The Quest for Answers

We only experience a small spectrum of the electromagnetic wave--what we call visible light. We can't see in the ultraviolet range but some animals and insects do. What does their world look like? We don't know. Bats experience and navigate the world using sound waves. What is it like to be a bat?

That is exactly is the title of Thomas Nagel's famous paper published in the Philosophical Review in 1974, defining the ultimate problem of consciousness, which has been the elusive holy grail for our current generation of philosophers, neuro-scientists and psychologists.

We may never find an answer to that question. Why? Because any answer that we can come up with is ultimately interpreted by consciousness itself. Can consciousness understand itself? Can we ever capture the reflection of a mirror with another mirror?

What do we mean when we 'understand' something? Is understanding simply familiarity? 2+2=4? 

Is understanding simply a process of establishing a chain of causality? Why did I eat that piece of cake? Because I'm hungry. Or because I have a craving for sweet things. Is that sufficient explanation for why I ate the cake? 

Is understanding an intuitive process? A feeling? An 'aha' moment? In high school or secondary school, the mathematics teacher would write some formulae on the blackboard and demonstrate to you how you use them to achieve certain outcome. With some practice, you soon figure out how to apply it efficiently. You learn how to extract the necessary parameters in the exam question and insert them into the formula. Lo and behold an answer pops up. Full marks. But do you really understand what it is about?

Perhaps each one of us has a different criteria for defining what understanding is. If someone tells you that you go to either heaven or hell after you die, is that sufficient explanation to you for the meaning of life? You must do good and worship the right god so that you end up in heaven, where you will lead a life of eternal bliss and joy. Is that good enough an explanation for you? If not, what is?

If I tell you that the purpose of existence is to work out your karma. Is that a satisfactory explanation for you? What constitutes a 'satisfying' explanation? What are the standards that need to be met for you to 'understand' and be 'satisfied' with an statement of 'fact'? Must you touch it and feel it in your hands first? Or must you see it with your own eyes?

What is this intuitive 'aha' moment? Is it some state of mind, a certain pattern of neurons firing in unison? Or is there something non-physical, something of the spirit that moves us when we get that Eureka moment? Like being 'moved by the spirit' or being 'touched by God'?

What do we even mean when we say that? Is it simply aesthetics--the joy and delight when we listen to a beautiful piece of music or being awestruck by a magnificent work of art?

If understanding is intuitive. What is intuition? Is it something supernatural? Some magical property that inhabits the human brain when it reaches a certain level of complexity? An emergent property of the system?

I dont' have answers to all these questions. But what I do know is that, as long as I am alive, I will be pursuing them. If there's such thing as the meaning of life, it is the pursuit of these answers. It is that Socratic quest for the examined life. And that is exactly what I do every day, the moment I wake up.