In article <3349-37F5253F-28 at newsd-173.iap.bryant.webtv.net> ,
Y-chat at webtv.net writes:
>After reading Matt Jones comment in response
>to my post, in which he indicated that I had not made myself clear in my
>remark about the search for the SEAT of consciousness,( I assume
>misunderstanding,since his other posts are non judgemental) I will try
>to enlarge my views.
>>I certainly believe in scientific inquiry into all forms of cognitive
>and sensory activities. In particular, the miniscule world of single
>celled life forms, whose sensory impulses and purposeful actions can be
>studied at a sub molecular level. The new studies of neuronic activities
>of the spinal cord are also a doorway into the understanding of
>cognition , memory, and instinct, (instinct being the orphan subject in
>cognitive science).
>>In another news group, a contributor faulted another poster for
>comparing consciousness to the steering wheel of a car, he said "it is
>not the steering WHEEL, it IS the STEERING itself." In effect, that is
>what I have been trying to say, that the study of the individual parts
>that contribute to the overall creation of consciousness is most
>important, but we should not confuse the causal individual activities of
>the mind and body with the effective actuality of an evolved
>consciousness .
>
I apologize for being judgemental. I do not mean to be offensive. But
seeing as how this is a neuroscience group, you should expect a post such
as yours to irritate at least some of us who try to understand brain
function in reductionist terms. What you are stating in your post should
be acknowledged as being -your- opinion (just as what I am saying now is
-my- opinion).
To elaborate, it is my opinion that searching for the -mechanisms-
underlying consciousness (I have no idea what is meant by "seat of
consciousness") is not futile, that these mechanisms do exist, and that
there is no confusion at all between searching in the chemical and
physical realms and searching in other realms, because consciousness is
literally nothing more nor less than the physical and chemical events
occuring in our brains (in fact, it's only a very small subset of those
events).
But that's just my opinion.
In addition, although poetic and nice-sounding, I don't find phrases like
" inchoate
pre-natal stage", "not an objective phenomenon", "resonating
feed-back interrelationship of our plethora of sensory and cognitive
attributes", "spinal cord's cognitive and memory input", "the SEAT of
consciousness", "neuronic activities", "causal individual activities" or
"effective actuality" to convey any information, or to shed any light on
this search of ours, in whatever direction it may take each of us.
By the way, I think that whole steering wheel analogy is a red herring
too. To compare consciousness to anything having to do with a car
presupposes a "driver" (i.e., homunculus) which leaves us in the usual
infinite loop (i.e., who's driving the driver? etc...).
Cheers,
Matt Jones
