Hard Problem of Consciousness

[Jevan PMember]

Besides being a meditation guide, TMI is also a great book for theory of mind. I was wondering if Culadasa has any thoughts on the hard problem of consciousness.

For those unfamiliar with the Hard problem, it is the following — How does matter produce subjective experience? A rock, a tree, are all made up of atoms and molecules, but neither of those things are conscious. Why is that the human brain, similarly made up of atoms and molecules produces consciousness?

The hard problem of consciousness, imo, is the greatest mystery of mankind.

[Meshe MooetteMember]

Hello Jevan!

This is my first post on the forum, pulled out by this interesting thread. This topic (the hard problem of consciousness) is one of Alan B. Wallace’s favorite topics. https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/wallace-meditations-buddhist-skeptic He may also be a good place to look, if you are interested in what a scholar and adept meditator has to say on the subject =).

In his kindness, Gautauma the Buddha taught a spectrum of views, each to suit a particular set of mindstreams at a specific time. As the years went by, these teachings were elaborated upon, through the commentarial tradition, and formed “schools” of thought.
According to different “schools” of thought- this question would get answered radically differently- as each has a different concept of relative and ultimate reality.

Through meditation, we can examine the pre-supposition that matter produces subjective experience- and coming to our own empirical conclusions. If matter produced subjective experience, there are many logical inconsistencies to be found during analytic meditation- for example.

All the best,

Meshe

[wardMember]

I suggest to go back and re-read the Seventh Interlude. It is one of the most profound pieces I’ve ever read. The problem is “hard” only if you equate consciousness with human subjectivity. You mentioned trees as an example of unconscious entities. Coincidentally, this article came out today: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3792036/Do-trees-brains.html

[Jevan PMember]

Ward,

I re-read ch. 7. I’m not seeing where/how it addresses the hard problem. Where do you think it does?

[wardMember]

I see what you mean, now that I’ve looked into the hard problem a little further. I wonder if there are any meditation masters who have addressed this directly. I suspect that the answer you would get is that the solution is transcendent and cannot be expressed in the realm of duality.

[Ted LemonMember]

Addressing the hard problem of consciousness would violate Gödel’s Theorem. 🙂

This is a really intriguing topic, and I think there’s a lot of value in trying to answer this question in meditation, as long as you don’t get attached to succeeding. I would suggest that it’s like an Awareness meditation, or Mahamudra, or Dzokchen.

[wardMember]

Relevant scientific article: https://aeon.co/essays/the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-is-a-distraction-from-the-real-one

[Amiran CMember]

Culadasa seems to subscribe to monism – that mind and matter are two ways of looking at the same ‘non-dual’ thing.

http://dharmatreasure.org/tcmc-30-apr-2015-culadasa-dharma-talk/ (around the 10 minute mark)

The consequence of this view (Panpsychism) is that consciousness is just everywhere. Tononi/Koch paper ( http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1668/20140167 ) seems especially interesting in this area.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by  Amiran C.

[Don SalmonMember]

I added a number of comments to Anil Seth’s Aeon article. I’d be intrigued to hear the responses from some of the forum members here. This is a wonderful site, by the way, We just got Culadasa’s book – wonderful!

[Jevan PMember]

I don’t think that monism leads to panpsychism. After all, how could there be a subconscious mind, if consciousness is everywhere?

[Ted LemonMember]

Consciousness is everywhere, but we’re not aware of all of it? The unconscious is simply that portion of consciousness that does not appear in awareness. Since I am not directly aware of any of your cognition, my knowledge that you are thinking is not based on direct awareness of your thinking, but rather awareness of the effects of your thinking. I’m sure you’d consider it a bit presumptuous of me if I were to assert that you were not conscious simply because I can’t perceive your consciousness directly. 🙂

[Jevan PMember]

Do you really think your chair is conscious?

Also, if panpsychism were true, it would need to be explained why consciousness only appears in your awareness in a specific location, I.e why not in your subconscious (I.E why aren’t you aware of your subconscious?)

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  Jevan P.

[Don SalmonMember]

Jevan, I think Culadasa’s book provides a helpful answer.

The question “Do you think your chair is conscious?” appears to me – if I understand the context correctly – to be based on the kind of perceptions and assumptions about the world, about chairs, and about consciousness that are taken for granted in the earlier stages.

If you read in Culadasa’s book about what starts to happen to the perception of the body, the layers of “consciousness” (subtler and subtler aspects of awareness) that begin to unfold as the “silence” that begins with the ending of verbal thought begins to permeate to deeper and deeper levels – I think the understanding of the nature of panpsychism changes altogether.

I don’t know specifically what Ted was referring to when he said “consciousness is everywhere” – but if the word “consciousness” is taken to mean “consciousness as it appears to us when our attention is barely stabilized” – I don’t understand panpsychism to mean that.

