Posted: Jan 14, 2017 8:57 pm
DavidMcC wrote:Pebble wrote:scott1328 wrote:I don't view consciousness as a "function" of the brain. To me, it is a label we put on a mixed bag of faculties, abilities, and predispositions.
Well getting rid of the concept of consciousness is one way of approaching the issue. Certainly when we have a better understanding of what the brain does, the term may gradually become redundant or explained as a combination of other explained brain activities - however I think we are a long way from being able to stop people using the term.
I'm not sure I agree about that. (See my post #664, above - IMO, it has a function that cannot be made redundant unless our visual acuity collapses to almost nothing.)
Don't quite follow. There does not appear to be any localised part of the brain that is the decision making centre. The sensory input is not just filtered, it updates a persistent internal representation of the external world. Most of the sensory data does not contribute to this representation, it is dealt with at reflex level or limbic/thalamic/cerebellar without ever needing to update sensory image (not just visual, auditory, pressure, olfactory). This internal representation of the external world is necessary to interact sensibly with the world, but we also need an internal representation of ourselves to interact with the world - hence the sense of duality. Once one has this, what function would a separate decision making centre have? The brain has all the information it now needs to interact with the world (what we label decision making) - as a side effect it has created the 'appearance' of a you as a conscious entity.