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An Epilogue: Blade Runner or Einstein?
Published in Max R. Bennett, The Idea of Consciousness, 2020
According to the philosophers Searle and Chalmers, the problem considered in this book, of examining the extent to which neuroscience has explained consciousness, is ill-posed. All that neuroscience can do is explain the neural correlates of consciousness, leaving the difficult problem of explaining what consciousness is untouched. In defence, it should be mentioned that there is a strong metaphysical tradition in western philosophy, going back to Plato, of seeking for a set of principles that will provide a unifying explanation of the physical world and consciousness. What if the dualistic notion is correct, and consciousness is not to be identified with the synaptic workings of the brain? In that case, research will be needed to discover the grand laws that underpin both phenomena. This is a tall order, given the genius that has been required so far to establish the laws of the natural world. It will require talent at least as great as that of Einstein to bring forth explanations from a well of originality that is without precedent, as was the case with his general theory of relativity. Indeed, it raises the question of whether the synaptic networks of the brain of Homo sapiens have evolved to a level capable of providing a solution to such a problem. For neuroscientists there is still the realization that the synaptic networks of the brain work in a parallel relationship with that of consciousness, so that the scientific study of the former gives insights into the contents of the latter even though it might not provide an explanation of how consciousness arises.
Phenomenology – questioning consciousness and experience
Published in Kay Aranda, Critical Qualitative Health Research, 2020
Materialism is a monist position and maintains that primary reality is physical, the mind being the physical and functional properties of the brain and having a scientific explanation. Consciousness has a physical basis and is an epiphenomenon in that it derives from brain activity. An objective world exists independently of the observer. This reductive materialism remains the dominant paradigm for the world’s scientific community and positivist research generally. Neuroscientists are seeking the neural correlates of consciousness and believe they will ultimately identify the physical source of mental experience. The frustrating anomaly for the current paradigm is consciousness itself; it cannot be doubted and yet it cannot be explained.
Neurological development
Published in Allan Hobson, Psychodynamic Neurology, 2014
In my opinion, there are several good reasons for this failure. First is the model of physical reductionism. Knowing the “neural correlate of consciousness” which Crick and Koch sought would not explain how consciousness, a subjective experience, arose from the brain. Second, these scientists ignored the psychology and neurophysiology of perception. It is true that Crick speculated about the thalamus as a perceptual “spotlight” related to attention (Crick & Koch, 2003) but, again, this formulation stopped short of explaining how any cortical region, when spotlighted, could give rise to whatever aspect of perception it might be thought to mediate. Thus, the essence of consciousness, its subjectivity, was ignored, or explained away.
Consciousness in a Rotor? Science and Ethics of Potentially Conscious Human Cerebral Organoids
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2023
Federico Zilio, Andrea Lavazza
However, the validation of the presence of consciousness from the analysis of neural activity is currently far from simple. Neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) are hard to experimentally validate without cross-checking neural activity with the subjects’ behavioral responses or verbal communication. Even the direct association between subjective reports or behavioral responses and conscious experience is not to be taken for granted, as one could confuse NCC and neural mechanisms for cognitive functions, because the reports of those conscious experiences presuppose some level of cognitive access (Schlicht 2018). Furthermore, NCC can be mistaken for neural prerequisites, predisposition, and consequences of a particular conscious content (Aru et al. 2012) as no-report paradigms may confuse NCC with neural mechanisms underlying cognitive but unconscious processes (Northoff 2016; Schlicht 2018). In addition, there is no consensus among neuroscientific theories of consciousness on the necessary and sufficient elements for the emergence, development, and maintenance of consciousness (Northoff and Lamme 2020; Signorelli, Szczotka, and Prentner 2021).
Neurons Embodied in a Virtual World: Evidence for Organoid Ethics?
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2022
Brett J. Kagan, Daniela Duc, Ian Stevens, Frederic Gilbert
Indeed, the utility of the PCI in humans is established via exploiting the deterministic patterns of causal interactions among brain areas electricity via perturbation (Sinitsyn et al. 2020). Yet for that purpose it is relied upon only as a neural correlate of consciousness, not consciousness itself, phenomenological or otherwise (Figure 1). It is possible to consider that sentience alone would be a sufficient state to give rise to comparable results observed in humans with the PCI. Indeed, sentience, if taken strictly literally, has recently been observed in monolayers of cortical cells as they can respond to external signals in a goal directed manner (Kagan et al. 2021). Yet such cell cultures are far less complex than the organoids referenced and most comparable to Hydrozoa in complexity, which have seldom been proposed as capable of phenomenological consciousness. As formally sentience alone is not sufficient for consciousness; the argument that the PCI represents a proof of principle for consciousness gives rise to a premise subject to equivocation which compromises the conclusion. Therefore, there is the need to define and consider the different aspects of consciousness to classify the different types of engineered tissues and possible occurrences of conscious behaviors adequately.
Pure Experience and Disorders of Consciousness
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2018
For the former question, Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch’s hypothesis that consciousness might be measurable through particular neural correlates, such as the P300 wave, is a possible clinical tool (Tononi and Koch 2015). Tononi and Koch propose that consciousness, understood as an immediate subjective experience, might be determinable based on a comparison of the physical (neuronal) mechanisms present across different types of conscious experience. As they note, the neural correlates of consciousness are likely to differ across ages, species, and neuronal structures, but they nevertheless posit that there is a physical mechanism that exists as the condition for the possibility of consciousness in each conscious being.