Theoretic Approaches to Consciousness

• Dualism (mind does not equal body)

• Materialism (mind equals body)

• Neither approach satisfies

Refinements

• Higher order thought (HOT) theories (Rosenthal)

• Brain has a neural state corresponding to being aware of a separate first order neural state, example: first order state is the neural correlate of looking at a red object, second order state is that associated with being aware of “red”

Refinements

• Functionalism (Searle)

• Pain example: Pain understood as the collection of the input of noxious stimuli; behaviors resulting,such as withdrawal, crying etc: to expressed desires for the pain to go away. Any machine that replicated these functions would be in pain. Exact neural state does not matter.

Refinements

• Global workspace theory (Baars)

• Analogy to theatre in the mind. A spot light reveals what is conscious and this feeds back to rest of unconscious mind.

Refinements

• Dynamic core (Edelman)

• Connections of neural states feeding back and forth between cortex and thalamus

Refinements

• Computational (Pinker)

• String Theory

• Panpsychism or variants

Refinements

• Quantum Theories (Hamerhoff)

• DISCUSSION (Joe Brophy)

Why do we need a theory about brains and mind?

• Jeff Hawkins

• http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jeff_hawkins_on_how_brain_science_will_change_computing.html

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Further Reading

• Max Velmans• Christof Koch• Stuart Hameroff• Paula Churchland• Dan Dennett• Paul Davies• Stephen Priest• Douglas Hofstadter

• Steven Johnson• Howard Gardner• Gerald Edelman• Oliver Sacks• Daniel Levitin• Jonah Lehrer• John Searle• Rita Carver

Further Reading

• Antonio Damasio• John Holland• Michael Gazzaniga• Francis Crick• Bernard Baars• V. Ramachandran• Adam Zeman• Stephen Pinker

• Nicholas Humphrey• Joseph Ledoux• Guilio Tononi• David Chalmers• Semir Zeki• William Calvin• Anthony Damasio• Roger Penrose

Compendia

• Blackwell Companion to Consciousness ed Max Velmans and Susan Schneider 2007

• Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness Bernard Baars, William Banks, and James Newman eds 2003

Useful Web Sites

• Skeptic.com• Sciencenews.org• Mindhacks.com• (BBC All in the Mind)

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/• http://neuronarrative.wordpress.com/• http://www.neuroscience-gateway.org/

index.shtml

Useful Web Sites

• http://channeln.blogspot.com/

• UCTV.edu

• http://www.uctv.tv/

• http://www.edge.org/

• http://research.google.com/video.html

• http://www.ted.com/

• http://www.sfn.org/

Useful Web Sites

• http://www.mindscience.org/index.cfm

• http://www.nsi.edu/

• http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/tucson2008.htm

• http://neukominstitute.com/

• http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Useful Web Sites

• http://www.brl.ntt.co.jp/IllusionForum/basics/visual/index-e.html

• http://cogprints.org/ (huge bibliography)

• http://www.sciam.com/section.cfm?id=mindmatters

• http://consc.net/mindpapers (huge reference list)

Useful Web Sites

• http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/

• http://www.lawandneuroscienceproject.org/

• http://neuropolitics.org/

• http://www.neuroesthetics.org/

• http://plaisir.berkeley.edu/

• http://www.nature.com/neurosci/neuropod/index-2008-05-19.html

Useful Web Sites

• http://www.dana.org/

• http://www.ucsd.tv/greymatters/

• http://www.pbs.org/saf/archive.htm