Consciousness

• seCtIon tHRee: BoDY AnD WoRLD
  Libet’s conscious mental field (CMF) also acts
  both ways, providing in one direction ‘the medi-
  ator between the physical activities of nerve cells
  and the emergence of subjective experience’, and
  in the other ‘a causal ability to affect or alter some
  neuronal functions’ (Libet, 2004, p. 168).

These theories unambiguously answer our ques-

tion. When an action is carried out consciously,

the self-conscious mind or the CMF causes the

brain to carry it out by interacting with it; when an

action is carried out unconsciously, the brain acts

alone. But the interactions remain unexplained.

British psychologist Jeffrey Gray calls dualism

‘moribund’ (2004, p. 73) but also tries to retain

a causal role for ‘consciousness in its own right’

(p. 90). He proposes that ‘The decision [to act]

is made by the unconscious brain and enters

conscious awareness only after the event’ (p. 92).

Consciousness itself monitors features relevant

to ongoing motor programs, and permits change

in the variables controlled by unconscious servo-

mechanisms, or feedback-based controllers. For

Gray, qualia are ‘raw feels’ created by the brain which, once created, can be put to

use in a great variety of cognitive processes. How either conversion process works

is unexplained, but the answer to our question would presumably be that only in

conscious actions are qualia put to use.

Finally, there is global workspace theory (Chapter 5). According to Bernard Baars,

consciousness is a supremely functional biological adaptation. It is a kind of gate-

way: ‘a facility for accessing, disseminating, and exchanging information, and for

exercising global coordination and control’ (1997b, p. 7). The nine functions of con-

sciousness include being ‘essential in integrating perception, thought, and action,

in adapting to novel circumstances, and in providing information to a self-system’

(p. x). He firmly rejects the idea ‘that consciousness simply has no causal role to

play in the nervous system’ (p. 165).

Baars illustrates the power of consciousness with the following example. Imagine

that as you are reading this book, you become aware of a strange, foetid animal

smell, the noise of heavy hooves, and hot breath down the back of your neck.

Although reluctant to stop reading, you suddenly have the wild thought that

there might be a large animal in the room. You turn your head, see the large

angry ferocious bull, and leap from your chair. Consciousness, at least in our evo-

lutionary past, would have saved us from danger, he says. The problem with this

interpretation lies in the timing. The results of many experiments suggest that

you would have leapt out of that chair long before you could have consciously

thought about the danger (Chapter 9).

On Baars’s theory, the answer to our question is that actions which are performed

consciously are shaped by conscious feedback while unconscious actions are not.

For example, you might unconsciously make a speech error, but when you hear

BRAINMIND INTERACTION

OUTER SENSE INNER SENSE

World 2

Interface

World 1

LIAISON BRAIN

PERCEPTION WILL

Light

Colour

Sound

Smell

Ta ste

Pain

Touch

Thoughts

Feelings

Memories

Dreams

Imaginings

Intentions

The Ego

The Self

The Soul

FIGURE 8.2 • How the brain interacts with the
mind, according to Popper and
Eccles. The three components
of World 2 (mental) are outer
sense, inner sense, and the ego
or self, shown here with their
connectivities. Also shown are the
lines of communication between
World 1 (physical) and World 2,
i.e. from the liaison brain to and
from these World 2 components.
The area of the liaison brain has
a columnar arrangement, and
is supposed to be enormous,
including a hundred thousand or
more open modules (Popper and
Eccles, 1977, p. 360).