A case of shared consciousness

Tom Cochrane

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02753-6

A case of shared consciousness

Tom Cochrane

College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

If we were to connect two individuals’ brains together, how would this affect the individuals’ conscious experiences? In particular, it is possible for two people to share any of their conscious experiences; to simultaneously enjoy some token experiences while remaining distinct subjects? The case of the Hogan twins—craniopagus conjoined twins whose brains are connected at the thalamus—seems to show that this can happen. I argue that while practical empirical methods cannot tell us directly whether or not the twins share conscious experiences, considerations about the locality of content processing in the brain entails that they most likely do so.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	1-19
Number of pages	19
Journal	Synthese
Volume	Neuroscience and Its Philosophy
Early online date	24 Jun 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02753-6
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 24 Jun 2020

Keywords

Collective
Conscious unity
Consciousness
Group
Hogan twins
Neural connection
Neural correlates of consciousness
Sharing
Split-brains

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A case of shared consciousness

Abstract

Keywords

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