Creationists discover consciousness
I'm writing up a series of posts at my neuroscience blog on the creationists' recent discovery of consciousness. The first post is here. I'll be looking at consciousness from many angles, but always through a neuropsychological lens.
Since this is a philosophy forum, I'll quote the bit that offended my undergrad philosophy advisor:
Since this is a philosophy forum, I'll quote the bit that offended my undergrad philosophy advisor:
Over beers many neuroscientists are dismissive when consciousness comes up. They treat it as a "philosophical" problem, a waste of time for real scientists. I find this attitude strange. New data fuel conceptual progress in science, so it seems an empirical approach is the best way to make headway on something that is clearly a real and important phenomenon. Avoiding the topic leaves it in the hands of the philosophers, a fate just a little better than death.Hey, at least it isn't worse than death!
Eric,
Here is one philosopher's conception of consciousness that I dispute. Alva Noe thinks that neuroscientists are wrong in focusing on the brain as the locus of consciousness. You can see his argument and my rebuttal here:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/noe08/noe08_index.html#trehub
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I'm not so sympathetic to Noe's position either. They have trouble accounting for things like dreams.
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And i think one more unavoidable trouble for those who are immobile but show signs of consciousness (dreamers, Locked-in-syndrome patients...)
Neverthless, he is an honest philosopher who tries to move things forward.
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I agree. I saw him speak and it was quite a good talk.
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