This paper presents an enquiry into the essential nature of phenomenal consciousness and its rela... more This paper presents an enquiry into the essential nature of phenomenal consciousness and its relation to the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain (NCCs). It first combines critical accounts of current ideas about the nature of NCCs themselves and about what constitutes phenomenal consciousness. This is followed by an examination of how these two may be related with a particular focus on pointing out the defects in the currently most popular hypothesis in this field namely the Identity Theory. The conclusion is that we need a better theory.
One way of describing the flow of time, described most cogently by Broad (1953), is to suppose th... more One way of describing the flow of time, described most cogently by Broad (1953), is to suppose that there is a second type of time (t 2 ), or at least a higher dimension, with respect to which our motion through physical time (t 1 ) is measured. Physical time (t 1 ) is then amalgamated with space into spacetime, while mental time (t 2 ) describes how the field of observation moves through spacetime. At any moment in t 2 , a physical object will have either a unique future world-line (in a mechanistic model) or a number of possible world-lines (in a quantum model). The intervention of consciousness allows the future world-line to change in the first case or to be selected from in the second case. This is illustrated in and corresponds to what is sometimes termed a 'growing block universe'. This picture can also be related to brane cosmology (where the brane is viewed as moving through the bulk) and the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics (Everett 1957).
This paper presents an enquiry into the essential nature of phenomenal consciousness and its rela... more This paper presents an enquiry into the essential nature of phenomenal consciousness and its relation to the neural correlates of consciousness in the brain (NCCs). It first combines critical accounts of current ideas about the nature of NCCs themselves and about what constitutes phenomenal consciousness. This is followed by an examination of how these two may be related with a particular focus on pointing out the defects in the currently most popular hypothesis in this field namely the Identity Theory. The conclusion is that we need a better theory.
One way of describing the flow of time, described most cogently by Broad (1953), is to suppose th... more One way of describing the flow of time, described most cogently by Broad (1953), is to suppose that there is a second type of time (t 2 ), or at least a higher dimension, with respect to which our motion through physical time (t 1 ) is measured. Physical time (t 1 ) is then amalgamated with space into spacetime, while mental time (t 2 ) describes how the field of observation moves through spacetime. At any moment in t 2 , a physical object will have either a unique future world-line (in a mechanistic model) or a number of possible world-lines (in a quantum model). The intervention of consciousness allows the future world-line to change in the first case or to be selected from in the second case. This is illustrated in and corresponds to what is sometimes termed a 'growing block universe'. This picture can also be related to brane cosmology (where the brane is viewed as moving through the bulk) and the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics (Everett 1957).
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