Evolution of Consciousness

Scientific investigations on consciousness are currently focused on the activities in the brain. While there has been good progress in understanding mechanisms leading to different human behavior by activating different regions of the brain, the mechanisms by which neural processes give rise to cognition still remain elusive. Recently there have been theories like the Integrated Information Theory (Tononi, 2015), Global Workspace Theory (Baars et al., 2021), Orch-OR Theory (Hameroff, Penrose, 2011) and so on, as an attempt to explain consciousness through physical processes. But as the famous philosopher David Chalmers put it in his 1996 paper: how and why neural functions are accompanied by subjective experience (also known as the “hard problem of consciousness”) needs to be answered if we want to make scientific progress in this regard. Our research revolves around  such hard problems of consciousness, which are not addressable by standard methods.  Easy problems of Consciousness are addressable via standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. Examples include understanding the mechanisms of sensation, perception, and information processing in the brain, as well as the neural correlates of conscious experience.

In our scientific and philosophical approaches to consciuosness research, we investigate open questions such as: what is the relationship between mind, consciousness and physical matter/biology? Can we ascribe mental activity and consciousness to plants? How can we adddress the mind-body problem to explain the relationship between mind and biology? If the mind can survive death then what is the metaphysics that can explain "mind information" in our universe? Our focus is to leverage Eastern and Western theories (and practices) on mind and consciousness, to ultimately understand consciousness and reality.

References

1. Baars, B. J., Geld, N., & Kozma, R. (2021). Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and Prefrontal Cortex: Recent Developments. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 749868 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.749868
    
2. Davie J Chalmers, THE CONSCIOUS MIND In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press,  1996
    
3. Tononi, G. (2015). Integrated information theory. In Scholarpedia (Vol. 10, Issue 1, p. 4164). https://doi.org/10.4249/scholarpedia.4164
    
4. Penrose, Roger, and Stuart Hameroff. "Consciousness in the universe: Neuroscience, quantum space-time geometry and Orch OR theory." Journal of Cosmology 14 (2011): 1-17.   https://thejournalofcosmology.com/PenroseCHG.pdf 

5. The BIG Bell Test Collaboration†, Challenging local realism with human choices, Nov, 2018: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.04431.pdf

6. Seth, A.K., Bayne, T. Theories of consciousness. Nat Rev Neurosci 23, 439–452 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4

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