Part I described science’s requirements of empirical evidence and falsifiable hypotheses. Part II described religions that emphasize outer aspects of existence and those that point inward. Outer religions differ one from another. Inner religions unitively focus on the “experience” of pure consciousness and its consequences.
If science seeks a theory of everything, science must include consciousness because, undeniably, consciousness exists. Some even propose that only consciousness exists. Including consciousness must transcend focusing on the physical, on the nervous system.
Psychology attempted a chemistry of mental events, failed, regressed to behaviorism, failed, then rediscovered mind in the cognitive revolution. But psychology remained so enamored with the rigor and claimed objectivity of the physical sciences that still, for many, the study of subjective experience remains taboo.
Some claim that consciousness, obviously the basis of all knowledge and mentality, cannot be studied because objectivity regarding an individual’s consciousness is impossible. Mental events can only be observed by a single individual, so, they argue, there can be no bias control. But psychologists do study mental events such as in reversible figures where a picture seems to switch between a young lady and an old one, or rabbits switch to ducks. Such study is not studying verbal or neural behavior. It studies subjective experience.
What is objectivity? Scientists discovered that social and ethical values, and individual biases, could produce erroneous observations. Objectivity aims to eliminate such error.
But objectivity is a fiction. Individual subjects make observations. There are no objective observations. Subjective observations are compared and discussed, but there is no actual objectivity. To expand scientific vision, the blinding straitjacket of “objectivity” must be removed.
Some quantum physicists seriously argue that there is no objectivity because until an observation occurs, there is no event. But even if these arguments fail, we still should backburner objectivity rather than exclude consciousness from our inquiry into what exists.
David Chalmers’ “hard problem of consciousness” is our inability to understand how a physical system can have subjective experience. “How to get thought from meat.” Chalmers argues a new fundamental is required when phenomena cannot be understood using existing fundamentals. We could not understand the behavior of electrons with only mass and charge. Spin had to be added. The reality of consciousness, argues Chalmers, cannot be understood in terms of the existing physical concepts, so physics requires an additional fundamental: consciousness.
Consciousness as a fundamental of existence may provide a bridge between science and inner religion because consciousness would be fundamental in each domain.
Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins, preeminent scholars, have commented on the (in)compatibility of science with religion. Gould, and Pope John Paul II, argued science and religion are compatible because they have no overlapping areas of applicability; no “overlapping magisteria.” The pope accepted evolutionary theory but indicated that evolution concerns the body, whereas religion concerns the soul. Gould generalized the nonoverlap claim to all areas of science.
Dawkins countered that of course science and religion incompatibly overlap. Just look at the scientific and biblical stories of creation and the age of the earth. One of his papers is titled “Science discredits religion.”
Gould and Dawkins will both be wrong when physics accepts consciousness as a fundamental concept that is necessary for understanding existence. Science and inner religion will overlap, and science will not discredit inner religion but instead may benefit from the subjective “research” and theory that inner religionists have recorded in religious scriptures.
Consideration of consciousness as an actual existent may also illuminate religious mysteries. For example, inner religion sometimes metaphorically describes existence as an ocean of consciousness, with entities being waves in that ocean. Note that the wave is nothing other than what the ocean is doing, and both are consciousness. Now, consider the mystery of the trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are three and yet are one. Some find this baffling. But if the Father is the ocean of existence, the Son is a wave in that ocean, and the Holy Spirit is what they are made of, consciousness, the bafflement disappears.
When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” or the Hindus say “Atman is Brahman,” the understanding might be as that of a wave correctly declaring it and the ocean are one? “Man is made in God’s image” might have nothing to do with physical appearance but might point to their fundamental identity as consciousness.
Can we imagine that the presently evasive concept of soul might acquire physical meaning in a physics that includes consciousness?
Richard S. Bogartz is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
