Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction

Yet with all these theories we must still ask why ‘what it’s like’ (i.e. subjective experience) provides a selective advantage over and above the specific abilities that have evolved. The final possibility is to throw out the idea that experiences themselves can do anything. In this ‘illusionist’ view consciousness is not an adaptation but an illusion, not because it is a useless by-product, but because it is not something separable from intelligence, perception, thinking, self-concept, language, or internal modelling.

If consciousness is an adaptation, if subjective experience is adaptive in its own right, it makes sense to say that we might have evolved without it. But in this case we would not be philosophers’ zombies; we would be more like Hollywood Haitian zombies—creatures deficient in something important. Evolution would then have favoured the conscies. If you take this view, you have to explain what consciousness adds, and you will remember the trouble we had with the concept of consciousness actually doing anything. For a start, it is difficult to see how subjective experiences or what it’s like to be could actually affect anything. Then there is all the evidence that conscious experiences come too late to be the cause of actions or to have the kinds of effects they are commonly thought to have.

Daniel Wegner suggests that unconscious processes give rise to both thoughts about action and the action itself. We then wrongly infer that our thoughts cause our actions

the feeling of willing something is no evidence either for or against free will.

Could we be turning the same habit on ourselves when we imagine an inner self who has desires and intentions, and who makes things happen? Could this be why, when we get the feeling of having willed something, we go on to imagine an ‘I’ who is responsible. As far as evolution is concerned, it does not matter that the centre of will is a fiction, as long as it is a useful fiction.

In this view, conscious will cannot initiate actions, not because it comes too late, but because it is not separate from the processes going on in the brain and so it is not any kind of power or force at all.

The whole idea of timing conscious experiences assumes that there are two sets of timings: the times at which brain events happen, and the times at which those brain events ‘become conscious’ or ‘get into consciousness’. In other words, by accepting that ‘W’ can be timed, you are accepting that conscious experiences are something other than brain events.

Perhaps it is not surprising that this finding caused so much controversy. After all, it seems to threaten our most basic assumptions about willed action—that our decision to act starts the process off. And yet if you think about it, the idea of a conscious decision beginning before any brain processes would be nothing short of magic.

Raichle describes the DMN as a self-centred predictive model of the world. This may be essential for running our lives and even for staying alive, but with its focus on self it may also be the cause of pointless rumination, anxiety, depression, and suffering. Meditation and mindfulness have been found to reduce DMN activation beyond levels found with other attention-demanding tasks and to lead to long-term changes in the brain’s networks.

Another example is Damasio’s multi-level scheme. Simple organisms have a set of neural patterns that map the state of an organism moment by moment, and which he calls a proto-self. More complex organisms have core consciousness associated with a core self. This is not dependent upon memory, thought, or language, and provides a sense of self in the here and now. This core self is transient, being endlessly recreated for each object with which the brain interacts. Finally, with the human capacity for thought and autobiographical memory comes extended consciousness and with it the autobiographical self. This is the self who lives your life story, is the owner of the movie-in-the-brain, and emerges within that movie.