(Byrne, 2006)
Precisely how and precisely where is human conscious experience
located in the natural world? “The Extended Conscious Mind Thesis”
says this:
The constitutive mechanisms of human conscious experience include
both extra-neural bodily facts and also extra-bodily worldly facts.
In “Spreading the Joy? Why the Machinery of Consciousness Is (Probably) Still in the Head,” Andy Clark has argued for what, in “Minding the Body,” Robert Hanna calls “The Cautious Consciousness-Is-All-Neural Thesis”:
Because the arguments currently on offer for The Extended Conscious
Mind Thesis fall short of decisive proof, then, all things considered, we
should conclude that the constitutive mechanisms of human conscious
experience are all either in the brain or the central nervous system.
Hanna agrees with Clark that The Extended Conscious Mind Thesis is (probably)
false. But he also thinks that there is sufficient reason for rejecting Clark’s
Cautious Consciousness-Is-All-Neural Thesis, and for accepting what Hanna calls
“The Body-Bounded Conscious Mind Thesis”:
Human conscious experience occurs everywhere in our living bodies,
constitutively including the brain and the central nervous system, and
ALSO constitutively including all the other vital systems of the living
body, right out to the skin, but no further out than that.
You can find an accessible but also fully detailed podcast on “Minding the Body,” created by Scott Heftler and other friends of Philosophy Without Borders, HERE.
And you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the full text of “Minding the Body” by clicking on the Download tab directly below.
(Byrne, 2006), Byrne, A. “What Mind-Body Problem?” Boston Review. 4 May. Available online at URL = <https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/alex-byrne-mind-body-problem-understanding-consciousness/>.
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