The materialist view is that consciousness can be explained objectively by studying the brain. All sensory impressions, sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are translated into nerve impulses inside your brain. It is like information being processed in a computer. The neurons are “talking together” in your brain and creates an integrated experience of reality. But how can a grey, special kind of jelly blob inside your head, be the creator of the entire reality as you know it? The brain is just another object inside reality and yet it somehow is the holder of your entire reality.
Is our senses in direct contact with reality?
It seems naive to think that our senses are “windows to reality”. Modern science suggests that our senses are various states and combinations of neurons in our brain. This discovery agrees with Kant's assumption that what we think is reality is just as much our own creation. So is there anything objective? You don't experience “objective reality” the same way I do. All our brains have a pretty different experiences of sensory impressions like light, weight, pressure or sound. For one person lifting 40 kg is hard, for another it is no problem at all. For one person the dress looks gold and white, for another it looks blue and black.
On the other hand doubting the reality that your senses present to you seems plain stupid. You will never try to cross the road if cars are passing by, the cars are real death machines that will kill you if you doubt their existence.
Can we explain a subjective experience in an objective way?
The greatest problem with materialism is that we are trying to explain something that is fundamentally subjective (consciousness) in an objective way. Nigel pointed out in his famous article; “What it is Like to Be a Bat?” that we can never really understand what it is like to be a bat. Why? Because the bat-experience is not available to our perceptive system. The bat uses sonar sound waves to understand reality and none of our senses can accurately copy that. The bat consciousness, or “what it is like to be a bat” is not within our grasp because it is completely alien to our experience of reality. It is a reality that is only available to the bats. So if consciousness is fundamentally subjective, than how can we find it in objective reality?
Are we trapped inside our brain?
It seems that we can never get outside of our own consciousness because then we would not be conscious. We know that we exist, without really knowing how we know it. According to Descartes we exist because we think. More fundamentally this means that we exist because we experience. It is the only thing we can never doubt. If you were not conscious you would not have any experience, and the experience of awareness is a sure sign that you exist.
So is the closest we get to reality our own experience right now? What if this is all a dream and Steem is just a creation of your own brain? We can never really be sure if we are dreaming or not because our mind is capable of reproducing reality in complex and intricate ways when we are sleeping. But even in our dreams we are conscious, only in very deep sleep or in coma consciousness disappears. You can always rest in your experience of the Now, even if you are in a dream. These words on this computer screen, the feeling of you body, the sights and sounds around you.
We can change reality
When we are present in the moment we have an obvious ability to change reality. If you see an old lady falling, you run to help her because you are there, you can change reality from where she gets hurt to where she stays safe. When we compare humans to animals, the most obvious difference is that we are flexible in the present. Animals never really question why things are as they are and why they do what they do, they are just naturally adapting and reacting to the limits of their surroundings. Humans on the other hand do not take reality on face value. We question, learn and have the ability to see how things could have been different. We do not only see reality, we see possibility. To see possibility we must rest in the Now, be connected to our experience in this moment. That is what all true religion and spiritual practices are trying to teach us.
Is possibility just as real as actuality?
In some way, I think actuality really depends on possibility. Without possible outcomes we would not be able to point out the actual outcome. 1 makes no sense without 0. When you see red you do not only see red, you also see the absence of all the other colours. Without the other possible colors red would not have made any sense at all.
So we are conscious beings, somehow able to perceive the actuality because of possibility. Maybe subjectivity would not be possible without objectivity? Maybe in seeing ourselves as limited objects in an actual reality we see that we are the subject aware of our own objectivity. So maybe consciousness is inside you at the same time as you are inside consciousness. It might be like two sides of the same coin, like possibility is somehow linked to actuality.
