Posts Tagged ‘Cognitive Science’

Buddhism Teaches Cognitive Science About Consciousness

Let us say you see a red apple, which is all that your eye does for you. It just brings you the sensory image of an apple by somehow translating the outside world into an image for consciousness, but it doesn’t provide the concept that the image is an apple nor does it make the word “apple” arise in the mind. That comes later. It somehow just gives you a mental picture image of a red apple by somehow reflecting the outside world and transmitting that reflection into consciousness. That’s what the reflective aspect of consciousness does – it gives you the shape, colors, smell, feel of the apple by reflecting the outside world and making it into a consciousness image.

Therefore, what you actually see when you see an apple is not the apple but consciousness. You are just seeing, perceiving, witnessing or experiencing an image in consciousness, but not the apple itself. The image in the mind doesn’t give you any other intelligence beyond the image, so your eyes, ears, tongue, body and nose just give you all these mental impressions which Buddhism calls images or signs. Your five senses are like five soldiers who always make an accurate report to headquarters without adding any commentary or interpretation at all. They just give you all these simultaneous images. But who interprets them?

Without being able to grasp those images and discriminate them out into parts with borders, properties or characteristics, you don’t have a clue that there is something there with a specific meaning as a specific object with specific attributes and characteristics. In other words, besides reflecting the outside world into something internal, consciousness has a function of discrimination that makes this one set of pictures quite different in meaning from another set, otherwise they’d all appear to you as the same. Read more…