--- abstract: "Treating consciousness as awareness or attention greatly underestimates it, ignoring the temporary levels of organization associated with higher intellectual function (syntax, planning, logic, music). The tasks that require consciousness tend to be the ones that demand a lot of resources. Routine tasks can be handled on the back burner but dealing with ambiguity, groping around offline, generating creative choices, and performing precision movements may temporarily require substantial allocations of neocortex. Here I will attempt to clarify the appropriate levels of explanation (ranging from quantum aspects to association cortex dynamics) and then propose a specific mechanism (consciousness as the current winner of Darwinian copying competitions in cerebral cortex) that seems capable of encompassing the higher intellectual function aspects of consciousness as well as some of the attentional aspects. It includes features such as a coding space appropriate for analogies and a supervisory Darwinian process that can bias the operation of other Darwinian processes. \n" altloc: - http://WilliamCalvin.com/1990s/1998JConscStudies.htm chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Calvin given: William H honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 1998 date_type: published datestamp: 2003-10-17 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/32/18 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 3218 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/3218/3/1998JConscStudies.htm full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: ~ lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:22 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 4 pagerange: 389-404 pubdom: FALSE publication: Journal of Consciousness Studies publisher: ~ refereed: TRUE referencetext: |2 Derek Bickerton (1990), Language and Species (University of Chicago Press). 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Yilmaz (1993), Neuronal organization in area 17 of cat visual cortex. Cerebral Cortex 3:49-68. Karl Popper (1979), quoted by Raphael Sassower in Cultural Collisions: Postmodern Technoscience (Routledge). Hugh Smith (1935),“Synchronous flashing of fireflies,” Science 82:51. David Somers and Nancy Kopell (1993), “Rapid synchronization through fast threshold modulation,” Biological Cybernetics 68:393-407. Paul Valéry (1962). quoted at p. 346 in W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger, The Viking Book of Aphorisms (Viking). Arthur T. Winfree (1967). “Biological rhythms and the behavior of populations of coupled oscillators,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 16:15-42 (1967) relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 8 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:49:07 subjects: - neuro-psy - bio-socio - phil-mind - behav-neuro-sci succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: 'Competing for Consciousness: A Darwinian Mechanism at an Appropriate Level of Explanation' type: journalp userid: 3697 volume: 5