Consciousness is very fundamental to human existence. It is one of the basic necessities for all the living creatures of the universe. It does not only assist human beings to experience both gross (table, chair, etc.) and subtle objects (hunger, thirst, feelings, etc.) of the world but also assist in acquiring knowledge about worldly affairs. Human beings acquire knowledge due to their mental representation of objects and concepts of the world. In this regard, the notion of ‘consciousness’ and the concept of ‘mental representation’ are interrelated with each other. The functionalists (computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and others) suggest that a person’s body and brain are interrelated with each other due to the presence of consciousness in every part of body and brain. But they could not answer an important question, that is, in what ways body and brain of a person are connected to each other? This paper attempts to answer this question from a functionalist perspective. While answering this question, it argues that the emergence of consciousness in a person is not due to his/her brain functions, but due to the presence of ‘self’ in a person from birth to death.
| Published in | International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 10, Issue 1) |
| DOI | 10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11 |
| Page(s) | 1-6 |
| Creative Commons |
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Copyright |
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Science Publishing Group |
Brain, Body, Consciousness, Intentionality, Representation, Self
| [1] | Swinburne, R. (2013). Mind, brain and free will. Oxford University Press, Oxford. |
| [2] | Damasio, R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Harcourt Brace & company, New York. |
| [3] | Smart, J. J. C. (1959). Sensations and brain processes. Philosophical Review, 68, 141-56. |
| [4] | Enc, B. (1983). In defense of the identity theory. Journal of Philosophy, 80, 279-98. |
| [5] | Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behaviour. Appelton Century Crofts, New York. |
| [6] | Searle, J. R. (1984). Minds, brains and science. Reith Lectures, BBC Publications. |
| [7] | Honderich, T. (1981). Psychological law-like connections and their problems. Enquiry, 24, 277-303. |
| [8] | Churchland, P. S. & T. J. Sejnowski (2006). The Computational brain. MIT Press, Cambridge, p. 207. |
| [9] | Kandel, E. R. & Schwartz, J. H. (1985). Principles of neural science. Elsevier, New York. |
| [10] | Northoff, G. (2004). Philosophy of the brain: The brain problem. John Benjamin Publishing Company, Philadelphia. |
| [11] | Damasio, R. (1995). On some functions of the prefrontal cortex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 769, 241-51. |
| [12] | Damasio, R. (1999). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. G. P. Putnam, New York. |
| [13] | Panksepp, J. (1998). Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions. Springer-Verlag, New York. |
| [14] | Churchland, P. S. (1998). Feeling reasons. In P. M. Churchland & P. S. Churchland (Eds.) On the contrary: Critical essays 1987-1997 (pp. 231-54). MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [15] | Nielson, L. (1998). Modelling creativity: Taking the, & A. C. evidence seriously. In S. R. Hameroff, A. W. Kaszniak Scott (Eds.) Toward a science of Consciousness II: The second Tucson discussions and debates (pp. 714-24). MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [16] | Levine, D. S. (1998). Emotion and consciousness: A shotgun marriage? In S. R. Hameroff, A. W. Kasznaik & A. C. Scott (Eds.) Toward a science of consciousness II: The second Tucson Discussions and debates (pp. 513-20). MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [17] | Taylor, C. (1992). The ethics of authenticity. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. |
| [18] | Somatic markers are feelings in the body that are associated with emotions such as the association of rapid heartbeat with anxiety or fear. In the brain, somatic markers are thought to be processed in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the amygdala. |
| [19] | LeDoux, J. (1996). The Emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. Simon and Schuster, New York. |
| [20] | Cohen, N. J., & Eichenbaum, H. (1993). Memory, amnesia and the hippocampal system. MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [21] | Nadel, L. & Willner, J. (1980). Context and conditioning: A place for space. Physiological Psychology, 8, 212-228. |
| [22] | Ben-ze’ev, A. (1993). The Perceptual system: A Philosophical and psychological perspectives, Peterlang, New York. |
| [23] | Ben-ze’ev, A. (2001). The Nature of typical emotions. In Kaszniak, A. (Ed.) Emotions, qualia and consciousness (pp. 42-58), World Scientific Publishing Co. Ltd, Singapore. |
| [24] | Tye, Michael. (2008). The Experience of emotion: An Intentionalist theory. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 243 (1), 25-50. |
| [25] | Searle, J. R. (1983). The passions: The myth and nature of human emotions. New Doubleday, New York, p. 2. |
| [26] | Merskey, H. (1979). Pain terms: A list with definitions and a note on usage. Recommended by the International Association for the study of Pain (IASP) Subcommittee on Taxonomy. Pain, 6, 249-52. |
| [27] | Transduction is the process by which foreign DNA is introduced into a cell by a virus or viral vector. |
| [28] | Besson, J. M. & Chaouch, A. (1987). Peripheral and spinal mechanism of nociceptions, Psychological Review, 67, 67-185. |
| [29] | Willis, W. D, & Westlund, N. (1997). Neuroanatomy of the pain system and of the pathways that modulate pain. Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology, 14, 2-31. |
| [30] | Myelin is lipid-rich substance (fatty) formed in the central nervous system and this serves as insulators to the nerve cells to increase the speed at which information travels from one nerve cell to another. |
| [31] | Chapman, R. R., & Nakamura, Y. (2001). A passion of the soul: An Introduction to pain for consciousness researchers. Consciousness & Cognition, 8 (4), 391-422. |
| [32] | Kelso, J. A. S. (1995). Dynamic patterns: The Self-organization of brain and behaviour. MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [33] | Akins, K. (2001). Of sensory systems and the ‘aboutness’ of mental states. In W. Bechtel, P. Mandik, J. Mundale, & R. S. Stufflebeam (Eds.) Philosophy and the Neurosciences (pp. 369-95), Blackwell Publishers, Oxford. |
| [34] | Kriegel, U. (2014). Two notions of mental representation. In U. Kriegel (Ed.) Current controversies in philosophy of mind (pp. 161-79). Routledge, New York. |
