Brain stem as source of consciousness

[Jim Cross]

Dana,

There is much new in this thread if there is any interest whatsoever in science and neuroscience. There are always new observations and correlations. If people want to retread the usual arguments, there really hasn't been anything new since Bishop Berkeley and Kant.

[AshvinP]

Honestly this doesn't to much in terms of solving the problem. Just because you make the required area for conscious experience smaller it doesn't change that it can't explain how physical matter creates consciousness and qualia. I don't think most people here would argue that human, independent consciousness requires a brain so saying the brain stem is key to consciousness doesn't really change the equation. You're just narrowing down which exact part is most important.

Again, this is the image and imaged problem, or the representation-represented problem. Does a mountain require a photo of itself to exist? More relatedly, does data stored in computer hardware require desktop folder/file icons to exist?

[Jim Cross]

BTW, here's Bernardo FB post on Friston's theories which also are very germane to Solms.



Fundamentally, neuroscience in idealistic terms is about explaining alters which is where BK uses Friston's theories.

[Brad Walker]

If the brain stem is sufficient for conscious life, why/how did the other 97.4% of the brain evolve at great metabolic cost and childbirth risk?

[Brad Walker]

Neuroplasticity isn't total magic. Hemispherectomy patients are semiblind.

[Jim Cross]

Brad,

This is an imprecise analogy but Solms thinks of the cortex as like the memory in the computer where all of the images of consciousness are formed. Raw consciousness - the sense of feeling to be like something - is from the brainstem. So the human mind would have little of its capabilities without the cortex even though the core consciousness arises at a more primitive level.

[Jim Cross]

Brad,

This is an imprecise analogy but Solms thinks of the cortex as like the memory in the computer where all of the images of consciousness are formed. Raw consciousness - the sense of feeling to be like something - is from the brainstem. So the human mind would have little of its capabilities without the cortex even though the core consciousness arises at a more primitive level.

To add to that thought, I personally think this division is problematic but that is Solms' argument.

[Brad Walker]

Remember, just a cut to this region and consciousness is cease in the subject.

The obvious question is that if this leads to permanent coma and corporeal death, how would any researcher know, beyond just subjective opinion, that there is no ongoing experience for the psyche transitioning into a transcorporeal state of consciousness, as it could not be reported?

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[Brad Walker]

How does this brain stem model fit with corpus callosotomies where there are apparent split subjects but no brain stem division?

[Dave casarino]

I feel there seems to be a total lack of any mediatory contemplation, whilst the materialists usually do not even consider non materialist ideas most of the time the idealist response is to merely flip the bias in their own direction. Materialists (or emergentists not necessarily from materialist metaphysics) are convinced, idealists are convinced, there is no maybe's if's or but's. Why are we all so convinced of the victory of our preferred metaphysics? To be sure to be sure, I have observed and indulged in so many different articles certainty to me seems very.... well dangerous really. Maybe not in the way partisanship is dangerous but dangerous in that niggling subtle way that gradually erodes mountains over time.