9 Answers

  1. Let's also consider a question that neither scientists nor philosophers, with all the variety of hypotheses (it is still extremely incorrect to call them theories), can answer, even with the maximum tension of this very consciousness.

    Even without fully defining the term consciousness itself, only by delineating the range of phenomena (subjectivity of perception, its phenomenality, coherence or continuity, mobility of focus or spots of attention, both arbitrarily and involuntarily, etc.) can we notice the key question: why do we have attention focused, mobile and can we know where attention is directed, what is in the field of attention, what is in focus, and what is behind focus?

    Why is this question so important and why has it not yet been answered?

    Let's start with a simple one: scientific ideas.

    Let's look at the computer. The computer has a processor: this is the block that determines the focus of the computer's attention, defines it “here and now”. This is the central element of the system, since it is constantly in the flow of time and has locality.

    How does it work in the brain? No one can tell. We subjectively feel ourselves in the flow of time and find ourselves localized in space. Our attention is mobile in the psychic space, like a ray of light in the dark. It may be wider or narrower, but what we find as ourselves is the movement of attention in the space of phenomena, images, situations, characters, events.�

    So what can science tell us about where the “processor” is located in the brain? Nothing.�

    Let's look at neural networks. Artificial neural networks all, without exception, have this architecture: an input layer, an output layer, and intermediate layers. You see, this architecture is fixed. The information was entered, processed, and there is a clear way out of the ANN. What about natural neural networks in the human brain? Oh, this is a grandiose connection, the complexity of which is huge, but try to determine the inputs and outputs in it?

    For direct sense organs, it is still possible to do this somehow. Optic nerve, a nerve connected to the inner ear, this can be designated as some input. Speech apparatus, musculoskeletal system – some way out. But where is the focus of attention management? Why is attention consistent? What in the brain is responsible for plot-event perception of the world around us? Who does the mythically conditional “grandmother” neuron tell that it recognized the grandmother? What's the use of it being activated, is there some special neuron that knows that the grandmother's neuron has been activated?

    But a purely scientific view of the problem, alas, may seem insignificant, so the question needs to be considered both deeper and broader. Deeper-philosophically. Wider – engineering.

    So, why, from the very beginning of the computer era, was it decided to allocate some central block of the system that controls the flow of attention of this very system?�

    Even today, in the era of multithreading, multiprocessing, and networking, we know that this cannot lead to chaos or loss of control, but there is always a conductor of all this orchestra, there is an operating system that knows on which of the peripheral blocks the function of this conductor is currently located. The conductor may change, but his role is always fulfilled.�

    Is it possible that this is also the case in the brain? In other words, there is a certain marker that passes from zone to zone, from neuron to neuron, which introduces order and, if not hierarchy, then an element of local dominance in space and time?

    Then we will have to observe the movement of the focus of a person's attention – what the attention is inclined to, to such a structural and functional dominant at this very moment, the marker has shifted. Perhaps this marker will not be clearly localized, and we are talking about rather complex patterns that cover the entire brain.�

    Let's consider a conditional animal that does not have self-consciousness, that is, such a subjective perception of itself in the world that can be viewed with the inner eye, without visible motor activity. Thinking, if I may say so, of this conditional animal is completely visual. The focus of attention is obvious. Cockroach looking for food, running away from the light. His whole body is an orchestra controlled by a genetic program without complex feedback loops. Stimulus – response. According to Pavlov.�

    Now let's add some strategy to this conditional animal. Let this animal have a choice of options and the simplest simulation. This means that the stimulus does not directly cause a response, but rather uses some intermediate layer. In this intermediate layer, a simulation of reactions and results occurs in associative memory. And this intermediate layer can suppress the reaction or conduct it to the motor exit zone. Or vice versa, it can provoke a reaction in the absence of an external stimulus, imitating the stimulus inside itself.

    We can imagine and model such an inner zone, but here there is a global, semantic (or conceptual) gap between all modern theories of consciousness, cognition, and cognitive sciences and experimental studies of higher nervous activity. You get into the zone of two complex entities: physical and mental.

    Both are extremely complex, and we still don't know the correlations between them. Perhaps in the future we will find this correlation. But maybe first, we will create it artificially and more than once, until we find the algorithm of the “nature of the mind”, which generates all this complexity: both physical and mental.�

    We already have ideas and hypotheses about what can be the generator of all this complexity. And they are not as desperate as string theory, which generates 10 ^ 500 variants of worlds other than our own.

