Baars, Banks, and Newman have made
a thoughtful contribution to the study of consciousness by presenting to those
engaged in research in consciousness and related areas a massive collection of
68 papers, articles, and issue-based studies, spanning more than 50 years of
scientific research spread over 1192 pages. Almost all the important fields of
research have been given representation including Vision based perceptual
consciousness, Attention, Immediate memory: The fleeting conscious present;
Internal sources: Visual images and Internal speech; Below the threshold of
sensory consciousness; Consciousness and Memory; Unconscious and €œFringe processes,€
Consciousness as a state: Waking, Deep Sleep, Coma, Anesthesia, and Dreaming;
and Theory. The collection not only tells the researcher about the direction of
emphases, the issues that were considered important, but also the empirical and
experimental approach that was followed. Most important aspect of the
collection is that any one interested in consciousness research finds the
paper/s in one place, saving him/her the labor of conducting a €œsearch.€

Out of 68, there are 10 papers on
theory, including those by Gerald Edelman, Stephen Grossberg, Antanio R. Damassio,
Bernard Baars, and Stan Franklin. Baars, well known in Consciousness research,
provides an introductory text and 4 other papers.

In his comprehensive introduction
(which in itself would serve as a useful set text for a wider audience) Baars
argues for consciousness to be treated as a variable rather than as an absolute
state. By this he means that consciousness can be measured as being more or
less present in relation to other states, such as between wakefulness and
sleep, alertness and coma, new and habituated events, and so on. In this way,
and in opposition to those who deny consciousness can be scientifically (that
is, experimentally) studied at all, Baars and his colleagues propose that hard
empirical data can be reliably gathered about the processes of consciousness,
and thus contribute to the building of a coherent scientific theory of this
most enigmatic of human attributes. The favored methodological approach seeks
to correlate internal, subjective experiences with objective experimental
techniques so that, as Baars says, "in modern science we are practicing a
kind of verifiable phenomenology". (p. 8)  Philosophical analyses continue
to dominate the study of consciousness. Recent resurgence of interest in
neuroscience study of consciousness and the interest shown by the other
sciences reflect the contemporary concerns. Science and Consciousness Review,
an upcoming forum highlighting these concerns would vouch for this trend.

All in all, one interested in the study of consciousness
would find that Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness lives up to its
title.

© 2004 G.C. Gupta

G.C. Gupta, Visiting Faculty of
Cognitive Science, Allahabad University, Allahabad, India

Categories: Philosophical, Psychology