Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[smcder]

Velman's framing of "Western" and "Eastern" appears to be based on, at least in part, a loose association of "Western" phenomenology with the "Eastern" likes of Krishna and Eastern Mysticism. But with respect to the progress being made on a common understanding between East and West, of what's really going on inside our heads, there is a growing understanding of neuroscience. For example Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, Director, National Brain Research Centre, India, and Vilayanur Subramanian Ramachandran, born in India, and now living in San Diego. They tend to be exploring things along the same lines as Laurey ( above ). Here's a video featuring Ramachandran:

3 clues to understanding your brain​

MEDIA=youtube]Rl2LwnaUA-k[/MEDIA]

Ramachandran is very interesting and very popular, but also controversial. I don't know if the following casts any concern on the video you posted, but it would be worth checking into:

• see his Wikipedia page
• the Tell Tale Brain page on Wikipedia, subsections:
  • controversy
  • positive reviews
  • critical reviews

Here is the full section critical reviews from Wikipedia, I've highlighted what appear to me to be some pretty serious criticisms of a scientist from some pretty heavyweight critics:

The Tell-Tale Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Critical Reviews[edit]

In his review for the American Scientist, Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Cambridge University, said he found the book stimulating and enjoyable but questioned the validity of Ramachandran's views on the importance of mirror neurons. In particular, Baron-Cohen took issue with Ramachandran's well known prediction "... that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.” Baron-Cohen stated "Whether [Ramachandran] has overstated the importance of mirror neurons and will decide to retract this statement remains to be seen." Baron-Cohen, who is Director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University, pointed out that Ramachandran has failed to acknowledge the experimental evidence that contradicts his theory that dysfunctional mirror neurons play a significant role in autism. Baron-Cohen writes "There are also clinical and experimental reasons for being skeptical of the broken-mirror theory of autism... As an explanation of autism, the [Broken Mirror] theory offers some tantalizing clues; however, some problematic counter-evidence challenges the theory and particularly its scope."[11]
In the New York Times, Anthony Gottlieb criticized Ramachandran for not mentioning that his ideas about the importance of mirror neurons are controversial:

"Although Ramachandran admits that his account of the significance of mirror neurons is speculative, he doesn’t let on just how controversial it is. In the past four years, a spate of studies has dented every part of the mirror-neuron story. Doubt has been cast on the idea that imitation and the understanding of actions depend on mirror neurons, and on the theory that autism involves a defect in these systems of cells. It has even been claimed that the techniques used to detect the activity of mirror neurons have been widely misinterpreted. Ramachandran may have good reason to discount these skeptical studies, but he surely should have mentioned them."[12]

Nicholas Shakespeare, the well-known British writer, felt that Ramachandran did not fully engage the ideas presented in the book:

"Ramachandran wanders along intriguing neural pathways, pausing to investigate strange disorders, but he leaves the impression that he is an explorer who has yet to leave the coast.

* this is a very interesting statement:

Further, he appears not fully to appreciate that the interior of this vast continent he is mapping may be at war.

His book is intermittently fascinating, but is not important in the way of

Iain McGilchrist The Master and His Emissary,

last year’s magisterial study of the brain’s two opposed hemispheres, which it nicely (though unintentionally) complements – even to the extent of using some of the same illustrations."[13]

In his review for the Wall Street Journal, Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester complained that Ramachandran has failed to provide the research needed to back up his theories:

"The trouble begins when the neurologist turns philosopher and tries to use these insights to get closer to "what makes us human." He suggests that such cross-wiring underpins both humans' ability to enjoy metaphors and artists' capacity to create novel connections—an assertion that has scarcely any research to back it up. (What little has been done depends on laughably simplistic models of how metaphors and creativity really work.) Likewise, his explanation of how we became speaking animals has scarcely a toe-hold on empirical data."[14]

@Soupie - this isn't just me being critical, as laypersons we'd have to really dig into this to see what's what, but rather this comes back to my ongoing concern with popular science and what a layperson can really understand from the information that is ready at hand on the internet. A lot of the material at hand is sanitized of the nuance and complexity of the actual dialogue and presented to the layperson in a more simplisitic way.

