Consciousness: Theories in Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind

196 Pages·2014·6.092 MB·English

by  Andrea Eugenio Cavanna, Andrea Nani

Andrea Eugenio Cavanna
Andrea Nani
Consciousness
Theories in Neuroscience
and Philosophy of Mind
123
Consciousness

Andrea Eugenio C avanna (cid:129) Andrea Nani
Consciousness
Theories in Neuroscience
and Philosophy of Mind
Andrea Eugenio Cavanna Andrea Nani
Michael Trimble Neuropsychiatry Michael Trimble Neuropsychiatry
Research Group Research Group
BSMHFT and University of Birmingham BSMHFT and University of Birmingham
Aston University Birmingham
Birmingham UK
UK
ISBN 978-3-662-44087-2 ISBN 978-3-662-44088-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-44088-9
Springer Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014950510
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To our parents
who taught us to appreciate consciousness
in all its niceties

Contents
Part I Philosophical Theories of Consciousness
1 David Chalmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2 Paul and Patricia Churchland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 Tim Crane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4 Donald Davidson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5 Daniel Dennett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6 René Descartes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
7 Jerry Fodor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8 Jaegwon Kim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
9 William Lycan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
10 Colin McGinn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
11 Thomas Nagel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
12 Alva Noë . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
13 Hilary Putnam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
14 David Rosenthal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
15 John Searle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Part II Scientifi c Theories of Consciousness
16 Bernard Baars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
17 Francis Crick and Christof Koch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
18 Antonio Damasio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
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19 Stanislas Dehaene. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
20 Merlin Donald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
21 John Eccles and Karl Popper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
22 Gerald Edelman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
23 Nicholas Humphrey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
24 Julian Jaynes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
25 Benjamin Libet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
26 John Kevin O’Regan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
27 Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
28 Giulio Tononi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
29 Max Velmans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
30 Semir Zeki. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Epilogue: A Brief Tour of the Introductions to Consciousness Studies. . . 181
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Introduction: The Conu ndrum
of Consciousness
The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process:
how does it come about that
this does not come into the considerations of our ordinary life?
This idea of a difference in kind is accompanied by slight giddiness,
which occurs when we are performing a piece of logical sleight-of-hand.
[…] When does this feeling occur in the present case?
It is when, I, for example, turn my attention in a particular way
on to my own consciousness,
and, astonished, say to myself:
THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain!
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, part I, section 412 )
The study of the human mind and consciousness has never been so exciting. During
the last few decades, both philosophical and scientifi c attempts to account for the
origin and nature of consciousness have mushroomed so as to form a respectable
fi eld of research that has conquered autonomy and independence. The main goal of
the present book is to provide the reader with an overview of what we consider to
be the two faces of consciousness studies. On the one hand, philosophers of the
mind have explored a number of different theoretical positions in order to unravel
and disentangle the conceptual intricacies of consciousness. On the other hand,
neuroscientists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists have developed a panoply
of theoretical and empirical models of the brain mechanisms underlying
consciousness.
The demarcation line between philosophers and scientists is far from straight
and univocal; however, it rests upon the observation that philosophers and scientists
tend to adopt different perspectives in their approach to the study of consciousness,
mind, and brain. The philosophical approach traditionally devotes more attention
to logical reasoning and aims to develop and describe the most coherent pictures
of different possible scenarios. Therefore, philosophers are mainly concerned with
concepts; their purpose is to examine and sift out different conceptual possibilities
in order to provide a theoretical framework for a valid account of mental phenom-
ena. To do so, philosophers can use a set of conceptual tools, including the often-
employed recourse to modal logic. Thought experiments (G edankenexperiment in
the philosophy of mind jargon) can be particularly helpful as they can offer theoreti-
cal proofs in order to foster the plausibility of a speculative theory over competitor
ones. Well-known thought experiments in the philosophy of mind are, for instance,
the conceivability of doppelgangers and of inverted qualia, Mary the color-blind
neuroscientist, the Chinese room, the philosophical zombies, etc. Provided we
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