Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), Volume 3: Cognitive and Neuropsychological Approaches the Study of Consciousness, Part 2

This is the third volume of Velmans, M. (ed.) (2018) Consciousness (Critical Concepts in Psychology), a 4-volume collection of Major Works on Consciousness commissioned by Routledge, London. The introduction and 20 readings in Volume 3 introduce major phases and findings in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) starting with the time it takes for these to form and the wider research program that might lead to their discovery. This includes the search for mechanisms responsible for "neural binding" (how widely dispersed neural activities support integrated conscious experiences), and the search for neural markers of consciousness that can serve to distinguish conscious from preconscious and unconscious activities in the brain. The readings then turn to global disorders of consciousness that indirectly reveal the conditions that support consciousness by establishing what abolishes it or impairs it, and concludes with reviews of the major challenges in the search for NCCs that still remain. This survey continues with research on the divided brain with cerebral commissurotomy patients, which proved to be very useful in determining the respective functions of the left and right halves of the brain. It also raised philosophical questions. Could consciousness itself be divided by this operation? And, if so, would such patients have a distinct left-brain and right-brain consciousness? Philosophical issues also combine with methodological and experimental developments in the following sections on the reintroduction of first-person methods and how to combine these with complementary, third-person methods in neurophenomenology and experiential neuroscience -- two well-developed research programs for both investigating consciousness and understanding its functions. This volume then concludes with a survey of research on free will, covering both the major findings arising from neuropsychological research and a way to understand these that is consistent with a natural understanding of volition, ethics, and legal responsibility