5 Comments

1. 

   Mark Twain on June 16, 2010 at 3:35 pm

   Review by Mark Twain for Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
   Rating:
   I have to admit that at first I dismissed this little introduction to consciousness, but then I read the book again. It’s a gem. Blackmore makes it all clear right up front what the problem of consciousness is and several ways that consciousness might be defined. She considers whether consciousness is some integral feature of brain processes or something in addition to the physical features of the brain (a position that goes by the clumsy name of “epiphenomenalism”). Next she talks about a last Cartesian seduction in the thinking of some materialists called “the Cartesian theatre”, a phrase coined by Daniel Dennett that means that some scientists have embraced the material operation of the brain but still believe that consciousness is something that appears at a place and time in the brain. It as if there is a little theatre in the brain where consciousness is played.

   Blackmore next questions the natural or intuitive idea that consciousness is present in a continuous stream: this is a grand illusion and how the brain may create this illusion is investigated. She focuses on visual perceptual consciousness and presents research that questions our natural understanding of what is going on with our brains while we experience the world. There follows a consideration of “the self” (a useful construction, it seems), conscious will, and altered states of consciousness (psychedelic drugs, meditation, and out-of-body experiences). All in all this is a brief, but very clear and stimulating discussion of consciousness. I find it remarkable that so much was packed in a little volume that left me stimulated and grateful instead of exhausted, bored, or confused.

   It’s just a great place to begin trying to get a grip on what the fuss is and why consciousness is such a curious and marvelous phenomenon.

2. 

   Earle Bowers on June 16, 2010 at 4:29 pm

   Review by Earle Bowers for Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
   Rating:
   No one book can cover all there is to say about the burgening field of Consciousness Studies of Consciousness Research, but this book comes as close as any one up-to-date one can; furthermore, it has all the usual physical advantages of Oxford University Press’ “Very Short Introduction” titles: small enough to actually fit into a pockes yet so well bound that when carried so the spine will never crack nor pages ever fall out.

   Susan Blackmore’s experience as a Zen meditator adds depth to the section on altered states of consciousness as well as to her final summary on the future of consciousness and consciousness research.

   A minor disappointment was the abscence of any treatment of Artificial Intelligence and the philosophical problems it raises, especially unfortunate since she sha covered that subtopic well and thoroughly in a longer book. Also some cartoon drawings are rudimentary and add little to the text, but on the other hand, some photographic, do-it-yourself demonstrations of how our conciousness differs from what we believe we introspectively know it to be are excellent.

   Another positive for any book but especially one suitable as an initial introduction to a topic is an excellent bibliography for further reading.

3. 

   dcleve on June 16, 2010 at 5:07 pm

   Review by dcleve for Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
   Rating:
   Susan Blackmore has written an outstanding introductory reference in Consciousness, A Short Introduction. She wires clearly, and in a jargon-free style that is a pleasure to read.

   The book discusses most of the major frameworks that people have used to think about consciousness, as well as the problems they suffer from. The organization, however, is not around these theories, but around the observations and experiences which have lead to developing these different theories. This observational/experimental focus is why I think her book is the best single book on consciousness I have read. She has collected about half of all the observations I have read in nearly a dozen other books on consciousness, but with a broader focus than any of these other books have had. This short (135 page) gem is therefore an outstanding summary for anyone who does not wish to delve into the much denser tomes that are more characteristic of literature in this field.

   Every writer has a bias and a point of view, and Blackmore is no exception. She is a devotee of the Daniel Dennett “Consciousness is a self delusion” school. She interweaves advocacy for this viewpoint into the discussions of the observations on consciousness, arguing that all other theories of consciousness are doomed to failure. Her advocacy is not overbearing, and the book includes examples which actually disprove her claims (discussed later). Dennett’s views are very different from pretty much all other materialist thinking, and are influential enough to have a prominent place in modern thought. So her treatment, which is to carry an ongoing debate between materialism, dualism, and delusionism through the text, is very appropriate.

   Aside: materialism is the belief that the whole universe consists solely of matter/energy. The brain would then be the sole site of consciousness, and any explanation of it must solely be in brain terms. Dualism is the belief that there are two substrates to the universe, and the consciousness consists at least partially of some other substance that interacts with matter. A major corollary is that it is possible at least in principle for a purely material processing brain to function without any first-person experiences, an unconscious Zombie. Delusionism is the belief that consciousness does not exist, and is therefore neither material nor dual in nature.