    However, maybe all the known hypotheses will be rejected and we will find ourselves in the same situation as quantum paradoxes – who knows?

    Scientists are both fascinated and overwhelmed by the degree of complexity of consciousness, no matter how you approach it: from the physical side, from the mental side, from the simple to the complex, from general principles to particulars, from burying trillions of facts and trying to find hidden patterns in them.�

    There are many different classifications of theories of consciousness, but every school, every researcher or philosopher tries to create their own.�

    I'll also enter my own classification.

    1. Theories based on introspection. Consciousness is found in our subjective experience, and we will first of all investigate it, ignoring at the first stage any physical component. This is a kind of information theory (including a variety of mystical directions)

    2. Measurement-based theories. We can see behavior, we can evaluate hidden drives, we can examine the states of individual neurons and entire zones, so we will investigate this, ignoring any mental component at the first stage. These are physicalist theories

    3. Theories based on explication. We can reason, make sense, so we will try to build something descriptive, explanatory, which does not contain formal errors and contradictions. And even if at first we ignore Godel's theorem on the fundamental incompleteness and inconsistency of formal systems, we will try to build a formal system, part of which tends to completeness, ignoring inconsistency, and part tends to consistency, ignoring incompleteness.

    My classification of theories is based on the third principle, although in my work I follow principle 4.

    1. Theories based on hope, and if more scientifically, then on imitation, on imitation, on the experiment of similarity. Why did I use the word hope in the first place? Because these theories and hypotheses are based on a blind faith that it will be possible to find the right complexity generator, the right algorithm that generates both a physical and informational (mental) structure in the same way, which can be so limited and directed that it corresponds to the existence in our world.�

    This classification is hardly exhaustive, and it goes somewhat against tradition. But maybe someone will be curious about her, too.

  2. The main question of the philosophy of consciousness is still whether it is possible to work with it as with a material object, measure it and manipulate its state, as well as transmit its state to another being using devices. To put it more strictly – whether each subjective fact has an objective manifestation or not. The second question is whether all the facts in the material world are observable by someone (or whether there are facts that are not observed by anyone). Depending on the answers to these questions, we can distinguish 4 concepts. “yes, yes” – panpsychism (the ultimate case of materialism and idealism, complete identity), “yes, no” – classical materialism, “no, yes” – classical idealism, “no, no” – dualism. Most modern authors answer the first question “yes”, that is, they are materialists. But with the second question, the situation is much more complicated.

  3. Here is a contender for a holistic model of the functionality of consciousness, based not on philosophical intuitions, but on the axiomatic system of factual research data.
    Summary of research on the organization of the psyche for 2018: scorcher.ru/19798

  4. All the presented attempts to define consciousness as such are absolute subjectivism… – the level of development is too high

    low… These are the attempts of monkeys with a consciousness complex…�

    From what position will you define consciousness?!… – From the position of consciousness?!…

    I have a certain “theory of reality”, but I don't want to lower myself to your level… throw a bisser in front of “you know who”…

    With respect.

  5. Instead of listing individual theories, let's look at the problem of “consciousness” as a whole, and in the process we will refer to various versions and opinions of specialists.
    _______________

    So – what is consciousness ?

    To answer this question, consider the brain of an animal – any species, excluding highly developed ones (monkeys, dolphins, elephants). Take, for example, the brain of an antelope… By looking at its cognitive apparatus, we can tell what functions its neural network has and does NOT have, compared to the human one. That is, we will approach the problem “from the end”, and having considered the basic functions of the primitive brain, we will climb the ladder of cognitive evolution, to increasingly complex information processes.

    So, the first and main function inherent in this brain (like any other) will be intelligence, intelligence. Here you need to explain… First of all, an organized neural network is a computing system – the brain perceives information, organizing it into patterns; generalizing it according to the cognitron principle (for more information, see A. Reduzobov: http://vk.com/video186732288_169902384). In this case, intelligence can be represented as a mathematical tool for finding correlations. Its task is to find the interdependence between the incoming and outgoing data flow (http://vk.com/wall-89421240_18). If the correlation is clearly expressed, the mind can form a suitable response pattern; a signal organized in such a way that the neural network can reach a hypothetical “equilibrium” state (see the principles of behaviorism).

