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Nicholas Humphrey - Soul DustSoul Dust Nicholas Humphrey The substance of this book falls into two parts, an attempt to explain how consciousness arises and an attempt to understand the functions of consciousness, working from the basis that evolution must have selected for it. The explanation of how consciousness arises rests on feedback loops. These are widespread in the brain, and according to this theory, lead on to dynamic activity in the form of the kind of attractor basins found in chaos theory. Humphrey's is not the first to suggest there might be chaos theory aspects to neural processing, with small differences in initial conditions leading to big differences and also repetitive patterns (attractor basins) in the eventual outcome. As such this does not seem out of tune with either the 'run away' or the repeating aspects of some cognitive and emotional processing. However, what is difficult to see is how this gives process rise to consciousness. Chaos theory originally became established as a result of observing weather systems. In fact the classic example of a small difference in initial conditions leading to a major difference in outcome is still that the movement of the wings of a butterfly in China leading to a tornado or similar in the US. From weather, the theory was extended to other systems such as turbulence in water and even to financial markets. What is noticeable however is that none of these systems is suggested to be conscious, and there is no clarification as to why a chaotic system in biological matter should be conscious either. The larger part of the book is spent discussing the functions of consciousness as a justification as to why evolution selected for consciousness. The main suggestion is that consciousness conveys a pleasure in living that incentives us towards survival. Arguably the most interesting moments in this book are examples of what looks like pleasure in life in non-human animals. P. I think there's something to be said for the pleasure in living idea. It might have benefited from being connected to evidence for emotional evaluation of perceptions and their part in subsequent behaviour. This would allow the idea to be extended beyond just pleasure in living to a more general adaptiveness for subjective experience. Unfortunately the merits of the pleasure in life idea are rather dissipated by a contradiction that emerges at a slightly later stage. The incentive to go on living appears to be ascribed a causal role in keeping us alive, which is why evolution selected for it. However, only a bit later we are told that as scientists, we support a Libet-style deterministic view of all actions without apparently any role for consciousness, taking pleasure in living or otherwise. The author does not discuss the apparent contradiction, nor the problem that the claimed science is based on trivial rather than more deliberative actions. |
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