   She notes that our introspection of our own consciousness has us experiencing consciousness as an integrated stream of experiences, which seem to exist in a theater of our mind, with continuity over time so they happen to the same “me”. This is the common-sense view of consciousness held by most lay-people, and one that she attempts to show in example after example in the book is not correct.

   The first objection she raises is the structure of the brain. The brain is a massively parallel structure, with no central processor, and no location in which processed experiences can come together in the stream of consciousness. This is not a problem for dualism, which could potentially integrate experiences in another plane, but it is a major problem for materialist views of consciousness. Achieving a singe integrated “me”, and integration of our multiple sensory inputs, solely through brain operation would seem to require an integration point. But there isn’t one. This is the first of many darts thrown at materialism.

   There is one test of brain experiences which does support the materialist’s necessary “location” idea, for consciousness in the brain. Some images, Escher prints for example, can be seen with two different frameworks. The image is the same, our sensory input is the same, SOMETHING seems to change in our consciousness as we shift attention between these two interpretations of the image. Measurements of the energy level in the temporal cortex part of brains does show a change as one shifts from one interpretation to the other, leading some researchers to declare the temporal cortex the site of consciousness. However, since this location does not get the inputs from all other senses necessary for it to produce the sensory awareness of non-visual functions that we have, this test does not address the objections that Blackmore raised.

   Blackmore attacks the continuity of consciousness with evidence from damaged brain patients. Is someone who can hold conversations with you, but forgets your existence after a 2 minute departure from his presence conscious in the same way undamaged minds are? They are unable to carry out any program of action which involves more than a very brief interruption, and cannot plan for the future, or experience their own past. They certainly do not experience their selves as continuous.

   She attacks the integrated nature of consciousness with other sorts of injuries. Is someone who cannot think of verbs as fully conscious as the rest of us? Or of anything in the right part of their field of view? One fascinating experiment involved patients with this injury describing a city square they were familiar with. When asked to describe it from the south, they could only name the buildings on the West, and from the North, only the buildings on the East. They were unable to integrate the two descriptions even after giving both in sequence. Brain injuries have shown that consciousness is NOT an integrated whole, but instead involves multiple skills, the boundaries of which are not readily defined unless brain damage highlights them.

   Blackmore considers the brain damage data fatal to dualist models of consciousness. But it is not at all. Dualist models are INTERACTIONIST – consciousness for me is created by a soul leveraging a brain to perform thinking. Damage to a brain removes the ability to leverage that part of the brain, and will limit that individual’s consciousness.

   One experiment provided support for the dualist view. A different brain injury involves damage to the primary visual processing center of the brain. Sufferer’s eyes are fine, but they say they cannot see. Interestingly, when forced to “guess” at what object an experimenter held, or the direction of stripes on a screen, and to reach out for objects, they perform at least minimally – far better than a true blind person. They have been partially successful in learning to function using their “guesses”. These people are “zombies” relative to vision – they have no first-person experience of seeing, demonstrating that the “Zombie” concept is certainly possible.

   Another experiment provided support for delusionism, and a challenge to dualism, and also most materialist views. Patients with exposed brains, who had their skin-sensing brain locations simulated for less than 0.5 seconds, reported no touch. With stimulation beyond 0.5 seconds, they reported accurately the start time of the stimulation. The experimenter concluded that consciousness of sensory inputs occurs a half second after the inputs, and that our minds “back-date” the event. This challenges the idea that consciousness is part of the causal loop (a major belief within dualism), since a ½ second lag is tremendous. Dualist models, as well as most materialist models based on the mind/consciousness emerging from processing functions, have difficulty with a half-second delay for consciousness. It also provides an example of the mind deluding itself.

   A further interesting observation that is part of her case for delusionism is that what is “in” consciousness is very hard to pin down sometimes. One can notice that a clock is chiming part way through a series, but still know what the correct count is. One can be in one conversation, and overhear one’s name in another, and know the full sentence in which one’s name was used. So how do we know the start of the sentence, or number of chimes, when we were unconscious of them? Similarly, one can drive, which involves a LOT of coordinated mental activity, while daydreaming about another subject. So was the act of driving “conscious”, if one can not remember the events from driving while daydreaming?

