Posted by: balthusbemusedbycolor on: December 9, 2010
The philosopher, Paul Davies Sheldon, has written an interesting article on the philosophical implications of animal affective neuroscience (in particular, taking into account the work of Jaak Panksepp). The article, entitled Ancestral voices in the mammalian mind: Philosophical implications of Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal, Neuroscience [...]
Posted by: balthusbemusedbycolor on: December 6, 2010
Consciousness represents the ‘holy grail’ of neuroscience (or in its even more extreme form, the ‘holy grail’ of science in general) This is a myth that, in my own experience, is held by almost no one who is actually a neuroscientist. Indeed, to hold up consciousness as the apex of neural evolution and function does [...]
Posted by: balthusbemusedbycolor on: April 21, 2009
One way to winnow down the variety of different approaches to the study of consciousness is to organize them according to how they relate to the ‘hard problem’. The hard problem, fortunately for us, can be stated rather succinctly: how do the physico-chemical processes in the brain give rise to subjectively experienced mental states? For [...]
