"As a professor of philosophy, I couldn’t help but smile at the headline: “Neuroscientists identify key gatekeeper of human consciousness.”
Science, meet Descartes.
According to the article:
"A new study published in Science has identified the thalamus as a central player in how humans become consciously aware of visual information … Scientists discovered that specific thalamic regions activate earlier and more strongly during moments of visual awareness. These findings suggest that the intralaminar and medial thalamic nuclei act as a gateway that initiates conscious perception by influencing the activity of the prefrontal cortex."
The thalamus, a small, egg-shaped structure deep within the brain, is known to relay sensory data – sight, sound, touch – to the cerebral cortex, where interpretation occurs. It also helps regulate alertness, sleep, and attention. Now, it appears it does more. This research suggests it may be the threshold to consciousness.
For today’s science, that’s not just outdated; it’s heresy. Materialism insists consciousness is not a thing, but an emergent property – a byproduct of brain activity; but it most definitely is not a bridge between material and non-material realms.
Yet four centuries later, neuroscience is drawn back to a brain locus remarkably close to Descartes’ little gland – and to calling it the “gateway to consciousness.”
But language matters. A gateway is an opening in something, and consciousness is an empirically verifiable reality. Both are observationally admitted by scientific investigation.
Q: By what authority, then, does science dismiss the existential status of consciousness, defining it away as an “emergent quality”?
Q: Can scientists take a hint from their own language?
Q: Why isn’t it possible that consciousness is more than the leftovers of chemistry in a bone beaker?
Q: Why can’t it point to something real beyond their materialist bias?
Descartes. He didn’t have PET scans or MRI machines. His anatomical knowledge was primitive by our standards. He believed what common sense and the Bible told him – that the “soul” is real and immaterial. Yet after nearly four centuries of scoffing, science is led back toward Descartes’ “naïve” dualism." CEH
Yet four centuries later, neuroscience is drawn back to a brain locus remarkably close to Descartes’ little gland – and to calling it the “gateway to consciousness.”
But language matters. A gateway is an opening in something, and consciousness is an empirically verifiable reality. Both are observationally admitted by scientific investigation.
Q: By what authority, then, does science dismiss the existential status of consciousness, defining it away as an “emergent quality”?
Q: Can scientists take a hint from their own language?
Q: Why isn’t it possible that consciousness is more than the leftovers of chemistry in a bone beaker?
Q: Why can’t it point to something real beyond their materialist bias?
Descartes. He didn’t have PET scans or MRI machines. His anatomical knowledge was primitive by our standards. He believed what common sense and the Bible told him – that the “soul” is real and immaterial. Yet after nearly four centuries of scoffing, science is led back toward Descartes’ “naïve” dualism." CEH
