# Consciousness Studies/Introduction#Intended audience and how to read this book

Everyone has their own view of the nature of consciousness based on
their education and background. The intention of this book is to expand
this view by providing an insight into the various ideas and beliefs on
the subject as well as a review of current work in neuroscience. The
neuroscientist should find the philosophical discussion interesting
because this provides first-person insights into the nature of
consciousness and also provides some subtle arguments about why
consciousness is not a simple problem. The student of philosophy will
find a useful introduction to the subject and information about
neuroscience and physics that is difficult to acquire elsewhere.

It is often said that consciousness cannot be defined. This is not true;
philosophers have indeed defined it in its own terms. It can be
described in terms of two principal components: firstly **phenomenal
consciousness** which consists of our experience with things laid out in
space and time, sensations, emotions, thoughts, etc., and secondly
**access consciousness** which is the processes that act on the things
in experience. Phenomenal consciousness is much like the "perceptual
space" of psychological and physiological research. It is the many
simultaneous events that become the space of experience in general and
it is now a legitimate target of scientific research.

As will be seen in the following pages, the issue for the scientist and
philosopher is to determine the location and form of the things in
phenomenal consciousness and even to consider whether such a thing could
exist. Is phenomenal consciousness directly things in the world beyond
the body, is it brain activity based on things in the world and internal
processes --- a sort of virtual reality --- or is it some spiritual or
other phenomenon?

## A note on Naive Realism

The study of consciousness may seem to be esoteric or outside of the
main stream but it includes some very real problems in science and
philosophy. The most obvious problem is how we can see anything at all.
Many people with a smattering of geometry tend to believe that they have
a \'point eye\' that sees the world, and this idea is known as
perceptual \"Naive Realism\". Physical considerations show that this
idea is highly contentious; we have two eyes with different images in
each, normally the only images in the world are created by optical
instruments such as the eye, and the photons that carry light to the
observer cannot and do not all converge at a single point. Some of the
discrepancies between the physical reality and our experience are shown
in the illustrations.

![](Constudnaive1.png "Constudnaive1.png")
![](constudnaive2.GIF "constudnaive2.GIF")

The naive realist idea of perception involves a point eye looking at a
geometrical form. But the physics is different; there are two eyes with
sometimes very different images in each. Light is refracted over the
entire area of the cornea and directed over the entire area of the
retina - there is no \'point eye\'.

The cloud of photons that compose light must get in the way of the view
but naive realism neglects this, regarding the photons as somehow
transparent yet gathering as an impossible group of millions of photons
in a viewing point.

Light rays go everywhere, it is only after light has passed through an
optical instrument such as the eye that an image is formed. Hold up a
sheet of paper - there are no images on it.

![](Constudnaive4.png "Constudnaive4.png")The illustrations show the
nature of one of the most difficult problems studied by neuroscience:
how can the images on the two retinas become experience? How can we
imagine things or experience dreams and hallucinations? Studies on the
neural basis of binocular rivalry and MRI studies of imagination are
leading the way in our comprehension of these problems but there is
still **no physical theory that is congruent with sensory experience**.
The problem of *binding* also takes us further from Naive Realism; we
experience speech at the mouth of the speaker even though we might be
listening through headphones, how is sound, touch etc. bound to vision?
The objective of the scientific study of consciousness is to discover
how we convert data from the world into our experience.

A degree of Naive Realism is a sensible idea for coping with the
everyday problems of working and living. Most physical scientists and
people in general are, to some extent, Naive Realists until they study
the biology of sensation and the problems of perception and
consciousness. There is often a suspicion, or even fear, amongst Naive
Realists that any analysis of conscious experience is a suggestion that
the world does not exist or everything is imaginary. These fears are
unfounded: Neuroscience is a study of the part of the physical world
represented by brain activity and is part of medicine.


## Intended audience and how to read this book

This book is intended as a complementary text for neuroscience and
philosophy degree courses. The book is divided into four parts. If you
are not interested in some part, skip to the next. The first part is a
detailed historical review of the philosophy of phenomenal
consciousness. The second part is a discussion of philosophical
theories, it is intended to be challenging and even irritating.
Philosophy undergraduates are encouraged to criticise and react to this
part. The third part is a review of the neuroscience of consciousness
and is suitable for undergraduate studies in the field. The end of the
book is a discussion of theories of consciousness.

Being freely available to all students the book can serve as a source
for seminars even if you disagree with the content i.e.: "Why is (a
given section) an oversimplification/biased/out of date etc.?"

The text covers a difficult area that straddles the humanities and
science faculties. It is probably more oriented towards the scientist
who needs a scientific insight into philosophical theory rather than
vice versa. It is suitable as a **supplementary text** for the following
**undergraduate** modules, units and courses:

-   Neurophysiology/Neurobiology modules (physiology of perception,
    physiology of consciousness, neuronal basis of consciousness)
-   Neuropsychology modules
-   Neuroanatomy modules
-   Cognitive psychology/Cognitive science
-   Psychology of consciousness
-   Psychology - behaviourism vs cognitivism debate
-   Philosophy of mind and metaphysics
-   Computing - Artificial intelligence and consciousness
-   Consciousness studies courses

This is a "Wikibook" and, in this edition, has more breadth than depth.
In some areas, particularly in the huge field of the philosophy of
consciousness, topics are introduced and the obvious flaws or successes
pointed out but a fully referenced, in-depth treatment is sometimes
absent at this stage. We need your help and contributions from scholars
in the field are invited. Please contribute but please, at the very
least, scan the book first to ensure that your prospective contribution
has not been included already! In particular contributors who wish to
write "all self respecting scientists think that the brain is a digital
computer" should read the section on information theory and add their
contribution to the section on the possibility of conscious digital
computers.