| [35] | Steiner, P. (2019). Explicit, implicit and tacit representation. Retrieved 23 August, 2019, from www.sifa.unige.it. |
| [36] | Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and object. MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [37] | Edelman, G. M & Tononi, G. (2000). A Universe of consciousness: How matter becomes imagination. Basic Books, New York. |
| [38] | Searle, J. R. (1997). The Mystery of consciousness. New York: The New York Review of Books. |
| [39] | Collins, H. M. & Kusch, M. (1998). The Shape of actions: What humans and machines can do. MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [40] | Autoepistemic limitation refers to the inability of humans to directly experience the brain as a brain from the first-person perspective. |
| [41] | Eliasmith, C (2010). How we ought to describe computation in the brain. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 41, 313-20. |
| [42] | Clark, A. (1998). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. MIT Press, Cambridge. |
| [43] | Edelman, G. M. (2004). Wider than the sky: The phenomenal gift of consciousness. Yale University Press, New Heaven. |
| [44] | Crick, F., & Koch, C (1990). Towards a neuro- biological theory of consciousness. Seminars in the Neurosciences, 2, 263-75. |
| [45] | Creutzfeldt, O. D. (1979). Neurophysiological mechanisms necessary for consciousness. In G. Wolstenholme & M. O’Connor (Eds.) Brain and Mind (pp. 217-33). Elsevier, New York. |
| [46] | Global workspace theory is a cognitive structure that has been developed to account qualitatively for a large set of matched pairs of conscious and unconscious processes. It uses theatre metaphor as to spotlight selective feature of consciousness while acknowledging a multiple unconscious process involved. Cf. Baars, B. J. (1997). In the Theatre of Consciousness. Oxford University Press, New York. |
| [47] | Supramodular interaction theory proposes that phenomenal states (brain states) play an essential role in permitting interactions among supra modular response systems- agentic, independent, multimodal, information- processing structures. Skeletomotor actions become a possibility due to these interactions. Cf. Morsella, E. (2005). The function of phenomenal states: Supramodular interaction theory. Psychological Review, 112 (4), 1000-1021. |
| [48] | Ramachandran, V. S. (2004). The astonishing Francis Krick. Perception, 33, 1151-54. |
| [49] | Stoerig, P. (2006). Blindsight, conscious vision, and the role of the primary visual cortex. Progress in Brain Research, 155, 217-34. |
APA Style
Suresh Muruganandam. (2022). ‘Consciousness’ and Brain Functions: A Re-look from Functionalist Perspective. International Journal of Philosophy, 10(1), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11
ACS Style
Suresh Muruganandam. ‘Consciousness’ and Brain Functions: A Re-look from Functionalist Perspective. Int. J. Philos. 2022, 10(1), 1-6. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11
AMA Style
Suresh Muruganandam. ‘Consciousness’ and Brain Functions: A Re-look from Functionalist Perspective. Int J Philos. 2022;10(1):1-6. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11
Share This Article
Twitter
Linked In
Facebook
Copy
Download@article{10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11,
author = {Suresh Muruganandam},
title = {‘Consciousness’ and Brain Functions: A Re-look from Functionalist Perspective},
journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
volume = {10},
number = {1},
pages = {1-6},
doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11},
url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11},
eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20221001.11},
abstract = {Consciousness is very fundamental to human existence. It is one of the basic necessities for all the living creatures of the universe. It does not only assist human beings to experience both gross (table, chair, etc.) and subtle objects (hunger, thirst, feelings, etc.) of the world but also assist in acquiring knowledge about worldly affairs. Human beings acquire knowledge due to their mental representation of objects and concepts of the world. In this regard, the notion of ‘consciousness’ and the concept of ‘mental representation’ are interrelated with each other. The functionalists (computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and others) suggest that a person’s body and brain are interrelated with each other due to the presence of consciousness in every part of body and brain. But they could not answer an important question, that is, in what ways body and brain of a person are connected to each other? This paper attempts to answer this question from a functionalist perspective. While answering this question, it argues that the emergence of consciousness in a person is not due to his/her brain functions, but due to the presence of ‘self’ in a person from birth to death.},
year = {2022}
}
TY - JOUR T1 - ‘Consciousness’ and Brain Functions: A Re-look from Functionalist Perspective AU - Suresh Muruganandam Y1 - 2022/01/18 PY - 2022 N1 - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11 DO - 10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11 T2 - International Journal of Philosophy JF - International Journal of Philosophy JO - International Journal of Philosophy SP - 1 EP - 6 PB - Science Publishing Group SN - 2330-7455 UR - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221001.11 AB - Consciousness is very fundamental to human existence. It is one of the basic necessities for all the living creatures of the universe. It does not only assist human beings to experience both gross (table, chair, etc.) and subtle objects (hunger, thirst, feelings, etc.) of the world but also assist in acquiring knowledge about worldly affairs. Human beings acquire knowledge due to their mental representation of objects and concepts of the world. In this regard, the notion of ‘consciousness’ and the concept of ‘mental representation’ are interrelated with each other. The functionalists (computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and others) suggest that a person’s body and brain are interrelated with each other due to the presence of consciousness in every part of body and brain. But they could not answer an important question, that is, in what ways body and brain of a person are connected to each other? This paper attempts to answer this question from a functionalist perspective. While answering this question, it argues that the emergence of consciousness in a person is not due to his/her brain functions, but due to the presence of ‘self’ in a person from birth to death. VL - 10 IS - 1 ER -
Information
Email: