Review by Choice Review
Once again, Humphrey gives readers a provoking look at the mystery of consciousness. A follow-up to his Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness (CH, Nov'06, 44-1813), this volume focuses on the "hard problem" of consciousness. Humphrey opens by saying that he "make[s] no apology for putting the human soul back where I am sure it belongs: at the center of consciousness." In the history of psychology, certainly, the importance of the soul/mind/self can be traced from Aristotle through Descartes through William James; the notion begins to melt away as mind gives way to brain. Humphrey's intent is not to replace science with the metaphysical; rather, he wants to bring the spiritual back into conversation with science. He reaches beyond the confines of science to find a way to understand consciousness as a part of the brain and a function of natural selection. Often poetic, Humphrey draws not only on the philosophers and neuroscientists who are central in the debates about consciousness but also cites the work of theologians, literary figures, and, yes, poets to illustrate how central the motive of transcendence is to the consciousness of the human being. Even those who disagree with Humphrey's premise or conclusions will want to read this book. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. D. M. Chirico York College CUNY
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
A psychology professor offers the theory that consciousness is a show we stage for ourselves. "SOUL DUST," Nicholas Humphrey's new book about consciousness, is seductive - early 1960s, "Mad Men" seductive. His writing is as elegant, and hypnotic, as that cool jazz stacked on the record player. His argument feels as crystalline and bracing as that double martini going down, though you might find yourself a little woozy afterward. And his tone is as warm and inviting as that big, crackling fire, even if the dim flicker does leave things a bit obscure in the corners. I mean, the man recites Rupert Brooke love poetry at length. Very different from the usual awkward geeks of academic philosophy and psychology. But what about the morning after? Will all that transcendental experience he describes so eloquently turn out to be just plain old biology after all? No, actually - his book is not only thoroughly enjoyable but genuinely instructive too. Humphrey, an emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Economics, may not have solved the mind-body problem, and there is something to be said for the awkward geekery of philosophical analysis and experimental data. But he has some really interesting and original ideas about consciousness. Many philosophers say it's impossible to explain our conscious experience in scientific, biological terms at all. But that's not exactly true. Scientists have explained why we have certain experiences and not others. It's just that they haven't explained the special features of consciousness that philosophers care about. For example, why does the moon look so much larger when it's at the horizon than when it's overhead, at the zenith? This is a question about conscious experience - about how the world looks to us - not about behavior and brains. And there is a clear and convincing evolutionary explanation. The visual system wasn't designed to deal with objects that are thousands of miles away. It was designed to accurately judge the size of close, evolutionarily relevant objects like apples. As an apple moves closer or farther away, it will project a larger or smaller image on my retina. But I don't see the apple expand and contract. I see an apple with a concrete, stable size. This is because my brain evolved to combine information about the size of the retinal image with information about distance to create a single, constant visual experience. The retinal image of the moon is always about the same size. But the horizon looks farther away than the zenith, perhaps because we see that other objects are in front of the horizon while the zenith is unoccluded. The brain determines that the horizon moon must therefore actually be larger than the zenith moon. And, voilà, the rising moon looks much bigger. So we actually have a good and interesting naturalistic explanation for this particular feature of our conscious experience and many others like it. But it seems that we can't explain the most important thing: Why does the moon look like anything at all? What explains that ineffable je ne sais quoi, that irreducible magic of experience? That big, beautiful moon doesn't just feel like the outcome of a cool calculation. And it isn't looming up at just anyone, but at me, the equally ineffable and irreducible self. Humphrey's clever and original idea is to treat these intuitions about consciousness - this sense of ineffability, specialness, irreducibility and point of view - as simply more features of experience to be explained, the way we explain the apparent size of the moon. Maybe we experience consciousness as special because it really is special. But maybe those intuitions are as illusory as the shrinking and growing moon. We know how the details of our visual experience, like the experience of size constancy of objects, are related to our need to survive. But what is the evolutionary function of the experience of the ineffable and irreducible? Humphrey points to a feature of consciousness that has been surprisingly neglected. "The bottom line about how consciousness changes the human outlook - as deep an existential truth as anyone could ask for - is this: We do not want to be zombies," he writes. "We like 'being present,' we like having it 'be like something to be me.'" HUMPHREY ingeniously works out the many consequences of this apparently simple fact. He points out, for example, that we humans will work as hard to get a newer or more vivid or more intense experience as we will to get a meal or a mate. Almost as soon as we could use tools to make hearths and spears, we also used them to construct consciousness-expanding art installations in painted caves like Altamira. We fear death so profoundly not because it means the end of our body but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in heaven than a zombie on earth. There is a story that Samuel Beckett was walking through the park with a friend, and exclaiming at the beauty of the day. "Yes," said the friend, "it's the sort of day that makes you feel good to be alive." "Ah, now," Beckett replied, "I wouldn't go that far." But most of us, most of the time, would go that far. Humphrey argues that this is the result of a benign evolutionary illusion. It does feel good to be alive, and it feels especially good to be me being alive. And that in turn makes us go to great lengths to extend our lives and to fend off death. Human beings don't do this just with the blind struggle of the hunting predator and the fleeing prey, but with elaborate long-term inventive planning. And that does help us extend life and hold off death. Similarly, we are most vividly conscious of the unexpected and the novel - consciousness is linked to curiosity and exploration. So, Humphrey argues, the thirst for consciousness keeps us on the move, reveling in new information even when the immediate usefulness of that information isn't apparent. In the long run, though, pursuing new information does give us important and distinctively human evolutionary advantages. Just as the moon illusion is an effect of size constancy, the illusions of ineffability and irreducibility, in Humphrey's view, are effects of our human capacity for self-reflection, long-term planning and innovation. The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, "Gee, you are really special" to that sack of water and protein that is a body and you can get it to do practically anything. Humphrey's ideas are appealing, but they aren't always precise, and it will take a lot of empirical work to discover whether they are true. Evolutionary arguments have to go beyond just-so stories, and it's not easy to see just how you could test Humphrey's hypotheses. And even if we understood the evolutionary function of consciousness, we would still need to understand just how the brain accomplishes those functions. While you can't help sharing Humphrey's own exuberant enthusiasm about consciousness, maybe gloomy old Beckett had a point too. We are, after all, as intensely and unbearably conscious of grief and pain as of joy and hope, and we humans seek out oblivion as well as exaltation. Still, you would do well to let Humphrey talk you into thinking that experience is meant for our delight - at least for an hour or two. Alison Gopnik's most recent book is "The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Vs About Truth, Love and the Meaning of Life." Consciousness helps our survival for a simple reason: we like being conscious and work hard to remain so.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 22, 2011]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Humphrey (Seeing Red), the psychologist who discovered blind sight, combines the latest research on neurology and psychology with age-old philosophical questions about the nature of perception and sensation. In answer to the quandary of how human consciousness evolved, since much of our mental activity occurs unconsciously (fight or flight; intuition; biases), he suggests that sensual pleasure and the perception of beauty add value to our lives and enhance our desire to survive. Because we externalize our perceptions ("projecting sensations onto objects") we believe that our lives have meaning. He argues that the "magical interiority of human minds" is not merely a pleasurable bonus to the business of survival but creates the foundation for human existence and our ability to "acknowledge and honor the personhood of others." Though he rejects the existence of the supernatural, Humphrey sees a "soul niche," made possible by the development of complex neurological feedback loops, as the evolutionary home of the human species. This is a fascinating affirmation of the existence of the human soul and a difficult read, but well worth the effort. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
