Relevance of Interdisciplinary Approach in the Study of Consciousness

Summary

Consciousness is a complex phenomenon studied across philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, sociology, and computer science. Interest surged in the late 1980s with key works by Baars, Dennett, Penrose, Crick, Koch, and Chalmers establishing consciousness as an interdisciplinary research field. Major unresolved issues include the hard problem of consciousness, the mind-body problem, the explanatory gap, the brain's role, and implications of artificial intelligence and neural networks. Given this complexity and debate, interdisciplinary approaches offer the greatest promise for advancing understanding.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The research is devoted to justification of the interdisciplinary approach in the study of consciousness. Studying consciousness as a phenomenon is a very divergent project, the mystery of its nature and appearance makes different ways of studying consciousness possible. Besides, consciousness is an umbrella term which may be interpreted differently in different contexts. Various approaches to comprehension of consciousness have been developed nowadays in Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Medicine, Neurosciences, Sociology, Cognitive and Computer Sciences, Linguistics and a number of other research fields. In the end of the 1980s one can notice an exceptional growth of interest in the problem of consciousness both in Philosophy and Science. The works by Bernard Baars, Daniel Dennett, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick and Christopher Koch, David Chalmers have appeared in these years. They outlined the main approaches to the study of consciousness and demonstrated that study of consciousness became an interdisciplinarity research. The research discusses the features of the phenomenon of consciousness and outlines the main theoretical issues, the most relevant of which are the “hard problem” of consciousness, the problem of mind and body, the problem of “the explanatory gap”, the question of the primacy of the brain in relation to consciousness, the place of consciousness in the modern scientific paradigm, changes of the ethical and worldview interpretation in connection with artificial intelligence, neurochips and neural network. Based on the complexity and multidimensionality of the research field associated with the problem of consciousness, the variety of approaches to studying this problem in Philosophy and Science, the controversial character of the questions raised, and the heated discussion among researches, the author concludes that interdisciplinary studies of consciousness have the greatest heuristic possibilities today.

Tags