Reply to commentators on the paper 'Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism'.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Theories of binding have recently come into the focus of the consciousness debate. In this review, we discuss the potential relevance of temporal binding mechanisms for sensory awareness. Specifically, we suggest that neural synchrony with a precision in the millisecond range may be crucial for conscious processing, and may be involved in arousal, perceptual integration, attentional selection and working memory. Recent evidence from both animal and human studies demonstrates that specific changes in neuronal synchrony occur during all of these processes (...) and that they are distinguished by the emergence of fast oscillations with frequencies in the gamma-range. (shrink)

Voluntary acts are preceded by electrophysiological (RPs). With spontaneous acts involving no preplanning, the main negative RP shift begins at about200 ms. Control experiments, in which a skin stimulus was timed (S), helped evaluate each subject's error in reporting the clock times for awareness of any perceived event.

In the past decade, the notion of a neural correlate of consciousness (or NCC) has become a focal point for scientific research on consciousness (Metzinger, 2000a). A growing number of investigators believe that the first step toward a science of consciousness is to discover the neural correlates of consciousness. Indeed, Francis Crick has gone so far as to proclaim that ‘we … need to discover the neural correlates of consciousness.… For this task the primate visual system seems especially attractive.… No (...) longer need one spend time attempting … to endure the tedium of philosophers perpetually disagreeing with each other. Con- sciousness is now largely a scientific problem’ (Crick, 1996, p. 486).2 Yet the question of what it means to be a neural correlate of consciousness is actually far from straightforward, for it involves fundamental empirical, methodological, and _philosophical _issues about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the brain. Even if one assumes, as we do, that states of consciousness causally depend on states of the brain, one can nevertheless wonder in what sense there is, or could be, such a thing as a neural correlate of consciousness. (shrink)

and apply it to various examples of neural plasticity in which input is rerouted intermodally or intramodally to nonstandard cortical targets. In some cases but not others, cortical activity ‘defers’ to the nonstandard sources of input. We ask why, consider some possible explanations, and propose a dynamic sensorimotor hypothesis. We believe that this distinction is important and worthy of further study, both philosophical and empirical, whether or not our hypothesis turns out to be correct. In particular, the question of how (...) the distinction should be explained is linked to explanatory gap issues for consciousness. Comparative and absolute explanatory gaps should be distinguished: why does neural activity in a particular area of cortex have this qualitative expression rather than that, and why does it have any qualitative expression at all? We use the dominance/deference distinction to address the comparative gaps, both intermodal and intramodal. We do so not by inward scrutiny but rather by expanding our gaze to include relations between brain, body and environment. (shrink)

Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.

The third edition of a work that defines the field of cognitive neuroscience, with extensive new material including new chapters and new contributors.

Ion -- Meno (Menon) -- Symposium (The banquet) -- The republic -- The apology (The defence of Socrates) -- Crito (Criton) -- Phaedo (Phaidon) -- The Greek alphabet -- Pronouncing index.

Behav. and Brain Sci., 8, 558-566. Libet, B. (1987). 'Consciousness: Conscious, Subjective Experience.' In Encyclopedia of Neuroscience , ed. G. Adelman. ...

Over the past half-century, the Freeman laboratory has accumulated a large volume of data and a correspondingly extensive interpretive framework centered around an alternative perspective on brain function, that of dynamical systems. The purpose of this paper is first briefly to summarise this work, and bring it into dialogue with other perspectives. The contents of consciousness are seen as an inevitably sparse sample of events in the perception–action cycle. The paper proceeds to an attempt to elucidate the contents of this (...) sparse sample. A critical concept is that of selfhood, and how it presents itself phenomenologically. It is argued that our experience of selfhood is an artifact of the necessity of preservation of subject/object relations. As this part of metaphysics has been badly misunderstood, we scrutinise it at some length in quantum mechanics, biology, and cognition. It is argued that Pattee's approach, while valuable, tends to premature closure on these issues. The paper then proceeds to outline a view on how selfhood is best considered wrt the immune response. This is interrelated with phenomenology, and some data are adduced to support this central hypothesis. Finally, consequences for the social sciences in general are hinted at. (shrink)

Referentialism has underappreciated consequences for our understanding of the ways in which mind, language, and world relate to one another. In exploring these consequences, this book defends a version of referentialism about names, demonstratives, and indexicals, in a manner appropriate for scholars and students in philosophy or the cognitive sciences. To demonstrate his view, Kenneth A. Taylor offers original and provocative accounts of a wide variety of semantic, pragmatic, and psychological phenomena, such as empty names, propositional attitude contexts, the nature (...) of concepts, and the ultimate source and nature of normativity. (shrink)