July 2025
Scientific American delves into the topic of consciousness but gets stuck in the physicalist view that its source is the brain. The publication should know that new findings have ruled out this possibility.
SCREEN SHOT: Scientific American
Under the headline, “When Does Consciousness Emerge in Babies?” Scientific American magazine purports to dig into one of the big questions about life. However, the reporter and the scientists interviewed in the piece ignore frontline research on consciousness.
The headline reflects the article’s physicalist lens, through which the elusive consciousness is seen as an emergent property of the brain. But ever more experiments and studies show that consciousness is non-local, which means that brain waves or firing neurons are visible effects of consciousness — not what creates consciousness.
“Among the debates surrounding the developing mind is the question of when consciousness first emerges”, the reporter notes. “And that question is tied to the scientific challenge of defining conscious experience. Various philosophical, psychological and neurobiological models have attempted to explain what it is and what underlies it. Investigating whether this phenomenon exists across early development may offer new insights and ways to assess theories of consciousness.”
One way of investigating this is by measuring brain waves in infants and fetuses. It turns out that brains in babies older than one year create waves that resemble the ones in adults, whereas brains in younger infants don’t. The article attributes this correlation as causation as to when consciousness emerges. The only certain conclusion, however, is that the brain, like other organs, matures.
The article also references research on behavioural evidence that infants experience some form of subjective experience –interpreted as primary consciousness – shortly after birth, like fixating on faces and being able to distinguish a mother’s voice from that of strangers.
“Most abilities grow gradually”, says neuroscientist Julia Moser of the University of Minnesota, one of the researchers interviewed for the story. “Why would consciousness be an exception?”
Actually, many new findings tell us that it is an exception.
The modern physicalist view is challenged by some of the latest frontline science of consciousness, which is a rediscovery of ancient wisdom. Studies of Near-Death and Out-of-Body experiences show that consciousness is non-local, which is incompatible with physicalism or the materialist worldview. Research also shows that the evidence for parapsychological phenomena – also non-local in character – is comparable to that for established phenomena in psychology and other disciplines.
Many neuroscientists are adopting the philosophy of panpsychism, which holds that every component of the universe has some level of consciousness. Some go further and adhere to idealism, an orientation that says consciousness precedes matter (the physical universe is then a manifestation of what consciousness has created – a thought, for example). The concept of a conscious universe has been put forth by some astrophysicists.
Much of the reasoning in the article conflates consciousness and sense perception. For example, some features of ”blindsight” are discussed, a neurological condition where a person with damage to their visual cortex can unconsciously perceive visual stimuli despite not having conscious sight. When asked to guess where a particular object is, a blindsighted person can point to it. Thus, the brain ‘unconsciously’ detects things visually.
Interestingly, this shows that there is a perceived difference between what the brain does and the self. It is as if there are (at least) two points of reference in play within the same person. The conscious person can observe that their brain independently performs things ‘for’ them.
Are we so accustomed to this meta-awareness that we seldom ponder what it entails for the nature of consciousness. Investigating this observing self would be a crucial clue.
In meditation or deep relaxation, an adult can reach a state of pure, thoughtless awareness in the space between thoughts. Could this pure awareness be what newborns experience before the mind is activated?
Considering the new discoveries (or rediscoveries) at the intersection of science and spirituality, perhaps a more pertinent question than the one in the headline would be, “When Do Babies Emerge in Consciousness?”
This juxtaposed starting point acknowledges the research in non-local consciousness and raises core questions about spirit, soul and what the essence of a human being is.
Anders Bolling
