Are Neuroscientists Able to Explain Human Consciousness Essay

Are Neuroscientists Able to Explain Human Consciousness - Essay Example The essay "Are Neuroscientists Able to Explain Human Consciousness?" talks about the different aspects of neuroscience in the context of human consciousness studies and how these studies have changed with the time. It would be an exaggeration to say that neuroscientists have no clue whatsoever to how consciousness is possible. In fact, neuroscientists have certain facts at hand to give them a hint. As whatever consciousness ultimately might be, it is somehow based on the workings of the central nervous system. This is something humans have not always known: For Aristotle, it was the heart, not the brain that was the seat of human mental life. In fact, Aristotle explicitly denied that the brain could be the sensory center. Before the advent of modern neuroscience, consciousness was a subject for philosophical debate or qualitative psychological descriptions based on introspection. In some schools of psychology, such as behaviorism, it was placed outside of the scientific program, and considered to be a kind of epiphenomenon. More recently, cognitive psychologists have taken certain functional aspects of consciousness as an unanalyzed basis for their studies on human perception and even with a certain degree of success. Such a position does not go far enough, however. Any attempt to account for higher brain functions in terms of the physical organization of the brain itself and of its constituent neurons is confronted sooner or later with the need for a detailed analysis of consciousness based on brain structure.