Until now, science is firmly rooted in the notion that everything can be explained by matter and its properties alone. But leading cognitive scientists like David Chalmers are now claiming, this usual material reductionist approach is not effective in understanding consciousness. They are proposing that consciousness should be another fundamental reality in addition to the physical world. This school of thought is not new. The same theory was well studied long ago in Indian dualistic philosophy called "Sankhya". Science is just late to the party. How late? At least 3000 years late.
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| Figure 1: Hard problem of consciousness |
Now, the fun fact is, the two highest peaks of human knowledge, Advaita Vedanta of Hinduism and Yogacara Buddhism (A major school of thought in Mahayana Buddhism and highly influential in Tibetian Buddhism) have gone beyond this dualistic understanding. They both prove that reality which appears dualistic is non-dual and the physical world is just a projection of that non-duality. This projection is what creates the illusion of duality. So, science has a very long way to go. But I'm happy that science is finally taking baby steps in the right direction.
