Eli5: Why is consciousness such a hard thing to study?
In: 0
Because it’s a phenomenon, as in it’s a subjective thing relating to personal experiences. We can’t look into the head of other people, we can’t even determine a threshold for brain activity or configuration at which point you can say “now we have achieved consciousness”. The best thing we can do is to look for neural correlates for consciousness, but since we can’t say for sure that anyone else besides ourselves is actually conscious, that one’s pretty hard as well.
Latest Answers