Consciousness. A user’s guide
Consciousness. A user’s
guide
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用户的意识。
DOI：
--
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发表时间：
2003
影响因子：
6
通讯作者：
Prof. D. A. S. Compston
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Prof. D. A. S. Compston
这篇评论就像一个跑完伦敦马拉松的人打扮成小熊维尼温妮-进来晚了，但覆盖了地面。起初，事情似乎很难：小学生哲学家把时间分配在莎士比亚和牛顿之间;亚当·泽曼在处理通用代词时未能巧妙地处理性别问题;意识和感知之间的混淆;骄傲的父亲让我们过度使用儿科的妙语，这些妙语更适合家庭团聚;冒号和冒号的大量使用;而且，无论如何，泽曼博士在诺福克和诺维奇医院的图书馆里苦读哲学是为了什么，而他本来是我们的神经病学高级注册医生？搁置了几个月，意识：用户指南最终进入了桌面，随之而来的是一个沉默而真诚的道歉，因为曾经质疑过它的学术和权威。事实上，泽曼博士写得很好。他使用简短的句子。它们传达了意义。他创造了简洁的措辞。他们取悦读者的耳朵。他对比喻和比喻的运用是恰当的。娜塔莉亚、植物群和本说的一些话对阐述问题真的很有帮助。从一个，为什么我们睡觉;“因为它的夜晚”;到另一个“因为如果我们不，我们会变得非常累和东西”。差不多了，不情愿的梦游者通过方便但强制的冬眠来安全地玩耍;或者疲惫的生理框架蹲下来重新储存脑干桶。亚当·泽曼引用的丰富性和广泛性反映了广泛的阅读，而不仅仅是创造性地使用参考书。亚当将遇到的著作，另一个前居民诺维奇，托马斯布朗（e）-他的17世纪世纪出版商是不一致的使用最后的"e"-而放牧在诺福克和诺维奇医院图书馆。作为绅士哲学家和医生，布朗和泽曼有很多共同之处。弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫的《奥兰多》中的一系列引语巧妙地回避了代词问题，因为奥兰多是一个连续的性别转换者。虽然建议跳过它（作为一个专家），我还是偷偷看了一眼大脑是如何工作的。泽曼沉浸在经典的神经学说中。他把中枢神经系统看作是一条不和谐的反射带的伟大指挥者，这是谢林学派的观点。他是杰克逊主义的，而不是颅相学的，因为他认为病变忠实地再现了离散的综合征，而不一定表示局部功能。他是马古尼亚人，因为他把脑干网状激活结构作为大脑意识和电活动的源泉。他很乐意用格拉斯哥昏迷量表来衡量意识。也许，他把40赫兹的节奏作为意识的电子信号，比一些人想要的要短。他喜欢医学历史学家扮演的历史：卡哈尔和高尔基之间的争吵，以及《人》（De Homine，1662）中那个被烧伤的笛卡尔男孩，而不是作为历史背景的医学--这个职业如何在与流行的社会环境的竞争中发挥作用。他的临床轶事很能说明问题。有些令人不寒而栗。他报告了那些在全身麻醉期间瘫痪的人的回忆，他们意识到自己被认为是无意识的（事实并非如此）。简而言之，他用一根直棒玩神经科学。当亚当·泽曼（Adam Zeman）带我们绕过定义意识的棘手问题时，这一点很重要。在这里，其他人已经失败了。很有帮助的是，泽曼从显而易见的事情开始。你知道什么是无意识，就像被击倒一样;好吧，有意识是它的反面。现在我们已经弄清楚了，你可以处理另一个维度，就像意识一样。以此类推，避免了其他人的陷阱，他们被语义限制弄得晕头转向，从而有必要否认有知觉动物的意识。不要告诉我，我的狗是没有意识时，他（在这里，代词是准确的，不需要通用或中性的诡辩）分散所有人类和猫科成员的家庭，以确保不间断地获得猫的食物。这无疑是杰拉尔德·埃德尔曼的“难忘的礼物”。在动物王国的意识层次上，随着猴子和黑猩猩之间的过渡，读者会对小熊维尼（赢得伦敦马拉松比赛后）、跳跳虎和丑小鸭在面对镜子中的形象时感到非常同情。跳跳虎被这个大胆的冒名顶替者吓坏了。街头智慧温妮冷静地再次保证。丑小鸭已经完全知道了他的身份（泽曼可能会选择她）
This review is like a runner completing the London Marathon dressed as Winnie the Pooh – comes in late but covered the ground. At first, things seemed difficult: the schoolboy philosopher dividing his time between Shakespeare and Newton; Adam Zeman’s failure to finesse gender when dealing with the generic pronoun; the possibility of confusion between consciousness and perception; the proud dad overexposing us to paediatric bon-mots better kept for family reunions; much use of the colon and semicolon; and, in any case, what was Dr Zeman doing boning-up on philosophy in the library of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital when he was meant to be our senior registrar in neurology? Put aside for some months, Consciousness: a user’s guide eventually made it to the desktop and with that came a silent and sincere apology for ever having questioned its scholarship and authority. In the event, Dr Zeman writes well. He uses short sentences. They convey meaning.He coins neat turns of phrase. They please the ear of the reader. His use of metaphor and simile are apt. Some of the things Natalya, Flora and Ben say are really helpful in formulating the problems. From the one, on why do we sleep; “because it’s night”; to another “cos if we didn’t we’d get really tired and stuff”. That just about has it; the reluctant somnambulist playing safe through convenient but forced hibernation; or the exhausted