Embodied AI and the Multiple Drafts Model

In "Intelligence without Representation" (1991), Rodney Brooks lays out his vision for an alternative AI project that focuses on creating embodied "Creatures" that can move and interact in real-world environments, rather than the simplified and idealised scenarios that dominated AI research in the 60s and 70s. Essential to this project is the idea of moving away from centralised information processing models and towards parallel, task-focused subsystems. For instance, he describes a simple Creature that can avoid hitting objects whilst moving towards "distant visible places" (1991: 143). Rather than attempting to construct a detailed internal representation of its environment, this Creature simply consists of two subsystems, one which moves it towards distant objects and another that moves it away from nearby objects. By decomposing this apparently complex task into two simple ones, Brooks is able to find an elegant solution to a difficult problem.

Brooks and a robot having a hug

His description of this process is particularly interesting:

Just as there is no central representation there is not even a central system. Each activity producing layer connects perception to action directly. It is only the observer of the Creature who imputes a central representation or central control. The Creature itself has none; it is a collection of competing behaviors. Out of the local chaos of their interactions there emerges, in the eye of an observer, a coherent pattern of behavior. There is no central purposeful locus of control. (1991: 145)

It is strikingly similar to Dennett's account of consciousness and cognition under the Multiple Drafts Model (see his 1991). Maybe not so surprising when you consider that both Dennett and Brooks were inspired by Marvin Minsky, but it does lend some theoretical credence to Brooks' work...as well as perhaps some practical clout to Dennett's.

• Brooks, R. 1991. “Intelligence without representation.” Artificial Intelligence, 47: 139-59.
• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.

Things that are (probably) magic

There are some philosophical questions that seem utterly unanswerable from within a naturalistic framework. These are questions that science just doesn't appear to have the capacity to investigate. These are things that, at least from where we're currently standing, appear to be magic.

1. Consciousness: Why is there anything at all that it feels like to be a person, or a dog, or a bat? Where does subjectivity fit into the naturalistic framework?
2. Free Will: Naturalism commonly assumes a causally deterministic universe (or at best, a quantum undeterministic universe, which is hardly an improvement). How then can we freely choose to act?
3. Morality: How can anything possess inherent value? What does it mean for something to be right or wrong if all that exists is the physical world?

There's an obvious sense in which all three of these "magic things" are linked. Moral action, at least under most systems, requires a degree of free will, and free will would seem to require a degree of conscious awareness. So maybe we should say that there's just one magic thing, perhaps a transcendent soul of some description.

This is all a bit tongue-in-cheek, although there's a serious point to it as well. Rather than just discarding these as "magic things" that naturalistic philosophy cannot investigate, it might be better to simply regard them as ill-formed questions. In fact, scientific progress is being made on the subject of consciousness, but only by breaking it up into a number of smaller, related questions about attention, perception, and so on. Similarly, questions about the cognitive implementation of agency are tractable, even if the fundamental nature of free will is not. And whilst we might not be able to determine why something is right or wrong, we can ask more practical questions about how ethical principles should be applied in the world.

So maybe we should just accept that, at least for the time being, some things appear to be magic, and get on with answering the questions that we can answer.

Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind

I'd call this a book review, but I haven't finished the book yet. I am enjoying it though, so I thought I'd write a few words about some of the more relevant themes.

Just chilling, no doubt reading some Wittgenstein

As I mentioned last time, it was Gilbert Ryle who coined the term "ghost in the machine" to refer to the disembodied mind that cognitive science seems intuitively drawn towards. The Concept of Mind is to a large extent aimed at dispelling this intuition, but along the way it also touches upon a number of other fascinating topics. Below is a list of ideas that Ryle either introduces, expands upon, or pre-empts:

