Essential
Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Bernard
J. Baars, William P. Banks, James B. Newman
(eds.)
2003, Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press
1163 pp. Illus. B/w.
ISBN 0-262-52302-7
Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
pepperell@ntlword.com
Essential Sources in the Scientific
Study of Consciousness is a massive
compendium of articles and papers spanning
some 50 years of scientific research into
the nature and operation of human consciousness.
Within the nearly 1200 pages and almost
70 chapters a huge range of issues are
given detailed discussion, including perceptual
consciousness, attention, memory, internal
data, unconsciousness and dreaming. All
the papers are in some way significant
to the developing history of consciousness
studies, and have been drawn from some
of the key journals in the field.
In contrast to many other books on this
subject that take a philosophical line
of inquiry, the papers here are almost
exclusively empirical and experimental
in nature, although a selection of more
theoretical articles are included from
contributors such as Gerald Edelman, Antonio
Damasio, and Bernard J. Baars. In fact
Baars, one of the editors and best known
for his global workspace theory
of consciousness, is a prominent presence,
providing not only the introductory text,
but four other papers as well.
In his comprehensive introduction (which
in itself would serve as a useful set
text for a wider audience) he argues for
consciousness to be treated as a variable
rather than as an absolute state. By this
he means that consciousness can be measured
as being more or less present in relation
to other states, such as between wakefulness
and sleep, alertness and coma, new and
habituated events, and so on. In this
way, and in opposition to those who deny
consciousness can be scientifically (that
is, experimentally) studied at all, Baars
and his colleagues propose that hard empirical
data can be reliably gathered about the
processes of consciousness, and thus contribute
to the building of a coherent scientific
theory of this most enigmatic of human
attributes. The favoured methodological
approach seeks to correlate internal,
subjective experiences with objective
experimental techniques so that, as Baars
says, "in modern science we are practicing
a kind of verifiable phenomenology".
(p. 8).
This volume would be a highly useful reference
and source book for any serious scholar
of the science of consciousness, which
nowadays includes many from beyond the
purely scientific community.