The brain activity can be adequately described from a third person perspective, but if it is the be-all and end-all of explaining consciousness, why wouldn't a third person researcher be able to explain the subjective aspects as well? The internal life that goes on where brain activity generates a mind that has a sense that it is a unified self....provided the subject isn't mentally ill ofcourse, seems to be off limits to the onlooker, and can only be understood as a lived experience by the subject. Is it good enough to just say that we have a neural correllate of the experience?
Ralph.m
"The sense of self is off limits to the onlooker, because it is a combination of hardwired neural connections generated while the brain was developing as a child, and distributed memory tracks of incidents that defined self and other.
Incidentally, the complexity of the sense of self is for me the most powerful argument against any kind of dualist external imposition of soul. The sense of self of which the soul is an integral, and integrating part, is so much a part of the functioning of the entire brain, that the imposition by God would be impossible unless God was present as the brain developed. It seems more likely to me that God was created later on in the life of the self, as the self encountered the other identified as God by social peers and mentors."
No comments:
Post a Comment