If someone follows up on these criticisms, I'd be interested to know what's found.

To give an appreciation of the nuance and complexity of the discussion in neuro-science, here is Cohen's review:

Making Sense of the Brain’s Mysteries » American Scientist

He ends thusly:

But none of these debatable scientific issues diminished my enjoyment of this book, which is important as a record of its author’s restless mind and seemingly infinite curiosity. Ramachandran is without doubt one of the world’s most stimulating neuroscientists, and his bold ideas offer not just food for thought but explanations of what makes us human.

 

[smcder]

@ufology - I'd like to ask you about your participation on this thread:

And you do ( understand the complexity ) I presume? Fact is. Like I said, that thread is hundreds of pages long and still there is no definitive answer.

The truth is, that while I don't have all the answers, I understand a lot more than you give me credit for, and the thread hasn't advanced my understanding of the topic beyond where it was before the derail that occurred when I challenged Tyger's nonsensical claims, and attempted to point out the logical inconsistencies with Chalmers' ideas ( e.g. the so-called "Hard Problem of Consciousness" ). I think I left off with the idea that our consciousness ( human consciousness ) is an emergent property of a normally functioning brian/body system. If you have such a firm grasp on all those issues, then you can always go back and post a logical analysis that indicates why those views are in error. Maybe I'll read it and respond someplace else besides the derailed thread, of which my participation is mainly in protest to the initial derail.

Can you say more about what you mean by "mainly in protest"? The derail occured quite some time ago and the C&P thread now has a life and history of its own. I hope you are here now to constructively engage in the dialogue.

 

[Constance]

"In experiences that have transpersonal dimensions, the individual has the sense of having transcended his or her own identity and ego boundaries as they are defined in the ordinary state of consciousness."

Our experiences with our children, in the mutual openness that we realize in getting to know one another from the baby's earliest days, are one of the most productive ways our consciousnesses change in/by virtue of the felt and responsive presence of one another. My experience in caring for my child opened me up emotionally in ways that no other relationship had ever done. It's hard to put into words, but the experience itself was one in which she and I lived in a mutual world, an interrelated consciousness that indeed transcended the nature of my consciousness before Annie. I at first thought that this was the result of my sensing and living in 'her world', but I soon realized that the transcendence of my consciousness in her company was enabled by her.

Doubt has been cast on the idea that imitation and the understanding of actions depend on mirror neurons, and on the theory that autism involves a defect in these systems of cells. It has even been claimed that the techniques used to detect the activity of mirror neurons have been widely misinterpreted. Ramachandran may have good reason to discount these skeptical studies, but he surely should have mentioned them."[12]

The idea that mirror neurons produce our feelings and our responsiveness to others (and our responsiveness to the world) seems to me to 'grasp the wrong end of the stick'. Panksepp's research on primordial affectivity alone places that hypothesis in question. It seems more likely to me that the development of mirror neurons follows the evolution from affectivity to feeling to meaningful preconscious and conscious awareness of the world and of others in it. I think that neuroscience is a long way from exploring how preconscious experience influences the body/brain's adaptations to and realizations of sensed being-in-the-world. Aside from neurophenomenology, it seems that that question has not even been raised.

 

[Randall]

Ramachandran is very interesting and very popular, but also controversial. I don't know if the following casts any concern on the video you posted, but it would be worth checking into:

• see his Wikipedia page
• the Tell Tale Brain page on Wikipedia, subsections:
  • controversy
  • positive reviews
  • critical reviews

Here is the full section critical reviews from Wikipedia, I've highlighted what appear to me to be some pretty serious criticisms of a scientist from some pretty heavyweight critics:

The Tell-Tale Brain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Critical Reviews[edit]