• "Knowing How and Knowing That": This is the title of a whole chapter, wherein he draws a conceptual distinction between the two kinds of knowing. In brief, the first is the skilful execution of an action, the second the reliable recollection of a fact. The "intellectualist legend", according to Ryle, makes the former subordinate to the latter, in that all activities are reduced to the knowledge of certain rules (32). That this reduction is false is fundamental to his broader point - there is no isolated realm of the mental, and all cognitive activity must be expressed through action (or at least the potential for action).
• Embodied cognition and the extended mind: In the same chapter, he devotes a few pages to the common notion that thinking is done "in the head" (36-40). This notion, he argues, is no more than a linguistic artefact, stemming from the way we experience sights and sounds. Unlike tactile sensations, sights and sounds occur at some distance from our body, and so when we imagine or remember them, it makes sense to highlight this distinction by saying that they occur 'in the head'. By extension thought, which Ryle conceives of as internalised speech,¹ is also said to occur 'in the head'. However this idiomatic phrase is just metaphorical, and there is no reason that thinking should (or could) occur exclusively in the head.
• "The Will": Another chapter, this time de-constructing our understanding of volition and action. Suffice to say, Ryle thinks we've got ourselves into a terrible mess, in particular in supposing that to do something voluntarily requires some additional para-causal spark. Rather, to describe an action as voluntary is simply to say something about the manner in which, and circumstances under, it is performed. Free will, under this reading, is something to do with the kind of causal mechanism involved, rather than anything 'spooky' or non-physical.² Personally I've never found this kind of account particularly convincing, but it is nonetheless influential to this day.
• Higher-order thought as a theory of consciousness: Although he never explicitly puts it this way, there is a passage where Ryle describes how some "traditional accounts" claim that what is essential for consciousness is the "contemplation or inspection" of the thought process that one is conscious of (131). This is very similar to contemporary 'higher-order' theories of consciousness (see Carruthers 2011). Ryle doesn't exactly approve, dismissing such theories as "misdescribing" what is involved in "taking heed" of one's actions or thoughts.

So there you have it: Gilbert Ryle, largely forgotten but by no means irrelevant. As you may have noticed, a lot of his ideas influenced Daniel Dennett, which isn't surprising, seeing as Dennett studied under Ryle at Oxford.

1. This, perhaps, is one source of Dennett's fable about the origins of consciousness (1991).
2. Again, this is reminiscent of Dennett (2003).
 

References

• Carruthers, P. "Higher-order theories of consciousness." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/consciousness-higher [21.12.2012]
• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown & Company.   
• Dennett, D. 2003. Freedom Evolved. Little, Brown & Company.   
• Ryle, G. 1949. The Concept of Mind. Hutchinson. 

Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, and philosophical mysticism

I study embodied cognition, an emerging field which has taken considerable inspiration from the phenomenological work of the likes of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger. As such, I've been attempting to get to grips with phenomenology, which given my analytic, Anglo-American philosophical education, is a somewhat odd experience. Phenomenology, broadly speaking, was a reaction against both empiricism and idealism, placing primary emphasis on "lived experience" and the act of perception. Merleau-Ponty in particular also focused on the interaction between the perceiver and the world, and it is this sense of "embodiment" that embodied cognition has most taken to heart.

Merleau-Ponty: grumpy

However there is another side to phenomenology, one which has the potential to be profoundly inimical to the whole project of cognitive science, embodied or not. There is evidence to suggest that Merleau-Ponty, at least, understood phenomenology to be far more than a modification of our psychological methodology. His most famous work, Phenomenology of Perception, is  littered with cryptic remarks that undermine any attempt to read it as a work of empirical psychology. He explicitly states that it is a work of transcendental philosophy, aimed at achieving "pre-objective perception". It is not at all clear what this might be, or even whether it can be expressed in words. Throughout the book (which I'll admit I haven't yet read), there is apparently a sense in which many things go unsaid, perhaps even things which will "only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts".

Wittgenstein: even grumpier

That sounds familiar. The above quote comes from the introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus (which I have read, although I won't claim to have understood it). Both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty seem to be struggling to express the unexpressable, and both, perhaps, ought to be read as "anti-philosophers", whose mission is not to solve any great problems but to help us understand why there never were any problems in the first place. This is certainly the opinion of a psychology lecturer I know who, under the influence of both Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, seemed shocked that us philosophers might still be trying to solve the "problem" of consciousness. Whilst I think this is somewhat arrogant (and ignorant), it is true that both Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein regarded analytic philosophy as curiously misguided, tied up in knots of its own creation.

In light of which it may seem odd that half a century later analytic philosophy continues to venerate Wittgenstein, and that analytic philosophy of mind, or at least a certain strand of it, has recently adopted Merleau-Ponty as something of an idol. If both or either of them were right, surely we're completely missing the point? In fact I don't think this should worry us too much. Neither Merleau-Ponty nor Wittgenstein were perfect, and much of what they wrote may have been as confusing to them as it is to us. What is important is to pay attention to the issues that they do highlight, and to take to heart anything that does make sense to us. Daniel Dennett takes this approach with regard to Wittgenstein (in Consciousness Explained and elsewhere), and Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi seem to be doing something similar in The Phenomenological Mind, where they attempt to apply phenomenological insights to contemporary cognitive science. Regardless of whether or not either Mearlea-Ponty or Wittgenstein would have approved, I find this approach extremely useful, and phenomenologically speaking, perhaps this is all that should matter. It is, after all, my lived experience, not Merleau-Ponty's!