physiological frame hunkering down for a re-stock of the brainstem barrels. The richness and range of quotations deployed by Adam Zeman reflects wide reading and not just creative use of reference books. Adam will have come across the writings of that other former resident of Norwich, Thomas Brown(e) – his 17th century publishers were inconsistent in use of the final “e” – whilst grazing in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital library. As gentlemen philosophers and physicians,Brown and Zeman have much in common. Serial quotations from Virginia Woolf ’s Orlando neatly sidestep the pronoun issue since Orlando is a serial gender swapper. Although advised to skip it (as an expert), I did sneak a look at how the brain works. Zeman is steeped in classical neurodoctrine. He is Sherringtonian in his view of the central nervous system as the great conductor of an otherwise cacaphonous band of reflexes. He is Jacksonian rather than phrenological in his view that lesions faithfully reproduce discrete syndromes without necessarily denoting localized function. He is Magounian in having the brain stem reticular activating formation as the fount of awareness and electrical activity in the brain. He is happy to measure consciousness using the Glasgow coma scale. Perhaps,he gives 40Hz rhythms shorter shrift as the electrical signature of consciousness than some would want. He likes history as played by medical historians: spats between Cajal and Golgi, and the Cartesian boy with the burning foot from De Homine (1662), rather than medicine as historical context – how the profession functioned in contest with prevalent social circumstances. His clinical anecdotes are telling.Some are chilling.He reports the recollections of those who were conscious of being thought unconscious (which they were not) whilst paralysed during general anaesthesia. In short, he plays neuroscience with a straight bat. This matters when Adam Zeman gets us round the tricky issues of defining consciousness. Here, others have come unstuck. Helpfully, Zeman starts with what is obvious. You know what unconscious, as in slugged out, is; well, conscious is the opposite of that. Now we’ve got that straight, you can handle another dimension, as in consciousness as awareness. And so on, avoiding the trap of others who get turned inside out by semantic constraints making it necessary to deny consciousness, as defined, in sentient animals. Don’t tell me my dog is not conscious when he (here, the pronoun is accurate requiring no generic or neutral sophistry) distracts all human and feline members of the household so as to ensure un-interrupted access to the cat’s food. This is surely Gerald Edelman’s “remembered present”. And on the hierarchies of consciousness in the animal kingdom, with transitions twixt monkey and chimpanzee, readers will feel much sympathy for Winnie the Pooh (after winning the London Marathon), Tigger and the Ugly Duckling in facing up to their images in the mirror. Tigger is terrified by the audacious imposter. Streetwise Winnie is calmly re-assuring. The Ugly Duckling is already fully wized-up to the identity of his (Zeman might opt for her) doppelBOOK REVIEW