   To explain the time delay, and the daydream/driving effect; Blackmore introduces Dennett’s “multiple drafts” model of brain processing. Dennett asserts our minds are parallel processing all the time, trying to fit multiple different models to data. The way Escher prints reverse image is that one draft becomes dominant over the other. Similarly, parts of our brains are processing the driving, the daydreaming, the chimes, and the conversations all the time, simultaneously, and none can be characterized as “in” or “out” of consciousness. It is only after the fact, when we ask ourselves whether we were aware of something, that the mind convinces itself ONE of these activities was conscious.

   The multiple-drafts model is a very appropriate way to explain brain function, and I accept it readily. The brain is obviously trying to fit models to data all the time, and most of this fitting takes place out of our conscious awareness. Consider looking at an unfamiliar scene. For some complex and strange images, it can take minutes before we can say “that’s a close-up of a part of a dog’s fur” or “leaves on a forest floor” or whatever, because it takes time to fit the models to the data, and the brain is attempting multiple model fits simultaneously. It is also true that driving can hardly be an UNCONSCIOUS activity – there are too many decisions, and coordinations between skill sets. And even when daydreaming, when one pulls out after a stoplight, one can remember the decision to stop if one tries. What these examples tend to show is that our consciousness is not unified, and we can be conscious of multiple activities in our heads simultaneously. But neither the daydreams, nor the driving, are readily remembered afterwards. Memory of what was in our consciousness seems to only be laid down when our consciousness is FOCUSSED on only one of the multiple parallel processes. So what the multiple drafts modes provides is another piece of the attack on the UNITY of consciousness, not on the REALITY of consciousness. All of these examples can be readily explained by a dualist model that accepts multiple drafts processing, in which the will can choose to FOCUS on one of the drafts – then it ends up in consciousness. This model is not available to materialists because of the lack of a central “focusing point” capability in the distributed brain.

   Blackmore presents further illustrations of a delusion effect in vision. We THINK that we have a representational map in our heads of our visual field. If we did, we should be able to notice big things removed from that map. BUT, people are very poor at seeing changes in their visual field. Test subjects were only able to identify object disappearance, or color change, less than 1/3 of the time when shown changing images on a screen. So our idea of how we see is seriously wrong. Blackmore calls it a Grand Illusion, and considers it decisive evidence for delusionism. But again, non-delusional models have no difficulty dealing with this “Grand Illusion” effect. If consciousness emerged from the top tier of a neural net processing, or from the brain creating a predictive simulation of the world, there is no reason either of these processes should lead to the mind having a CORRECT understanding of the lower-level processes which provide it data. Self-delusions about how the brain processes lower level data are fully compatible with conscious still being real.

   The theories of consciousness that have the most difficulty with the examples that she gives are those that have come out of the computer/AI/logic world, which see consciousness as emergent from higher processing functions. “Higher Order Thought” theories, which assert that sensations and thoughts are conscious only if we have thoughts ABOUT our perceptions, peculiarly would say we are only consciously daydreaming if we think “I am now daydreaming”. Global Workspace Theory asserts that conscious processes are globally broadcast to the brain, so they are available to other processing centers, while processing which is only local is not conscious. Since driving involves so many functions, GWT would assert we could never drive “unconsciously”, and that daydreams should pretty much never intrude in to consciousness. These sorts of models are widely popular among brain and consciousness researchers, but are basically incompatible with multiple drafts, self-delusion, and a non-integrated mind. Her critique of these models is a setback for some materialist thinking, but this is only a subset of theories of consciousness.

   Blackmore discusses experiments performed with split brain patients. Some severe epilepsy sufferers had the corpus callosum which connects the two halves of their brain severed. The surgery helped with the epilepsy, and most patients seemed unaffected by it otherwise. But experiments revealed some interesting effects. Because each half of the brain sees only half of the visual field, it is possible to present two different sets of information to each side of the brain. Both sides can understand language, but only one side can speak. When one side was shown a picture of a chicken, and the other side shown a picture of a snowy field, and both sides were instructed to pick an object related to the picture form a selection presented, one side picked a rubber chicken foot, and the other a snow shovel. When asked why, the verbal side who had seen the chicken said that the foot was for the chicken, and the shovel was for what you always have when you have a bunch of chickens. This rationalization was regularly performed by the verbal side to explain the actions of the non-verbal, with explanations the experimenters knew were false. Blackmore extrapolates off this, arguing that the verbal part of our brain is not well-linked to all of the other parts, so we may well confabulate (rationalize) ALL the reasons we tell ourselves for our own actions.

