Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote / Image

Quote image editor Paul Broks

Back to previous page

“What I think I am saying is that phenomenal consciousness - the raw feel of experience - is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so. It is, by definition, subjective - where as science, by definition, adopts an objective stance. You can't be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness "from the inside" ([...]) or you view it "from the outside" ([...]). Science can study the neural activity, the bodily states, the environmental conditions, and the outward behaviours - including verbal behaviours that stand for different states of awareness ([...]), but the quality - the feel - of our experiences remains forever private and therefore out of bounds of scientific analysis. I can't see a way round this. Privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.” — Paul Broks

Quote 1080 x 1350 Instagram portrait
More
Platforms
Pure ratios
What I think I am saying is that phenomenal consciousness - the raw feel of experience - is invisible to conventional scientific scrutiny and will forever remain so. It is, by definition, subjective - where as science, by definition, adopts an objective stance. You can't be in two places at once. You either experience consciousness "from the inside" ([...]) or you view it "from the outside" ([...]). Science can study the neural activity, the bodily states, the environmental conditions, and the outward behaviours - including verbal behaviours that stand for different states of awareness ([...]), but the quality - the feel - of our experiences remains forever private and therefore out of bounds of scientific analysis. I can't see a way round this. Privateness is a fundamental constituent of consciousness.
— Paul Broks