Mindmelding consciousness neuroscience and the mind s privacy 1st Edition by William Hirstein ISBN 978-0199231904 0199231907
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ISBN 10: 0199231907
ISBN 13: 978-0199231904
Author: William Hirstein
Can consciousness and the human mind be understood and explained in sheerly physical terms? Materialism is a philosophical/scientific theory, according to which the mind is completely physical. This theory has been around for literally thousands of years, but it was always stymied by its inability to explain how exactly mere matter could do the amazing things the mind can do. Beginning in the 1980s, however, a revolution began quietly boiling away in the neurosciences, yielding increasingly detailed theories about how the brain might accomplish consciousness. Nevertheless, a fundamental obstacle remains. Contemporary research techniques seem to still have the scientific observer of the conscious state locked out of the sort of experience the subjects themselves are having. Science can observe, stimulate, and record events in the brain, but can it ever enter the most sacred citadel, the mind? Can it ever observe the most crucial properties of conscious states, the ones we are aware of? If it can’t, this creates a problem. If conscious mental states lack a basic feature possessed by all other known physical states, i.e., the capability to be observed or experienced by many people, this give us reason to believe that they are not entirely physical.
In this intriguing book, William Hirstein argues that it is indeed possible for one person to directly experience the conscious states of another, by way of what he calls mindmelding. This would involve making just the right connections in two peoples’ brains, which he describes in detail. He then follows up the many other consequences of the possibility that what appeared to be a wall of privacy can actually be breached.
Drawing on a range of research from neuroscience and psychology, and looking at executive functioning, mirror neuron work, as well as perceptual phenomena such as blind-sight and filling-in, this book presents a highly original new account of consciousness.
Table of contents:
Chapter 1: The Impasse
Is the mind private?
The possibility of mindmelding
Assertions of privacy
Ten popular (but false) claims
Conclusion
Chapter 2: An Alternative Framework
Introduction
Making mindmelding conceivable
Sense of self
The brain’s higher-level architecture: a hypothesis
Binding
Reminder
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The Brain and Its Cortex
Introduction
Neurons
Sensing the world, and ourselves
Functional systems
Approaches to consciousness
Executive processes
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Consciousness
Introduction
The neuroscience of binding
What is the relation between consciousness and binding?
Visual consciousness
What is the function of binding?
Where are conscious states?
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Preparing Representations
Introduction
Filling-in
Where are colors?
Objections and replies
The apparent completeness and consistency of conscious states
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Executive Processes
Introduction
Sensory and mnemonic representations remain in posterior cortex
The ensemble of executive processes
The anatomy and physiology of the prefrontal cortex
We are not directly aware of executive processes
Are active prefrontal connections necessary for posterior conscious states?
Access consciousness versus phenomenal consciousness
Bare consciousness
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Sense of Self
Introduction
Six senses of “self”
Making self-representations
The psychology of executive processes
We are not directly aware of the psychological self
Is consciousness without a sense of self possible?
Conclusion
Chapter 8: The Reality and Importance of the Executive Self
Introduction
Acknowledging executive activity as ours
The relation between executive processes and self-representations
Personality: the executive and emotional selves
Skepticism about the psychological self
Conscious action
Is the self merely a creation of confabulation?
Questions about unity
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Sharing Conscious States
Introduction
What sort of possibility?
Cleaving representations and executive processes
White matter fiber tracts
Mindmelding thought experiments
Mind reporting versus mind reading
Objections and replies
Conclusion
Chapter 10: Mindtalk
Introduction
Folk psychology
What sentences say
Attributing mental states
Putting the approach to work
Self as inner actor: a folk-psychological metaphor
First-person attributions
Describing mindmelding
Objections and replies
Conclusion
Chapter 11: Disentangling Self and Consciousness
Introduction
Problems of the mental and problems of the physical in general
The metaphysician’s toolchest
Categories of existence
Basic metaphysical categories of mind
Physical definitions
Our knowledge of things, properties, and facts
Inseparability
Privacy and inseparability
Creating metaphysical categories
Conclusion
Chapter 12: Representation and Consciousness
Introduction
Representational states
Routes of access
The relation between consciousness and representation
Schematic version of the hypothesis
Misrepresentation
How to tell what is represented
Are there mental representations?
Higher-order thought theories
“Representations” without executive contact
Inhibiting the capacity to represent
Conclusion
Chapter 13: The Mind and Its Care
Introduction
Mysteries
Mind and medicine
Conclusion: Privacy Most Precious
References
Author Index
Subject Index
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