Online research in philosophy

1 Matching Templates and Feature Analysers. 2 Modes of Perception in Left and Right Cerebral Hemispheres. 3 Identification and Recognition. 4 Chess Plying Machines.

I dispute that consciousness is generated by core circuitry in the forebrain, with predominance of motor areas, as Cotterillproposes in Enchanted Looms and other theorists do also. Ipropose instead that conscious contents are the momentary modeof action of the integrated cortical field, expressed as a point vector ( dominant focus ), to which, in varying degree, allsectors of the network contribute. Consciousness is the brain''saccess to its own activity space, and is identical with the moment''sdominant mode of activity. The dominant focus is generally weightedtoward enactively encoded percepts. Anticipation and preparation,perception and action, inextricably interdigitate. I also dispute the view of Cotterill and others that consciousnesshas unique agency, which bestowed adaptive advantage when the brain evolved. Being identical with the activity of the network,consciousness can have no additional agency, and it can offerno adaptive advantages beyond those that characterize the network.

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).

When circumscribed brain regions are damaged in humans, highly specific iimpairments in language, memory, problem solving, and cognition are observed. Neurosurgery such as "split brain" or hemispherectomy, for example has shown that encompassing regions, the left and right cerebral hemispheres each control human behavior in unique ways. Observations stretching over 100 years of patients with unilateral focal brain damage have revealed, withouth the theoretical benefits of "cognitive neuroscience" or "cognitive psychology," that human behavior is indeed controlled by the brain and its neurons.

How should we count people who have two cerebral hemispheres that cooperate to support one mental life at the level required for personhood even though each hemisphere can be disconnected from the other and support its “own” divergent mental life at that level? On the standard method of counting people, there is only one person sitting in your chair and thinking your thoughts even if you have two cerebral hemispheres of this kind. Is this method accurate? In this paper, I argue that it is not, and I advocate an alternative I call the Multiple Person View.