Out Of Our Heads

It always goes back to René Descartes. Descartes said that each of us consists of a non-physical mind inside a physical body. The mind, which in his view is the person, is in a different dimension to the body, as it does not exist in physical space (he would say, ‘mind is not extended’, although it connects with the brain in a definite location, the pineal gland). This aspect of Descartes’ view was jettisoned, but the core template of ‘little true self in big extraneous self’ was retained. However, instead of a non-physical mind, the inner, true self came to be regarded as the brain. This view has been paradoxically called ‘Cartesian Materialism’ by Daniel Dennett (the paradox being that Descartes was no materialist).

Because this core dual structuring of the self was retained, many of the conundrums of Descartes’ philosophy have been retained as well, albeit recast in terms of the brain: Does the brain have direct contact with, and therefore reliable knowledge of, reality, or is our knowledge a ‘user illusion’? Could we be deceived, not by an evil demon, but by a mad scientist who puts our brain in a vat and feeds us a virtual reality? Do we know that other people have minds, or might they all be zombies? Apparently, the switch from immaterial mind to material brain as the true self has not led to as much philosophical progress as one’s brain might have thought.

Berkeley Professor of Philosophy Alva Noë would like to save us from the residues of the Cartesian paradigm by challenging it at the root. Noë’s contention is that you are not your brain – rather, that 'consciousness is an achievement of the whole animal in its environmental context'.

Noë supports this contention with references to many fascinating experiments in neuroscience. But he claims that neuroscience isn’t getting anywhere in explaining consciousness because it views consciousness of reality as a representation of the world created and manipulated by the brain. Noë attacks brain-body dualism in part by attacking this representationalism.

This is one of the key points in the discussion of dualism versus mind-body holism. Dualism and representationalism share the idea of the true self being at one remove from physical reality, with the sensing body as both intermediary and barrier. Noë doesn’t examine this relationship in great detail, but he’s clearly aware of it. He examines the case for vision not having external reality as its true object, but instead only an internal representation. To take one problem, it is said that vision cannot simply be what it seems because the images on the retinas are upside-down, while what we perceive is right-side-up. Noë’s response is that we do not see our retinal images: there is no ‘mind’s eye’ gazing at the eye from behind. Since no one is looking at them, it doesn’t even make sense to say that the images are upside down. Their orientation is irrelevant to the process of the creation of vision.

Process is an important way of thinking for Noë. Thus, consciousness isn’t just what happens in the brain: brain activity is just part of an extended process that starts with the environment, involves the whole body and includes the brain. In this, the environment isn’t merely a source of stimulation, nor is it a model or representation built by and viewed by the brain. In Noë’s words, 'the world is its own model'. To put it another way, the real object of perception is the physical environment, not some artifact of the brain/mind.

Alva Noë is a writer and philosopher at UC Berkeley, where he is also a member of the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and the Center for New Media. For the last decade or so his philosophical practice has concerned perception and consciousness. His current research focus is art and human nature.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/BcteyTXqfdc