Neural Basis of Consciousness (Advances in Consciousness Research) [ハードカバー]

This is a slightly above average collection on papers on the neural basis of consciousness. The paper by Baars is good as usual, and argues convincingly that working memory requires consicousness, and not the other way arround. This is easily accepted science prefrontal lesions rarely cause unconsicousness. Osakas paper is interesting, but seems to equate working memory with consicousness, a move that Baars shows is not quite solid. Libets paper is good, and his time-on theory, tha consicousness requires a minimum time of neural processing is strong in place, good evidence is shown for it. Libets attacks on other theories and his speculation of a consicous mental field is questionable, for reasons I need not go in detail here. Cotterill makes a sinthesis of his views on cognition, and how muscular activity is essential in understanding it.

Longothesis presents his elegant experiments on single cells recording and binocular rivalry. This is some of the strongest work being done on the neural basis of consicousness. Hardcastle also quite convincingly shows that attention and consicousness are not the same thing, although she allows they might be closely related. Baars shows that WM alone is not enough, and Hardcastle that attention alone is not enough. Maybe both together could be an important part of the story. The Churchlands, in the philosophical paper in the book, make sense as usual, and argue against those that say consciousness is unexplainable scientifically in principle. I think they are right, but misplace the problem of qualia. They point out that there are neuronal correlates of qualia, which is right, but the problem is what makes this correlates cause certain qualia and not others, or what is special about these processes that cause consicousness, for similar neuronal activity will not cause consicousness if other certain conditions cannot be met (alertness, attention, etc,). I however, am on the naturalist side and an optimist, and believe the qualia problem is not insurmoutable.

Finally, on a section on physics and consicousness, Eccles et.al argue for dualist quantum interactionism, a far-fetched quantum theory, too philosophically problematic in my opinion. Hameroff and Wolf, however, present the most plausible qauantum model of consicuousness out there. However, it still seems to me that panpsychism (which Hammeroff adopts), the foundations on a collapse interpretation of quantum physics, and the uses of an unknown gravity involvment, make this approach problematic, to say the least. Although his proposal is testable in a way, the explanatory power of his model depends on panspsychism, which is a philosophical move unwarranted for, that does not even require any quantum effects for it to work. Hameroff overestimates his models superiority over conventional neurobiological ones. Scott in the last chapter of the book actually gives soome good arguments, motivated by nonlinear system theory considerations, against the quantum physics relevance for consicousness.

This book then gives a proper overview on the neural basis of consicousness, but is not terribly complete or comprehensive. It should be a good and valuable but non-essential addition to a science of consicousness interested reader's collection.

This book, as the title says, is about the neural basis of consciousness(NBC) i.e. about the set of neural events that cause consciousness. It includes the different theories and models of consciousness, as well as the issues that are being addressed by present day research in this area. The book aims (so it claims) to bring together different research perspectives and models in a comparative study so as to encourage future researchers. Clearly, this book is not really intended for the lay interested reader, but for the researcher who is specifically looking for a somewhat extended review article.

The book starts with a good introductory chapter on the major issues in NBC research and primary research questions. Then it gives a summary of a few models of consciousness (notably the working memory model and the global workspace theory), moving on to more physiological aspects (experimental study of conscious awareness, visual consciousness, etc.). This is followed by the section on neurophilosophy and finally the book ends with an excellent section on one of the hottest research areas in this domain- quantum mind.

Though the book as a whole is organized well, the same is not true of each chapter. Some chapters are informative but disorganized, and some are slightly one-sided views of a theory -only a few are really good. Like many research books, the style is not very interesting (in a fun or humorous sense) but this is worsened by the vagueness or poor organization in some chapters. On the plus side, the book is quite informative and has the right amount of detail for the most part, making it a valuable reference. Of course, the research summarized is not exactly the latest because the book is about 10 years old, however it is a pretty good introduction to this domain.

So should you buy it? If you are working in this domain and looking for an average summary of different areas (like a collection of papers), you should probably give it a shot. But then again, it is not the best option available.