Keith Sutherland states:
This would seem to me to be entirely question-begging. Given Bernie's theory requires multiple cortical self-systems, then why are there not multiple memories (this would surely be more logical). What is this "individual" anyway? And, given the multiplicity of creation, why does the number *one* seem to be in a league of its own? (Answer: because there's only one *me* [but then you're back where you started].) The model you suggest sounds (as is appropriate with digital architectures) like discrete systems switching in and out. But this is really not our experience of consciousness at all. Bernie mentions the "appetitive self-system". Well, my experience is I get hungry, I get horny, but its the same me! And its not a rapid oscillation between different systems switching in and out. And these systems don't compete in a winner-takes-all fashion, they overlap and modulate each other.
And I agree... while there are multiple cortical processes and multiple loops from cortex to/from the ILN/RAS, we do not experience an "audience" observing the world or each other; we experience one self at any (mental) instant. The above restates the "binding problem." Whether neural processing is serial/parallel, uses oscillations of whatever frequency, the *subjective* result is one individual consciousness. We may analyze this consciousness and say that at various times we experience in different ways ("intentional stances"); that we incorporate past, present, and future anticipations (Husserl's "running-off"); that we experience many "things" at once (however we divide gestalts). We may even believe that we are different persons, in some sense, at different times. But we never say, "There are three of me tasting this apple at this moment". I think that conceptualizing consciousness as multiple, the experiencing "I" as an audience, is a category mistake; one certainly can understand *brain processes* as multiple, but brain processes are not conscious states.
Husserl, E. (1966). The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Indiana U Press, Bloomington.
stevenbrown@igc.apc.org
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