This is the first report on the distribution of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes during stage-1 sleep or somnolence. Two hypotheses were tested: (A) that rCBF differed between the awake relaxed state and stage-1 sleep, (B) that hypnagogic hallucinations frequently experienced at sleep onset would be accompanied by measurable changes in rCBF using positron emission tomography (PET)....
Abstract In 1994 John Searle stated (Searle 1994: 11-12) that the Chinese Room Argument (CRA) is an attempt to prove the truth of the premise: led him to the conclusion that ‘programs are not minds’ and hence that computationalism, the idea that the essence of thinking lies in computational processes and that such processes thereby underlie and explain conscious thinking, is false. The argument...
Abstract I shall begin by recalling what I perceive to be the four polarities of viewpoint that I enunciated in Shadows of the Mind (Penrose 1994: 12) with regard to the relationship between conscious thought and computation: All thinking is computation; in particular, feelings of conscious aware ness are evoked merely by the carrying out of appropriate computations. Awareness is a feature of...
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of psycho-physical parallelism and about how we could define probabilities for our individual future observations given our individual present and previous...
Abstract A feature normally assumed essential to martyrdom is that it results in physical death. This essay, however, focuses on a variety of traditions in which martyrdom has to do with something other than actual dying. In certain Jewish mystical traditions, particularly medieval Kabbalah and Eastern European Hasidism, we discover a range of rituals that encourage the practice of...
This two-part article is propaedeutic to considering subsequently Weiskrantz's “commentary” conception of consciousness: from the perspective that James bequeathed to us more than a century ago. Weiskrantz has sought to render plausible a general account of awareness that resembles the “Intellectualist” notion of mind to which James had objected in The Principles. Whereas the central problem he...
When he formulated the program of neurophenomenology, Francisco Varela suggested a balanced methodological dissolution of the “hard problem” of consciousness. I show that his dissolution is a paradigm which imposes itself onto seemingly opposite views, including materialist approaches. I also point out that Varela's revolutionary epistemological ideas are gaining wider acceptance as a side...
We describe briefly the recent advances in understanding the distributed nature of computations in the (neural) network structure of the brain. We discuss if such artificial networks will be able to perform mathematics and natural sciences. The problem of consciousness in such machines is addressed. Ancient Indian ideas regarding mind-body relations and J. C. Bose's experimental observations...
A collection of stimulating studies on the past, the present, and the future of consciousness, Consciousness Evolving contributes to understanding some of the most important conceptual problems of our time. The advent of the modern synthesis together with the human genome project affords a platform for considering what it is that makes humans distinctive. Beginning with an essay that accents...
I hypothesize that people engage in religious practices, in part, because such practices activate the frontal lobes. Activation of the frontal lobes is both intrinsically rewarding and necessary for acquisition of many of the behaviors that religions seek to foster, including self-responsibility, impulse and emotion modulation, empathy, moral insight, hope, and optimism. Although direct tests...