Week 4 Post 6

John Searle vs. Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber's ideas differ quite a bit from John Searle's ideas. Searle believes firmly that, "Conscious states are caused by lower level neurobiological processes in the brain and are themselves higher level features of the brain." John Searle would classify him as a Cognitive Scientist, or some one who "tends to view consciousness as anchored in functional schemas of the brain/mind, either in a simple representational fashion (such as Jackendoff's `computational mind') or in the more complex emergent/connectionist models, which view consciousness as an emergent of hierarchically integrated networks." Wilber believes in a culmination of all of the ideas behind the conscious. He thinks that they can be put together in one model to explain consciousness.

I am more inclined to believe Ken Wilber. I think that his model makes more sense because it is all inclusive. While I am more inclined to believe Ken Wilber over John Searle, that does not mean that I am ready to accept his idea. I still believe in a soul, whereas I do not feel that these two men feel that way. I will also agree with what it says in Wilber's article in that this is something that needs to be further studied. We are still extremely far away from understanding all of the intricacies of the human mind.