Aspects of Consciousness

We applaud the spirit of MacNeilage's attempts to better explain the evolution and cortical control of speech by drawing on the vast literature in nonhuman primate neurobiology. However, he oversimplifies motor cortical fields and their known individual functions to such an extent that he undermines the value of his effort. In particular, MacNeilage has lumped together the functional characteristics across multiple mesial and lateral motor cortex fields, inadvertantly creating two hypothetical centers that simply may not exist.

A central source of socially meaningful signals is the face, which can be visually analyzed to understand a person's emotions, intentions, beliefs, and desires, along with information about that person's social status, approachability, age, and gender. This article reviews the neural basis of the perception of such signals in humans, focusing on facial expression and gaze, and touching on lesser-studied signals such as pupil dilation and blushing. It discusses the involvement of structures such as the insula, orbitofrontal cortex, amygdala, and (...) superior temporal gyrus, which are studied in some detail with respect to how they process social stimuli. It reveals that social perception also involves information from other modalities and depends on the context in which signals occur. (shrink)

Sartre posited a (nondual), nonreflexive, nonthetic, nonpositional awareness which makes all consciousness possible, and which underlies dualistic, thetic, positional consciousness of object. Though his description assumes dualistic, thetic, positional consciousness of object to be inherent in nondual, nonreflexive,nonthetic, nonpositional awareness and hence to be ineradicable, with some modifications it can explain the view of rdzogs-chen that the sems-sde series of teachings illustrate in nonphilosophical terms with the example of the primordial mirror in which both dualistic consciousness and its objects manifest (...) as the play of the mirror’s energy. Dualistic consciousness: (1) is not inherent in nondual awareness, but arises when the threefold thought structure (Tib. ’khor-gsum) causes the mental subject—an illusory, incorporeal phenomenon—to manifest in nondual awareness coemergently with the phenomenon of being that makes the subject in question appear to involve self-being, and as the (co)Gnitive capacity and motility of nondual awareness seems to lie in this subject, the latter seems to be a separate perceiver of experiences, thinker of thought and doer of action—so that the mental subject appears to be an individual, separate, autonomous dualistic consciousness; (2) together with the phenomenon of being, is the core of the basic human delusion at the root of unhappy consciousness (duhkha); and(3) can dissolve in nirvana, putting an end to the unhappy consciousness inherent in it. (shrink)