Brain Modularity and Consciousness Of.
In Who’s In Charge, Gazzaniga says there is no gatekeeper to conscious experience. It’s just a plethora of subsystems, “modules”, competing for consciousness.
So. Many. Questions.
- The classic question: if modular consciousness-of, why this sense of continuity? This sense of a single-unified-continuous-self experiencing a stream of phenomena over time?
- What’s the mechanism for “winning”? In How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett discusses the brain as primarily a computational mechanism. This makes a ton of sense from an evolutionary perspective and it jives nicely with classical discussions of vedanā. But what’s doing the computation?
- And what about directing attention? It seems there is some ability, capable of cultivation, to intentionally direct attention towards particular phenomena allowing those phenomena to predominate experience.
- Example: Let’s say there’s a subsystem that processes incoming signals from the right big toe. Normally that subsystem does not “win” the competition to arise into consciousness. Ie, I’m not normally conscious of my right big toe. If there’s a problem however, if I kick my toe hard, all of a sudden that toe-subsystem wins the competition. But I can also direct my attention to my right big toe and notice the incoming signals. How does that fit the no-gatekeeper-model?
- And what about sensory sensitivity (and Autism spectrum?) (Now we are deep in the realm of baseless speculation (BS)). One could imagine a gatekeeper kind of situation in which, if the gatekeeper let “too much” in, a psyche might become overwhelmed by experience. But if there’s no gatekeeper, what might the mechanism be? Why is experience overwhelming for some systems?
- And what about meditation? I have sometimes wondered if meditation might not be a process of allowing the gatekeeper to open the door a little wider, allowing more phenomena to pass into conscious experience. If there’s no gatekeeper, then what?
Your thoughts?
Dharma PhD 