The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified c...

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Autor principal:	Jesse J. Winters
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:	consciousness TICL phenomenology EM field causality Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry RC321-571
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/c8e431425a9a49bd8b18345ccddefe77
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:c8e431425a9a49bd8b18345ccddefe772021-11-04T05:32:22ZThe Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness1662-516110.3389/fnhum.2021.768459https://doaj.org/article/c8e431425a9a49bd8b18345ccddefe772021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.768459/fullhttps://doaj.org/toc/1662-5161In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and a large body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL). In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements (the System), which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness.Jesse J. WintersFrontiers Media S.A.articleconsciousnessTICLphenomenologyEM fieldcausalityNeurosciences. Biological psychiatry. NeuropsychiatryRC321-571ENFrontiers in Human Neuroscience, Vol 15 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	consciousness TICL phenomenology EM field causality Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry RC321-571
spellingShingle	consciousness TICL phenomenology EM field causality Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry RC321-571 Jesse J. Winters The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
description	In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and a large body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL). In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements (the System), which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness.
format	article
author	Jesse J. Winters
author_facet	Jesse J. Winters
author_sort	Jesse J. Winters
title	The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
title_short	The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
title_full	The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
title_fullStr	The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
title_full_unstemmed	The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness
title_sort	temporally-integrated causality landscape: reconciling neuroscientific theories with the phenomenology of consciousness
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/c8e431425a9a49bd8b18345ccddefe77
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The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness

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