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Framing the Mind–Body Problem in Contemporary Neuroscientific and Sunni Islamic Theological Discourse
Published in The New Bioethics, 2018
Faisal Qazi, Don Fette, Syed S. Jafri, Aasim I. Padela
In contemporary neurological discourse, and cognitive neuroscience by extension, we find two aspects of consciousness: (1) the level of consciousness and (2) the content of consciousness. The level of consciousness refers to the degree of ‘wakefulness’ an individual possesses- ranging from being fully awake to being in a state of sleep and could vary from a state of delirium to brain death with many additional states in between. The level of consciousness, in turn, has three subcategories – alertness, attention, and awareness (Blumenfeld 2002). Each of these states is thought to have a physical/biological correlate, which, if damaged manifests as a ‘disorder of consciousness’. For example, a lesion in an area of the brainstem referred to as the RAF (reticular activating formation) is associated with a state of coma.