Questioning Consciousness

[EricM]

Nicholas Humphries take on consciousness (http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/01/questioning_consciousness.php?page=all&p=y), from Seed Magazine.com
Also blogged about today by Mindblog (http://mindblog.dericbownds.net/2008/02/nicholas-humphrey-on-consciousness.html) and The Frontal Cortex. (http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/02/the_hallucinations_of_consciou.php)

[toddhargrove]

I don’t understand the author’s conclusion – that there is somehow a distinction between consciousness enabling us to do something (which he seems to agree we can’t prove) and consciousness providing us with motivation or interest or joie de vivre. Why couldn’t the motivation be provided by physical structures of the brain that do not depend on consciousness? Why is consciousness necessary for motivation? Is he saying that such “motivation” can only be provided by consciousness? Than he has proposed that consciousness is “employed” in some way, something which seems to contradict his earlier quoting of Fodor that consciousness doesn’t have a job.

[Diane]

Here is a link to a bunch of articles (http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/index.html#Consciousness) that seems to belong here, in this forum, and here, on this thread.
In particular I was interested in this McCrone article, referred to by Butler in SNS: The Dynamics of Brain Processing (http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/DynamicBrain.html). I think Damasio has shown that it's less a top-down process than it is a center-outward process, but the article is still good even after 10 years.