In his review for the American Scientist, Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at Cambridge University, said he found the book stimulating and enjoyable but questioned the validity of Ramachandran's views on the importance of mirror neurons. In particular, Baron-Cohen took issue with Ramachandran's well known prediction "... that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.” Baron-Cohen stated "Whether [Ramachandran] has overstated the importance of mirror neurons and will decide to retract this statement remains to be seen." Baron-Cohen, who is Director of the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University, pointed out that Ramachandran has failed to acknowledge the experimental evidence that contradicts his theory that dysfunctional mirror neurons play a significant role in autism. Baron-Cohen writes "There are also clinical and experimental reasons for being skeptical of the broken-mirror theory of autism... As an explanation of autism, the [Broken Mirror] theory offers some tantalizing clues; however, some problematic counter-evidence challenges the theory and particularly its scope."[11]
In the New York Times, Anthony Gottlieb criticized Ramachandran for not mentioning that his ideas about the importance of mirror neurons are controversial:

"Although Ramachandran admits that his account of the significance of mirror neurons is speculative, he doesn’t let on just how controversial it is. In the past four years, a spate of studies has dented every part of the mirror-neuron story. Doubt has been cast on the idea that imitation and the understanding of actions depend on mirror neurons, and on the theory that autism involves a defect in these systems of cells. It has even been claimed that the techniques used to detect the activity of mirror neurons have been widely misinterpreted. Ramachandran may have good reason to discount these skeptical studies, but he surely should have mentioned them."[12]

Nicholas Shakespeare, the well-known British writer, felt that Ramachandran did not fully engage the ideas presented in the book:

"Ramachandran wanders along intriguing neural pathways, pausing to investigate strange disorders, but he leaves the impression that he is an explorer who has yet to leave the coast.

* this is a very interesting statement:

Further, he appears not fully to appreciate that the interior of this vast continent he is mapping may be at war.

His book is intermittently fascinating, but is not important in the way of

Iain McGilchrist The Master and His Emissary,

last year’s magisterial study of the brain’s two opposed hemispheres, which it nicely (though unintentionally) complements – even to the extent of using some of the same illustrations."[13]

In his review for the Wall Street Journal, Raymond Tallis, emeritus professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Manchester complained that Ramachandran has failed to provide the research needed to back up his theories:

"The trouble begins when the neurologist turns philosopher and tries to use these insights to get closer to "what makes us human." He suggests that such cross-wiring underpins both humans' ability to enjoy metaphors and artists' capacity to create novel connections—an assertion that has scarcely any research to back it up. (What little has been done depends on laughably simplistic models of how metaphors and creativity really work.) Likewise, his explanation of how we became speaking animals has scarcely a toe-hold on empirical data."[14]

@Soupie - this isn't just me being critical, as laypersons we'd have to really dig into this to see what's what, but rather this comes back to my ongoing concern with popular science and what a layperson can really understand from the information that is ready at hand on the internet. A lot of the material at hand is sanitized of the nuance and complexity of the actual dialogue and presented to the layperson in a more simplisitic way.

If someone follows up on these criticisms, I'd be interested to know what's found.

To give an appreciation of the nuance and complexity of the discussion in neuro-science, here is Cohen's review:

Making Sense of the Brain’s Mysteries » American Scientist

He ends thusly:

But none of these debatable scientific issues diminished my enjoyment of this book, which is important as a record of its author’s restless mind and seemingly infinite curiosity. Ramachandran is without doubt one of the world’s most stimulating neuroscientists, and his bold ideas offer not just food for thought but explanations of what makes us human.

My post was to point out that the issue of East meets West in the search for answers to what goes on inside our heads isn't taking place merely with respect to old religious and philosophical beliefs, but also in neuroscience. How constructive you find that position be within the context of this thread is dependent on the way you choose to compare the two issues. I seriously doubt that Ramachandran is the only Eastern neuroscientist they have. Would you seek to discredit the rest of them too, or accept that on the level of East meets West, some progress is being made by both cultures, through the medium of science, and that [science] is at least as relevant to the issues here as mysticism and philosophy?

 

[Randall]

@ufology - I'd like to ask you about your participation on this thread:
Can you say more about what you mean by "mainly in protest"? The derail occured quite some time ago and the C&P thread now has a life and history of its own. I hope you are here now to constructively engage in the dialogue.

