Brain, Self and Consciousness: Explaining the Conspiracy of Experience (Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality Book 3)

This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. It develops a novel approach in consciousness studies by charting the pathways in which the brain challenges the self and the self challenges the brain. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. To address such a unity is to understand mutual challenges that the brain and the self pose for each other. The fascinating discussions that this book presents are: How do the brain and self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self? Preface 5 Contents 7 Biosketch of the Author 10 1 The Problematic of Consciousness: An Introduction 11 References 27 2 Brain and the Self 28 2.1 Brain’s Profile 28 2.2 The Mutual Challenge 30 2.3 NCC and Unconscious Perceptions 32 2.4 Body and the Conspiracy of Experience 33 2.4.1 Why Embodiment? 34 2.5 Harder Problem of Experience and the Easy Problem of the Body 36 2.6 What is the Self? Can it be Defined by its Characteristics and Functions? 37 2.7 Agency, Emotions and Altered Self 40 2.8 Dual Worlds: Biology and Philosophy 41 2.9 Puzzles for Another Decade 43 References 44 3 Beginnings: Biological and Philosophical Accounts of Consciousness 46 3.1 Brain and its Functions 48 3.1.1 Neuronal Connections 48 3.2 Cerebral Cortex and the Four Lobes 50 3.2.1 Subcortical Structures 51 3.2.2 Sensory Processing and Association Areas 53 3.3 Body-Mind and Body-Self Debates 55 3.3.1 Is Experiential Primacy the Puzzle of Consciousness? 57 3.4 The Harder Problem 59 3.4.1 The Elusive Explanatory Gap 61 3.4.2 The ‘Hard Problem’ and its Inadequacies 62 3.4.3 Subject and Object 64 3.5 Perplexing Challenges for Science 65 References 68 4 The Not-So-Rigid Brain: Philosophical Riddles and Experiential Ironies 70 4.1 Making Sense of Neural Changes 71 4.2 The Malleable Brain, ‘Me and the Other’ Divide, and a Theory of Mind 75 4.3 Self-Reflection and Modelling Another Self 76 4.3.1 What is a Conscious Experience? 78 4.3.2 The Ongoing Commentary of Self-Report 78 4.3.3 The Nearness of ‘the Other’ 79 4.4 Self-Reflection and Neurons that Mirror 80 4.4.1 Why Do Neurons Mirror? 82 4.5 Implicit, Explicit, and Failing Memories 84 4.5.1 Are Memories Functionally Different? 85 4.5.2 Failing Memories for Some, Persistent Memories for Others 86 4.5.3 The Truth Behind Memories 88 4.6 Brain and the Subjective Markers of Meaning-Making 89 4.7 Philosophical Riddles and Experiential Ironies 91 References 92 5 Body-Sense and Self-Sense: Why is Minimalism Insufficient? 95 5.1 Making Sense of ‘Sense’ 96 5.2 What is Body-Sense? 98 5.2.1 Brain Cartography and the Body-Sense 98 5.2.2 Owning Me and My Actions 101 5.3 What is the Self-Sense? 102 5.3.1 Body Absence and Self-Sense 103 5.3.2 Bundles, Streams and Technologies of Self 104 5.4 The Range of Self-Sense 107 5.4.1 Minimalizing the Minimal Self Further 110 5.4.2 Why is Minimalism Insufficient? 112 5.5 Entanglement of the Body-Sense and Self-Sense 116 5.6 The Very First Sense 118 5.7 A Proposal 119 References 122 6 Boundaries of Self: Displacement, Meaning and Purpose 124 6.1 Tracing the Contours of Self 125 6.1.1 Brain Impairments and Body Displacements 126 6.2 Self-Recognition and the Core-Self 129 6.2.1 Illusion-Based Manipulations of Body-Identification 131 6.2.2 Experience and Ownership 132 6.3 Body and Embodiment 133 6.4 Movement, Agency and Subjectivity 135 6.5 Core-Self and Self Correlates 138 6.6 Brain–Self Connectors 142 References 142 7 The Feel Factor: Qualia and the Affective Markers of Experience 145 7.1 The Feel Factor 146 7.1.1 Representationalism 147 7.1.2 Bodily Subjectivity and its Qualities 149 7.2 Qualia and Non-physical Feelings 150 7.2.1 Is Qualia Impersonal? 151 7.3 Feeling and its Uniqueness 152 7.3.1 Making Sense of Mixed up Senses 154 7.4 Emotions and the Self 156 7.4.1 Emotions that Reason 158 7.4.2 Illusory, but Emergent, Dimensional, and Layered Self 161 7.5 Sense, Sensations and Sensibilities 162 7.6 The Inevitable Feel Factor 166 References 167 8 Being and Wellbeing: You, Me and Our Free Will 176 8.1 Why the Self is not a ‘Teme’, and Why I am ‘Me’ 177 8.2 Values and the Ontological Commitment 179 8.2.1 The Signs of Self 179 8.3 The Being-Well Agenda 180 8.3.1 Inner Narratives and Moral Agency 182 8.4 Desire and the Self 184 8.5 Self, Character and Wellbeing 188 8.5.1 Meaning and Purpose 189 References 190 9 Beyond the Brain: The Final Frontiers of Consciousness 191 9.1 Normality of Self and Alternate Self-experiences 193 9.2 Neural Correlates Versus Self-correlates 196 9.3 Beyond the Brain and the Body 196 9.3.1 The Core-Self 198 9.3.2 Emotion, Its and Our Future 199 9.3.3 Enactment and Therapy 205 9.4 Self in the Brain and Brain in the Self 206 References 210 Index 213 3_5, 95 This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. It develops a novel approach in consciousness studies by charting the pathways in which the brain challenges the self and the self challenges the brain. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. To address such a unity is to understand mutual challenges that the brain and the self pose for each other. The fascinating discussion that this book presents is: How do the brain and self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self? "This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. The fascinating discussion that this book presents is: How do the brain and self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self?"--Page 4 of cover This book discusses consciousness from the perspectives of neuroscience, neuropsychiatry and philosophy. The author argues that the central issue in brain studies is to explain the unity, continuity, and adherence of experience, whether it is sensory or mental awareness, phenomenal- or self-consciousness. The fascinating discussion that this book presents is: How do the brain and the self create the conspiracy of experience where the physicality of the brain is lost in the subjectivity of the self?