Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Claim: Seat of human awareness discovered

Denyse O'Leary
November 11, 2016
Mind, News
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From Andrew Tarantola at Engadget:

The Harvard study examined 36 patients with similar brainstem lesions, 12 of which were comatose. The study sought to determine why that dozen of people lost consciousness while the other 24 retained theirs. The researchers quickly zeroed in on one region: the rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum. Ten of the twelve comatose patients suffered damage to this area, while only one of the conscious patients did.More.

It will be interesting to see if this is replicated. One guesses that it is a bit more complex.

See also: Evading the hard problem of human consciousness: Consciousness is in everything!

and

What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness

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Comments
Dionisio Thanks for the links. It looks like the first one is the critical one. With my mobile device all I can see is the menu. I'll check it out on a real computer at the office. hnorman5
hnorman5 This seems to be one link from the above OP: https://www.engadget.com/2016/11/08/scientists-think-this-is-where-your-consciousness-lives/ Here's another link: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/evading-hard-problem-of-human-consciousness-consciousness-is-in-everything/ Dionisio
I'm sorry but I'm unable to follow the link above. Could someone tell me something about the Harvard study referred to? Is it intended to show that finding a part of the brain responsible for being awake or asleep solves the hard problem of consciousness? hnorman5
I suppose that what's being discussed here is the illusion of awareness or as Rosenberg puts it "the illusion that there is someone inside." IOWs science has located the illusion of consciousness.
Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion. Even after scientism convinces us, we’ll continue to stick with the first person. But at least we’ll know that it’s another illusion of introspection and we’ll stop taking it seriously. We’ll give up all the answers to the persistent questions about free will, the self, the soul, and the meaning of life that the illusion generates. The physical facts fix all the facts. The mind is the brain. It has to be physical and it can’t be anything else, since thinking, feeling, and perceiving are physical process—in particular, input/output processes—going on in the brain. We can be sure of a great deal about how the brain works because the physical facts fix all the facts about the brain. The fact that the mind is the brain guarantees that there is no free will. It rules out any purposes or designs organizing our actions or our lives. It excludes the very possibility of enduring persons, selves, or souls that exist after death or for that matter while we live. Not that there was ever much doubt about mortality anyway. [Rosenberg, Ch. 9, The Atheist Guide To Reality]
Origenes
Wonderful. So now we no longer have a mind-body problem. We have a mind-seat of human awareness problem. hnorman5
knock out the interface . . . kairosfocus

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