Modern neuroscience's primary goal is to understand how consciousness results from brain function. Pursuing their quest neuroscientists face the so called "binding problem". In this site I present a partial translation of the book I published in Greek on the subject. My treatment of the "binding problem" is quite different that the usual ones and, in my opinion, as good as any other. I also express the idea that the modern scientific problem of how consciousness emerges from the brain (the notorious "explanatory gap" lurks here) and the traditional epistemological problem of how to prove the existence of the material world (the question of solipsism) are two aspects of the same thing. I suggest a single solution for both and I take the risk to claim that it is sound. My analysis is concentrated on the logical qualities of the visual image.

A general outline of my views:

The problem of the relation between matter and consciousness can be seen in two ways. We can either start from the brain and try to explain consciousness or start from consciousness and try to infer its material substratum. The second way is the traditionally considered non-solvable problem of the reality of the material world. But, since the path from consciousness to matter is the same with the path from matter to consciousness, it is possible that, if the reality of matter were not provable, the relation between the brain function and consciousness would not be able to be traced either. Indeed the effort to explain consciousness starting off from the brain is even more difficult, because 1) we begin with the unproved assumption of the reality of the material world, but since it is unproved, the precise meaning of this assumption might be eluding 2) we begin not knowing the relation between matter and consciousness, between the brain function and consciousness. If we start from consciousness to trace matter, we have the advantage that the path of the tracing will necessarily give us the relationship of matter and consciousness, because the tracing itself will be the proof of this relation.

Let us begin with the elementary and indisputable reality of the visual image we see in front of us and study its properties. Whatever the image might be and whatsoever properties it might have they are included exactly in this thing that we see. At first, no connection to any material element is seen, so the visual image itself declares that it is an isolated entity: the visual image is what it seems and as it seems to be and if it looks isolated, so it is. But the visual image does not support its own extent. On the one hand it seems coherent, united. On the other hand every part of it ignores the existence of its other parts, contains no information on them, cannot see them, ergo it stands alone. I.e. no element keeping the image united is seen; consequently such an element does not exist. So the image should be dispersed into fragments which should get further intersected and finally become invisible. The image seems united, but its unity is broken. Then the image should not be visible or even existent. On the other side, it obviously is.

Since the image cannot support its own unity and hence its own existence, still it does exist, matter is needed to support it. The unity of the image is visible, since the image is seen as united, it is invisible, since no element can be seen to constitute this unity. The image is visible and this same image is dispersed and invisible.

Such contradictions appear constantly, when we deal with consciousness. Let us take some chromatic quality, e.g. blue. We presume that blue is necessarily associated to some cerebral condition, function, etc. But, in order to be associated, it should be able to be analyzed, so that it would become clear where blue is different e.g. from red and so blue instead of red should be attributed to the particular functional condition. So, can blue be analyzed? It is known that sensory qualities cannot be described, therefore they are called qualia. But it has not been pointed out that they cannot be described, because they include no information about themselves (nevertheless they serve as information about the material world), which means that they describe themselves as nil, they annihilate themselves, just like the extent of the visual image does. Consciousness would not even be able to exist, if it were not self - contradictory.

The translated text in pdf and in html files

My email: asdfghgrc@yahoo.com

Link to my Greek page