Reductionism as a Dead End in Neuroscience — Captured in an Essay
From the evidence that he presents, Anil Seth could at most show that animal consciousness is more complex than previously thoughtUniversity of Sussex professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience Anil K. Seth, during a routine dismissal of René Descartes (1596–1650), assures us, “It looks like scientists and philosophers might have made consciousness far more mysterious than it needs to be.” More mysterious than it needs to be? As noted earlier, what makes understanding the human mind necessarily complex is that it is both the entity we are trying to perceive and the tool by which we hope to perceive it. Such a problem is like trying to imagine a five-dimensional box in relation to the real world. Unlike the five-dimensional box, consciousness is part of the life experience of every human being. How would Dr. Seth unravel the problem? In Read More ›
