Human Consciousness, or Possibilities of Electronics. Part I.

Abstract

The phenomenon of "human consciousness" is considered on the basis of the full electronic interpretation of brain functioning proposed earlier. In the first part of the work the principles of the analysis of the phenomenon, problems and approximations of its description, as well as the essence of the developed theory of human consciousness are presented. In particular, it has been shown that an accurate analysis of human consciousness is impossible in principle. In this regard, the transition to an approximate consideration of consciousness is actually forced. When considering the phenomenon of "consciousness", strictly speaking, it is necessary to analyze the following complete system: "the brain — other components of the nervous system — the body — the environment." This is related to the fact that the brain, as well as the person as a whole, is an open, dynamic and self-organizing subsystem in this case. Even though consciousness is a product of the brain in accordance with the concept of in- ternalism adopted in the work, other components of the complete system are certainly influencing consciousness, and this influence is not one-sided and can be significant. Therefore a rigorous treatment of the brain functioning is hardly possible. Analysis of known promising approaches to the description of consciousness leads to the conclusion that the use of the full electronic interpretation of the functioning of the human brain proposed by the author is the most realistic way at the present stage of neuroscience development. A theory of human consciousness has been developed on the basis of this interpretation. It is described in detail in this part of the work. Thought and other mental functions are material in accordance with the theory. It is noted that the proposed theory can be attributed to the monistic materialistic theory of consciousness of the emergent type.