Brain Activity and the Nature of Consciousness: the Theological Aspect

Abstract

Elucidation of the connection between brain activity and consciousness is an urgent problem in neurobiology and philosophy of consciousness. The complexity of this problem is due to fundamentally different properties of physical processes and subjective phenomena. Neurophysiological studies have shown that subjective phenomena are associated with synchronous electrical activity of neural ensembles of the cerebral cortex, where the content of the subjective phenomenon is determined by the network coordinates of a simultaneously excited group of nerve cells. However, the question arises: how does the physical process of excitation of nerve cells turn into a sensation, a subjective, experienced phenomenon? The main difficulty is seen in the fact that all subjective phenomena are always ‘in the first person’, they are subject-oriented (or ‘who-oriented’), personal, while
all physical processes are fundamentally objective (object oriented), nonpersonal. The reduction of personality to the sum of physical processes is impossible. Therefore, it is impossible to explain consciousness on the basis of neurophysiological phenomena alone. To explain the transition from brain activity to consciousness, an important factor is missing — ‘personality factor’, which is the essence of consciousness. Understanding the nature of personality factor is only possible in the context of theology. The article makes an assumption that the nature of personality factor is grace. A metaphysical model of consciousness is proposed, in which the physical processes that occur on a neuron level and determine the content of subjective phenomena act as a “mirror” in relation to the initially given grace, which, being “reflected” by brain processes, is our consciousness.