The trigger for this post was the sentence: “How this organ (the brain) produces consciousness remains highly mysterious.”
One could (should?) have said “How this organ produces consciousness remains as yet unknown.” To refer to the source of consciousness as mysterious is iffy in that the definition of “mystery” is:
- a : something not understood or beyond understanding (Source: Merriam-Webster Online)
The “something not understood” part is fine, but “beyond understanding” is ridiculous and that is the part that most people think of when they hear the term “mysterious.” So, that post-inducing sentence is a loaded claim. And as a fan of the English language the modifier “highly” makes no sense when applied to the “not understood” part but works with the “beyond understanding” part more, so the focus is shifted there again.
How would one go about determining that something is “beyond understanding”? How long would you have to try to understand something to reach this state? How many people would be required for the effort? How much money needs to be spent in the effort? These are questions I bring up when people claim “science cannot explain … <fill in the blank here>.” In order to understand something scientifically, there must be people working on “the problem” for a substantial amount of time as well as money to be spent in the effort. Look at the questions answered by billion dollar atom smashers. Those questions could not be answered before those machines were built, no matter how hard someone thought, there just wasn’t enough data of the appropriate kind. If thinking hard was all that was needed, the ancient Greeks would have developed quantum mechanics.
I suggest that the problem of consciousness has been seriously studied only since the invention of brain scanners, ca. 1970-1975. Prior to that all we had were electroencephalograms (EEGs) as data and they are hardly up to the task. So, we have been scientifically studying consciousness for about 50 years. Since this is a tough problem, it will probably take another 50 or even 100 years to crack it. Until the problem is cracked, we do not even know which data are important and which are not.
It sure as Hell doesn’t help to declare anything to be “beyond understanding” because there is no way to determine whether that is true or not, it is just a claim of impotence … on the speaker’s/writer’s part.
Uncommon Sense 