Forget to learn about consciousness for a while[i]

We learn from neuroscientist the correlations between physical and conscious states but we do not learn about consciousness itself. That is because a physical description is not able to say what consciousness is (we can’t get it out). If a reducible description is valid for other areas of science, this is not true for consciousness.
Since Aristotle passing through seventeen century, the science reduced the description of the phenomenon in terms of matter and motion. Matter is one thing that has a structure that can be mathematically described but consciousness not (so far).
Scientific description of matter is just describing certain properties of matter that can be described mathematically. Not all parts of matter can be captured this way. Exactly the consciousness is not possible to be described this way. The way we know that matter is completely different the consciousness is – it is only known by us internally.
For Rebecca, there is no chance for our science to move on and learn about the consciousness. She is really skeptical about that. For her, this is a limitation of our science “way of life”. Well… and about the consciousness?
Dualism definitely is not the case because it means that we don’t know the whole system and then we do not decide what is missing. Panpsychism can be a good theory because it puts the power in some sort of particles that can have one principle. One interesting and fundamental property not so complicated and maybe presented in all matter or arrangement. For Rebecca, it seems more plausible then reductionism or dualism.


[i] According to: https://youtu.be/DG6-wbFgFpY. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein - Is Consciousness Irreducible? Watched on April 28, 2020.

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