Philosophy Research On Neurobiological Approach To Consciousness

There is a exploding growth in explaining consciousness with the push of cognitive sciences.At the same time,the traditional opinions on the nature of consciousness by speculative method gets new developments,even are challenged.Developments means it is possible to find the exact location of neural correlates consciousness and formulate consciousness generation mechanism because of new research approaches,while challenge means there are contradictions between new experimental findings and traditioanl philosophical views.According to the methodology in modern cognitive neuroscience,we discuss the following five aspects about consciousness study: first,contrast method between consciousness and unconsciousness.Modern brain imaging technology make such contrast more accurate.Subtraction make the neural basic and mechanism supporting consciousness more obvious.But it does not deal with mind-body problem,if we could not resolve this problem,we can not understand consciousness only by contrast method.Second,the neural definition of consciousness.Different from meaning from traditional philosophy which apply to qualia,cognitive sciences defines consciousness from “neural correlates consciousness” and information.Such kind of definition is corresponding with its methodology and serve for its experiments.Consciousness is some kind of special information processing,but it could not provide a satisfactory answer to phenomena property of consciousness.Third,cognitive neural mechanism of consciousness.In consciousness research,scientists should answer how consciousness give rise from physical brain.The Global Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory,which have the greatest influence in modern circle,present their own theoretical framework.The former represents materialism,while the latter represents panpsychism(more refined version).Fourth,freedom and consciousness.We hold that we should resort to consciousness mechanism to explain the experimental data of freedom.As a conscious willing intention,freedom should not be separated with the coherent whole constituting with consciousness and unconsciousness.Modern science experiments treat freedom just like we pick up a piece of physiological slice from our body,which ignore the transformation mechanism between consciousness and unconsciousness and get a wrong answer.Fifth,the self in consciousness.In traditional philosophy,consciousness and thought is such a tool to prove self as a entity,there are more theory about self.On the contrary,in cognitive neural sciences,self is not a entity any more,and more focus on how self generates from the content of consciousness.We argument that self is not a coherence and identity but a constantly constructed process on the basis of language and psychic analysis.Cognitive neural research on consciousness show that modern consciousness scientific study expand the problem domain,develop its approaches,and update some knowledge about consciousness mechanism,but it does not dissolve philosophical problem on consciousness.It also show in the future we can see more and more mutual promotion between scientific and philosophical study on consciousness problem.