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Mind and Matter

This chapter discusses different views on the basis of human consciousness. A major problem with much popular speculation about the biological roots of consciousness is that those who advocate a gene-based view of consciousness often appear to have little understanding of modern genetics, while speculation about how brain structures shape that consciousness often bear little resemblance to emerging knowledge about the complexity of an actual human brain. There is a common thread here, which is that idealised genes and brains have been substituted for real ones. Unfortunately, because of this tendency, it is not clear how much we have really advanced forwards from René Descartes and his belief that the human mind was an unknowable entity, or for that matter, the behaviourists with their view that the human mind could be treated as a black box. In contrast, to understand human consciousness, there is a need to understand real genes, real brains, and how these have evolved in humans compared to other species.