Review of Nicholas Humphrey's new book on consciousness

[Russ Abbott]

Quite a positive review by Alison Gopnik.  Here's a lot of it.  She starts out by explaining why the moon looks 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.

Neat! I had never heard this.

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.

 

-- Russ 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Eric Charles]

Odd quote, especially with the beginning part. The moon illusion is the oldest known illusion, and it is very cool. The effect was documented in ancient Greece, and they knew it was an illusion. The easiest way to demonstrate the illusory nature is to look at the moon, hold you hand out at arms length and cover the moon with your finger nail (whichever covers it best); then, when the moon is in a different part of the sky and looks a different size, hold out your hand and you will find that the same nail covers it just as well. Thus you can tell that the moon is producing the same optic image, and with a few deductive step you can conclude that the moon is the same size. -- All that aside, there is NOT a consensus as to the cause of the moon illusion. The effect that Gopnik refers to is at best a partial explanation, as scores of studies have shown it is insufficient to explain the full effect.

Where Gopnik (or, I guess, Humphrey) goes from there is equally odd. How, for example, do you know that I like being "present" more than "not present"? If we take that claim literally, I have never been "not present" in order to compare and contrast. If we take that claim metaphorically, then many people spend a lot of time, and very large sums of money, in an effort be "not present," suggesting it is a desirable state, at least for some.

Eric

P.S. Thanks everyone for all the blog advice!



On Fri, May 20, 2011 09:11 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

Quite a positive <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/books/review/book-review-soul-dust-the-magic-of-consciousness-by-nicholas-humphrey.html?" onclick="window.open('http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/books/review/book-review-soul-dust-the-magic-of-consciousness-by-nicholas-humphrey.html?');return false;">review by Alison Gopnik.  Here's a lot of it.  She starts out by explaining why the moon looks 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.

Neat! I had never heard this.

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.

 

-- Russ 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Jochen Fromm-5]

I think Gopnik picks out the wrong points.
I doubt that all of us like ‘being present'.
All of us certainly like to get a good meal
or mate. We are designed to like supper and
pairing times. But what if you can not get the
meal or mate you desire? It does not feel good to
be alive in general, it only feels good if you
meet the objectives of your genes, if you reach
your goals, if you win a game, if you find the mate
or meal you are looking for, or if you discover
something new.

The interesting point is if it is possible to
explain our conscious experience in objective
scientific terms at all. I think the "magic
of experience" is not irreducible. Subjective
experience is reducible to good and bad feelings
(i.e. meals and mates), to pleasure and pain,
to former impressions and experiences, see
http://bit.ly/dv9ssf

How exactly is an interesting question. The
magic aspect is especially interesting, for example
the magic of self-awareness, but even this aspect
can be understood: see http://bit.ly/lOIFQN
Hermann Hesse said the magic lies in the beginning,
in the complex, if we experience something for
the first time, or (in William James' words) if
everything appears to be a big "blooming, buzzing
confusion". Magic arises from uncertainty and lack
of knowledge.

-J.

----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: FRIAM
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2011 3:11 AM
Subject: [FRIAM] Review of Nicholas Humphrey's new book on consciousness

Quite a positive review by Alison Gopnik.  [..]



============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org