages are white sheets with black ink, displaying letters in a language you have known since childhood. Imagine, you had been asleep for thousands of years, and a mutant who had been put to rest. But how can you be sure of that too? Nick Bostrom, in his paper, "Are You Living in a Simulation?" opines that our lives may be a simulation in the computer of a highly advanced species. Similarly, claiming to have answered the question of life is to pertinently answer these related questions with all the complexities that start with the basic question "What is life?". Even our minuscule thought on these questions will tell us that we do not have answers to them. Instead, what we have are just theories.

An honest observation of the fairly stringent conception will make us have a look at our loose definitions of life and hope that a loose grasp of the questions will dissolve the problem. The functional capacity of biological operations such as reproduction and respiration is what defines life. The question we must ask ourselves is: do these functional capacities define life? Saying so would mean that all that we know about these capacities is what life is, and there is no need to endeavour to understand it any further. To limit life only to its functional capacity is like tying a whale to an aquarium. In real life, we cannot tie the whale to the aquarium; we just buy a caricature of the whale. Similarly, to say that we understand a problem as complex as life would be an attempt to drop the magnitude of the problem to a caricature version of the resolution.

This is how sciences are meant to operate. The correlations are deemed to be marks of causation or in many places causation itself. The evolution (or signs of the growth of functional capacities) is what is deemed to be life. We let go of the whole inner world of subjectivity, the feelings of curiosity and perplexion which made us question life itself to answer the question, "What is life?". The point here is not to merely object to the advance of sciences but to remind ourselves of the fact that we do not have answers to "the questions" of life, for we do not know what the nature of the questions is. We limit the ways a question can manifest itself and then seek what is left and think of that as the answer. Philosophy too has not fared any better.

Philosophy, on the other hand, covers a wide range of theoretical mechanisms that lead to the final human experience. In a systematic philosophical argument, we begin by questioning the cosmos, the subject of metaphysics, and work our way to the human level and their knowledge of this world, the realm of epistemology. Herein the possibility of knowing about the nature of existence ontology and experience is discussed. Finally, by combining various cognitive mechanisms into a single coherent whole, the study of the nature and knowledge thereof is brought to consciousness. This study of the foundational basis of all human experiences and the knowledge associated with them is then brought into the realm of the philosophy of mind as a holistic matter of inquiry.

The present topic of discussion in the book is the "mind-body problem" and the related questions of consciousness, which are perennial conundrums in the domain of philosophy. The conundrum pertains to the ontological dichotomy of mind and matter. Though the precise problem can be stated in a single line about this dichotomy, what it holds within itself is a bunch of interlinked questions arising from the same statement.