Allow me to restate for the sake of clarity. My participation ( or in this case the lack thereof ) in this thread, has been ( historically ) mainly in protest to the derail of the thread I had started all this on ( Philosophy, Science, and the Unexplained ), but not posting doesn't mean I haven't been observing, and it not does it mean that as Constance implies at times, that I'm so uninformed that opinions don't carry any weight with respect to the issues discussed. They [ my opinions ] may however carry no weight on a subjective personal level with some participants. But that's not my concern.

Regarding why I choose to post: It's the same as it always is. Something in a post will grab my attention. I like to write and share my opinions, so it gives me an excuse to lay down a few words and/or post something I think is relevant. If that's not to the liking of those who view the thread, then they can always post their rebuttals or ignore my posts ( just like anyone else ).

 

[Constance]

Not sure if maybe you missed the post I inserted the brain map of regions corresponding to what parts of the brain seem to produce subjectivity.

As Merleau-Ponty points out, "the map is not the territory." The territory is the physical, natural, temporally changing terrain -- made more complex through the cultural, ideological, perspectival overlays we place upon the world. It is the world as constituted by both nature and the sedimentations of cultural perspectives we inherit within which individual human consciousness and mind first find their way to reflection and thought. The way is through the world as subjectively and temporally experienced.

 

[Constance]

not posting doesn't mean I haven't been observing, and it not does it mean that as Constance implies at times, that I'm so uninformed that opinions don't carry any weight with respect to the issues discussed.

What I mean is that you evidently have not engaged the issues in consciousness research as they have been developed here in our discussions of them, based on various approaches in consciousness research that we've cited and quoted. We are still grappling with those issues because no one has yet resolved them. You enter the discussion at this point still holding the same reductive presuppositions and consequent opinions that you held when we broke away from the thread you had started several years ago.

 

[Constance]

Of Ideal Time and Choice

Since thirty mornings are required to make
A day of which we say, this is the day
That we desired, a day of blank, blue wheels,

Involving the four corners of the sky,
Lapised and lacqued and freely emeraldine
In the space it fills, the silent motioner

There, of clear, revolving crystalline,
Since thirty summers are needed for a year
And thirty years, in the galaxies of birth,

Are time for counting and remembering,
And fill the earth with young men centuries old
And old men, who have chosen, and are cold

Because what they have chosen is their choice
No more and because they lack the will to tell
A matin gold from gold of Hesperus

The dot, the pale pole of resemblances
Experienced yet not well seen, of how
Much choosing is the final choice made up,

And who shall speak it, what child or wanderer
Or woman weeping in a room or man,
The last man given for epitome,

Upon whose lips the dissertation sounds,
And in what place, what exultant terminal,
And at what time both of the year and day;

And what heroic nature of what text
Shall be the celebration in the words
Of that oration, the happiest sense in which

A world agrees, thought's compromise, resolved
At last, the center of resemblance, found
Under the bones of time's philosophers?

The orator will say that we ourselves
Stand at the center of ideal time,
The inhuman making choice of a human self.

~~Wallace Stevens

 

[Constance]

“Somnambulisma” by Wallace Stevens

On an old shore, the vulgar ocean rolls
Noiselessly, noiselessly, resembling a thin bird,
That thinks of settling, yet never settles, on a nest.

The wings keep spreading and yet are never wings.
The claws keep scratching on the shale, the shallow shale,
The sounding shallow, until by water washed away.

The generations of the bird are all
By water washed away. They follow after.
They follow, follow, follow, in water washed away.

Without this bird that never settles, without
Its generations that follow in their universe,
The ocean, falling and falling on the hollow shore,

Would be a geography of the dead: not of that land
To which they may have gone, but of the place in which
They lived, in which they lacked a pervasive being,

In which no scholar, separately dwelling,
Poured forth the fine fins, the gawky beaks, the personalia,
Which, as a man feeling everything, were his.

 

[Randall]

What I mean is that you evidently have not engaged the issues in consciousness research as they have been developed here in our discussions of them, based on various approaches in consciousness research that we've cited and quoted. We are still grappling with those issues because no one has yet resolved them. You enter the discussion at this point still holding the same reductive presuppositions and consequent opinions that you held when we broke away from the thread you had started several years ago.

