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To cite this article: Bernard J. Baars & Katharine A. McGovern (2000) Consciousness Cannot Be Limited to Sensory
Qualities: Some Empirical Counterexamples: Commentary by Bernard J. Baars and Katharine A. McGovern (Berkeley,
CA), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:1, 11-13, DOI:
10.1080/15294145.2000.10773274
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2000.10773274
11
A New Synthesis, ed. J. Richardson & M. Velmans. Kalamazoo: Fetzer Institute, pp. 100-123.
Tootell, R. B. H., Dale, A. M., Sereno, M. I., & Malach, R.
(1996), New images from human visual cortex. Trends
Neurosci., 19:481-489.
Young, M. P., & Yamane, S. (1992), Sparse population
coding of faces in the inferotemporal cortex. Science,
256:1327-1331.
Christof Koch
Division of Biology, 139-74
Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125
e-mail: koch@klab.caltech.edu
Phone: 626-395-6855
Fax: 626-796-8876
Web: klab.caltech.edu
12
Baars-McGovern
tennis: set
Boolean: set
table: set
chess: set
ready, go: set
13
contents, without giving rise to focal sensory consciousness. Judgments of beauty, rightness, wrongness, meaningfulness, self-association, relational
concepts, and the like, are all in this category of what
William James called "the vague" or "the fringe."
James thought that perhaps one-third of all conscious
experiences were like this, and that they played a central role in the functioning of the mind. Arguably, however, they are always present, usually simultaneous
with focal conscious contents. Mangan (1993) has argued that the function of some fringe events is to circumvent the capacity limits of focal consciousness.
We cannot resist letting James describe the fringe
of consciousness for us.
Every definite image in mind is steeped and dyed in
the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying
echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of
whither it is to lead. The significance, the value of the
image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds
and escorts it~r rather that is fused into one with it
and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh;
leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was
before, but making it an image of that thing newly
taken and freshly understood [1890, p. 246].
References
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Katharine A. McGovern
The Wright Institute
2728 Durant Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
e-mail: kamcgovern@aol.com