    Plus, such a mind meets another criterion: the formula of intelligence (http://scinquisitor.livejournal.com/41563.html). Developed by the Harvard physicist and computer programmer Alex Wisnerr-Gross, it describes intelligence as a force designed to maximize future freedom of action, or, more simply, a system that tends to produce entropy around itself. This system seeks to “capture” as many future options as possible, which is consistent with the correlative understanding of consciousness as an apparatus that captures the correlation between incoming and outgoing information, i.e., it seeks to predict the result of its actions, and use this knowledge to achieve conditional goals (equilibrium states, for example).

    Back to the antelope. Based on the above theses, we can draw conclusions about its behavior… In order to achieve balance, her brain lowers its own entropy, increasing the “chaos” around it. It is during this process that information is processed, allowing the antelope brain to draw conclusions. You can say that her mind is able to fully process the external (incoming) flow; it can build logical chains like “event A has occurred => you need to respond to B”. For example, “a predator has appeared => you need to run for your life”. Moreover, the reactions here are mostly binary-the primitive brain of a ruminant is not able to build long logical chains; it is unable to fully predict, as a result of which the organism exists in one moment. There is only “now” and nothing else.

    If we talk about other functions inherent in the antelope neural network, then we need to remember about attention. The role of attention is critical because it allows you to focus on a particular phenomenon; to direct, relatively speaking, all the work of the intellect in one vector.

    How is this principle implemented in practice ? The answer is provided using the SPM (https://vk.com/doc229983100_364648364?hash=18e6620e2ac9e76ae8&dl=eb7f4c4f46fcb46be4). The passive brain network operates at a constant frequency. This is an ensemble of signals that controls and synchronizes all parts of the neural array; responding to its impulses, different, remote parts of the brain are activated simultaneously. As a result, there is a kind of adjustment, and coordination in time – SPM, as if the conductor controls an orchestra of spikes, allowing even such a complex and disjointed system as connectome to act in one “rhythm”.

    However, it is incorrect to compare the “attention network” of animals with human attention. The ability to concentrate in the same antelope is reduced – its subjective perception is monotonous, and more like a dream. Take one specific object / phenomenon, and separate it from the environment as the human brain does, it is not able to.

    What is missing from this scheme ? The answer is self-awareness. Antelope has a full-fledged network for processing information from the external environment, capable of generalizations, abstractions, and even some logic… But only the inclusion in this network of self-consciousness, reflection, forming the subjective ” I ” leads to a qualitative leap-synergy-when all the components of the cognitive system move to a new level, and their total effectiveness begins to exceed the usual sum of terms.

    Here you need to delve into the very essence of the term. Self-awareness, “self-awareness”. This is a process of directed thought reactions, including personal structures (values, interests), mechanisms of perception, empathy, emotional response, behavioral patterns, etc. When we talk about self-awareness, we are talking about the ability of the subject to direct the view inside; a process that organizes our picture of reality-so natural that intuitively it seems inseparable from awareness of the external environment. But, from the point of view of cognitive sciences, the perception of the external and the perception of the internal environment, the mental “core” of the individual, are fundamentally different phenomena; independent, but at the same time merging, they give a complete picture of reality. This is what we call consciousness.

    Now consider the “self” aspect. The nature of our self-awareness comes from thoughts… And what shapes your thoughts ? Right. Language. It is linguistic patterns that play a huge role in how we perceive the world (https://vk.com/wall-35222542_7018). Without language, full-fledged reflection is impossible, because it is descriptive categories that give objects and phenomena the essence that they have. Here we can recall the example of chimpanzees and dolphins – tests using mirrors show that these animals are able to recognize themselves in the reflection (i.e., they have developed cognitive abilities), and at the same time they have developed semantic systems (“clicking” using ultrasound in dolphins, cries and gestures in monkeys).

    But the role of semantics is actually greater. Language, as a process of giving meaning to objects, is associated with the attention system. When we talk about something, we give the object a designation, that is, we “reify”, concretize the object, separating it from the surrounding space. Say “lemon”, and a neural ensemble will flash in our head, including all the associative chains – sour taste, yellow color, citrus smell… In this case, all extraneous impulses will be suppressed, i.e. an act of concentration will occur. When we give items a designation, we assign them a category, making a kind of”sorting”. Words help to separate patterns of images from each other, and, at the same time, create a hierarchy – they build logical chains, mentalities that are connected to each other and go into associative infinity.

