Vehicles of Consciousness

Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 2014

Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 2018

The mind and brain sciences began with consciousness as a central concern. But for much of the 20th century, ideological and methodological concerns relegated its empirical study to the margins. Since the 1990s, studying consciousness has regained a legitimacy and momentum befitting its status as the primary feature of our mental lives. Nowadays, consciousness science encompasses a rich interdisciplinary mixture drawing together philosophical, theoretical, computational, experimental, and clinical perspectives, with neuroscience its central discipline. Researchers have learned a great deal about the neural mechanisms underlying global states of consciousness, distinctions between conscious and unconscious perception, and self-consciousness. Further progress will depend on specifying closer explanatory mappings between (first-person subjective) phenomenological descriptions and (third-person objective) descriptions of (embodied and embedded) neuronal mechanisms. Such progress will he...

geocities.ws

Two compelling intuitions about consciousness are that i) there is no appearance/reality distinction for phenomenal character and ii) phenomenal character plays a causal role in cognition and behaviour. Process theories of consciousness, such as Dennett"s multiple drafts theory, secure the first intuition but must give up the second. In contrast vehicle theories, such as that offered by O"Brien and Opie, secure the second intuition but must give up the first. These approaches exhaust the options available to the cognitive scientist for explaining consciousness. Hence on the cognitive science framework at least one of our intuitions about consciousness must be given up.

This paper argues that the many and various conceptions of consciousness propounded by cognitive scientists can all be understood as constituted with reference to four fundamental sorts of criterion: epistemic (concerned with kinds of consciousness), semantic (dealing with orders of consciousness), physiological (reflecting states of consciousness), and pragmatic (seeking to capture types of consciousness). The resulting four-fold taxonomy, intended to be exhaustive, implies that all of the distinct varieties of consciousness currently encountered in cognitive neuroscience, the philosophy of mind, clinical psychology, and other related fields ultimately refer to a single natural phenomenon, analysed under four general aspects. The proposed taxonomy will, it is hoped, possess sufficient clarity to serve as a sound theoretical framework for further scientific studies, and to count as a significant step in the direction of a properly formulated unified concept of consciousness.

Archives in Neurology & Neuroscience, 2024

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License ANN.MS.ID.000908.

2006

Current views of consciousness can be divided by whether the theorist accepts or rejects cognitivism about consciousness. Cognitivism as we understand it is the view that consciousness is just a form of representation or an information-processing property of a system that has representations or perhaps both. Anti-cognitivists deny this, appealing to thought experiments about inverted spectra, zombies and the like to argue that consciousness could change while nothing cognitive or representational changes. Nearly everyone agrees, however, that consciousness has a representational base. Whether consciousness simply is representational or cognitive, it at least requires representation (and cognition). In an ecumenical spirit, we will focus on this point of agreement and sketch a theory of what this representational base might be. We hope that the result will be a framework useful for investigating consciousness empirically.

Cognitive processing, 2018

In this article, I argue that consciousness is a unique way of processing information, in that: it produces information, rather than purely transmitting it; the information it produces is meaningful for us; the meaning it has is always individuated. This uniqueness allows us to process information on the basis of our personal needs and ever-changing interactions with the environment, and consequently to act autonomously. Three main basic cognitive processes contribute to realize this unique way of information processing: the self, attention and working memory. The self, which is primarily expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems, maps our body, the environment, and our relations with the environment. It is the primary means by which the complexity inherent to our composite structure is reduced into the "single voice" of a unique individual. It provides a reference system that (albeit evolving) is sufficiently stable to define the variations that will be use...

2013

This symposium undertakes the interdisciplinary study of consciousness, the "hard problem" of neuroscience that literature is in a unique position to illuminate. The study of consciousness has had a formidable history, from the cognitive revolution of the 1990s to the current day. Leading neuroscientists have called consciousness "the chaìlenge of the century." Several prominent neuroscientists, recognizing the limits of lab research, have begun to reach across the disciplinary divide, and humanists have been responding in kìnd. Lite¡ature provides a ¡eservoir ofexperiential data that can be used productively by philosophe¡s and neuroscientists, whose findings, in turn, shed fresh light on literature. The four sessions at this ICLA Paris Congress demonstrate the span that the inquiry is takrng with diffe¡ent emphases-of domain, processing, pathology and culture-as we move from the neuron to the environment in the analysis of consciousness. In all the sessions, connections are drawn between literature and leading neu¡oscientific theory-The sessions are also dedicated to developing new methodologies for this inte¡disciplinary investigation. This interchange has the potential to spur further collaborative research in neuroscience and literature.

In A.E. Cavanna, A. Nani, H. Blumenfeld & S. Laureys (Eds) The Neuroimaging of Consciousness, 2013

This chapter reviews some of the central theoretical challenges confronting the search for the brain basis of consciousness and develops a conceptual framework for tackling these challenges. At the heart of the search for the neural basis of consciousness is the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness. Identifying the neural correlates of consciousness requires that we acknowledge the various aspects of consciousness, for each of the aspects of consciousness raises its own set of methodological challenges. We examine the question of whether an account of the neural correlates of consciousness can be used to ascribe consciousness to creatures that lack the capacity to report their experiences, and we ask whether it is possible to go beyond the neural correlates of consciousness by providing neurally-based explanations of consciousness.

Journal of Neurology and Neurobiology, 2021

Consciousness and the human mind have been pondered for centuries [1,2]. Today the most fundamental, likely outlines of the explanation of consciousness are known, and from this landscape we are well-positioned to fill in the basket of specific theories that will include the correct one. However, many errors in thinking and assumptions have accumulated, and even gained fashion, that obscure our progress. It is time to eliminate these, which we do herein by enumerating the complementary true assertions. Following that we mention four principles for choosing direction for further work. We conclude with a framework for further progress.