The Science of Consciousness

The oldest question

Consciousness is the most familiar thing in the world, and one of the least understood. It is simply what it is like to be you: to see colors, feel warmth, think, remember and choose. Philosophers have asked about its nature for millennia. Over the last few decades it has also become an active field of scientific research, bringing together neuroscience, psychology, physics, philosophy and contemplative practice.

The "hard problem"

In 1995 the philosopher David Chalmers distinguished between the "easy problems" of consciousness, such as explaining how the brain discriminates stimuli, integrates information and controls behavior, and the "hard problem": why any of this processing is accompanied by subjective experience at all. The easy problems are hard enough, but in principle they can be addressed by describing mechanisms. The hard problem asks why there is something it is like to have those mechanisms. It remains one of the great open questions in science.

Neural correlates of consciousness

One productive strategy, championed by Francis Crick and Christof Koch, has been to search for the neural correlates of consciousness: the minimal brain activity that reliably accompanies a specific conscious experience. Researchers compare conditions in which the same stimulus is sometimes consciously perceived and sometimes not, and look for what changes in the brain. This work has taught a great deal about perception, attention and the brain states associated with being awake, dreaming or anesthetized.

Leading theories

• Global Workspace Theory, proposed by Bernard Baars and developed by Stanislas Dehaene and others, suggests that information becomes conscious when it is broadcast widely across the brain and becomes available to many processes at once.
• Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi, proposes that consciousness corresponds to how much a system integrates information as a unified whole, and offers a mathematical measure of it.
• Higher-order theories hold that a mental state is conscious when the mind represents itself as being in that state.
• Predictive processing approaches view the brain as constantly generating and updating predictions about the world and the body, with experience shaped by those predictions.

These theories make different predictions, and researchers have begun designing "adversarial collaborations" in which proponents agree in advance on experiments that could distinguish between them. No theory has yet won general agreement.

Contemplative science

A growing area of research studies meditation and other contemplative practices. Experienced practitioners can offer detailed first-person reports and can deliberately enter particular states of attention, which makes them valuable partners in research. Studies have examined how meditation relates to attention, emotion regulation and networks such as the brain's default mode network. Sleep and dreaming, including lucid dreaming, offer another window, since consciousness changes dramatically across a single night.

The Agni Institute's approach

At the Agni Institute, our mission is to serve the common good by awakening and expanding human consciousness. We believe the combination of Eastern and Western methods, meaning disciplines of consciousness, critical thought and scientific methodology, when motivated by goodwill, is capable of enhancing both.

Contained in the texts of Agni Yoga are hundreds of suggestions regarding research into natural law and the nature of consciousness. In our Institute Research program, co-workers collate these suggestions and write research and test protocols, using laboratory space and equipment for benchwork such as building fixtures and circuits for measurement and data collection. Through Collaborative Research, participants at three levels, from enthusiast to citizen scientist to professional or academic investigator, follow defined methods and share methods, data and findings.

We hold that unconventional questions deserve neither automatic acceptance nor automatic dismissal, but careful investigation using appropriate methods, clear standards of evidence and intellectual openness. Alongside research, meditation is practiced as a way to include human consciousness itself among the instruments of inquiry.

Get involved

Whether you are curious, a citizen scientist or a trained researcher, there are ways to take part. Contact us to ask about current projects, or read about how to get involved.