ABSTRACT
It was Descartes who first posed the dualistic problem of the relationship between the brain, treated as an object for physical study, and consciousness. David Marr suggested that the syntactical structure of the information processing that is carried out by the Sensibilities can be divided into three levels. The idea that different parts of the nervous system, such as the retina, have an objectively formal syntactical structure like that of a computer program has been challenged by John Searle. Neuroscience has shown that different parts of the neocortex, the mantle of the brain, process different aspects of our experience of the world and of our reactions to those experiences. The attempt to incorporate qualia into an algorithmic procedure is much more difficult to conceive of than the possibility that syntactical or even semantic processes are algorithmic. Neuroscience may have something to say about qualia.
