1. 1. While loss of behavioral responsiveness is currently the only objective measure that neuroscientists use to infer the loss of consciousness, we acknowledge and have published elsewhere that loss of behavioral responsiveness per se does not necessarily entail unconsciousness. In rare cases (approximately one to two out of a thousand), confirmed by broad studies in Europe and America, loss of behavioral responsiveness has been achieved, and yet consciousness is still present without any objective indices. For empirical details, see Mashour and LaRock; LaRock, “Philosophical.”
2. 2. For further empirical details on anesthesia and the subject’s strong emergence, see LaRock, “Hard Problems.”
3. 3. Binding in consciousness arguably occurs at this intermediate level, since the lower-level processing is too piecemeal, and higher-level processing is too abstract (see Prinz, “Intermediate”; LaRock, “Disambiguation”). This fits the data surrounding the “viewer-center” (or point of view) intrinsic to experience and its explanatory relevance to questions about survival in real-time scenarios. That object recognition is dependent on the viewer-center of the subject also explains why visual agnosics can see objects without recognizing them. The subject, seated in the EM field, appears to be engaged in some crucial biological way at this intermediate level of neuronal organization during perception.
4. 4. Incidentally, there are, in fact, multiple competing theories about the function of the claustrum. Some theorists hypothesize that the claustrum functions as a synchrony detector and others a salience detector. The latter has important evolutionary benefits: if one can detect the presence of a lion through its characteristic roar, then one can deliberate over competing action plans to avoid it. This salience capacity is categorical by nature and hence is linked to our capacity to recognize objects on the basis of salient cues. See Smythies et al.; Remedios et al.
5. 5. This conception of the fundamental ontology of mind does not originate in British philosophy but has rather ancient philosophical roots (see Hartshorne).