Conclusion to the Introduction

So where, finally, are we? I think we can say with reasonable confidence that consciousness is a function of the brain, and I argue that it is just that: part of the brain's activity. That is, the contents of consciousness are identical with the patterns of data-flow through the brain. But we have this reflexiveness which is our view of ourselves and we are led by current cultural paradigms to see ourselves as somehow separate from the physical brain.

Thus the problem has become: is consciousness something, so to speak, foisted upon the physiology by some outside agency or perhaps captured from some "mindfield"? Or is it a necessary function of a highly organised system?

My view is that it is the latter. That all the dynamic behaviour of that vastly complex organised system of systems of the brain, given all the feedback pathways and the propagation delays inherent in that, produce a kind of resonating system; a heterarchy of recurrent neural nets which are trained (connected up) by the culture and go live by the processes of interaction internally and externally with all the other similar systems in the world (i.e. other people).