What does it mean, exactly, for a given system to be a 'neural correlate of consciousness'?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Actually, I think my view is compatible with much of the work going on now in neuroscience and psychology, where people are studying the relationship of consciousness to neural and cognitive processes without really trying to reduce it to those processes.
Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.
Consciousness itself is an infinite regress. This explains coincidences.
When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.
Consciousness, for me, is a manifestation of complexity in biology. It's an emergent property.
Consciousness, rather than being something that we have, is something we participate in.
And for me anyway, consciousness is three components: a personal component which for lack of a better word we can call the soul. A collective component which is more archetypal and a deeper level, and then a universal domain of consciousness.
Consciousness is a disease.
Physiology seeks to derive the processes in our own nervous system from general physical forces, without considering whether these processes are or are not accompanied by processes of consciousness.