    At first glance, all of the above seems to be a bare theory, but recent research by scientists confirms its concepts. For example, as for the presence of two autonomous networks in the brain (external and internal processing), they completely fit into the experimental data. A recent study of the Buddhists, in particular, showed that meditation practices (based on improving the state of “awareness”) lead to the suppression of signals rear cingulate cortex (SSG), which is believed to play a key role in the “public awareness”, and at the same time increase neuroactivity anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), forming the basis of the “network of internal awareness” (http://medach.pro/can-mindfulness-meditation-alter-consciousness/).

    Here it will be useful to recall that the common definition of consciousness is “global integrated information”. That is, consciousness, as a phenomenon, is born at one point-the area where all information processes converge, all data flows coming from different areas of the brain. Now let's take and group into two conditional pulses (external and internal) all the information that the neural network operates with. The question immediately arises: where is the intersection point ? In what part of the connectome do two streams merge together, gaining emergence that gives rise to the basis of consciousness, and is there such a point at all, or is its presence only speculative, and integration occurs evenly throughout the network array ?

    The answer is probably yes. And the thalamus appears to her. Having long connections to all areas of the cortex, the thalamus acts as a kind of relay-integrating information from the entire cortex, it detects coincidences in calculations, and sends data packets to its next department (http://vk.com/wall5695154_15632). It is probably this area of the brain that is responsible for combining two streams – “external” and “internal” (reflexive, i.e., self-awareness). Thus, consciousness is the result of the” summation ” of information processes, and its immediate substrate is the thalamus.

    If we go deeper into philosophy, then the phenomenon of one's own experience, qualia, is explained here from the point of view of synergetics. Organized in a certain way, an array of highly parallel computations undergoes a qualitative leap; information is integrated-interacts, acquiring a new property. So the “I”,consciousness, arises.

    Of course, these are all just concepts. Unconfirmed (though logically justified) versions here, in any case, prevail over practice. Until convincing experimental data appear, it is impossible to speak with confidence about such a complex, controversial, and complex thing as consciousness. We need new research and new technologies. Fortunately, progress is moving – new parallel computing systems (such as memristors) allow us to model neural networks more accurately, closely approaching biological analogues. In the future, modeling of local neural networks, and even the whole connectome (Human Connectome Project), will allow us to observe cognitive processes with an accuracy that we cannot achieve when scanning a living neuromass. If the pace of progress continues, we will be able to confirm (or refute) a number of hypotheses that are not falsifiable at the moment due to the limits of computing technology. Many issues that are a stumbling block for both natural sciences and philosophy will be solved – now cognitive science is moving forward progress in all areas, combining physical, informational, psychological and other aspects of the work of consciousness. The future belongs to the mind, to its understanding. And what horizons will open up later, we can only guess…

  6. The very term “theory of consciousness” is certainly a play on words and at the same time a trap for the mind, for the unconsciousness in us, who is every person who always remains ignorant of himself by definition. The theory of consciousness is a theory without practice, since “consciousness” always remains only a term, an interpretation of what is only imagined in us in the form of an idea, guess or axiom, as an ideal being, not confirmed by the practice of experiencing oneself as a person.

    In self-awareness, a person disappears, dissolves into nothing (the body remains). Therefore, all theories of consciousness are not viable. Since man himself (not the body, the body is only a form of nature), in essence, is “consciousness”, formed in the form of concepts of the contents of the mind, where this consciousness itself can never be a being for us. Either a Person or Consciousness, the third is not given.

    If we talk about the essence of Consciousness as such, the function of which is awareness, it comes not from knowledge, but from ignorance. So the great Socrates said: “I know I don't know anything.” His awareness came from ignorance, from the non-identity of consciousness with anything that a person (mind) knows. As soon as we learn something, we immediately break the integrity (quantum nonlocality), and with it the uncertainty of existence, pulling out of it only the specifics that we managed to grasp. Everything else is missed, LIFE is missed, because this very moment, the moment here and now, in which birth and death are both present, is missed.

    Man (not the body), born of man in the mind, knowing himself and the world, realizing, proceeds from the knowledge already known to him (being determines consciousness). Knowledge is continuous and builds on what we already know. Hence, awareness born in a person, that is, in the mind, however, like understanding, is not an attribute of Consciousness that is not identical with anything that testifies through us, that is, it is not transformational in nature. Such awareness belongs to the mind and does not go beyond it.

    And finally, in order for a person not to talk about being and consciousness, about witnessing itself, as, indeed, about something else, first we must remember who is saying this?! Who are you and where did this narrative come from? Because whatever is stated: theory, doctrine, concept, idea or just an opinion, it is always only the author's interpretation, often far-fetched to confirm what has been said, with reference to an authoritative opinion.

