The unity of consciousness : binding, integration, and dissociation / edited by Axel Cleeremans.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Cleeremans, Axel.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consciousness.

Physical Description:

xiii, 314 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

Consciousness has many elements, from sensory experiences such as vision, audition, and bodily sensation, to nonsensory aspects such as volition, emotion, memory, and thought. The apparent unity of these elements is striking: all are presented to us as experiences of a single subject, and all seem to be contained within a unified field of experience. But this apparent unity raises many questions. How do diverse systems in the brain co-operate to produce a unified experience? Are there conditions under which this unity breaks down? And is conscious experience really unified at all?

In recent years, these questions have been addressed by researchers in many fields. Neurophysiologists and computational modelers have investigated the mechanisms by which binding and integration of disparate information may take place in the brain, producing a unified experience. Neuropsychological research has documented a large variety of dissociation disorders in which damage to specific brain regions leads to dissociated experiences, suggesting the apparent disintegration of a unified subject. Cognitive psychologists have investigated the role of attention and learning in the integration of information, and have examined conditions under which perception and action, or subjective experience and behavior, can become dissociated. Some cognitive modelers have suggested that unity is a mere illusion, while others have emphasized the role of a central unifying system in integrating sensory and motor experience. And philosophers have analyzed just what the unity of consciousness comes to, and whether we have reason to believe that it exists. With chapters from some of the leading thinkers on consciousness, this is a thought provoking new book that attempts to answer some of the big questions.

Contents:

Part 1 What is unity?

1.1 What is the unity of consciousness? / Tim Bayne, David J. Chalmers 23

1.2 Consciousness and co-consciousness / Sydney Shoemaker 59

1.3 Action, the unity of consciousness, and vehicle externalism / Susan Hurley 72

Part 2 Binding (the mechanisms of unity)

2.1 Consciousness and perceptual binding / Anne Treisman 95

2.2 Conscious visual representations built from multiple binding processes: evidence from neuropsychology / Glyn W. Humphreys 114

2.3 Temporal binding and the neural correlates of consciousness / Andreas K. Engel 132

2.4 Oscillatory synchrony as a signature for the unity of visual experience in humans / Catherine Tallon-Baudry 153

2.5 Three forms of binding and their neural substrates: alternatives to temporal synchrony / Randall C. O'Reilly, Richard S. Busby, Rodolfo Soto 168

Part 3 Dissociations (when unity breaks down)

3.1 Linking learning and consciousness: the self-organizing consciousness (SOC) model / Pierre Perruchet, Annie Vinter 193

3.2 Unifying consciousness with explicit knowledge / Zoltan Dienes, Josef Perner 214

3.3 Face recognition with and without awareness / Andrew W. Young 233

Part 4 Integration (the emergence of unity)

4.1 Consciousness differentiated and integrated / Giulio Tononi 253

4.2 Neural synchrony and the unity of mind: a neurophenomenological perspective / Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson 266

4.3 Conscious unity, emotion, dreaming, and the solution of the hard problem / Rodney M.J. Cotterill 288.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0198508573

OCLC:

50747505