Questioning Consciousness

I posted something on Facebook which says, “People debate whether AI chatbots have consciousness. I would even question whether humans have consciousness.” A Facebook friend responded and asked, “If humans don’t have consciousness, what faculty is it that you are using to question whether humans have consciousness?” In what follows, I will answer this friend’s query using two perspectives: (1) Neuroscience perspective, (2) Buddhist perspective.

Neuroscience Perspective

From a neuroscientific point of view, consciousness is considered an illusion. What we experience as ‘consciousness’ may be better understood as the result of complex neural processes rather than an independent ‘faculty’ in the traditional sense. According to many models, consciousness emerges from the brain’s interactions — neural firings, sensory integration, memory access, and data processing. This emergence doesn’t necessarily imply a singular, unified ‘consciousness’ as an entity or fixed faculty but rather a dynamic process that gives us the sense of continuity and self-awareness. Many neuroscientists view consciousness as a distributed process rather than a function of any single location in the brain. This view allows us to question consciousness without assuming that our experience of it indicates a distinct, non-physical essence or faculty. So, when I question whether humans have…