For 20 years at Princeton University I studied how the brain processes sensory information and controls movement, but lately I've become interested in a more esoteric question, the big question of neuroscience: the brain basis of consciousness. There is now a conceptually simple theory that in principle can account for consciousness, that has emerged over the past 10 to 15 years, and that in my view is likely to be correct at least in its general outlines, although a great deal of scientific controversy still surrounds the topic. I wrote about this theory in my recent book, God Soul Mind Brain.
This theory of consciousness begins with something called social perception. Humans are social animals, and not surprisingly the human brain has special-purpose machinery that allows us to be socially intelligent -- to reconstruct information about the contents of other people's minds. When I interact with another person, I reconstruct what he might be thinking and feeling. I monitor what he might be aware of or what he might be attending to. All of this information forms a linked, interconnected bundle of data, an informational model of another person's mind, computed inside my own brain. It is a perceptual model of someone else's consciousness, and the study of the brain circuitry that computes this type of perceptual model is called social neuroscience.
Social neuroscience arguably began in the 1960s with experiments on monkeys. Monkeys are social animals, and it was discovered that neurons in a particular brain area carry information of social relevance, such as visual information about faces or about body gestures. The scientist who made these initial discoveries was Charles Gross, my long-time mentor. I worked in his lab for many years.
The findings from monkeys were picked up by many scientists and extended to the human brain, mainly by putting people in MRI scanners and measuring brain activity. It turns out that the human brain contains specific areas, mainly in the right hemisphere, but to some extent on both sides, that emphasize the task of social perception: of building an informational model of another person's mind. Damage to these brain areas can lead to a disability in social perception.
Now I would like to draw a distinction between two items: social perception and social cognition. The terms are used differently by different scientists, and the border between them is not absolute. We understand other people's minds at many different levels, some more cognitive and some more perceptual. But generally speaking, one might think of social cognition as more a process of intellectually figuring out what might be in someone's mind and social perception as more intuitive, more basic.
One of the best examples to get across this distinction is ventriloquism. In ventriloquism, as an audience member looking at the puppet, you know intellectually, cognitively, that there is no conscious mind in its head. But perceptually, you fall for the illusion. That is what makes ventriloquism fun. When a good ventriloquist makes the puppet move in realistic ways, directs its gaze with good timing, makes it react to its environment in a plausible way, the effect pops out. You can't help feeling as if consciousness, awareness, agency were emanating from the puppet. The social machinery in your brain constructs an informational model of a conscious mind that you project onto the puppet. In fact, you build two perceptual models of minds, one that you project onto the performer and the other that you project onto the puppet. Ventriloquists have worked out a set of tricks to enhance this illusion of two separate minds. That is why the puppet always has a different tone of voice and usually argues with the performer.
Ventriloquism is an exotic example, but this tendency to perceive mind in things is something we do every day. How many times have you gotten mad at your car? You know it doesn't have a mind, but you can't help constructing that perceptual model. We do the same thing to our TVs and to our computers. Some people talk to their plants. Children talk to their stuffed animals.
We do the same thing with respect to each other. When I meet a new person, my brain constructs an informational model of a mind, a consciousness, and attributes it to that person. That model allows me to predict the person's behavior, at least to some extent, and to interact more effectively.
According to the theory, I do the same thing with respect to myself. I perceive consciousness in myself. My brain constructs a perceptual model of a mind that thinks this and that, feels this and that and is aware of this and that; the mind is attributed to my own location. That model provides an organized, coherent way for me to understand myself -- to predict and help guide my behavior. It is not always accurate; it is woefully incomplete; but it is a useful model of myself.
This realization that consciousness is a perception is counterintuitive. We think of consciousness as something ghostly that inhabits an object. But according to this neuro-social theory, consciousness is a perception that is attributed to something. Like beauty, consciousness is in the eye of the beholder. Our brains actively paint consciousness onto ourselves and onto the objects around us.
The implications for spiritual belief are rather startling. In this theory, the spirit world is the complex, richly detailed universe of social perception, the perception of mind. We not only perceive consciousness in ourselves and in others, but we perceive it in the objects and spaces around us. Spiritualism is a fundamental mode of perception by which humans relate to the world. In this view, spiritualism is not an incorrect theory; not a misapplication of rational thought; not pseudoscience. One of the reasons why scientific rationalism has such trouble dealing with religion is that spirituality is not generally about rational thought, evidence or logical inference. At root it is a built-in tendency to construct perceptions of mind, project them around us, and then move through and interact with that perceptual world.
I find myself in the end with a theory that does not fit neatly into anyone's political bunker. It is decidedly materialistic and atheistic. Yet according to the theory, spirits exist -- deities, ghosts, souls, the consciousness of other people, one's own consciousness -- as rich perceptual simulations run on the hardware of the brain. That perceptual world has psychological reality and genuine importance to human existence.
Michael Graziano: The Spirit Ends When The Brain Dies
Michael Graziano publishes new book: God, Soul, Mind, Brain: A ...
If you perceive consciousness, then it is an object of what? Who is the *you* that perceives this object?
It went something like this:
Aww, c'mon.
Language is inherently built around the notion of consciousness-assignment. It's why we have pronouns.
