The octopus and the unity of consciousness
| Autor: | Sidney Carls-Diamante |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
0301 basic medicine
Cognitive science Nervous system biology Sensory processing Biological organism Functional autonomy medicine.medical_treatment media_common.quotation_subject Motor control 03 medical and health sciences Philosophy Octopus Philosophy of biology 030104 developmental biology 0302 clinical medicine medicine.anatomical_structure History and Philosophy of Science biology.animal medicine Consciousness General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Psychology 030217 neurology & neurosurgery media_common |
| Zdroj: | Biology & Philosophy. 32:1269-1287 |
| ISSN: | 1572-8404 0169-3867 |
| Popis: | If the octopus were conscious, what would its consciousness be like? This paper investigates the structure octopus consciousness, if existent, is likely to exhibit. Presupposing that the configuration of an organism’s consciousness is correlated with that of its nervous system, it is unlikely that the structure of the sort of conscious experience that would arise from the highly decentralized octopus nervous system would bear much resemblance to those of vertebrates. In particular, octopus consciousness may not exhibit unity, which has long been assumed to be the normal or default structure of consciousness. The octopus nervous system is characterized by the following features: its three anatomically distinct components have extensive functional autonomy and little intercommunication; much of the sensory processing and motor control routines—that in vertebrates are localized in the brain—take place within the peripheral arm nervous system; and proprioception and somatotopic representation (point-for-point mapping of the body) are significantly downplayed. In this paper, I present the octopus as a highly successful biological organism in which it is plausible that the unified model of consciousness does not hold. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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