The Brain and SelfConsciousness
Could the brain remain awake and conscious
without sensory information and without
the ability to move?
• Embodied behavior (Conca et al.)
• Mental emptiness (Jacobson)
• Sensory deprivation effects (Heron)
• Locked-in syndrome
• Minimally conscious state (MCS)
• Persistent vegetative state (PVS)
Ethology: Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt
• “Behavior consists of patterns in time.”
• Movements, vocalizations, thinking
Animal behavior
• Varies enormously
• Indicates diverse brain functions
• Produces actions that are:
• Inherited ways of responding
• Learned; plasticity
Most behaviors consist of a mix of:
• Inherited (innate; fixed) behaviors
• Learned actions that are part of cultural transmission
Mentalism
Aristotle
and
Mentalism
• Explanation of behavior as a function of the
nonmaterial mind; mind is responsible for behavior
• Consciousness, sensation, perception, attention,
imagination, emotion, motivation, memory, and
volition
Ancient Greece: Aristotle
• Believed the brain cooled the blood; no role in
producing behavior
• Psyche
• Synonym for mind; entity once proposed to be the
source of human behavior
• Nonmaterial entity governs our behavior, and our
essential consciousness survives our death
Darwin and
Materialism
• Darwin and materialism
• Natural selection and heritable factors
• Way new species evolve and existing
species change over time
• Key terms
• Natural selection
• Species
• Phenotype
• Genotype
• Epigenetics
Darwin and
Materialism:
Natural
Selection
• Materialism
• Philosophical position that behavior
can be explained as a function of the
nervous system without recourse to
the mind
• Evolution by natural selection explains
how
• New species evolve and existing
species change over time.
• Differential success in the
reproduction of characteristics
(phenotypes) results from the
interaction of organisms with their
environment.
The Significance of Human Brain Size
Comparisons
• Problems with correlating brain size and intelligence
• Difficulty in brain size measurement
• Volume or weight; body mass and measurement
• Individual differences in brains
• Body weight, gender, age, nutrition, disease or injury, stress,
neurological disorders, plasticity
• Measurement of intelligence
• Species-typical behavior
• General factor intelligence (Spearman’s g)
• Flynn effect
• Multiple intelligences