(Some credit should go to the phenomenology reading group at the University of Edinburgh, with whom I discussed much of the content of this post. Any errors or misunderstandings, however, are entirely my own.)

• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown & Company.
• Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, P. 2008. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge.
• Merleau-Ponty, M. 1945/1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge.
• Wittgenstein, L. 1921/1991. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Dover.

First Impressions of The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

(by Jonny)

In a recently fascinating move, various researchers at a meeting at Cambridge University, including cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists, signed a declaration voicing their support for the notion that homologous circuits and activity within non-human animal brains demonstrates consciousness. Any such exciting claim requires careful reading. Their declaration is summarazied thus:

“The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that  non-human  animals have the neuroanatomical,  neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

The problem with the declaration is that it is far too quick to throw around important words, like “affective states”, “emotions” and more importantly “consciousness” without carefully defining them. This isn’t pedantry, it is a necessity given the ambiguity of key concepts within the debate.

This photograph proves cats are much more like humans than first thought.

The idea of looking at neural correlates for demonstrating consciousness is interesting in itself, and I do think it has some value. The logic seems founded on the idea of looking at the neural activity when humans are performing or undergoing x (presumably taking x to involve some unquestionably “affective” or “emotional” state), then discovering some parallel activity in animal. But without much hint of their reasoning (and yes I understand this is just a declaration but this seems to me to be the keystone), the declaration takes this parallel activity to be obviously a sign of consciousness. In short, we need a good clear definition of consciousness before we start talking about it in important contexts. I’m not saying the signees are wrong in their conclusions, but that they are overly ambitious for a two page declaration, or out of touch with the necessities of the debate.

As an aside, here are my two favourite comments from the article about this on io9:

“ if science says this is correct, it is. end of story.”

And,

“Animals don't have souls or a conscience, they were put here on the Earth to serve man. This is the truth from the Lord our God himself as written in his Holy Bible.”

It’s nice to a see a variety of constructive opinion keeping the debate alive!

Drescher on False Reification

In Good and Real, an ambitious attempt to "demistify paradoxes from physics to ethics", Gary Drescher discusses the "false reification" of concepts in the philosophy of mind (2005: 50ff). The fallacy of reification is familiar in other areas of philosophy, but to my knowledge Drescher is the first to apply it specifically to consciousness (although he acknowledges Dennett [1991] as a source of inspiration). Today I want to discuss a few of his insights, and I'll maybe go into more detail with my thoughts on them in a future post.

First off, what is false reification? It occurs when we mistakenly interpret our empirical observations as identifying a new and distinct entity. In the case of consciousness, that basically means identifying "being conscious" as a property over and above the cognitive processes that we are conscious of. A simple, non-cognitive example of false reification is the historic notion of vitalism. It used to be believed that there was a separate life-force that endowed living things with life, animating them in a way that non-living things could not emulate. We know now that no such vital life-force exists, and that being alive is in fact no more than a function of the biological processes that compose living things. Whereas vitalism supposed that biological processes involved an extra 'spark of life', modern biology simply identifies life with certain biological processes. We can say that vitalism falsely reified life, believing it to be a distinct entity or property over and above the physical processes that instantiate it. 

Similarly, many philosophical puzzles can be neatly side-stepped if we avoid falsely reifying consciousness. A common mistake, according to Drescher, is to view consciousness as being an intrinsic property of mental events that we discover when we examine those events. "Rather," he writes, "the examination of a mental event [. . .] is what constitutes that event's consciousness" (Drescher 2005: 49). Under this interpretation, it is no surprise that whenever we examine a mental event, we find that event to be conscious. Like the light that turns on whenever we open a refrigerator, consciousness 'turns on' whenever we focus on or examine a particular mental event (ibid.). The false reification that we commit here is to think of consciousness as something extra that we must discover within a conscious system, beyond the physical processes that constitute that system.

Quale, not quail.

