Is consciousness biological?

March 15th

Sometimes I feel very dumb. I mean, like, you know — extra stupid and limited in any thinking process or something. Like I am reading something and I understand every single word, and those words are in order that I also understand, but after reading a single sentence I am just dumbfounded as to what I actually read and what was the meaning of it. Re-reading doesn’t help, something is not just clicking there.

There — I mean in my mind.

Last night I started thinking what is the current scientific consensus on the question above. So, I started reading whatever results come up in the search query. Of course — first was Wikipedia, and then I went through a “rabbit hole” of clicking and reading links and annotations and footnotes. It took me a while to see that even though I read a lot already, there was no clear answer to what I thought was a simple question. It seemed like every sentence is muddled enough just to say something without actually saying too much. Why? Why do people write this way? Are they hedging their bets in a case in the future there will be an obvious answer to that question, and they just want to prevent any possibility of being wrong by not being clear in the first place?

Like I just did in a paragraph above — a lot of words, very little meaning. And still a detour from the actual question.

I think that there is no clear answer in the scientific community to that question for now — since there is no binding definition of what “consciousness” is. I think that the only point everybody agrees on is that it exists. Is our awareness of internal and external being just a product of genes and chromosomes and neuron connections? Or does it develop from a blank slate by interactions and learning and nurturing and development from outside stimuli? Can it be developed and improved and disabled by particular actions? And if so, are those actions also conscious, autonomous decisions or is free will a false concept?

It bothers me that something so familiar as consciousness can be also so mysterious and open to debate. And what about if every single person has a consciousness that is biological, but is even by 0.00000001% different and unique from everybody else’s? Can any person actually understand any other person if that is the case? I don’t know. And no one else knows for sure. And that nagging thought is pestering my mind and my consciousness.