From Consciousness to Brain-Sign: a Neurobiological Reconstruction
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From Consciousness to Brain-Sign: a Neurobiological Reconstruction Philip Clapson 1 Received: 16 July 2020 / Accepted: 1 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract It may seem obvious we are conscious for we are certain we see, feel and think, but there is no accepted scientific account of these mental states as a brain condition. And since most neuroscientists assume consciousness and its supposed powers without explaining it, science is brought into question. That consciousness does not exist is here explained. The alternative, the theory of brain-sign, is outlined. It eliminates the quasi-divine knowledge properties of seeing, feeling and thinking. Brain-sign is a means/mechanism enabling collective action between organisms. Brain-sign signifies the shared world of that action. Signs are intrinsically physical and biologically ubiquitous. Brain-signs are derived moment-by-moment from the causal orientation of each brain towards others and the world. Interactive behaviour which is not predetermined (as in passing a cup of coffee) is characteristic of vertebrate species. Causality lies in the electrochemical operation of the brain. But identifying the changing world by brain-signs binds the causal states of those interacting into one unified operation. Brain-signing creatures, including humans, have no ‘sense’ they function this way. The world appears as seen. The ‘sense of seeing’, however, is the brain’s communicative activity in joint behaviour. Similarly for ‘feeling’. Language causality results from the transmission of compression waves or electromagnetic radiation from one brain to another altering the other’s causal orientation. The ‘sense of understanding’ words is the communicative state. The brain understands nothing, knows nothing, believes nothing. By replacing the prescientific notion of consciousness, brain-sign can enable a scientific path for brain science. Keywords Brain-sign . Causal orientation . Consciousness . Interneural communication . Inter-organism communication . Neural interpretation
Introduction A credibility gap lies at the heart of brain science. While consciousness supposedly illuminates the world, and language subjects its fabric to human mastery, it resists physical description. How it functions is ‘explained’ by substituting other words for it like ‘awareness’ or ‘experience’ which invoke similar nonphysical concepts (e.g. Pennartz et al. 2019; Frith and Rees 2017). As a generality, neuroscientists identify active areas and conditions of the brain, then attribute to them mental categories as seeing, feeling or thinking, without specifying what they add to, or how they arise from, physical states. At the same time, nonconscious neural activity is considered so extensive and productive of behaviour that what consciousness does beyond it is regularly asked with no agreed * Philip Clapson [email protected] 1
Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
account emerging (e.g. Anderson 2014; Oakley and Halligan 2017). However, it seems
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