Actually, I hold a slightly different position, thanks in part to some of the exchanges you and I have had. When I first entered into the discussion, I was of the opinion that given sufficient processing power, base programming and sensory input, the human brain could be duplicated, along with the consciousness that seems to emerge from it. However I am no longer confident that such an approach will necessarily produce the desired results. I now believe that it may be the very materials and configuration of those materials that provide the right circumstances for the emergence of consciousness, and that duplicating those circumstances with current processors and circuitry may not be possible.

This still leaves me in the basic position that, notwithstanding that the entire universe may be run by an outside system, our brain is ultimately responsible for our consciousness. That's not due to ignorance of other positions. It's that given the evidence and logic I've seen for the other positions, they contain insufficient evidence or logical reasoniong for me to change my viewpoint. Until that happens, I'll continue to explore the most promising avenues where real progress is being made, and that is in cutting edge neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and emergence.

Consequently, your assertion that I am "... still holding the same reductive presuppositions and consequent opinions ..." is false. Reductionism is a very useful scientific method of investigation with tried and true results, but it's not the only position I seriously consider. Once again, you have also heard me speak of emergence, e.g. consciousness is an emergent property of our normally functioning brain/body system. Emergence is sharply contrasted with reductionism, but at the same time reductionism doesn't preclude the presence of emergent properties. It just handles them a bit differently than mystics or religion.

I'm still not sure what your position is on it all other than that you don't believe that the brain is responsible for the emergence of consciousness. If it's not ( despite all the evidence suggesting that it is ), then where do you think it [ consciousness ] comes from?

 

[Constance]

I'm still not sure what your position is on it all other than that you don't believe that the brain is responsible for the emergence of consciousness. If it's not ( despite all the evidence suggesting that it is ), then where do you think it [ consciousness ] comes from?

What is the evidence that consciousness is produced by rather than correlated with the brain? The viewpoint is a 'hypothesis', and one questioned by a wide range of scientists and philosophers.

Where "do I think consciousness comes from"? I think it arises with life, out of nature -- the structure of nature remaining yet to be understood.

 

[Randall]

What is the evidence that consciousness is produced by rather than correlated with the brain?

The correlation is evidence. It's just not proof ( for some people ).

The viewpoint is a 'hypothesis', and one questioned by a wide range of scientists and philosophers.

Like anything else of an experiential nature, there can never be 100% proof positive one way or the other, therefore the argument that an idea is only a hypothesis, or that it hasn't been proven, isn't relevant, and certainly doesn't add any weight to alternative hypotheses. So what we're left with a choice as to which are most reasonable hypotheses to believe based on the evidence at hand. Given this situation I remain on the path that is exploring neuroscience/AI/emergence. I see no reasonable alternatives e.g. religion and mysticism.

Where "do I think consciousness comes from"? I think it arises with life, out of nature -- the structure of nature remaining yet to be understood.

Don't you think it's safe to narrow that down just a bit? Like when you say "life" and "nature" does that preclude the possibility of a creator? Or are all potential creators products of nature too?

​

 

[Constance]

Published this summer:

Retrieving Realism
by Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor.

Review comments:

"This book is a spirited defense of a sensible yet profound idea all too often ignored in mainstream philosophy, namely, that our grip on the world is deeply rooted in contingent interpretations and practices, but that those modes of access to reality do not preclude our―sometimes―coming to see it as it really is ‘in itself.’ Retrieving Realism is a passionate plea that we cannot escape seeing ourselves as being in direct contact with a world that vastly transcends us." (Taylor Carman, Barnard College)

"Two major philosophers are joining forces in order to offer an alternative account to the prevailing picture of the human mind and its cognitive powers. The book will obviously be on the reading list of all who seriously concern themselves with issues in contemporary philosophy when it is, like here, at its best. (Vincent Descombes, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris)

Amazon description:

“A picture held us captive,” writes Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations, describing the powerful image of mind that underlies the modern epistemological tradition from Descartes onward. Retrieving Realism offers a radical critique of the Cartesian epistemic picture that has captivated philosophy for too long and restores a realist view affirming our direct access to the everyday world and to the physical universe.

