CONSCIOUSNESS FEATURETo discover what makes us self-aware, researchers from
around the world are going head-to-head in a grand
competition to determine where consciousness really
comes from... by DR CHRISTIAN JARRETTTHE MYSTERY OF YOU
cientificadvanceshavesentpeople
totheMoonandtothegreatest
depthsof theocean.We’vesplitthe
atomandcreatedcomputersthat
candefeata chessgrandmaster.
Andyetsciencestillcan’texplain
arguablythemostfundamentalaspectof
existence– oursubjectiveexperienceof
existence.Ourconsciousness.
That’snotfora lackoftrying.Thereare
manyconsciousnesstheories,it’sjustthat
noneis widelyaccepted.Partof thereason
is thetwo-tierednatureofthechallenge.
There’swhattheAustralianphilosopher
DavidChalmerscalledthe‘easyproblem’
of consciousness,whichis explainingthe
biologicalprocessesthatunderliemental
functions,likeperception,memoryand
attention.Butthere’salsothe‘hardproblem’,
whichisexplaininghowandwhythere
is a subjective,first-personaspectto these
mentalfunctions(why,whenyoustubyour
toe,youdon’tsimplyregisterthedamaging
contact– it actuallyhurts).Scientific
theoriesofconsciousnessparticularlyS
struggle with the hard problem – in fact,
there’s disagreement about whether there
really is a hard problem at all.PROGRESS NEEDED
The Templeton World Charity Foundation
(TWCF) – one of a t rio of cha ritable
entities established by the US-born British
philanthropist John Templeton – believes
it can help. The TWCF funds research
to ‘enrich individual lives and redefine
t he f rontier of huma n k nowledge a nd
progress’. At the end of 2019, it launched
a new multimillion dollar funding
initiative called Accelerating Research
On Consciousness. The aim is to stimulate
greater progress in the consciousness
field, effectively by reducing the number
of competing theories. “I would consider
t he initiative successf ul if we kill off
one theory,” says Dr Dawid Potgieter at
the TWCF, who set up and is overseeing
the exercise.
The initiative is based on an approach
known as ‘adversarial collaboration’, where
two or more scientists wit h opposing
views work toget her to resolve issues
in science. It is advocated by the Nobel-
winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman,
who pioneered our understanding of how
people make decisions. Indeed, the launch
of the new consciousness initiative marked
t he a n niversa r y of a not her scient if ic
competition that took place 100 years
ago. Arthur Eddington used the total solar
eclipse of 1919 to compare the predictions
of Einstein’s then new General Relativity
with Newton’s theories. Einstein won.
But consciousness is trickier to test 2“THE AIM IS TO STIMULATE GREATER
PROGRESS IN THE CONSCIOUSNESS
FIELD, BY REDUCING THE NUMBER
ILLUSTRATION: VICTOR SOMAOF COMPETING THEORIES”