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What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models

The nature of consciousness is considered one of science’s most perplexing and persistent mysteries. We all know the subjective experience of consciousness, but where does it arise? What is its purpose? What are its full capacities? The assumption within today’s neuroscience is that all aspects of c...

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Autores principales: Wahbeh, Helané, Radin, Dean, Cannard, Cedric, Delorme, Arnaud
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490228/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36160593
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594
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author Wahbeh, Helané
Radin, Dean
Cannard, Cedric
Delorme, Arnaud
author_facet Wahbeh, Helané
Radin, Dean
Cannard, Cedric
Delorme, Arnaud
author_sort Wahbeh, Helané
collection PubMed
description The nature of consciousness is considered one of science’s most perplexing and persistent mysteries. We all know the subjective experience of consciousness, but where does it arise? What is its purpose? What are its full capacities? The assumption within today’s neuroscience is that all aspects of consciousness arise solely from interactions among neurons in the brain. However, the origin and mechanisms of qualia (i.e., subjective or phenomenological experience) are not understood. David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the difficulties in elucidating the origins of subjectivity from the point of view of reductive materialism. We propose that the hard problem arises because one or more assumptions within a materialistic worldview are either wrong or incomplete. If consciousness entails more than the activity of neurons, then we can contemplate new ways of thinking about the hard problem. This review examines phenomena that apparently contradict the notion that consciousness is exclusively dependent on brain activity, including phenomena where consciousness appears to extend beyond the physical brain and body in both space and time. The mechanisms underlying these “non-local” properties are vaguely suggestive of quantum entanglement in physics, but how such effects might manifest remains highly speculative. The existence of these non-local effects appears to support the proposal that post-materialistic models of consciousness may be required to break the conceptual impasse presented by the hard problem of consciousness.
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spelling pubmed-94902282022-09-22 What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models Wahbeh, Helané Radin, Dean Cannard, Cedric Delorme, Arnaud Front Psychol Psychology The nature of consciousness is considered one of science’s most perplexing and persistent mysteries. We all know the subjective experience of consciousness, but where does it arise? What is its purpose? What are its full capacities? The assumption within today’s neuroscience is that all aspects of consciousness arise solely from interactions among neurons in the brain. However, the origin and mechanisms of qualia (i.e., subjective or phenomenological experience) are not understood. David Chalmers coined the term “the hard problem” to describe the difficulties in elucidating the origins of subjectivity from the point of view of reductive materialism. We propose that the hard problem arises because one or more assumptions within a materialistic worldview are either wrong or incomplete. If consciousness entails more than the activity of neurons, then we can contemplate new ways of thinking about the hard problem. This review examines phenomena that apparently contradict the notion that consciousness is exclusively dependent on brain activity, including phenomena where consciousness appears to extend beyond the physical brain and body in both space and time. The mechanisms underlying these “non-local” properties are vaguely suggestive of quantum entanglement in physics, but how such effects might manifest remains highly speculative. The existence of these non-local effects appears to support the proposal that post-materialistic models of consciousness may be required to break the conceptual impasse presented by the hard problem of consciousness. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9490228/ /pubmed/36160593 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594 Text en Copyright © 2022 Wahbeh, Radin, Cannard and Delorme. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Wahbeh, Helané
Radin, Dean
Cannard, Cedric
Delorme, Arnaud
What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title_full What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title_fullStr What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title_full_unstemmed What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title_short What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
title_sort what if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9490228/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36160593
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594
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