Abstract
By consciousness I mean conscious experience, which each of us has privately for himself. It is the primary reality for each of us, as I have argued in my book (Eccles, 1970). I try to avoid the words ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ because they have been so indiscriminately misused that they now are devoid of precise meaning. For example, mental attributes have been postulated for matter in some ordered state. It has been stated: ‘We arrive at another concept of order in matter in which events analogous to mental events in man, maintain the order, respond to previous events and anticipate immediate future events, for that is what we mean by mental events’ (Birch, 1974); and Polten (1973) states that ‘a rock is subject to mind in that it is ruled by law…. I maintain that a rock is held together by substantial binding energies that are mental in nature’. As I have stated earlier (Eccles, 1970): On the contrary, Dobzhansky (1967) has stated that there are two exceptions to this continuity in the evolutionary process—the origin of life and the origin of man.
In order to preserve a continuity in the evolutionary process and to avoid a special and unique emergence or discontinuity, many eminent thinkers [Sherrington, 1940; Teilhard de Chardin, 1959; Huxley, 1962] have taken refuge in the vague generalisation that there is a mental attribute in all matter. As the organisation of matter gradually became perfected in the evolutionary process, there was a parallel development of the mental attribute from its extremely primordial state in inorganic matter, or in the simplest living forms, through successive stages until it reached full fruition in the human brain.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Birch, C. (1974). Chance, necessity and purpose. In this volume.
Deecke, L., Scheid, P. and Kornhuber, H. H. (1969). Distribution of readiness potential, pre-motion positivity, and motor potential of the human cerebral cortex preceding voluntary finger movements. Exp. Brain. Res., 7, 158–68.
Dobzhansky, Th. (1967). The Biology of Ultimate Concern. New American Library, New York.
Eccles, J. C. (1953). The Neurophysiological Basis of Mind: the principles of neurophysiology. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Eccles, J. C. (1965). The brain and the unity of conscious experience ( Eddington Lecture ). Cambridge University Press, London.
Eccles, J. C. (1970). Facing Reality. Springer, New York, Heidelberg, Berlin.
Eccles, J. C. (1973). Brain, speech and consciousness. Naturwissenschaften, 60, 167–76.
Feigl, H. (1967). The ‘Mental’ and the‘Physical’.University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,Minnesota.
Gardner, R. A. and Gardner, B. T. (1969) Teaching sign language to a chimpanzee. Science, 165, 664–72.
Geschwind, N. (1972). Language and the brain. Scientific American, 226, 36–8.
Geschwind, N. and Levitsky, W. (1968). Human brain: left-right asymmetries in temporal speech region. Science, 161, 186–7.
Globus, G. G. (1974). Biological foundations of the psychoneural identity hypothesis. Philosophy of Science (in the press).
Huxley, J. (1962). Higher and lower organization in evolution. Journal of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 7, 163–79.
Lazlo, E. (1972). Introduction to Systems Philosophy. Gordon and Breach, New York and London.
Levy-Agresti, J. and Sperry, R. W. (1968). Differential perceptual capacity in major and minor hemispheres. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 61, 1151.
MacKay, D. M. (1966). Cerebral organization and the conscious control of action. In Brain and Conscious Experience (ed. J. C. Eccles ). Springer, New York.
Moruzzi, G. (1966). The functional significance of sleep with particular regard to the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness. In Brain and Conscious Experience (ed. J. C. Eccles ). Springer, New York.
Penfield, W. (1966). Speech and perception—the uncommitted cortex. In Brain and Conscious Experience (ed. J. C. Eccles ). Springer, New York.
Penfield, W. and Roberts, L. (1959). Speech and Brain-Mechanisms. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.
Polten, E. P. (1973). Critique of the Psycho-Physical Identity Theory. Mouton, The Hague. Popper, K. R. (1950). Indeterminism in quantum physics and in classical physics. Brit. J. Phil. Sci., 1, 117–33.
Popper, K. R. (1968a). Epistemology without a knowing subject. In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, III (ed. van Rootselaar and Staal). North-Holland, Amsterdam.
Popper, K. R. (1968b). On the theory of the objective mind. In Akten des XIV. Inter-nationalen Kongresses für Philosophie, Vol. 1, Wien.
Popper, K. R. (1970). Personal communication.
Popper, K. R. (1974). Scientific reduction and the essential incompleteness of all science. In this volume.
Premack, D. (1970). The education of Sarah: a chimp learns the language. Psychology Today, 4, 55–8.
Schrödinger, E. (1958). Mind and Matter. Cambridge University Press, London.
Sherrington, C. S. (1940). Man on His Nature. Cambridge University Press, London.
Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Knopf, New York.
Sperry, R. W. (1968a). Hemisphere deconnection and unity of conscious awareness. Am. Psychol., 23, 723–33.
Sperry, R. W. (1968b). Mental unity following surgical disconnection of the cerebral hemispheres. In The Harvey Lectures, 62, 293–323. Academic Press, New York.
Sperry, R. W. (1969). A modified concept of consciousness. Psychological Review, 76, 532–6.
Sperry, R. W. (1970a). Perception in the absence of the neocortical commissures. In Perception and its Disorders. Res. Publ. A.R.N.M.D., vol. XLVIII. The Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.
Sperry, R. W. (1970b). Cerebral dominance in perception. In Early Experience in Visual Information Processing in Perceptual and Reading Disorders (ed. F. A. Young and D. B. Lindsley ). Nat. Acad. Sci., Washington, D.C.
Sperry, R. W., Gazzaniga, M. S. and Bogen, J. E. (1969). Interhemispheric relationships: the neocortical commissures; syndromes of hemisphere disconnection. In Handbook of Clinical Neurology, chap. 14, 273–90. Wiley, New York.
Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1959). The Phenomenon of Man. Harper, New York.
Wada, J. A., Clarke, R. J. and Hamm, A. E. (1973). Morphological assymetry of temporal and frontal speech zones in human cerebal hemispheres: observation on 100 adult and 100 infant brains. Tenth Int. Con. Neurol., Barcelona.
Wigner, E. P. (1969). Are we machines? Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., 113, 95–101.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1974 Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eccles, J.C. (1974). Cerebral Activity and Consciousness. In: Ayala, F.J., Dobzhansky, T. (eds) Studies in the Philosophy of Biology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01892-5_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-01894-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-01892-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)