What is the transmission theory of consciousness?
- Type
- Background entry
- Sources
- 7
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Transmission theory of consciousness: the brain as a receiver and reducing valve of a broader field of mind.
Summary
The mainstream scientific starting point is that conscious experience is tightly linked to brain function: injury, cortical damage, chemistry, and drugs predictably alter perception and cognition. Critics such as Daniel Dennett favor extending ordinary neuroscience rather than adopting a premature metaphysical revolution. On this reading, the transmission model remains an alternative interpretation, not an established account of consciousness.
- EvidenceNeural dependence is robust, but the sources do not show that it proves production rather than transmission.
- Main objectionA receiver metaphor may redescribe brain–mind correlations without specifying a demonstrated external consciousness field.
- Brain injury, cortical damage, neurotransmitter changes, and psychoactive drugs produce major changes in conscious experience.
- Dennett argues that ordinary neuroscience may explain consciousness without requiring a scientific revolution or locating consciousness outside the brain.
- The transmission theory faces the challenge of explaining why detailed changes in brain function track detailed changes in experience.
Source mix
2 of 7 institutional
- 2 Journals & institutions
- 1 Groups & independent outlets
- 4 Other / unclassified
Deeper Insight
Brain injury can scramble the signal. Transmission theory makes the skull a filter, not a boundary.
A drug can alter perception; cortical damage can reshape thought; brain injury can change the person we recognize. Transmission theory reads these links as a receiver losing or distorting a wider signal. The move echoes a radical possibility: your mind may reach beyond the tissue inside your skull.
- What it could changeA wider field of consciousness would reshape research on memory, identity, and altered states.
- How it touches todayEvery drug, injury, and trance tests whether the brain creates experience or filters it.
- Our futureIf mind is larger than the brain, treating people as closed biological machines could look painfully small.
- Transmission theory says consciousness operates through the brain rather than being generated wholly by it.
- William James treated the brain’s dependence relationship with consciousness as compatible with either production or transmission.
- The model draws on exceptional or altered states, including mystical, dissociative, trance, mediumistic, and drug-induced experiences.
Sources · 7
- 2 Journals & institutions
- 1 Groups & independent outlets
- 4 Other / unclassified
What do these mean?
- Journals & institutions. Published in a peer-reviewed journal, or from a university, government body, court or other institution.
- Groups & independent outlets. Think tanks, advocacy groups and independent outlets or blogs, on any side of the question. They publish with a point of view.
- Other / unclassified. A site we have not classified yet. This says nothing good or bad about it.
Featured · Primary source · pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A Transmissive Theory of Brain Function: Implications for Health, Disease, and Consciousness - PubMed
Journal · peer-reviewed
# A Transmissive Theory of Brain Function: Implications for Health, Disease, and Consciousness PMC11523760. NeuroSci, 3(3):440–456. Published 2022-08-09. ## Authors Nicolas Rouleau, Nicholas Cimino ## Details - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/neurosci3030032 - PMID: 39483436 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.ni
Read sourceAnalysis · paranormallearning.com
What is the 'filter' or 'transmission' theory of consciousness?
Other
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Read sourceAnalysis · iai.tv
The brain doesn't create consciousness | Paul Marshall » IAI TV
Independent outlet
The brain doesn't create consciousness | Paul Marshall » IAI TV # The brain doesn't create consciousness ## The reducing valve theory of consciousness 15th December 2021 ## Paul Marshall Mysticism scholar and philosopher, author of Mystical Encounters with the Natural World and The Shape of the Soul
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