    In other words, everything that exists for us is only as existing in our consciousness. There is no other consciousness other than what is in man, just as there is no super-consciousness above all this, in which at the same moment one would be aware of what is happening in the minds of individual people. Therefore, there is no objective reality.

    It “is” only because someone else besides you thinks so, which you simply believe, naively believing that Being supposedly exists by itself, outside of its awareness by you, that is, outside of Consciousness as such.

    But this is not so, there is no being (nothing of the existing) outside the consciousness of man, that is, outside the mind that is identical with him, just as there is no being outside the consciousness that is not identical with anything.

    The only question is, who are you (?), the man before whom the word was, is, and will be, whose being you are, or are You the Author of this Word (Revelation) (the being of the witnessing consciousness), which was always God (the Light of Consciousness), and there was no one but God, from whom this Word was, which is at the Beginning of all that is BEING, to which it is also the End.

    A person born of the word (the beginning) dies (the end), just as the body dies-the form born of the form through which either God or man speaks.”

    Who are you!???

  7. I would like to note that the answer to the question posed in this way IS METHODOLOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE IN PRINCIPLE.

    As noted in the first answer, you should start by defining consciousness. It is impossible to construct, compare, and take seriously theories about what does not exist.

    What do we call consciousness? A body of knowledge? emotions? logic? decision-making criteria? morals and morals? something else? all together?

    Depending on how we define it, we will assume that one or another theory is correct. The terminology adopted in psychoscience (as opposed to” neuroscience”, although neither one nor the other exists as a whole at all) cannot be considered a proper terminology at all – completely unrelated concepts were introduced and are being introduced by everyone who is not lazy. Often, even the names of the same concepts characterize not so much the object as the school that describes it.

    Wikipedia defines consciousness as a state of an individual's mental life, expressed in a subjective experience of events in the external world and the individual's own life, as well as in a report on these events. Simply put, it is a collection of perceived information about the world and corresponding reactions.

    In the Great Encyclopedia (2000), consciousness is defined as “the highest form of mental reflection, characteristic of a socially developed person and associated with speech, the ideal side of goal-setting activity.”

    But from the physiology of the nervous system and GNI, we know that all processes in the brain are realized by nerve impulses transmitted along neural chains. Therefore, consciousness must have a material carrier, and this carrier is nothing more than a neural network (a network of neurons; please do not confuse with the newfangled term that came from IT!!!), which provides and implements all nervous and mental processes – from simple spinal reflexes to emotions.

    It remains only to find out which of these theories most accurately describes this.

  8. A few small comments.

    Functionalism is primarily a metaphysical view that functional states have causal force regardless of their constituent components (in contrast to the type-type identity theory, where only specific physical states have causal force). The trait-trait identity theory fits perfectly into functionalism, and John Searle explicitly refers it there. All of these more specific hypotheses of consciousness (Dennett's multiple drafts, etc.) are functionalist. Since functionalism deals with causal functional states of the brain and the vast majority of functionalists consider themselves physicalists, it can be said that the problem of phenomenal consciousness and qualia does not concern him at all (a famous example is Dennett, nicknamed “Zombie”).

    Hameroff and Penrose's quantum theory of consciousness is not panpsychistic, but simply physicalist, like most existing quantum and electromagnetic theories of consciousness.

    Representationalism is not a full-fledged theory, but rather a concept within the philosophy of perception and consciousness, known since the time of Descartes and Locke. Today, representationalism is most popular again in cognitive science and the functionalist philosophy of consciousness, although, for example, such a major philosopher as Searle is his opponent.

    To characterize biological naturalism, in my opinion, it is more correct that consciousness is the result of causal interactions between different levels of the system (for example, the brain), as a result of which the system is intentionally “closed to itself” – it can conceptualize and mean itself. In addition to Searle, a similar theory exists in the biologist J. R. R. Tolkien. Edelman. Similar views are held by neurologist and bioanthropologist Terrence Deacon, who described them in his incredibly cool book Incomplete Nature (2011).

    I would like to note that I fully agree with the statement “The question is rather difficult and the answer to it is unlikely to bring satisfaction.” A superficial answer to the question formulated in this way requires writing a small book.

