Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque, and strange. How and when did we become conscious? What exactly is consciousness? A gift from God? Some kind of emergent property of our brain? A sequence of electrical sparks off electro-chemical neural activity?
This introduction to these and many of the other problems posed by consciousness discusses the most important work of cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy of the past thirty years and presents an up-to-date assessment of the issues and debates. CONTENTS: Preface and acknowledgements Introduction: problems of consciousness 1. Refection on consciousness before the mid-twentieth century 2. Functional neuroanatomy 3. Primate neuropsychology 4. Human evolution 5. Contemporary neuropsychology 6. Neuropsychology of consciousness 7. Philosophy of mind and consciousness 8. Reduction and non-reduction 9. Emergence 10. Prospects for neural theories of consciousness Notes Bibliography Index
Arvustused
"[ Welshon] brilliantly summarizes, synthesizes, and explains the state of affairs in all of consciousness studies in a way that is accessible and engaging. His work is the ideal guide to the field, simultaneously noting all of the major features of the landscape and sharing compelling insights about each of the important subsidiary philosophical arguments and scientific developments of which the major features are comprised." The Quarterly Review of Biology
Preface
vii
Introduction
1
(5)
PART I Philosophy and Consciousness
1 Consciousness and conscious properties
6
(25)
2 Identity, supervenience, reduction and emergence
31
(23)
3 Reductive and non-reductive physicalisms
54
(23)
4 Representationalist theories of conscious properties
77
(23)
PART II Neuroscience and Consciousness
5 Cortical evolution and modularity
100
(24)
6 Arousal, perception and affect
124
(25)
7 Attention, working memory, language and executive function
149
(23)
8 Neural models of conscious properties
172
(24)
PART III Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness
9 Measurement, localization, models and dissociation
196
(24)
10 Correlates, realizers and multiple realization
220
(23)
11 Microphysical reduction, overdetermination and coupling
243
(24)
12 Embodied and embedded consciousness
267
(72)
Concluding semi-scientific postscript
295
(16)
Appendix: Functional neuroanatomy
311
(28)
Notes
339
(8)
Bibliography
347
(24)
Index
371
Rex Welshon is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.
