Customer Reviews

The Race for Consciousness (A Bradford Book)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

O.K, I have tried to review this philosophically and have edited the result many times. I will now base my critiques on some evidence. First, Taylor proposes that posterior consciousness (phenomenal) emerges from circuits all in posterior cortex. These are suficient for posterior consciousness in his model. Now, experiments of decortication in monkeys of all but posterior regions make these animals (presumably-I will not go into reportability and animal consciousness issues) visually unconcious, and do not even retain blindsight. Second, imaging studies of visual (phenomenal) concsciousness show activation not only in posterior cortex, but also in anterior (Brodmn. Areas 46, 47, dorsolateral PFC).
Taylors main model is the 'relational' paradigm, that is for something to be conscious, its imput must be intermingled with past mamories and processing. Now some cases of severe amnesia are caused just because of inability to relate present imput to past memories or experiences. These patients are nevertheles conscious, even if they cannot remember the imput after some minutes. Relational-model necesary for memory, recolection, recognition, maybe even recall, but not apparently for consciousnes sin general. In fact, Taylor seems at times to equate consciousness in general with working memory, and this does not hold up completely.
Finally, he tries to explain qualia with "bubbles" of activity in cortex, his argument being that these phenomena have apparent similarity to the properties of qualia itself. But why must something in the brain be like qualia for it to be able to explain it? Are language areas like language? MT like motion? V4 milticolored? The amygdala fearfull? this is the fallacy of isomorphism. It is no argument to say that since something in the brain resembles a phenomenon, then that something is the correlate of the phenomenon.
The model is nevertheless quite complete -that is, he tries to explain a lot, and considers many pieces of evidence. I belive Taylor has gotten many things right, but not explained consciousness in a satisfactory way. Good read nevertheless.

The book is extremely fascinating, but I am left with a feeling that this field of science is hopelessly underdeveloped. Why haven't we made breakthroughs in this field decades ago? And is this theory really brand new? Some of these ideas about consciousness seem rather mainstream to me. Of course, kudos must go to Taylor for making an obviously needed effort in a young field.

Author does good job in explaining area to readers who usually read Ophra books. Extremely fundamental. 75% of the world is illiterate, 20% of the remaining have technical agility to operate an automobile or computer, less than 1% of the remaining know how to build them. The cumulative knowledge of biophysical type knowledge generally requires at least graduate college work. For instance if I told you that human free choice was merely a matter of how long the hysterisis loops in your IPSP were established in the attractor would you know what was being said? (In other words is there a thing called choice?) Another example, all 5-HT of the SSRI catagory cause a frequency shift in the thalmic inhibition cycle, what does this mean in terms of drug therapy for other damaged cortical areas? Yes the information and the state of the science is there, but only for people curious enough to question.