Brain, by Misha Rogov

Brain

Misha Rogov

They might say that the real brain is not the empirical and hence phenomenal brain, but the physical brain which is transcendent to phenomenal consciousness, i.e., it is never given empirically — never experienced as such. Does this idea explain consciousness scientifically? Hardly, for the transcendent is not the subject matter of science (which deals solely with phenomena and mathematical descriptions of the underlying “nature”), but of metaphysical speculations, and hence the “physical” exists in our imagination as an utterly problematic (considering the “hard problem” of consciousness) pseudoscientific metaphysics of materialism (physicalism) with its reductionist neuromythology.

Idealism leads us ultimately to the question of what is consciousness as such — consciousness-in-itself — the substance of phenomena; idealism leads us to the mystery of the transcendent, and considering mysticism (transpersonal experiences of the transcendent) — to the mystery of Transcendence. The pseudoscientific metaphysical mythology of materialism (physicalism) is primarily a reaction to the religious mythology, and the problem of its fanatical backers is that together with the water of naive religious myths they throw out Transcendence, and persist in a stubborn unwillingness to return to the path of faith, now purely philosophical. Alas, few of them realize that the “physical” is purely imaginary (for it is never experienced as such), whereas all three aspects of Consciousness — phenomenal (constituted phenomenal objectivity), transcendental (constitutive transcendental (inter)subjectivity), and transcendent (consciusness-in-itself, the nondual Light) — are experiential.