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Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1): Commentary by Douglas Watt (Boston)

The two authors of this essay graciously acknowledge that virtually everything on the table in terms of theories of consciousness is probably quite preliminary, potentially subject to substantive revision, and potentially contrasted with opposing ideas that are equally plausible. The easiest possible statement about current consciousness theory is that it is long on interesting ideas and short on empirically based consensus, a feature shared with any new science. In view of that most important agreement with the authors, I would like to take them up on this point, and offer some contrasting formulations. Most of my questions derive from one of their central assumptions: that consciousness depends on the activity of a definable set of "consciousness neurons." They outline two alternative views: that "any neuron can, in principle, at some time or another, contribute to consciousness" (pp. 3-4) and the more extreme notion that consciousness cannot be localized, and "arises out of the holistic interaction of all cells making up the nervous system" (p. 4). This is a version of mass action equipotentiality. I would only offer additional alternatives not listed as options. A corollary of these additional perspectives is the possibility that Crick and Koch are seeking to map discrete populations of neurons that support specific contents, but are not considering the deep problem of state-content relations and differences. One other possibility not mentioned is that consciousness is not about a relatively static set of consciousness neurons, but about the operations of globally resonant fields of interactions between neurons, that consciousness is more grounded in interactions between various systems in the brain, and is thus more about the dynamical organization of many systems of neurons, versus one neuron being neatly "in the consciousness subset" while another neuron is equally neatly not in the "consciousness subset." I suspect that the state-content distinction is also highly relevant for any meaningful discussion of the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), and that' 'state neurons" or more accurately" state neural fields" are highly distributed, whereas "content neurons" are more local, particularly when one is talking about