Thinking About Consciousness

[David Morris]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42772-2002May19.html

Neuroscientists -- data-dependent investigators who map brain function, 
trace neural networks and explore the biochemistry of neurotransmitters -- 
have traditionally treated the question of consciousness like an unwelcome 
guest at the dining table. Some have dismissed it as irrelevant to their 
understanding of the brain, and others have contended that objective 
analysis can never comprehend a feeling that is entirely subjective.

Increasingly, however, some scientists who explore neurons and brain 
connections are turning their attention to the philosophers' "hard problem." 
Most have come to believe that Descartes was wrong -- that there is no 
"observer" sitting in the head. Consciousness, they say, is highly organized 
brain chemistry, just as life itself comprises proteins and cells organized 
into complex patterns.

"Consciousness is real, but like stage magic -- it has a mundane scientific 
explanation," said Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist 
at Tufts University. "It's all just brain mechanisms and their activities.

"All the work that one imagines being done by the ego are really done by 
bits of the brain. Those brain tissues are not conscious and do not know who 
you are or care -- but their activity adds up to 'conscious you.' "

The most extreme version of this view, which is sometimes called 
reductionism, suggests that consciousness is an illusion. A new book by 
Harvard professor Daniel Wegner is titled, "The Illusion of Conscious Will."

The feeling you have as you read this sentence, Wegner argues, is an 
illusion pulled off by a complex machine in your skull. It not only reads 
and understands this sentence, he says, but also makes you feel as if you 
have experienced the reading of the sentence. In other words, the brain, not 
content with being a remarkably complex machine, also convinces itself that 
it isn't a machine at all.





_________________________________________________________________
Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com