I'm with Dennett too. Consciousness is the result of a simple connection wherein neurons that process the end result of neural cognition bring information to the input of a processing region, forming a nifty feedback loop. At the same time, information gets shuttled to parts of the brain that process long and short term memories, being routed through language centers. It's more of an issue to understand the specific mechanisms and brain regions that perform this, but that's rightfully the concern of cognitive neuroscientists.
What Crick was talking about consciousness neurons was trying to identify the brain region involved in those pathways - the author didn't understand that, methinks.
People shouldn't use the word 'qualia'. It implies things about the brain that are silly. It's interesting though, that the number of receptor cells for different colors varies wildly among different people, and the specific colors they detect varies too. But, people have pretty similar experiences with colors, so they probably suggest the same general things to all people. Ergo, most people experience basically the same "qualia".
Bleah, consciousness.
It's just a mechanism the brain uses to maintain train of thought and record salient thoughts to memories. It's not that big of a deal.
I'm with Dennett too. Consciousness is the result of a simple connection wherein neurons that process the end result of neural cognition bring information to the input of a processing region, forming a nifty feedback loop. At the same time, information gets shuttled to parts of the brain that process long and short term memories, being routed through language centers. It's more of an issue to understand the specific mechanisms and brain regions that perform this, but that's rightfully the concern of cognitive neuroscientists.
ReplyDeleteWhat Crick was talking about consciousness neurons was trying to identify the brain region involved in those pathways - the author didn't understand that, methinks.
People shouldn't use the word 'qualia'. It implies things about the brain that are silly. It's interesting though, that the number of receptor cells for different colors varies wildly among different people, and the specific colors they detect varies too. But, people have pretty similar experiences with colors, so they probably suggest the same general things to all people. Ergo, most people experience basically the same "qualia".
Bleah, consciousness.
It's just a mechanism the brain uses to maintain train of thought and record salient thoughts to memories. It's not that big of a deal.