Why Consciousness? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, April 11, 2011, 14:16 (4975 days ago) @ dhw

On the cover of yesterday Sunday Times magazine is a photo of Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, described by Richard Dawkins as the Marco Polo of neuroscience. The caption on the cover reads:
 
I CAN SEE INSIDE YOUR HEAD 
The world's leading neuroscientist unlocks the deepest secrets of the brain.-His discoveries are truly amazing, and his research is clearly of huge relevance to medical science. His findings and ideas are contained in a book entitled The Tell-Tale Brain (Heinemann), which I should think will make for fascinating reading. But here is the final paragraph of the article:-The nature of the self [is] still an unsolved puzzle of neuroscience, along with the origins of subjective experience and consciousness. Thirty years ago our understanding of the brain was in the bronze age, in comparison with that of the physical sciences. The neuroscience revolution was a huge advance, but only took us into the 19th century. According to Dr Ramachandran: "We need to stay completely honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have only discovered a tiny fraction of what there is to know about the human brain."-Some folk think that we agnostics exaggerate the mystery of self, subjective experience and consciousness. It's reassuring to know that one of the world's leading neuroscientists agrees with us. No plaudits, though, for the ST caption writers: Dr R. himself makes it clear that he has NOT unlocked the "deepest secrets"!