At least, that’s not what matter and mind being perfectly correlated throughout the universe means in the Middle Way Philosophy as interpreted by Alan Wallace. In the end notes to MI, Culadasa notes that, though he disputes some pop interpretations of Vedanta which make the “witness” the ultimate, he is in agreement with the views of Ramana Maharshi and other non-dual Vedantins. In Advaita Vedanta (and even more integrally in some tantric views, in both Hinduism and Buddhism), nama-rupa, name and form, mind and matter, are thoroughly entwined, but neither can be reduced to the other. One “may” posit “Consciousness” or “Being-Consciousness” as That which integrates the two. But without a stable mind, this can be misleading.

Steve Hagen has a great and incredibly simple example of how the unstable mind cannot “hold” on to momentary awakenings to non duality.

He gives the example of the good guys and bad guys in the old Western movies. The good guys wore the white hats; the bad guys, the black hats. A nice simple position – good guys vs bad guys, white hat vs black hat.

So how to you transcend that duality? No hat.

And for a brief moment, you’re free. And then it sneaks in – ‘hat” vs “no hat” and you’re back in duality.

Same problem with understanding panpsychism when our minds have not fully stabilized. Our old assumptions of what “mind” and “matter” and “consciousness” and “space” and “time’ keep creeping in, all founded on a fundamental misperception of reality as dualistic.

The best versions of panpsychism I’ve seen (in the Buddhist tantras, for example) understand it as a “skillful means” – a way of avoiding the tendency to fall into one of the extremes of materialism or idealism, but then to be left behind as nondual recognition awakens and stabilizes.

[5adja5bMember]

“In Advaita Vedanta (and even more integrally in some tantric views, in both Hinduism and Buddhism), nama-rupa, name and form, mind and matter, are thoroughly entwined, but neither can be reduced to the other.”

Curious if you could elaborate on this. In one of the audio talks Culadasa says at some point one realises that nama and rupa are the same thing (IIRC); it is also something I am noticing in my practice. Whether thought or ‘external’ sensation or emotion or whatever… it all seems to be the mind-system’s interpretation of sensation; into ‘chair’ or ‘thought’ or ’emotion’ or ‘sound’… (and even ‘mind-system’)

Of course my insights can deepen, but this is the current direction of things for me.

Thanks!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 5 months ago by  5adja5b.

[Don SalmonMember]

Hi 5adja5b:

I saw your post and initially wasn’t sure what I could say that would be helpful, without knowing more about you and your practice. However, this just occurred to me and perhaps it could help.

I did my doctoral dissertation on mindfulness and pain reduction. The way it originated was in doing work with pain patients in the mid 1990s. After working with folks for a few months, I began to notice that a majority were not really “getting” the unique value of mindfulness, and were mostly benefiting from the relaxation and breathing that accompanied it.

I estimated that about 1/3 actually went through a cognitive “shift” – that is, they experientially “got” that what they were experiencing as “pain” – i.e. an objective ‘thing” that was ‘really” ‘there’ – was largely an interpretation. In other words, they were able to distinguish (but not “separate”) name and form.

This is very clear when you look at the distinct brain systems involved in interpreting pain signals. Put in very simple language, say you cut your hand. There is a very primitive “instinctive” alert system which has the simple purpose of signaling the existence of an injury along with the need to do something about it.

There’s a different system, which triggers an emotional reaction – “this pain is ‘bad’, i don’t like, it should go away.’ And there’s a “mental” response involving various regions of the cortex, “why does this always happen to me, i’m such a klutz” etc.

And on top of it all, there’s the self-system, “Why does this always happen to ME?!”

With increasing refinement and stability of attention, these various factors can actually be “seen.” What’s always fascinated me about working with pain, is that the simple seeing of this, the simple act of distinguishing these has the almost immediate effect of lessening the experienced pain (it has physiological effects too, but that’s another story).

Perhaps the most important thing is not the attention itself, but the fact that the pain experience is entirely bound up in the way you attend to it. The “knowing’ of the pain is inseparable from the pain.

Well, you can apply this not only to pain but to every aspect of our experience. If you bring the same attention to any emotion, you’ll also find it’s made up of a host of factors, and all of them come together to make up what we name “anger” or “sadness’ or whatever.

This is true of all of our perceptions as well, which is where it gets really interesting. It’s true of a tree, a desk, a stone, etc (which doesn’t mean the tree, desk or stone “only” exist as your perception!)

Well, that’s enough to meditate on for a few years. Don’t make my mistake and spend too much time trying to “figure it out.” Keep practicing, which will make it infinitely clearer than all the books you could read on sunyata. (which is not to say that studying such books is not helpful as well; it’s just taken me too many years to find the right balance, which for me is about 10:1 meditation: study:>))

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