Online research in philosophy

The problem of inferiority, of subjectivity, of conscience, is not only a metaphysical or psychological problem; it is susceptible to objective scientific study at the neurophysiological level. This study must not stop, however, at an analysis of cerebral function but must also recognize that conscience results from the self-being of the individual at himself in certain structures of his brain and that a cerebral process is or is not conscious according to whether or not it is integrated into the structure of the whole. This is best developed in man by virtue of the cerebral complexity which makes possible the verbalization of one self. The spiritual always appears as a functional, nonlocalizable aspect of the whole of the aggregate individual.

In "The Cerebral Code," he has solidly embedded his ideas in experimental neurophysiology and neuropharmacology, deriving from his decades in the laboratory.

Merker's approach allows the formulation of an evolutionary view of consciousness that abandons a dependence on structural homology – in this case, the presence of a cerebral cortex – in favor of functional concordance. In contrast to Merker, though, I maintain that the emergence of complex, dynamic interactions, such as those which occur between thalamus and cortex, was central to the appearance of consciousness. (Published Online May 1 2007).