"Temporal anomalies of consciousness: implications of the uncentered brain"

Abstract

As cognitive science, including especially cognitive neuroscience, closes in on the first realistic models of the human mind, philosophical puzzles and problems that have been conveniently postponed or ignored for generations are beginning to haunt the efforts of the scientists, confounding their vision and leading them down hopeless paths of theory. I will illustrate this claim with a brief look at several temporal phenomena which appear anomalous only because of a cognitive illusion: an illusion about the point of view of the observerix. Since there is no point in the brain where "it all comes together," several compelling oversimplifications of traditional theorizing must be abandoned.