Helen Oppenheimer, Making Good: Creation, Tragedy and Hope
ABSTRACTS
J.G. Taylor
From Matter To Mind
Abstract: The relation between mind and matter is considered in terms of
recent ideas from both phenomenology and brain science. Phenomenology is
used to give clues to help bridge the brain–mind gap by providing
constraints on any underlying neural architecture suggested from brain
science. A tentative reduction of mind to matter is suggested and used to
explain various features of phenomenological experience and of ownership of
conscious experience. The crucial mechanism is the extended duration of the
corollary discharge of attention movement, with its gating of activity for
related content. Aspects of experience considered in terms of the model are
the discontinuous nature of consciousness, immunity to error through
misidentification, and the state of ‘pure’ consciousness as experienced
through meditation. Corollary discharge of attention movement is proposed as
the key idea bringing together basic features of meditation, consciousness
and neuroscience, and helping to bridge the gap between mind and matter.
Correspondence: J.G. Taylor, Department of Mathematics, King’s College,
Strand, London WC2R2LS, UK. Email: john.g.taylor@kcl.ac.uk
Johnjoe McFadden
Synchronous Firing and Its Influence on the Brain’s Electromagnetic
Field Evidence for an Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness
Abstract: The human brain consists of approximately 100 billion electrically
active neurones that generate an endogenous electromagnetic (em) field,
whose role in neuronal computing has not been fully examined. The source,
magnitude and likely influence of the brain’s endogenous em field are here
considered. An estimate of the strength and magnitude of the brain’s em
field is gained from theoretical considerations, brain scanning and
microelectrode data. An estimate of the likely influence of the brain’s em
field is gained from theoretical principles and considerations of the
experimental effects of external em fields on neurone firing both in vitro
and in vivo. Synchronous firing of distributed neurones phase-locks induced
em field fluctuations to increase their magnitude and influence. Synchronous
firing has previously been demonstrated to correlate with awareness and
perception, indicating that perturbations to the brain’s em field also
correlate with awareness. The brain’s em field represents an integrated
electromagnetic field representation of distributed neuronal information and
has dynamics that closely map to those expected for a correlate of
consciousness. I propose that the brain’s em information field is the
physical substrate of conscious awareness — the cemi field — and make a
number of predictions that follow from this proposal. Experimental evidence
pertinent to these predictions is examined and shown to be entirely
consistent with the cemi field theory. This theory provides solutions to
many of the intractable problems of consciousness — such as the binding
problem — and provides new insights into the role of consciousness, the
meaning of free will and the nature of qualia. It thus places consciousness
within a secure physical framework and provides a route towards constructing
an artificial consciousness.
Correspondence: Johnjoe McFadden, School of Biomedical and Life Sciences,
University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH, UK. Email: j.mcfadden@surrey.ac.uk
Susan Pockett
Difficulties with the Electromagnetic Field Theory of Consciousness
Abstract: The author’s version of the electromagnetic field theory of
consciousness is stated briefly and then three difficulties with the theory
are discussed. The first is a purely technical problem: how to measure
accurately enough the spatial properties of the fields which are proposed to
be conscious and then how to generate these artificially, so that the theory
can be tested. The second difficulty might also be merely technical, or it
might be substantive and fatal to the theory. This is that present
measurements seem to show a non-constant relationship between
brain-generated electromagnetic fields and sensation. The third difficulty
involves the basic question of whether consciousness per se has any direct
effect on the brain. As an afterword, the disproportionate contribution of
synchronously firing neurons to conscious percepts is simply explained in
terms of the electromagnetic field theory of consciousness.
Correspondence: Susan Pockett, Department of Physics, University of
Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand. Email: s.pockett@auckland.ac.nz
Christopher Frith and Shaun Gallagher
Models of the Pathological Mind
Christopher Frith is a research professor at the Functional Imaging
Laboratory of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at University
College, London. He explores, experimentally, using the techniques of
functional brain imaging, the relationship between human consciousness and
the brain. His research focuses on questions pertaining to perception,
attention, control of action, free will, and awareness of our own mental
states and those of others. As the following discussion makes clear, Frith
investigates brain systems involved in the choice of one action over another
and in the understanding of other people. Such investigations are aimed at
understanding brain basis of autism and schizophrenia.
In his widely cited study of schizophrenia, The Cognitive
Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia (1992), Frith argues that many of the
positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions of control, auditory
hallucinations, and thought insertion, involve problems of self-monitoring.
Patients, in effect, lose track of their own intentions and mistakenly
attribute agency for their own actions to someone else. Frith employs models
of motor control, involving comparator mechanisms and efference copy, not
only to explain delusions that involve movement, but also to develop a
neurocognitive explanation of delusional cognition.
One of the central aspects of motor control involves a forward model,
a non- conscious pre-motor system operating prior to the actual execution of
movement and its sensory feedback. This forward mechanism, Frith argues,
generates a conscious sense of agency for action. This is consistent with
research that correlates initial awareness of action with recordings of the
lateralized readiness potential and with transcranial magnetic stimulation
of the supplementary motor area. One’s initial awareness of a spontaneous
voluntary action depends on this forward mechanism. Schizophrenics, however,
have problems with this forward monitoring of movement. They have problems
monitoring their own motor intentions at this level (Malenka et al., 1982;
Frith and Done, 1988).
Following Feinberg (1978), Frith postulates a similar mechanism for
cognition — specifically, for thought and inner speech. He pursues an
explanation of thought insertion, for example, by developing the following
line of reason.
Thinking, like all our actions, is normally accompanied by a sense of
effort and deliberate choice as we move from one thought to the next. If
we found ourselves thinking without any awareness of the sense of effort
that reflects central monitoring, we might well experience these thoughts
as alien and, thus, being inserted into our minds (Frith, 1992, p. 81).
The philosopher John Campbell has maintained that Frith’s model of
schizophrenia as a disruption of basic self-monitoring processes provides
the most parsimonious explanation of how self-ascriptions of thoughts are
subject to errors of identification (Campbell, 1999). Frith, as we see in
the following discussion, continues to explore a variety of related issues:
concepts of free will, self- awareness, and theory of mind.
Correspondence: Christopher Frith, Wellcome Dept. of Cognitive Neurology,
Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG. Email: cfrith@fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk
Shaun Gallagher, Department of Philosophy, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY
14208, USA.
Email: Gallaghr@Canisius.edu
