Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness
December 31, 2010 DOI: 10.1017/upo9781844654277
Summary
The introduction discusses the complexities of consciousness, which is both familiar and perplexing. It reviews significant recent contributions from cognitive science, neurophysiology, and philosophy, highlighting how neuroscience distinguishes this work from other philosophical discussions. The author provides a non-technical overview of key properties of consciousness and explores the implications of recent scientific findings on our understanding of the mind.
Abstract
Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque and strange. This introduction to the problems posed by consciousness discusses the most important work of cognitive science, neurophysiology and philosophy of mind of recent years and presents an up to date assessment of the issues and debates. The books engagement with the neuroscience material sets it apart from other philosophical introductions. Welshon presents an informal and largely non-technical account of the properties of consciousness that are thought to be the most paradigmatic and problematic before examining recent scientific work from neurophysiological studies of the brain to computational theories of the mind and the philosophical problems that these accounts raise.