You are of course right.
But on the other hand, what consciousness is *as far as brain functioning
goes is already de facto proven --- to a sufficient extent.
It can be defined by help of those myriad cases where awareness is for
whatever reason made "selectively absent" and/or for ditto reasons degraded
in intensity.
The theory (or factual reality) for this was almost pin-pointedly expressed
by Alexander Luria, in The Working Brain, mainly Chapter 2.
He approximately suggests that by selectively removing the role played by
the nonspecific subsystem (I call it "reticular activating type" [RAT]
neurons) or, rather, block signal transmission in their output "fibres", or
lower the intensity/frequency of RAT neurons of the lower brainstem
responsible for energising a general state of being awake and alert --- he
also of course points-out that RAT neurons normally interacts with neurons
of what Luria called the "specific" subsystem --- then we can demonstrate
"what" (at the level of brain functioning) "consciousness" essentially is.
It is sufficient just to observe and compile already existing (include mere
de facto) evidence pertaining to this topic of interest. We may "even"
include observations of ourselves by ourselves, beside clinical and
experimental laboratory records of naturally or drug-chemically induced
interference with RAT neurons.
All this *already* amply shows how we humans can be so incredibly stupid;
considering that highly perceptive people with high IQ (as measured, for
whatever it is worth) can be so crazy and/or so "blind" (thus so stupid).
(The last conclusion does not apply to me however. I often do not find what
I am looking for in the kitchen, and have never score high on a standard IQ
test.)
Peter F.
Didier A. Depireux <didier at Glue.umd.edu> wrote in message
news:7i3r1v$pf6$1 at hecate.umd.edu...
> Heiko Tietze () wrote:
>> : Cognition is done at mor cortical areas - the selection what
> : information to be cognated (is it english) is done in the thalamic
>> This might degenerate into semantics, like most other discussion of
> consciousness, but how would you know where cognition is? How would you
> know it is even localizable anywhere? The massive backprojections (that
are
> 10 times more numerous for auditory cortex) to Thalamus from Cortex shows
> you that it's not just a question of information being sent to cortex for
> processing there and nothing else.
>> Didier
>> --
> Didier A Depireux didier at isr.umd.edu> Neural Systems Lab http://www.isr.umd.edu/~didier> Institute for Systems Research Phone: 301-405-6557 (off)
> University of Maryland -6596 (lab)
> College Park MD 20742 USA Fax: 1-301-314-9920