Spatiotemporal Model of Consciousness II: Spatiotemporal Alignment—Neuro-ecological Continuum and World–Brain Relation

Abstract

Consciousness is neuronal as it is based on the brain and its neural activity. This is what neuroscience tell us citing strong empirical evidence. At the same time, consciousness is ecological in that it extends beyond the brain to body and world – this is what philosophers tell us when they invoke concepts like embodiment, embeddedness, extendedness, and enactment. Is consciousness neuronal or ecological? This amounts to what I describe as “argument of inclusion”: do we need to include body and world in our account of the brain and how is that very same inclusion important for consciousness? I argue that the “spatiotemporal model” of consciousness can well address the “argument of inclusion” by linking and integrating both neuronal and ecological characterizations of consciousness. I demonstrate various data showing how the brain’s spontaneous activity couples and aligns itself to the spatiotemporal structure in the ongoing activities of both body and world. That amounts to a specific spatiotemporal mechanism of the brain that I describe as ‘spatiotemporal alignment’. Conceptually, such ‘spatiotemporal alignment’ corresponds to “body-brain relation” and “world-brain relation”, as I say. World-brain relation and body-brain relation allow for spatiotemporal relation and integration between the different spatiotemporal scales or ranges of world, body, and brain with all three being spatiotemporally aligned and nested within each other. Based on various empirical findings, I argue that such spatiotemporal nestedness between world, body, and brain establishes a “neuro-ecological continuum” and world-brain relation. Both neuro-ecological continuum and world-brain relation are here understood in an empirical sense and can be regarded as necessary condition of possible consciousness, i.e., neural predisposition of consciousness (NPC) (as distinguished from the neural correlates of consciousness/NCC). In sum, the spatiotemporal model determines consciousness by “neuro-ecological continuum” and world-brain relation (with body-brain relation being a subset). Taken in such sense, the spatiotemporal model can well address the “argument of inclusion”. We need to include body and world in our account of the brain in terms of “neuro-ecological continuum” and world-brain relation since otherwise, due to their role as NPC, consciousness remains impossible.