The false reification of qualia can also result in philosophical confusion. A quale is a philosophical term referring to the conscious sensation of an experience, for example the feeling of what it is like to see red or hear a loud noise. A famous thought-experiment asks what would happen if you were able to 'invert your spectrum' - that is, make everything look the opposite colour to what it does now. So red would look green, blue would look orange, and yellow would look purple (or something like that, the precise details are unimportant). Would you notice any difference? If colour-qualia have an existence independent of the physical process of colour perception, then perhaps you might - but to argue that they do is to commit a false reification. Our conscious experience of a colour just is the act of perceiving that colour, and so the inverted spectrum experiment is simply incoherent. It just isn't possible that we could perceive everything in the same way that we do now, but with the colours inverted. There are no independent qaulia that we can switch around in order to make the experiment work.

A final, related false reification can occur when we consider our motivations for certain actions. Put (extremely) simplistically, we are motivated by a desire to experience pleasurable things and avoid painful things. So it seems natural to say things like "you want to eat chocolate becuase it just tastes good; you want to avoid stubbing your toe becuase that just feels bad" (Drescher 2005: 77). Intuitively this makes sense, but Drescher thinks that it gets things the wrong way round. There is no property tasty that is intrinsic to chocolate, and no property painful that is intrinsic to toe-stubbing. Rather it is the fact that we have a natural desire for sugar that makes chocolate taste good, and the fact that we have a natural aversion to harming ourselves that makes toe-stubbing painful. So pain and tastiness are constituted by these evolved processes, and to view them as intrinsic properties that we aim for (or aim to avoid) is to falsely reify them.

Thus concludes my whistle-stop tour of Drescher's views of false reification in the study of consciousness. His book is very interesting, although I'm doubtful of his central claims concerning free will and determinism in chapters 5-7. More on those next week, perhaps, or for now you can just re-read my previous post on the topic.

• Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.
• Drescher, G. 2005. Good and Real. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Memes vs Genes

(by Joe)

The term "meme" was introduced by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976: 191-201), to refer to a proposed unit of cultural information analogous to the standard unit of genetic information: the gene. He suggested that evolutionary analysis of memes could cast light on cultural oddities that evolutionary genetics sometimes struggle to explain, such as religion. His original introduction of memes was a somewhat off-hand way of illustrating that evolution by natural selection need not only apply to DNA and biology, but almost by accident he invented an entirely new field. Memetics now refers to the study of evolutionary models of cultural information transfer, although whether or not this is something worthy of study is somewhat controversial. A Journal of Memetics was published online from 1997 to 2004 (and is still available), but probably the most famous account of memetics is Susan Blackmore's The Meme Machine (1999).

Everything looked a bit like this in the 90s.

The basic idea behind memetics is extremely simple. Just as we can understand biological evolution in terms of competition between genes, we can understand cultural evolution as competition between memes. A gene will survive not because it is necessarily useful to its host, but because it is useful to itself, driving the kind of adaptation that allows it to be passed on. So the genes of a (non-fertile) worker ant that sacrifices itself for the hive will be passed on through that ant's close genetic relatives.  A meme will survive not because it is necessarily useful to its host, but because it is useful to itself, perhaps by being memorable or easily passed on. An annoying song that you can't get out of your head might not derive any pleasure for you, the host, but it will survive. Analysing behaviour in terms of the benefit for the cultural meme allows us to provide explanations that might not be available at either the genetic or organism level.

Memetics has been criticised for failing to identify a discrete unit of transmission (a meme might be anything from a few notes to a whole philosophical theory), but as Blackmore points out the same can, in a sense, be said about genetics (1999: 53-6). The study of memes more generally is accused of being too vague, even pseudoscientific, and I agree that there is a genuine risk of failing to make any meaningful claims. However I think what matters is whether memetics is able to provide a useful account of phenomena where other fields have failed - and this will only become clear with time. Daniel Dennett's account of consciousness and the self includes a memetic element (1991: 199-226) and Blackmore hopes that memetics might cast light on everything from altruism (1999: 147-74) to the development of agriculture (ibid: 26-7). Whether or not memes actually exists (whatever "existing" means) is not really important - memetics as a discipline can still be provide a useful heuristic, reminding us that cultural practices might propagate themselves simply because that's what they do, not because they are in any way useful to us.


Blackmore, S. 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford: OUP.

Dawkins, R. 1976 (2006). The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition. Oxford: OUP

Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.

Beyond Belief: Could Consciousness be Beyond our Ken?

