Consciousness/Skepticism

I remember sitting in a neuroscience class full of aspirations to find out what consciousness is, to break the final mystery i had left. But halfway through the semester i realized memorizing the names of neurotransmitters is not my idea of trying to answer the "hard question" of science. This realization suddenly depleted me of any desire for further inquiry into neuroscience.

In fact i am now convinced neuroscience in its current state will never solve the question. This will require a total paradigm shift in science. The problem is a lot of research that could potentially evoke that change is being swiped from the table-top due to stigma associated with the nature of such research.

Enlightenment era was considered the end of superstition and the celebration of science which alas, for historical reasons grouped such questions along with superstition. And today we suffer the consequences.

Skeptics need to realize that nature does not always conform to common sense as illustrated numerously by such discoveries as black holes, relativity theory, quantum mechanics or even heleo-centric model.

True science must leave the final judgment until the results of the experiments are in.

What is plaguing mankind is the false idea that we had got the universe figured out and there is nothing mysterious anymore. But what about consciousness? People like to pretend that we had solved the question with neuroscience but we did not even get close. All we did was notice some correlation but not a single answer to the hard - why? question.

Looking at all the psychedelic art makes me seriously rethink our common-sense understanding of consciousness as an emergent property of the brain. (like that answers anything). The brain has much to do with the content of the consciousness - that is clear. But beyond that so far we know nothing.

Today i declare that i will stop being the closed minded skeptic and start to mostly rely on experiments rather then pure common sense. If experiment challenges my world-view then so be it.

Why does consciousness have to be constricted by what is within the boundaries of the skull? What makes the neurons so special to other matter? Why do two chemicals in the skull create an emotion but 2 chemicals in the test tube do not?(obviously this is over simplified.)

I must ponder about that.