Consciousness and cognition
November 1, 2014
Georg Northoff
William James described consciousness as a 'stream' with 'substantive parts' (the contents of consciousness) and 'transitive parts' (the linkages between contents). While much research has focused on substantive parts, the neural basis of transitive parts and how they balance 'sensible continuity' and 'continuous change' in inner time consciousness remains unclear. This paper develops a neuro-phenomenal hypothesis proposing that cortical midline structures, with their high variability and strong low-frequency fluctuations, mediate this phenomenal balance.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2012
Justin Sytsma, Edouard Machery
The authors previously argued that ordinary people do not conceive of subjective experiences as having phenomenal qualities, which undermines a common justification for the hard problem of consciousness. Here, they respond to Talbot's criticism of their earlier argument, defending their position against the challenge.
Consciousness and cognition
December 1, 2008
George A Mashour, Eric LaRock
Philosophical p-zombies are imagined beings that behave like humans but lack consciousness, used to challenge physicalist theories of mind. Inverting this concept yields i-zombies: beings that appear unconscious but are actually conscious. A real-world approximation of i-zombies exists in anesthesia awareness, where 1-2 per 1000 patients under general anesthesia become conscious during surgery despite appearing unconscious due to paralysis and intubation. Additionally, 22% of patients in a recent study reported dreaming during anesthesia. P-zombies raise the hard problem of explaining qualia; i-zombies pose the practical problem of detecting qualia. The work compares these concepts and examines the hard problem of unconsciousness through anesthesia awareness.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2003
Josef Perner, Zoltan Dienes
Children likely become consciously aware of events in the world between 12 and 15 months of age, with a possible range of plus or minus 3 months. This conclusion emerges from evaluating five strategies: three look for signs of verbal communication, executive control, or explicit memory—activities that require conscious awareness in adults; two consider when children can engage in the minimal higher-order thought needed for access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. The answer is tentative, based on converging evidence from these different approaches.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2002
Wim Van de Grind
The debate over Benjamin Libet's findings on the timing of conscious experiences reflects deeper assumptions about how the nervous system handles time. The nervous system recombines and recodes sensory messages; ignoring these processes can lead to theories requiring subjective back-referral. Many neuroscientists assume a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) that compares activity patterns only if they arrive simultaneously, prompting searches for synchrony or latency compensation. Alternatively, symbolic representations of time and space could be encoded as tags multiplexed with sensory qualities. The hidden issue is whether the NCC is uniquely smart—solving timing and location problems on its own—or whether such information is coded symbolically early in processing. The author sides with the latter, distributed-smartness view.
Consciousness and cognition
December 1, 2000
R Lange, M A Thalbourne, J Houran et al.
A revised 17-item Transliminality Scale (RTS) corrects age and gender biases in the original 29-item version, is unidimensional by a Rasch criterion, and has a reliability of 0.82. The scale defines a probabilistic hierarchy of items addressing magical ideation, mystical experience, absorption, hyperaesthesia, manic experience, dream interpretation, and fantasy proneness. These findings validate William James's and Thalbourne's suggestions that some mental phenomena share a common underlying dimension with selected sensory experiences. Low scores correlate with "tough mindedness," "self-control," and "rule consciousness" on the Cattell 16PF test, while high scores associate with "abstractedness" and "openness to change." An independent validation study confirmed predictions implied by the definition of transliminality.