  9. The question is rather difficult and the answer to it is unlikely to bring satisfaction, since the concept of consciousness is overloaded with meanings, and therefore meets with very different expectations of what should be explained. And one of the central questions of any theory of consciousness is the definition of this phenomenon. I will offer theories that relate to the relationship between consciousness and neural processes in the brain.

    1. The theory of identity. It declares conscious processes to be identical with those in the brain, contrary to our intuition that conscious states have some nature that is not reducible to physical effects. Identity theorists explain their position by saying that postulating the existence of a separate phenomenon in the brain contradicts the principles of scientific knowledge, and the idea of a separate nature of consciousness is associated with common misconceptions such as that the Evening Star and the Morning Star are different objects ( although it is the same – Venus). There is a distinction between the standard identity theory and the trait-trait identity theory.

    2. Functionalism. This is the most popular position among cognitive scientists. Consciousness is not identical to physical processes, since the same mental state ( for example, solving a mathematical problem) can be realized by different physical media. This is a popular computer metaphor. Consciousness is software, and the brain is hardware, so functionalism has spurred research in the field of artificial intelligence.

    3. Non-reductive functionalism or property dualism. In contrast to traditional functionalism, which still insists that consciousness has no separate nature other than physical, theorists of this direction have put forward a number of arguments showing that some part of consciousness cannot be functionalized in principle. Traditionally, this part is qualia, the qualitative characteristics of conscious experience ( the redness of red, the subjective side of conscious experience). It is around qualia that the main battles in discussions about the nature of consciousness have unfolded.

    4. Chalmers ' non-reductive physicalism. Chalmers declared qualia a difficult problem of consciousness that cannot be solved by methods of cognitive and neuroscience. He proposed to consider consciousness in this sense as a fundamental characteristic of the universe, as well as fundamental physical interactions. Two positions followed from this: 1. Epiphenomenalism-qualia play no role in physical processes, but then their postulation becomes questionable 2. Panprotopsychism. At a fundamental level, there are proto-conscious properties that are responsible for performing certain physical functions and, in proper combination, for constituting conscious experience

    5. Quantum theory of consciousness. This is a subspecies of the panpsychist theory of consciousness. Penrose and Hameroff believe that consciousness is realized through quantum effects in the microtubules of neurons.

    6. A model of multiple sketches or fame in the brain. This is Dennett's theory. There are no qualia-this is a mistake. Qualia are the result of the coincidence of many relationships, that is, they are relational properties, such as the location of an object or the distance between objects. The brain is a machine with a parallel architecture, where competing coalitions of neurons compete for “power.” For example, visual coalitions dictate their will to others in some cases. Consciousness, on the other hand, is the result of a test when the subject tests his inner state, and it is at this point that the delusion arises that there is a Cartesian theater inside us, with an observer – the soul or Ego-sitting inside.

    7. Representationalism. This theory is close to the one described above and also believes that qualia do not have a separate nature, but are part of the representative content.

    8. Theory of global neural space. It is close to the last two. Consciousness is realized when a process of global synchronization occurs in the brain, involving different functional areas of the brain. Thus, a kind of large neural network is created that regulates the communication and broadcasting of information through many structures in the brain. Neuroscientist Dean calls the emergence of consciousness an avalanche, when effects in one part of the brain lead to the excitation of neurons everywhere, far from this department. Here we solve a probabilistic problem based on Bayesian probability. Unconscious processes also operate on the basis of calculating probabilities. But the conscious process is designed to offer a global model of the cognitive situation in which an organism finds itself.

    9. The theory of integrated information by Tononi and Koch. Like the concept above, this theory assumes that consciousness occurs when there is a large-scale synthesis of information in the brain.

    10. An attached Mid-level theory of consciousness realization. She opposes the theory of eight, considering global synchronization associated with the activation of high-level areas of the cerebral cortex ( for example, the frontal lobes) to be excessive and overloaded. A person already has consciousness at an average level, if this information is the subject of work for the system (that is, it is attached). For example, for visual perception, the zone of consciousness is the extrastriar cortex, which involves, for example, visual zones V 2,3,4 .

    11. Biological naturalism. Consciousness is as much a biological phenomenon as photosynthesis or digestion, but it is not fundamentally reducible to the physical properties of the brain.

    This review is incomplete and lacks proper systematization, and there are many subtle links between these items. And I'm afraid that this information is confusing, but it's already a good start for those who want to start diving into modern consciousness research. So far, it can be understood that we still do not have a clear understanding of this phenomenon, or at least one where a relatively large consensus has been reached.

Leave a Reply