We can say something like "water wants to flow downhill" but we all know that this doesn't mean we're imparting desire onto water. It's a convenient short-hand.
Anyone who charges in and says "Ha! You think water has a mind and desires, therefore your understanding of fluid dynamics assumes dualism! Zing, Mr. Scientist! Zing!" would be instantly disqualified from the conversation for being a sillybugger.
Michael spent several paragraphs explaining that, in his model, the brain virtualizes consciousness in response to various stimuli - and that one of those virtual consciousnesses is an illusion of self.
Sure, he summed this up with the phrase "I perceive consciousness in myself" - but it's a really low stab in the toes to ignore everything else and take the most naive possible interpretation of that initial pronoun 'I' as if none of the preceding paragraphs had actually happened.
It's the same facetious move as our fluid-dynamics-objector above.
If you're looking for a reason to off-handedly dismiss this idea about consciousness, you're going to need to do a lot better than that.
'Unenlightened man is dreaming constantly, even when he is awake. . . . The psyche of man is dreaming all the time, consciously as well as unconsciously."
He sanctifies us with the truth of His word. He gives us the ability and desire to be perfect like He is.
The only problem is, it depends on blurring the distinction between 'percepts' and
'concepts', actually even totally ignoring that a difference exists.
In our day-to-day activities, we don't "see" consciousness, 'seeing' is a 'perceptual' act.
We may be somewhat aware, in some cases, of someones consciousness, from their
conversation (sound-a percept), from their mannerisms (sight-a percept), from their
expressions (sight/sound-percepts), from their friendliness (percept-sight, possibly
touch), etc. From these experienced percepts, we form 'concepts' about the person,
their consciousness--if we desire to delve that deep into what makes them 'tick'--and
even our own consciousness--again, if we desire to delve that deep into what makes
us 'tick'. Some of those concepts can be immediate, most become latent.
You've taken a term, "social perception", and made the 'perception' part equal to both
percepts and concepts. Yet, you call the theory a "conceptually simple theory". Why
not call it a 'perceptually simple theory'? Probably because you can "see" neither a
'society', nor a 'theory'. You 'see' their attributes, singly, or read/hear their attributes,
singly, and then form a 'concept' about them.
But, if you have to tweak the rules to make them fit the theory....................?!?!
This subject fascinates me. Why God Won't Go Away, Brain Science And The Biology Of Belief got me hooked.
I look forward to seeing what this author has to say.
dont feel alone neither do the religious. ie two sides of the same coin: religion and materialism.
The Church Fathers during the Medeival period known as Scholasicism also fell into this deep hole of Greek Dualism, and even in the 1st century, by the time the husk fell away revealing the ripen seed of the early church, as the last Epistles were penned, the poisonous infection of Gnosticism had already began to spread its deadly spores.
The Church Father then began to see three gods instead one, and only a soul and body, and even more untenable, that soul eternal.
Yet the Bible is amazingly simple, to show us man's composition as being a unity of 3 parts-of spirit, body and soul, by the Tabernacle itself, with its outer court, the Holy place, and the Holiest of Holy, and in the New Testament, that the Holy Spirit never spoke on its own, and neither did Jesus, as person's can and always do; ergo, He was Yahweh Himself.
In Genesis, when Yahweh said" Let us make man in our image.." the "us" were angels who gave witness, as was the law, then it continue," so God, He, made man in His image." You don't have to be all that fluent in Hebrew to see that.
The largest symbol of this is in Vatican Square: http://www.cuttingedge.org/articles/RC125.html
The awareness of this gland is well known along with what is called the magic mushroom and is why the Vatican priest wear a red top with a white skirt. Did anyone think they were drinking wine?
Alternatively, we could embrace as allegorical truth the idea that this world rests on the back of an elephant standing on the back of a larger elephant standing on the back of another, yet larger elephant . . . . und so weiter to Alternative Dimension N without compromising the initial principle that consciousness generates perception.
That might not be a useful insight but it is amusing.
However, I do not follow your conclusion that "In this view, spiritualism is not an incorrect theory; not a misapplication of rational thought; not pseudoscience."
Spiritualism claims that there is some real substance behind reality--not that it is a perceptual layer on top of it. You have to redefine spiritualism in order to get it to fit, meaning that the original conception of spiritualism would be wrong. It is, in fact, a misapplication of rational thought to attribute minds to inanimate objects, nature, etc, because there is no mind there to perceive--perception of something that isn't there is a mistake no matter how you slice it.
If, when you say 'language,' you mean 'natural language' then I would say 'no.' Natural-Language obviously necessitates concepts with meaning-semantics-that look like great candidates for explaining aspects of the mind, however, we see that both intentional and phenomenal states of the mind require a representational/conceptual system on their own and, more likely, that Natural-language merely makes use of and repurposes said system as the other formal rules of language (syntax), (while potentially being analogous to a "syntax" of the mind), have developed for a more specifically oriented goal- Natural-language-output. Meaning that such a conceptual/representational system must come first within the cognitive architecture of mind in order for natural-language to make use of it. Thus language, by being able to directly access this architecture is uniquely endowed to provide of insights *about* it, but not that language is the direct output of the mind in an unequivocal sense. I hope that made sense.