The Goals of the Project
This educational documentary film that we have been working on for almost three years is about consciousness largely with philosophical and neuroscientific bents. The goal of this film is to explore Francis Crick's framework for consciousness, which is the neural correlate(s) of consciousness. We believe that the question of consciousness is an empirical one and has to be unraveled objectively, but we are wondering whether neuroscientific frameworks and discoveries can give us (a) clue(s) about the subjective aspects of consciousness. Many are leery of believing that neuroscience can solve this mystery, saying the problem of consciousness "lies outside our cognitive capacities." Although, a philosophical definition of consciousness is broader than a clinical one, it is very useful to know what happens in the brain when we feel the redness of red, the painfulness of pain, the funniness of a funny joke, and so on. No one has produced any plausible theory or explanation about how subjective experiences arise from over a trillion neurons.
here are the segments of the proposed film:
Segment 1: A brief history of the topic of consciousness
Segment 2: An introduction to "the problem of consciousness"
Segment 3: A review of Cartesian dualism (the theory, its implications, and the views of those who are or were critical of this theory)
Segment 4: A review of Empiricism (the theory, its implications, and the views of those who are or were critical of this theory)
Segment 5: Behaviorism (the theory, its implications, and the views of those who are or were critical of this theory) Segment 6: Fight over Qualia
Segment 7: Scientific attack on the problem of consciousness
Segment 8: Experiments: questions (whether consciousness is a property of the brain or not; whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon or not; whether consciousness is a process or not; and whether Libet's experiments explain convincingly the discrepancy between the occurrence of an event in the brain and the appearance of that event in the stage of consciousness)
Segment 9: Conclusion