Understanding consciousness has been one of the main focuses of philosophers for almost 400 years. Since John Locke’s conceptualization of consciousness as self-perception in the 17th century, and Rene Descartes’ dualism and the convergence of res cogitans and res extensa in the brain, many thinkers have involved their minds in its investigation. While the work in this field was dominated by theoretical approaches for a very long time, the advancements in behavioral and clinical neuroscience shed new light on the problem. This modern empirical approach to the mind-body problem not only possesses the potential to illuminate an essential human trait, but it further paves the way toward the realization of a strong artificial intelligence hypothesis, that is, the development of a conscious machine by training the context of sensory information as biophysical representation.
This book, edited by Richard Brown, is an attempt to cover the interface area of philosophy and neuroscience with respect to questions regarding consciousness. It is an epistemological dialogue constituted by ten contributions from the Third Online Consciousness Conference. It also includes commentaries and responses. This interactive feature of the book will certainly surprise neuroscientist readers, enabling them to take part in the discussions.
Its manifold content provides the reader with a variety of intriguing thoughts on questions of major importance in neuroscience research, such as the ontology of audition, hallucinations, synesthesia, and perception of taste, smell, sound, and pain. These and many other subjects are discussed in ten scientifically distinct parts; hence, a thorough survey of all papers and commentaries will exceed the framework of this review. Therefore, I will limit my statements to the general features of the book. In my opinion, the presented discussions and thoughts could merely be considered as an involvement of rational philosophical thinking in psychological terminology. I was disappointed to find only two brain-based contributions (by Adam Pautz and Miguel A. Sebastian), which discussed the matter from a neuroscientific point of view. In fact, many passages of the book raise the impression that the authors are either not familiar with the current progress in neuroscience or they simply ignore new scientific physical information in their arguments to fortify their substance dualistic positions. The book is also missing a paper on psychoactive drugs and consciousness. In light of the physical nature of the action of psychotropic substances and their significant influence on the state of consciousness, it is critical to present the philosophical debate on this issue.
Empirical investigations have the potential to provide the right nutrition for many of the abstractly discussed questions, and this book could have benefited largely from a broader integration of this feature in its contents.
In summary, this book represents the current state of philosophical thoughts on consciousness, with a view toward neuroscientific research in a unique and interactive manner. Despite my criticism regarding the shortage of empirical approaches, I highly recommend the book. Not only philosophers but also psychologists and neuroscientists will enjoy its contents and benefit from the presented ideas and discussions.
