Consciousness: Reductive Physicalism to Ultimate Holism

Consciousness: Reductive Physicalism to Ultimate Holism

Oct 22, 2008 | Article, GAU Journal

GAU Journal of Social and Applied Science

Abstract
In the reductive physicalist paradigm in mainstream modern science, consciousness emerges from random bits of energy/matter that bind together from lower-order parts into unitary biological organisms which somehow develop higher-order conscious control over the parts. How the closed causal chain unlinks and inserts a causally efficacious conscious mind is utterly mysterious. Consciousness must be epiphenomenal or non-existent, and thus a fundamental misperception. This paper summarizes a logically consistent alternative that incorporates progress over the past century in quantum, quantum gravity, and unified field theories extending into theorized subtle underlying nonlocal space and further into the ultimate holism of the unified field. Added to the reductionism and physicalism are real, non-local, nonphysical levels of nature. These cutting edge developments – which have profound implications for addressing long-standing dilemmas in modern science such as the mind-body problem – are matching up with the consciousness-mind-matter ontology in the oldest continuous knowledge tradition of Vedic science.

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Consciousness: Reductive Physicalism to Ultimate Holism

Is the ‘Big Bang’ a Big Myth?

Oct 22, 2007 | Article, GAU Journal

GAU Journal of Social and Applied Science, 2007

Abstract
Inflationary big bang theory is the consensus model of the origin of the universe in contemporary cosmology. According to this theory, the universe emerged from randomly fluctuating quantum fields that apparently originated instantaneously from nothing. It is further theorized that these quantum fields congealed into stars, planets, and eventually living organisms such as human beings with sufficient neural complexity to generate consciousness. These theories are associated with the reductive, materialistic, bottom-up matter-mind-consciousness ontology still prominent in modern science. In this perspective, consciousness emerges from randomly fluctuating bits of energy/matter, which somehow bind into neural networks that generate conscious mind; and then in some quite mysterious way, conscious mind gains causal power to direct behavior of the whole organism.
This paper describes an alternative, logically consistent, holistic view from ancient Vedic science that is a top-down consciousness-mind-matter ontology. In that holistic view, the source of everything in nature, the unified field, is conscious Being. Remaining within the unified field, nature limits itself or condenses into mind and matter. In the holistic view, the origin of the universe is better characterized as a ‘Big Condensation’ rather than the ‘Big Bang.’ The holistic view is consistent with unified field theories, symmetry breaking, quantum decoherence, the ‘arrow of time,’ and the 2nd law of thermodynamics – all of which imply that the universe originated from the lowest entropy, super-symmetric, perfectly orderly unified field.
Holistic Vedic science provides empirical means to resolve fundamental paradoxes in the reductive materialistic, bottom-up ontology, including the so-called hard problem of consciousness, order emerging from fundamental random disorder, and everything emerging from nothing.

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