According to Descartes, knowledge exists in the form of ideas in the mind that purportedly represent the world. This “mediational” epistemology―internal ideas mediating external reality―continues to exert a grip on Western thought, and even philosophers such as Quine, Rorty, and Davidson who have claimed to refute Descartes remain imprisoned within its regime. As Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor show, knowledge consists of much more than the explicit representations we formulate. We gain knowledge of the world through bodily engagement with it―by handling things, moving among them, responding to them―and these forms of knowing cannot be understood in mediational terms. Dreyfus and Taylor also contest Descartes’s privileging of the individual mind, arguing that much of our understanding of the world is necessarily shared.

Once we deconstruct Cartesian mediationalism, the problems that Hume, Kant, and many of our contemporaries still struggle with―trying to prove the existence of objects beyond our representations―fall away, as does the motivation for nonrealist doctrines. We can then begin to describe the background everyday world we are absorbed in and the universe of natural kinds discovered by science."

Link to it at amazon.com. These days if I link to a book directly at amazon the result is an end world hunger poster rather than the book's page at amazon.

 

[Constance]

The correlation is evidence. It's just not proof ( for some people ).

Remember? "Correlation is not causation." Your hypothesis claims causation, generation, of consciousness by and in the brain.

Like anything else of an experiential nature {what does the brain experience?}, there can never be 100% proof positive one way or the other, therefore the argument that an idea is only a hypothesis, or that it hasn't been proven, isn't relevant, and certainly doesn't add any weight to alternative hypotheses.[/quote]

Are you sure you want to stay with that answer? {tick, tock, tick, tock}

So what we're left with a choice as to which are most reasonable hypotheses to believe based on the evidence at hand.

That's what you're left with since you only want to argue/debate your opinion without engaging critiques of it and identifications of its shortfalls. The 'evidence at hand' to support the hypothesis that the brain generates consciousness is insufficient to account for numerous aspects of consciousness and mind explored here for hundreds of pages and still in being explored. If you think you already know what consciousness is, you ought to spend some time reading those pages and the works they cite. We still don't know what consciousness is, but we have by now a larger understanding of its activities and scope -- i.e., that which needs to be explained -- than you presently have.

Given this situation I remain on the path that is exploring neuroscience/AI/emergence. I see no reasonable alternatives e.g. religion and mysticism.

Religion and mysticism are far, very far, from the only alternatives to the neuroscientific hypothesis that the brain produces consciousness.

Don't you think it's safe to narrow that down just a bit? Like when you say "life" and "nature" does that preclude the possibility of a creator? Or are all potential creators products of nature too?

I have narrowed it down. Search the thread for references to Maturana, Varela, Panksepp, Evan Thompson et al. Re "a creator or creators," if you have firm information concerning the answer to that question, please do share it.​

 

[Randall]

Remember? "Correlation is not causation." Your hypothesis claims causation, generation, of consciousness by and in the brain.

We've already been through this, and I pointed you to the article: Correlation and Causation in Medicine. To reiterate, I never claimed that correlation is causation. I claim that correlation is evidence, and that the evidence suggests that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, or more specifically a normally functioning brain/body system in its lucid state. It's possible that I'm barking up the wrong tree, but this is where the tracks lead, and I don't see more substantial evidence elsewhere. I don't suppose you'd care to respond to my previous question: "Don't you think it's safe to narrow that [ your nature theory ] down just a bit? Like when you say "life" and "nature" does that preclude the possibility of a creator? Or are all potential creators products of nature too?"

 

[Constance]

Here's a book that might be very helpful to you:

Shaun Gallagher, Brainstorming: Views and Interviews on the Mind

Amazon description:

Shaun Gallagher is a philosopher of mind who has made it his business to study and meet with leading neuroscientists, including Michael Gazzaniga, Marc Jeannerod and Chris Frith. The result is this unique introduction to the study of the mind, with topics ranging over consciousness, emotion, language, movement, free will and moral responsibility. The discussion throughout is illustrated by lengthy extracts from the author’s many interviews with his scientist colleagues on the relation between the mind and the brain.

amazon review:

"This book is very well put together. Highly recommended for anyone interested in consciousness.
By Amazon Customer on January 20, 2010

Shaun Gallagher has put together a great book here. The greatest feature of Brainstorming is that Gallagher hasn't just thrown a bunch of random quotes together; it is obvious that he took the time to methodically lay out his approach and make his argument.

