Neural Basis of Consciousness (Advances in Consciousness Research, 49)

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: This is a slightly above average collection on papers on the neural basis of consciousness. The paper by Baars is good as usual, and argues convincingly that working memory requires consicousness, and not the other way arround. This is easily accepted science prefrontal lesions rarely cause unconsicousness. Osakas paper is interesting, but seems to equate working memory with consicousness, a move that Baars shows is not quite solid. Libets paper is good, and his time-on theory, tha consicousness requires a minimum time of neural processing is strong in place, good evidence is shown for it. Libets attacks on other theories and his speculation of a consicous mental field is questionable, for reasons I need not go in detail here. Cotterill makes a sinthesis of his views on cognition, and how muscular activity is essential in understanding it.

Longothesis presents his elegant experiments on single cells recording and binocular rivalry. This is some of the strongest work being done on the neural basis of consicousness. Hardcastle also quite convincingly shows that attention and consicousness are not the same thing, although she allows they might be closely related. Baars shows that WM alone is not enough, and Hardcastle that attention alone is not enough. Maybe both together could be an important part of the story. The Churchlands, in the philosophical paper in the book, make sense as usual, and argue against those that say consciousness is unexplainable scientifically in principle. I think they are right, but misplace the problem of qualia. They point out that there are neuronal correlates of qualia, which is right, but the problem is what makes this correlates cause certain qualia and not others, or what is special about these processes that cause consicousness, for similar neuronal activity will not cause consicousness if other certain conditions cannot be met (alertness, attention, etc,). I however, am on the naturalist side and an optimist, and believe the qualia problem is not insurmoutable.

Finally, on a section on physics and consicousness, Eccles et.al argue for dualist quantum interactionism, a far-fetched quantum theory, too philosophically problematic in my opinion. Hameroff and Wolf, however, present the most plausible qauantum model of consicuousness out there. However, it still seems to me that panpsychism (which Hammeroff adopts), the foundations on a collapse interpretation of quantum physics, and the uses of an unknown gravity involvment, make this approach problematic, to say the least. Although his proposal is testable in a way, the explanatory power of his model depends on panspsychism, which is a philosophical move unwarranted for, that does not even require any quantum effects for it to work. Hameroff overestimates his models superiority over conventional neurobiological ones. Scott in the last chapter of the book actually gives soome good arguments, motivated by nonlinear system theory considerations, against the quantum physics relevance for consicousness.

This book then gives a proper overview on the neural basis of consicousness, but is not terribly complete or comprehensive. It should be a good and valuable but non-essential addition to a science of consicousness interested reader's collection.