   Blackmore discusses the concept of willing. The experiments she discusses here were by a measurement of the timing of a decision. The energy level in the motor control part of the brain was measured, and subjects observed a timer and declared when they decided to flex their wrist. The energy level started building up 0.55 seconds before the move, but the decision was reported only 0.2 seconds before the move, which suggests that decisions occur in the brain before we “will” them, by 0.35 seconds. The experimenter then had the patients consider flexing, then decide not to. In this case, the energy build-up started 0.35 seconds before dropping to zero at the time the patients reported deciding not to flex. The experimenter considered this confirmation that we do not have “free will” but do have “free won’t”.

   I believe this is basically a confirmation of and extension of the “multiple drafts” theory to actions – our brains will ready us for, and initiate multiple possible actions, and we are consciously able to select among them. This is basically consistent with how we perform almost all actions. Hitting a ping-pong ball is not a CONSCIOUSLY driven action, and if we try to make it conscious, we will fail. However, we CAN consciously choose NOT to hit the ping-pong ball even after our hands are swinging the paddle.

   Blackmore cannot accept this consequence, because she is both a materialist, and an advocate of delusionism. For free will choices to be causal initiators of brain choices, they must be IN ADDITION to brain function, and this is explicit dualism. Additionally, her delusionism hypothesis asserts that consciousness is not real, and therefore there cannot be a time that events “enter consciousness”. The consistency of the ability of the subjects to precisely time when events DID “enter their consciousness” (when they decided) is a test case which refutes delusionism. Blackmore does not address this problem at all, and it is worthwhile to examine the evasive language she does use to discuss this test. She says “we might say the subjects reported where the [timer] was when they knew that a movement was about to happen [or not happen], but not that this was a time that the decision was consciously made.” This evasive language is an attempt to rationalize away the sensation of willing the subjects had. Note that it does not address at all the problem for delusionism that the TIMING of “when they knew that” is an explicit refutation of the “timing is impossible” claim she makes, AND that her own words admit to an unconscious/conscious state of brain events (the energy build up was unconscious, until the moment that “they knew”). Blackmore cannot explain these results in delusionist terms, and settles only for trying to rationalize away free will.

   Throughout the book, the dualist critiques of materialism are discussed. Materialist thinking is that consciousness is somehow implicit, or necessary, as an outgrowth of one of processing, brain function, or the use of words (different materialists disagree over which). Materialists cannot explain this necessary correlation now, but assume that further study and research in future decades will provide an understanding of how consciousness is derived from one of these items. The problem for materialists is that they are asserting a NECESSARY correlation, which is a logical relationship not an empirical one, so further empirical study will never provide them the NECESSARY correlation they claim. And, in fact, the experiments discussed in this book REFUTE the necessity for correlation. The blindsight patients, the potential energy buildup before movement, our speech operating faster than conscious control allows, our conscious veto on actions, etc, are all disproofs of this necessary correlation, or even of correlation at all, in some cases.

   This leaves materialism open to the “hard problem” question that dualists ask – “why is consciousness, me-ness, perception, a first person, or internal experiences present at all in a purely material world? How do you get from physical processes to a point of view?” Blackmore considers this question unanswered, and unanswerable for materialists.

   I have shown how dualism CAN explain all of the observations discussed in this book. Blackmore basically cites physics to justify her rejection of dualism, saying dualists cannot explain how mind is able to interact with brain. Since physicists cannot really say for sure what matter is, nor how it interacts with itself, her citation of physics here is invalid. She also dismisses the Zombie concept as “daft”, and pointless.

   (Aside, the Zombie concept is: if it is logically possible for human-brain processing to occur without perception, etc, why couldn’t we be Zombies, with no inner life? There are two consequences from assuming we could be.
   
   1. There is a significant difference between zombies and non-zombies, despite their physical identicality, and this in itself disproves materialism
   
   2. Since evolution has clearly crafted our consciousness, consciousness plays a role in causal processes, basically confirming dualist interactionism between consciousness and the brain.)

   Blackmore’s dismissals of the Zombie concept are argument by ridicule and argument by dismissal, both fallacies, surprising and disappointing from a thinker of her caliber.

