What Explains Consciousness? Or...What Consciousness Explains?

What Explains Patrilineal Cooperation?

Evolutionary anthropologists have proposed that unilineal kinship promotes collective action and that patriliny occurs when the reproductive payoff from passing wealth to sons is greater than that for daughters. We assess both of these theoretical perspectives as well as indirect reciprocity and kin selection as possible contributors to patrilineal cooperation in the Dogon of Mali. The mean coe...

What Explains Superior Retail Performance?

We analyze the performance of retail firms for the period 1978-97 using public financial data. Our performance measures are long-term stock returns and whether the firm filed for bankruptcy in the period of study. We assume that over a long time period of at least five years, stock returns are a reasonable measure of the overall success of a firm. We have found a very wide disparity in performa...

A true science of consciousness explains phenomenology: comment on Cohen and Dennett.

In their recent article in TiCS [1], Cohen and Dennett propose that consciousness is inextricably tied to one’s ability to report about the contents of experience (an ‘access-only’ theory). They contrast this with theories that distinguish mechanisms that create the contents of experience frommechanisms that allow one to report about this content (‘phenomenal-access’ theories). These they claim...

What about Memory, Consciousness, Recall, and Awareness in Anesthesia?

Consciousness - - What Is It ?

Conventionally, there is a tendency to view consciousness as simply a property or activity of the brain. One can explain a lot about consciousness in this way – but not everything. In this article, we draw attention to certain aspects of consciousness that resist the conventional interpretation including, in particular, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, the apparent linked consciousn...