A Spatiotemporal Model Of Consciousness And The Hard Problem

The debate concerning the phenomenal reality of consciousness has been a topical issue of concern to the philosophical and scientific community,referred to as the problem of consciousness.In the discussion of consciousness,there is an explanatory gap between the body and brain in the objective material world and consciousness in the subjective phenomenal world.And it is impossible to explain the existence of consciousness objectively by science.This is the hard problem of consciousness.Both philosophers and neuroscientists have tried to take steps to solve the hard problem of consciousness,but the results have been unsatisfactory.Northoff attributes the cause to a mistake in the perspective from which we view consciousness,which leads to the hard problem of consciousness.All along,people have viewed consciousness from the vantage point within their own minds.Guided by the intuition of the mind,consciousness is necessarily linked to the mind,which is naturally opposed to matter.Northoff goes through a perspective-shifting attempt to locate the vantage point between the brain and the world.This sees not only the brain and the world,but also the relationship between them.Such a relationship is specifically linked through the spatiotemporal structure shared by the brain and the world,and the resulting world-brain relationship can attempt to represent consciousness.Indeed,this can be achieved not only at the empirical level,but also at the ontological level in conjunction with structural realism.In the framework of Northoff ’s spatiotemporal model of consciousness,it is possible not only to see different representations of consciousness,but also to find a world-brain relationship based on spatiotemporal relations as a necessary condition for the existence of a necessary connection between brain and consciousness.This provides help and new perspectives for the solution of the hard problem of consciousness.In the light of the dilemmas facing the problem of consciousness,this paper elaborates on what Northoff considers to be the causes of these difficulties in consciousness and his proposed solution,the spatiotemporal model of consciousness.The article also further analyses the connotations of spatiotemporality,subjectivity and the world in the spatiotemporal model of consciousness,and the advantages of this model over other theories of consciousness,showing that the spatiotemporal model of consciousness has positive implications for future research on the problem of consciousness.