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What is consciousness?

What is consciousness?

Last updated on: February 5, 2026 at 5:23 pm by Dan Peterson

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What is consciousness? 2026-02-05T17:23:38-07:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Leaving Nauvoo for Carthage, Joseph Smith (portrayed by Paul Wuthrich) looks back one last time toward his wife, Emma, and his family, in a scene from the 2024 Interpreter Foundation film Six Days in August.

I would like to encourage you, if you haven’t already done so, to watch Episode 1 and Episode 2 of our new Becoming Brigham series. I also hope that you’ll subscribe to the series, and that you’ll commend it to others in your ward, in your family, and among your friends. You can help.

As foretold in a documented online prophecy that was revealed to his devotees by “Bond James Bond” on 25 January 2013, the Interpreter Foundation flatlined on or just prior to 1 January 2014 (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

This new item was posted today on the long-dead website of the Interpreter Foundation: The Interpreter Insights podcast — February 5 — “How Near-Death Experiences Have Influenced the Restored Gospel,” featuring Martin Tanner (who, as his biography illustrates, has long been seriously involved with the study of near-death experiences).

Gallagher-Iba Arena at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

BYU’s basketball season got off to a spectacular start this academic year but, lately, it has turned disastrous. However, some things remain constant:

“Kevin Young responds to offensive chants from Oklahoma State fans during game against Cougars”

“GROSS: Oklahoma State ATTACKS BYU, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints With Awful Chant”

“Big 12 Investigating Reports of Anti-Mormon Chants at BYU-Oklahoma State Game: The chants could be heard during the Cowboys’ upset victory over BYU.”

“UNACCEPTABLE: BYU’s Kevin Young Speaks Out | END Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Bigotry”

“Dick Vitale, Big 12 and Oklahoma State respond to offensive chants directed at BYU: Coach Kevin Young responded after BYU basketball’s loss to Oklahoma State on Wednesday”

A few voices from the peanut gallery at the Deseret News suggest that Latter-day Saints need to search their own souls to find the reasons for such crowd behavior. However, while self-examination and reflection are never inappropriate, the suggestion seems to me rather like expecting attractive young women to feel guilty for the catcalls that they sometimes receive when they walk past a construction site, or — if we want to be really serious — holding Jews responsible for antisemitic attacks. They must have done something to bring this upon themselves, right?

A recent Hollywood expedition, out on the road in quest of new script ideas (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

And here’s a bit of (perhaps) related news from the Babylon Bee (“Fake News You Can Trust”): “Hollywood Confused As Guy Keeps Saying ‘Jesus’ But Does Not Appear To Be Using It As A Curse Word”

I’ve always loved the “mummy portraits” from the Fayyum, near the area discussed in the article below. They humanize the ancient residents of the area, who look like people that you might meet in Egypt or around the Mediterranean today. This girl’s image was created during the Roman period, between about 120 and 150 AD. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) Are we now, though, dehumanizing even the contemporary people with whom we commonly interact?

I share now some passages that I marked a while back while reading Threshold: Terminal Lucidity and the Border of Life and Death, by Alexander Batthyány, who holds the Viktor Frankl Chair for Philosophy and Psychology at the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein and is Director of the newly-established Research Institute for Theoretical Psychology and Personalist Studies at Pázmány University, Budapest. Since 2012, Dr. Batthyány has been Visiting Professor for existential psychotherapy at the Moscow University Institute of Psychoanalysis, in Russia. He is also Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute and the Viktor Frankl Archives in Vienna and first editor of the 14-volume edition of the Collected Works of Viktor Frankl. Anyway, herewith the passages that I marked:

Is the personality, the self, of a dementia patient irretrievably destroyed as a result of neuropathological processes? And if the integrity of my personhood is so dependent on the integrity of my brain function, does this not also clearly imply that myself, my mind, my personality are ultimately no more than products of my brain? That any idea of the “soul” and the discussion about the possibility of a future destiny of the “soul,” as suggested by religious traditions, is indeed hopelessly antiquated and naïve? (20)

As a matter of fact, he say, this has actually become the reigning modern view of things, at least in many elite circles:

We see the effects of this new self-understanding not only in scientific publications—rather, it also permeates our everyday talk of how and why we experience, feel, think, decide. For instance, we (at least, I am somewhat ashamed to say, we professionals) tend to talk less often about sadness. Instead, we talk about depression. If you google “sadness,” you’ll get 1.9 million hits; but google “depression,” and the figure almost doubles to 3.6 million hits. And from there on, a very normal, human sentiment becomes an increasingly material, biological concept and, in the end, nothing but a biological event: depression is popularly ascribed to serotonin imbalance. Hence sadness is depression, and depression is serotonin imbalance. But next to some forms of clinical depression, which are indeed associated with (though far more complex) chemical imbalances: Can people no longer be simply sad? Perhaps their conscience and compassion are revolting against the injustice and pain we do to each other? And what, for instance, about the pain or sadness we feel when we learn that every year, around nine million people die of hunger—twenty-four thousand each day of the year—which is more than the death toll of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined? Chemical or social and moral imbalance? Or what about bereavement? Mourning the loss of someone you love seems to be so much more than just chemical; it is a deeply human expression of your love and the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the one you are missing. (24)

And what does this mean?

[E]ver since the scientific turn and the decline of religious and spiritual traditions in the West, the modern materialist view is that our feelings, our thoughts—mind and self—even our longing for meaning and love and compassion are merely products or functions of the brain. Of course, this view isn’t only based on what the ravages of dementia and other severe neurological disorders seem to tell us about the dependency of our minds on intact brain function. It is also based on a vast repository of scientific research that shows that each and every feeling, emotion, thought, choice is accompanied by a corresponding brain event. The materialist therefore concludes that the idea of a soul also is caused by brain activity alone, and that there is no need for any additional explanation for our inner lives. (25)

What are the implications of this now reigning view?

So is sadness just chemical imbalance? Is love merely brain activity? Or compassion? Our care for this world and others? Or our longing to understand who we really are, and why we are here? Our sense of or longing for meaning, warmth, hope, and love? Something seems to be missing in this scheme.

As Estonian-Russian philosopher Valentin Tomberg put it: Materialism does something with regard to the world that would be absurd with regard to a work of art, namely to explain it through the qualities—and quantities—of the materials of which it consists, instead of the style, the context, the meaning, and the intention that the work of art reveals. Wouldn’t it be absurd to want to understand one of Victor Hugo’s poems, for example, by chemically analyzing the ink with which it had been written and the paper on which it was written, or by counting the number of words and letters? (26)

Theists have long sought to meddle beyond their own communities. In this photograph, Anbrey Rees, a volunteer with Latter-day Saint Charities, checks the vitals of a 4-month-old Indonesian girl who had surgery to fix her cleft lip aboard Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, June 2, 2012, during Pacific Partnership 2012. Pacific Partnership is an annual deployment of forces designed to strengthen maritime and humanitarian partnerships during disaster relief operations, while providing humanitarian, medical, dental and engineering assistance to nations of the Pacific.

There’s never a shortage of new material in the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™:

“Interfaith Collaboration Brings New Elderly Care Home to Czech Village: The project provides a place of care, connection and respect for seniors”

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