The Brain-Consciousness Problem in Contemporary Scientific Research

Abstract

Among the different formulations of the brain-consciousness problem in the modern scientific world, Sherrington’s has become the most widely known—and, if we can say this of the statement of a puzzle, the most cherished one. Sherrington’s exceptional stature as a scientist, allied to the sincerity, directness, and wise humility of spirit so vividly revealed in his writings, easily explains the success of his formulation of the problem. How can physical sense receptors affect sense? he asks. How can a reaction in the brain condition a reaction in the mind? How can the (often quoted!) “enchanted loom” of nerve impulses in the brain, which always weaves meaningful, but never abiding, patterns—how can this “loom” evoke such rich mental experiences as the vision of everything we see, all the sounds we hear, all the bodily sensations we may ever become aware of? Mind is not physical energy such as compose the electrical impulses, Sherrington proceeds, and no process occurring only with physical energy could produce “mind out of no mind.” Yet, “unless mind have working contact with energy, how can energy serve it?” “The energy-scheme brings us to the threshold of the act of perceiving, and there... bids us good-bye.” The difficulty with sense, Sherrington also recognizes, is the same difficulty from the converse side, as besets the problem of the mind as influencing our motor acts.