The Role of the Brain During Conscious Experience: In Search of a New Metaphor

Many scholars interpret the close correlation between neuronal and mental phenomena as causal in nature --with physiological events producing psychological states and processes. This interpretation is suggestive but by no means the most parsimonious or logically sound account and there is an increasing number of challenges to this view. The current article discusses these, briefly reviews alternative accounts and elaborates on one such alternative account in particular. Proposed already a century ago, we take it up here because we consider it to have significant promise. We develop it into a new metaphor that we hope will prove useful in informing our understanding of --and approach to --the mind-body problem.