PoM paper: Can Neurobiology Teach us Anything about Consciousness?

Patricia Smith Churchland, Introduction: Human nervous systems display
an impressive roster of complex capacities, including the following:
perceiving, learning and remembering, planning, deciding, performing
actions, as well as the capacities to be awake, fall asleep, dream,
pay attention, and be aware. Although neuroscience has advanced
spectacularly in this century, we still do not understand in
satisfying detail how any capacity in the list emerges from networks
of neurons. We do not completely understand how humans can be
conscious, but neither do we understand how they can walk, run, climb
trees or pole vault. Nor, when one stands back from it all, is
awareness intrinsically more mysterious than motor control. Balanced
against the disappointment that full understanding eludes us still, is
cautious optimism, based chiefly on the nature of the progress behind
us. For cognitive neuroscience has already passed well beyond what
skeptical philosophers once considered possible, and continuing
progress seems likely...... http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/church.neuro.html

= = =

.

Loading