1 Making Consciousness Safe for Neuroscience
نویسندگان
چکیده
Work on consciousness by neurophilosophers often leaves a certain group of other philosophers frustrated. The latter group of philosophers, which includes people such as believe that consciousness is something quite different from the brain circuitry or other processes that are active in cognition. They feel frustrated because work on consciousness by neurophilosophers usually ignore this view, yet proceed from an assumption that it is wrong. This work tends to assume, simply assume, that neuroscience will not only identify neural correlates of consciousness (which virtually all parties to the current consciousness debate now accept), but (perhaps with the assistance of cognitive science) will eventually tell us what consciousness is. That is to say, it assumes that consciousness simply is a neural/cognitive process of some kind. Even more, it assumes that consciousness is a neural/cognitive process similar in kind to the processes that underlie (other aspects of) cognition and representation. That is to say, it assumes that consciousness is an aspect of general cognition. Consciousness has appeared to be weird and wonderful to many people for a very long time. Daniel Dennett captured the feeling very nicely many years ago. Consciousness appears to be the last bastion of occult properties, epiphenomena, immeasurable subjective states – in short, the one area of mind best left to the philosophers. Let them make fools of themselves trying to corral the quicksilver of " phenomenology " into a respectable theory. [1978a, p.149] Consciousness no longer appears this strange to very many researchers but the group of people just mentioned continue to hold that it is very different from any brain or other process active in cognition. By contrast, like most consciousness researchers now, neurophilosophers simply take for granted that consciousness will be domesticated along with the rest of cognition – indeed, that it will turn out to be simply an aspect of general cognition. I am sympathetic to the position assumed by these papers. However, I do not think that one can simply ignore the opposition. In my view, one must confront their arguments and show where they fail. In addition to the general desirability of not ignoring one's opponents, there is a specific reason why this needs to be done in the case of consciousness. If the opposition is left unchallenged, it can easily appear as though the neurophilosophy of 'consciousness' is in fact not talking about consciousness, has subtly changed the topic. It can …
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