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(by Jonny)

Consciousness is odd, I'll give you that. I tend to favour what you might call a deflationary account of Chalmers' “hard problem of consciousness”, that is the so-called problem of explaining the relationship between physical events like brain processes and the conscious experience of the world, the phenomenal “quality” of experience. I tend to favour the notion that the apparent incapability between a description of physical processes a description of first person “qualia” is only that, an apparent incapability. Given sufficient conceptual models, and sufficient knowledge of the processes at work, we will begin to see that consciousness is as an explicable natural phenomena as any other. Like other supporters of a deflationary account, I think we will explain away the hard problem by solving the easy ones,problems like how we discriminate, integrate information, report mental states etc.

Yet consciousness is nonetheless odd. Whether we like it or not, the phenomena is so special that has continued to persuade philosophers that it is is unique among perhaps all other phenomena, beyond physical or otherwise objective explanation. For this alone we have to give consciousness the respect of being marvellously teasing.

One philosopher for whom consciousness is especially mysterious is Colin McGinn. Via a position ominously labled “new mysterianism”, McGinn famously argues that consciousness may well be simply beyond our understanding. Human beings just do not have the capacity to solve the hard problem, the answers are beyond us.

Colin McGinn. Looking Mysterious.

I've always had a certain sympathy for this position. It has always struck me that, in principle, McGinn could be right. Though we might be motivated by different reason, I agree that it is possible that an understanding of consciousness is beyond human understanding. From my perspective, it seems to be right that there is a limit to human brain power, and that there could be, in principle, phenomena which to understand would take an amount of information processing beyond at least our current limit.

Where I disagree with this position is where it draws the line. It is tempting to say “we might not be able to explain consciousness” and confuse it with “we certainty cannot explain consciousness” and from there draw the conclusion “there's not point trying to explain consciousness”. I rather believe that this pessimistic line is too quick to jump the gun. Whilst it could be that consciousness is beyond us, there is no real reason to conclude it is in actual fact. I agree with Dennett's tone when says about this sort of view, “...just like Leibniz, they have offered nothing, really, in the way of arguments for their pessimistic conclusions, beyond a compelling image.” (2006:5).

Leibniz believed that when looking into our organic selves we would find only parts, like the machinery of a mill, and the mysteries of the mind would remain unexplained.

New Mysterianism does well to raise the possibility of human limitation and our possible arrogance of thinking we may, as a matter of principle, solve every theoretical problem. But it fails in lacking the reflection that it could be that we can. And that even if there are some unsolvable mysteries, consciousness isn't looking to such a specimen. It looks again like philosophers are too quick to grant consciousness a special status, too quick to exaggerate it's near supernatural nature.

In actual fact I believe we have come some way to explaining consciousness, and long may it continue. I for one am optimistic about the easy problems of the future.

Dennett, D (2006) Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. MIT Press: Masachusetts

Consciousness is in the business of producing illusions.

(by Joe)

Gary Williams, whose blog Minds and Brains I enjoy very much (although don't always agree with), has just written a post on the possibility of partial epiphenomenalism. The idea seems to be that the "feeling of consciousness" could be an epiphenomenal 'illusion' without consciousness itself being epiphenomenal. For one thing, this would solve the problem raised by the Libet experiments (which I mentioned briefly here) by allowing the apparently epiphenomenal experience of volition to be preceded by a casually active conscious decision, just one that has yet to be experienced. There's some similarity here with Dennett's interpretation of Libet in Consciousness Explained (1991: 154-67), where he argues for something like the distribution of consciousness into different 'strands'.

I need to give it a bit more thought, but I'm quite tempted by the idea of divorcing the epiphenomenal experience of consciousness from the functional process of consciousness itself. I particularly liked Williams' suggestion that we might want to say that "consciousness is in the business of producing illusions". That is to say, part of what consciousness does is make extremely convincing illusions of, for example, free will, moral agency, or self hood.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts on a post I found interesting. Proper post coming up soon, so watch this space!

Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.

Lucid Dreaming and the Illusion of Control

(by Joe)

Lucid dreaming refers to the experience of being aware and in control of your dreams. The term was coined by Frederik van Eeden (1913), who discusses his own numerous experiences of such dreams. Snyder & Gackenbach (1988) report that only 20% of the population naturally experience regular lucid dreams, although it is also possible to induce them artificially. The precise neural mechanism behind them is not fully understood, but there appear to be distinct neurobiological differences between regular dreams and lucid dreams. In any case, lucid dreaming presents us with a number of intriguing philosophical puzzles, as well as potential insights into the nature of consciousness.