So what is the argument? Essentially that Computationalism is quite futile in its attempt at explaining most, if any, of the properties of consciousness while Embodied Cognition is more fruitful. To make this argument Gallagher draws from interviews, dialogues and exchanges between various professionals working on the problem of consciousness. They are: Michael Arbib (Action to Language via the Mirror Neuron System), Jonathan Cole (The Invisible Smile: Living without facial expression), Christopher Frith (Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World), Michael Gazzaniga (Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique), Marc Jeannerod (Motor Cognition: What Actions Tell to the Self (Oxford Portraits in Science)), Anthony Marcel, Jacques Paillard (Brain and Space (Oxford Science Publications)), Jaak Panksepp (Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (Series in Affective Science)) and Francisco Varela (On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing (Advances in Consciousness Research, 43)).

I really enjoyed this book and found it very informative in the ongoing debate about Mind/Body, the "hard problem of consciousness", computationalism, embodied cognition and phenomenology. I would simply add that this book is somewhat technical; I don't imagine that a layman could read this book and be completely satisfied. I believe however, that IF someone wanted to read this book without much background in Philosophy of Mind AND was committed to it, then it wouldn't be too difficult to do a little research and catch-up. This would make a great introductory text to studying Embodied Cognition (which is the view that is presently displacing Computationalism in Philosophy of Mind). Here are a couple of other books that are worthy of looking at in this area: Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Philosophy of the Mind) and The Conscious Brain: Facts and Consequences."

 

[Constance]

We've already been through this, and I pointed you to the article: Correlation and Causation in Medicine. To reiterate, I never claimed that correlation is causation. I claim that correlation is evidence, and that the evidence suggests that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, or more specifically a normally functioning brain/body system in its lucid state. It's possible that I'm barking up the wrong tree, but this is where the tracks lead, and I don't see more substantial evidence elsewhere.

There are many places you could look for more information, including this thread and the book I just linked for you.

I don't suppose you'd care to respond to my previous question: "Don't you think it's safe to narrow that [ your nature theory ] down just a bit? Like when you say "life" and "nature" does that preclude the possibility of a creator? Or are all potential creators products of nature too?"

No, I wouldn't care to rewrite for you what I've already written in the thread. Use the search function to locate discussions of the researchers I identified.

 

[Randall]

There are many places you could look for more information, including this thread and the book I just linked for you.

Like I said before: It's not like I haven't looked elsewhere or am uninformed about the alternatives. It's that the alternatives I've looked at don't carry as much weight in terms of evidence or logic.

No, I wouldn't care to rewrite for you what I've already written in the thread. Use the search function to locate discussions of the researchers I identified.

You mean, "No." You don't care to narrow your theory down just a bit. or "No", all potential creators are products of nature too, and therefore the creation of consciousness still boils down to a product of nature." ? Or, just plain "No", you're not going to answer that simple question, and instead suggest I wade through hundreds of your posts for an answer that you may have changed your views on by now?

 

[Constance]

Like I said before: It's not like I haven't looked elsewhere or am uninformed about the alternatives. It's that the alternatives I've looked at don't carry as much weight in terms of evidence or logic.

I think you are uninformed about the alternatives and their significance. I suggest again that you read the book I recommended for you.

. . . Or, just plain "No", you're not going to answer that simple question, and instead suggest I wade through hundreds of your posts for an answer that you may have changed your views on by now?

That's right. Goodnight, now.

 

[Randall]

I think you are uninformed about the alternatives and their significance. I suggest again that you read the book I recommended for you.
That's right. Goodnight, now.

I think I've just changed my earlier opinion I'd had about you being a "good ole' girl" ... LOL.