We regard ourselves as the species par excellence. The Nazis and their strains went further and subdivided our species into higher and lower subspecies. God created everything, so many of us believe, and this “greatest being conceivable” designed us to be special. Each one of us got a brain that could think of itself and potentially ponder about many other things in extraordinary ways. Other animals were apparently not awarded with such a phenomenal aptitude. We were the chosen ones, wholly capable of practically infinite development that would lead us back to our Creator. Yet the brains inside our heads had to be more than just a mixture of organic substances. Thought and all that it entails had to originate from somewhere immaterial, a place where our consciousness could be relatively tranquil and far from the strains of existence. We therefore determined quite intuitively that our brains were separate from our minds. Dualism in terms of body and mind was widely adopted until the timely advent of brains like Hobbes, Darwin, Crick, and Dennett, just to name a few.
There is a clearer likelihood that consciousness is bound to the brain than separate from it. The dualistic view mostly stems from our egocentric attitude about the world, whereas the materialistic one arises from our inquiry into the nature of the world. We tend to regard the world with hopefulness and dismay, hoping that a better world awaits us while fearing that the opposite is true. This contradictory standpoint alone illustrates our perceptual downfall. We have grown in many respects but have yet to cut the creationist umbilical cord. Our imagination may take us where no one has gone before, and our intellect may make sense of it, but our stubborn clinging to the past pulls us back into the abyss of ignorance. Most of us are still unable to let go or even entertain our mortality. Our so-called consciousness is but a product of evolution, and presently, it can be successfully argued that the brain powers it. However, somewhere near the culmination of evolution, if such a peak is ever forthcoming, consciousness might free itself from the material world and exist in a sphere of pure energy, and only then would it be truly separate from the brain. Pending that splendid moment, we might as well power our consciousness with empirically plausible ideas.
