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IS CONSCIOUSNESS A BRAIN PROCESS?
Author(s) -
PLACE U. T.
Publication year - 1956
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1956.tb00560.x
Subject(s) - introspection , consciousness , fallacy , psychology , cognitive science , cognitive psychology , process (computing) , epistemology , subject (documents) , neuroscience , philosophy , computer science , library science , operating system
thesis that consciousness is a process in brain is put forward as a reasonable scientific hypothesis, not to be dismissed on logical grounds alone. conditions under which two sets of observations are treated as observations of same process, rather than as observations of two independent correlated processes, are discussed. It is suggested that we can identify consciousness with a given pattern of brain activity, if we can explain subject's introspective observations by reference to brain processes with which they are correlated. It is argued that problem of providing a physiological explanation of introspective observations is made to seem more difficult than it really is by ‘phenomenological fallacy’, mistaken idea that descriptions of appearances of things are descriptions of actual state of affairs in a mysterious internal environment.