Brain, bodily awareness, and the emergence of a conscious self: these entities and their relations are explored by Germanphilosopher and cognitive scientist Metzinger. Extensively working with neuroscientists he has come to the conclusion that, in fact, there is no such thing as a "self" -- that a "self" is simply the content of a model created by our brain - part of a virtual reality we create for ourselves.
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But what does it mean in a world where cognitive scientists can see brain function on an fMRI scan, capture the visual data, and reassemble it into videos using quantitative modeling? Now that physicists have the god-like power to accelerate tiny particles of matter and throw them at each other just to see what happens, is metaphysical philosophy dead? 
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It's my belief that only experiencing and understanding truly disembodied cognition, only seeing the coldness and deadness and disconnectedness of something that truly does deal in pure abstraction, divorced from sensory reality, only this can snap us out of it. Only this can bring us, quite literally, back to our senses.
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That’s probably enough for one day, but just to take this one step further; we know that what we see is not the world. The image we see is a mental construction of the world, and psychology has identified numerous examples of how we each see the world a little differently. An obvious example is colour-blindedness. Since the brain is constructing the world we see around us, and if we assume that the neural code and the image are different things… where is reality? Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=1&tag=neuroscience
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Barry Smith: Theories of consciousness are challenged by recent research into the impact of brain function on the sense of self... Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=1&tag=neuroscience
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Why are humans moral? Patricia Churchland, author of "Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality," is here to explain how humans evolved to be moral beings. How did we go from the attachment and bonding between parent and child to the sophisticated moral landscape we have today? Churchland believes a big part of the answer is in the evolution of the mammalian brain.
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We're not prisoners of our neural networks, either. "We can study cars and all their physical relationships and know exactly how they work," explains Gazzinga. "It in no way prepares us to understand traffic when they all get together and start interacting." Clearly, there's a balance between seeing people either as deterministic robots or as entirely in control of everything they do. "The way I sum it up is that brains are automatic, but people are free because people are joining the social group and in that group are laws to live by. We can understand brains to the nth degree, but it’s not going to, in any way, interfere with the fact that taking responsibility in a social network is done at that level."
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People make decisions—and act—based on their beliefs. The more we understand about the mechanism of why people believe what they do and how they act on it, the more we understand about people. Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=7&tag=neuroscience
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Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying close attention to what it is like to be ourselves in the world.
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Inspiration and interpretation are inevitable. As metaphor is basic to what we do, so emerging results in neuroscience will be taken well beyond the intentions and even meanings of their authors. Much caution and critique will be needed. Yet at the same time, I want to preserve a space for this other mantle, from science to art and humanism. To creation and design and expression.
A revolution based on neuroscience? No. A recognition of our bodies and experiences and senses? Yes. And thus much closer to metaphors that inspire us every day. Like HOME or WARMTH. And maybe even a tree or two.
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From
bigthink
More about FREE WILL: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?q=free+will
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THE problem of the self - what it is that makes you you - has exercised philosophers and theologians for millennia. Today it is also a hotly contested scientific question, and the science is confirming what the Buddha, Scottish philosopher David Hume and many other thinkers maintained: that there is no concrete identity at the core of our being, and that our sense of self is an illusion spun from narratives we construct about our lives. NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=neuroscience
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If the human mind is not the clearly demarcated information-processing device so neatly objectified in the familiar exemplar of the computer, then what is it? And, indeed, where is it? Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?” Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=1&tag=neuroscience
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Does free will exist, or are our decisions predetermined? In a series of articles, six scholars present arguments for and against the existence of free will. Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=1&tag=neuroscience
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New theory doesn’t limit consciousness to the brain... Tononi intuited a powerful new theory of consciousness, a theory based on the flow of information. He and others believe that mathematics — in particular, a set of equations describing how bits of data move through the brain — is the key to explaining how the mind knits together an experience
Jared Broker's comment,
September 26, 2013 11:27 AM
I like the model of a pervasive field of consciousness where the brain is a tuner - receiver. We have the power to change our "consciousness tool".
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"I do not know whether your pleasure is the same as my pleasure." They are not about reviewing something or giving it a score, or even just outline my opinion or thoughts. They go further than that and try to explain how they fit inside my mind because until the day when we can all share each others minds - whenever it will be – I will never use the term review. I will use the term “Transmission” and it will be just that: a Transmission of how something fits into my mind and how it affects my view of reality.
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The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to many others. Neuroscientists believe these connections hold the key to our memories, personality and even mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Articles about NEUROSCIENCE: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?page=7&tag=neuroscience
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Baggini is trying to save the self from neuroscience, which is admirable considering that neuroscience continues to show how convoluted our brains are. I am not sure if he is successful – argument by metaphor can only go so far, empirical data wins at the end of the day – but I like the idea that personal and neurological change and inconsistency does imply an illusion of identity. In this age of cognitive science it’s easy to subscribe to Whitman’s doctrine – that we are constituted by multitudes; it takes a brave intellect, on the other hand, to hang on to what Freud called our “naïve self-love.”
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“Networks are everywhere. The brain is a network of nerve cells connected by axons, and cells themselves are networks of molecules connected by biochemical reactions. Societies, too, are networks of people linked by friendships, familial relationships and professional ties. On a larger scale, food webs and ecosystems can be represented as networks of species. And networks pervade technology: the Internet, power grids and transportation systems are but a few examples. Even the language we are using to convey these thoughts to you is a network, made up of words connected by syntactic relationships.”
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