   Her ideological commitment to materialism, plus her recognition that the “hard problem” refutes all other materialist theories on consciousness, is why she has embraced delusionism. Delusionism basically involves claiming that we ARE all Zombies, and are deluded in our belief that we are not. In her own words “We do not need to explain how consciousness is produced by, or emerges from, the objective activity of the brain, because it does not …. We do not have to explain how subjective experiences evolved or whether they have a function because there is no stream of experience – only a fleeting event giving rise to a delusion.”

   She admits that living by this Zombie worldview is difficult – she has to convince herself that:
   
   She has no free will
   
   Makes no decisions
   
   Has no consciousness
   
   Or “self”
   
   Or long-term continuity
   
   And is instead a disconnected bundle of experiences

   I actually find Blackmore’s conclusions to be a frightening example of the power of ideology to warp one’s thinking. In the service of her materialist ideology, she has rejected:
   
   Empiricism, which puts a priority on evidence/experience over theory (she throws out all data from our own perceptions as “delusion” in the name of her theory)
   
   Reason, in her failure to recognize the refutation of her theory in the timing tests, and in her fallacious attacks on the Zombie idea
   
   And even her own self, despite that being the only thing in the universe she can know for sure that exists

   I consider this book, therefore, to be outstanding in multiple respects. It is an excellent summary of what we know about the peculiarities of consciousness. It presents reasonably fairly the multiple ideas in the community about what consciousness is. It shows why materialist views of consciousness continue to flounder, in the words of the most eloquent disciple of the leading materialist thinker of our time. And it shows how the ideology of materialism has driven that thinker, and his disciple, to adopt absolutely irrational views.
   

4. 

   Peter Reeve on June 16, 2010 at 5:09 pm

   Review by Peter Reeve for Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
   Rating:
   I first encountered Blackmore’s work when, after searching long and hard for a scientific explanation of out-of-body experiences, I came across her book Beyond the Body. It was astonishingly well researched and offered a rational, convincing explanation for phenomena that were usually neglected by the scientific community. I became an instant fan and have followed her work ever since. But now, alas, she has aligned herself with the Dawkins/Dennett axis of drivel, and my loyalty to her is badly shaken. In this book (a shorter version of her Consciousness: An Introduction) she follows Dennett by denying the existence of consciousness and then indulging in much speculation about the properties and evolutionary history of this non-existent entity. Consciousness, she maintains, is an ‘illusion’, which she defines as something that exists but does not have the properties it appears to have. She then proceeds to discuss it as if it does not in fact exist, and slips into calling it a ‘delusion’, which she apparently regards as a synonymous term. So far, so Dennett. She follows Dawkins by labeling just about everything a ‘meme’ (as Poe might have said ‘All that we see or seem is but a meme within a meme’), unless she happens not to approve of it, in which case it is ‘a virus of the mind’. As an example, she indulges in a quite intemperate and completely irrelevant rant against religion, in which Roman Catholicism is described as a parasitic infection. Like Dennett and Dawkins, she leaves no axe unground.

   So why do I give the book 5 stars if I disagree with so much of it? Well, I guess you can’t keep a good scientist down, and Blackmore is still a great scientist. She brings considerable knowledge and erudition to the subject, presents fair summaries of opposing views, and gives excellent descriptions of odd phenomena like Libet’s Delay and the Cutaneous Rabbit. And her style is as readable as ever. I was suspicious when I saw that her son Jolyon had contributed many of the illustrations – it smacked of nepotism – but I have to say his drawings are really charming and add greatly to the text. The other illustrations are useful too – with the possible exception of a photograph of the author opening a fridge door – which isn’t always the case with this series. The book ends with a very useful Further Reading list. It’s thus an excellent introduction to the subject (although I think John Searle’s The Mystery of Consciousness is still the best place to start).

   So, I shall keep the faith and continue to read everything Susan Blackmore publishes. I just hope that one day, just as she once abandoned a belief in the paranormal, she sees the light and abandons the axis of drivel.

5. 

   Hubert Cross on June 16, 2010 at 5:25 pm

   Review by Hubert Cross for Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
   Rating:
   According to Roger Penrose, consciousness is needed to *_understand_*. So a creature that understands, has to be conscious, and a creature that is not conscious cannot understand. His work is very convincing. He believes that consciousness is related to yet unknown Quantum laws and processes on the brain.

   My point being, I find it incredible that this author would not dedicate at least a short paragraph to explain his theories which are the most convincing ones I have ever read.