Greetings, Friendlies!
In Part 8 we considered the modularity of brain organization. So what?
Well, at the 50,000 foot level, if avijjā resides primarily in not understanding the kind of beings we are, then understanding brain function is a movement towards less avijjā.
But let’s zoom from 50,000 to, say, 20,000 feet and ask again, So What?
Well, it may be the case that we are seeing a mechanism for John Peacock’s “Consciousness Of” (refresher here).
In Who’s In Charge Michael Gazzaniga discusses this understanding of where conscious experience is “coming from”.
the brain has all kinds of local consciousness systems, a constellation of them, which are enabling consciousness. Although the feelings of [conscious experience] appear to be unified to you, they are given form by these vastly separate systems. Whichever notion you happened to be conscious of at a particular moment is the one that comes bubbling up, the one that becomes dominant. It’s a dog-eat-dog world going on in your brain with different systems competing to make it to the surface to win the prize of conscious recognition. *
Our brains are “vastly parallel and distributed systems that don’t seem to have a boss, much like the Internet does not have a boss.”
So modularity of brain organization leads to modular consciousness, aka “Consciousness of”.
It emphasizes yet again Gotama’s prowess as a contemplative practitioner. I mean, wow. One sees there is so much still to explore.
Okay. This raises so many questions. We’ll consider a few of them in the next post.
Your thoughts?
Dharma PhD 