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Psychology Today: Latest new theory of consciousness

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From neuroscience PhD student Joel Frohlich at Psychology Today:

While it is impossible to ever truly breach this epistemological hurdle, most of us operate on the assumption that other minds exist and individuals with behavior similar to our own experience the world as we do. Accepting this axiom, meaningful questions may be asked: Which brain architectures best support consciousness? Why does consciousness feel like “one thing” despite containing so much information? Why does consciousness vanish during seizures? Why do cerebellar lesions minimally impact consciousness?

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi has developed a system to answer these questions using the framework of information theory. In this context, information is a reduction in uncertainty, as in knowing the value of a variable with many possible states. Tononi’s theory, known as Integrated Information Theory (IIT), describes consciousness as information integrated across a highly differentiated system that cannot be reduced to constituent parts. The cerebral cortex has a vast capacity to both integrate and differentiate information, making its architecture optimal for consciousness. This balance between integration and differentiation is known as phi, a quantity which may one day be used to estimate the consciousness of a brain or other network.More.

So consciousness is irreducibly complex but we can’t admit that? How does calling it “phi” help?

Naturalist theories of consciousness tend to have a short shelf life. Give this one another five years.

See also: New Scientist: Consciousness is maybe a trick of the mind

and

Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?

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Comments
Here A an example of what happens when an Oxford educated Dawkins loving , Dennett obsessed philosopher of neuroscience debates someone that is knowledgeable in ndes , she gets embarrassed and humiliated . Abs they allow her to teach at ucsd one of the. It's prestigious medical schools in the world lol https://youtu.be/7a6ZaivvCnEwallstreeter43
October 12, 2016
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The problem here is that these neuroscientists won't tackle the nde science data that gets more damning towards materialism every single year we press forward . I dare any neuroscientist to debate people like dr Jeffrey long and dr Bruce Greyson on ndes . They won't do it cause they know where the current nde evidence leans and towards away from materialism and into a spiritual realitywallstreeter43
October 12, 2016
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