In class we have recently been discussing philosophy of the mind and debating whether it is possible for science to learn all there is to know about the brain. Although it is an unpopular belief, I still believe that science can teach us all there is to know about the brain. I think that consciousness is tied to the brain, even if we can’t understand how. Neuroscience is a fairly new field, only having been around for the last 100 years or so. Already, neuroscience has explained many aspects of the brain that previously were not understood. Memories, for example, can be stored in the brain, but they can also have a direct impact on the brain, altering neural routes and pathways. This can be applied to the Mary discussion that we had in class. The reason that Mary does not know about colors before leaving her black and white world is because she has never seen colors and therefore they have never been processed in her brain. However, upon seeing color, her neural pathways will be altered and she will now have the experience and understand what it is like to see color. She cannot perceive colors before she has seen them because her brain cannot imagine them until the proper neural connections have been established. This argument may not convince everybody and I understand. However, 500 years ago if you described electricity or smart phones, people probably would have claimed you were crazy; yet, now these advances are reality. Although it may not be imaginable now, I believe that one day science will make the necessary advances to understand the brain and consciousness.
Although science and consciousness may seem distant now, scientists are getting closer. This quote from “Research Methods in Psychology” by Beth Morling shows a possible scientific explanation for consciousness:
“Because the left hemisphere is apparently responsible for combing, interpreting, and telling a story about the many different inputs to the brain, [researchers] have suggested that the left hemisphere may be a seat of the self-concept–responsible for the conscious ‘sense of self’ that humans have”
In Jackson’s argument in “What Mary didn’t Know”, Mary is supposed to know all physical facts about color and how it is processed in the brain; however, this statement can be problematic. Science may not seem to be able to understand consciousness now, but like you said, neuroscience is relatively new and it is still something we are learning about. The people have an intuition that we cannot explain it, but people’s intuition isn’t always accurate. For example in my physics class, we are learning about special relatively which goes against the “common sense” view of absolute time and space; however, numerous experiments support special relativity which reinforces the idea that our current intuition may not necessarily be correct.