This works to some extent, but does not account for consciousness. A mind, at the very least a moment of experience, is a coherent whole. Your left and right visual fields are bound together. Thinking of neurons as entirely discrete units makes the binding problem insoluble.
> This works to some extent, but does not account for consciousness.
True, although consciousness itself is rather poorly defined. There are also other related issues like qualia. But I'm not sure it needs to 'account' for those things. To observe that there are certain mental phenomena that are evident at different scales.
> A mind, at the very least a moment of experience, is a coherent whole.
That rather assumes your conclusion. In the example of a divided brain, a stimuli may be presented to only half the brain. How would one know whether one's experience of 'coherent whole'ness was accurate?
> Thinking of neurons as entirely discrete units makes the binding problem insoluble.
No more than thinking of base pairs in your DNA as discrete units makes higher order phylogenesis insoluble. To recognise that discrete units are simple does not mean that large aggregates of them cannot display fundamentally different dynamics.
This question is considered in Sam Harris' Waking Up. Although I don't know how well Sam Harris is received here on HN, I finished it last night and thought it very thought provoking, especially when considering this relationship between the physical brain and our resulting subjective conscious experience.
