The Riddle of Consciousness and the Changing Scientific WorldView

Abstract

Centuries-old determinist traditions of scientific materialism are currently challenged in an unprecedented outburst during the past two decades of emerging new paradigms, new worldview "visions," new approaches to consciousness and to reality, and other transformative trends including an all-time high in favor of holism over reductionism. These revisionary developments are traced to sources in the preceding cognitive revolution and its changed concepts of consciousness and causation. Anew reciprocal "two-way" mode of causal determinism, required to shift mental states into an ineliminable causal role, is a common underlying factor. This bidirectional model is upheld to be a more complete and adequate paradigm for all casual explanation and understanding, giving science a new approach to the ultimate nature and meaning of existence with a new set of answers to some of today's thorniest issues.