Two Views of Consciousness

There is no end of hypotheses about consciousness, particularly by philosophers. But most of these are not what we might call principled scientific theories, based on observables and related to the functions of the brain and body. Several theories of consciousness based on functionalism and on the machine model of the mind... have recently been proposed. These generally come in two flavors: one in which consciousness is assumed to be efficacious, and another in which it is considered an epiphenomenon. In the first, consciousness is likened to the executive in a computer systems program, and in the second, to a fascinating but more or less useless by-product of computation.

Notes:

One view is that it is the executive function of the brain, the other is that it is a byproduct of its processing.

Folksonomies: consciousness

Taxonomies:
/science/social science/philosophy (0.510427)
/science (0.437023)
/science/phyiscs/atomic physics (0.276330)

Keywords:
consciousness (0.946836 (negative:-0.004147)), useless by-product (0.794909 (neutral:0.000000)), scientific theories (0.767904 (negative:-0.493205)), executive function (0.748503 (positive:0.370818)), machine model (0.721526 (neutral:0.000000)), systems program (0.714235 (neutral:0.000000)), byproduct (0.541808 (positive:0.351973)), brain (0.529578 (positive:0.370818)), functionalism (0.518037 (neutral:0.000000)), hypotheses (0.512055 (negative:-0.308130)), philosophers (0.493394 (neutral:0.000000)), flavors (0.488937 (positive:0.259038)), computation (0.476287 (neutral:0.000000)), Views (0.470021 (positive:0.370818)), view (0.469825 (positive:0.370818)), processing (0.468747 (positive:0.351973)), end (0.464680 (negative:-0.308129)), observables (0.461737 (neutral:0.000000)), functions (0.461512 (neutral:0.000000)), body (0.461287 (neutral:0.000000))

Entities:
executive:JobTitle (0.868810 (positive:0.370818))

Bright Air, Brilliant Fire

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Edelman , Gerald M. (1992), Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, Basic Books, Retrieved on 2012-04-26

Source Material [books.google.com]