I am particularly interested in whether the experience a lucid dreamer has of being in control of their dream is genuine, or whether it is merely an experience. It seems quite possible that when a lucid dreamer reports being able to choose how their dream progresses, all they are actually reporting is the sensation of being in control. Studies into schizophrenia and related disorders such as alien hand syndrome suggest that 'being in control' and 'experiencing being in control' are distinct phenomena. So we should not necessarily take a lucid dreamer's word for it when they say that they are in control of their dreams – although it would be difficult to deny that they at least experience or recall being in control.

Stephen LaBerge has conducted extensive research into lucid dreaming, including systematising the use of eye-movements to establish contact between a lucid dreamer and an experimenter (see, for example, LaBerge 2000). The fact that a lucid dreamer can communicate in what appears to be a purposeful manner would seem to validate their claim of being in control of the dream. Kahan & LaBerge (1994) use such evidence to suggest that the traditional distinction between non-conscious dreaming and conscious wakefulness might be flawed. Whilst they take the control of lucid dreamers as a given, one might instead want to question the way in which conscious control is being classified in the first place.

In a famous series of experiments Benjamin Libet discovered that the conscious decision to press a button was reported to occur several hundred milliseconds after the neural activity that was associated with the action began (Libet et al, 1979). The experiments were widely reported to disprove free will, but Daniel Dennett has offered a more subtle explanation. We only have access to the subject's reported experience of initiating the button push, and it might be possible that their decision to push the button actually precedes their conscious experience of control (1991: 154-162). Of course this calls into question the very definition of consciousness, but that is Dennett's intention. Given that there's no homuncular 'centre' to the brain, it might be that decision making occurs separately to conscious awareness of decision making, or that we rapidly lose track of having consciously made a decision.

Similarly, experience of control as reported by lucid dreamers does not unambiguously equal actual control. Whilst Dennett is keen to retain the possibility of free will, others might not be so happy with the apparent detachment of conscious awareness from the actual initiation of actions. When a lucid dreamer tells us that they are able to control their dreams, it would be more accurate to say that they have experienced being in control of their dreams. Whether they actually have, and what that even means, is a much more difficult question to answer.

Dennett, D. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Little, Brown and Company.

Kahan, T. L., & LaBerge, S. 1994. “Lucid dreaming as metacognition: implications for cognitive science.” Consciousness and Cognition, 3/4: 246-264.

LaBerge, S. 2000. “Lucid dreaming: Evidence and methodology”. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23/6: 962-3.

Libet, B., Wright, E., Feinstein, B., and Pearl, D. 1979. “Subjective Referral of the Timing for a Conscious Sensory Experience.” Brain, 102: 193-224.

Snyder, T. & Gackenback, J. 1988. In J. Gackenbach & S. LaBerge (Eds.), Conscious Mind, Dreaming Brain: 221-259. New York: Plenum Press.

Van Eeden, F. 1913. “A study of dreams.” Proceeding of the Society for Psychical Research, 26: 431-416.

Homeric Greece: Individualistic or Barely Conscious?

(by Joe)

In The Geography of Thought, a study of cross-cultural variation in cognition, Richard Nisbett asserts that the ancient Greeks had a “strong sense of individual identity [and] personal agency” (2003: 3). Almost thirty years earlier, in his notorious epic The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes claims almost the exact opposite, that the Homeric Greeks were in fact barely conscious, unthinkingly following the orders of auditory verbal hallucinations whose origin was thought to be the gods (1976: 67-83). So who's correct?

Now, Jaynes is, to say the least, controversial, but his book has inspired many, including myself (albeit indirectly, through Daniel Dennett), and so I think we ought to give it at least some consideration. Recently there have been some attempts to revitalise Jaynes' theories, most notably by Gary Williams (2011; and on his blog). As far as I can tell, one aspect of this is to highlight the philosophically unorthodox way that Jaynes tended to use the word 'consciousness'. Williams accuses Ned Block of foisting “his conceptual schema and terminology onto Jaynes” and then critiquing him “for not making sense of his distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness” (blog). With that in mind, lets look at the contradictory elements of The Geography of Thought and The Origin of Consciousness a little more closely.

Nisbett writes:

there is no doubt that the Greeks viewed themselves as unique individuals, with distinctive attributes and goals […] This would have been true at least by the time of Homer in the eighth or ninth century B.C. Both gods and humans in the Odyssey and the Iliad have personalities that are fully formed and individuated. (2003: 3)

In vivid contrast, Jaynes writes:

The characters of the Iliad do not sit down and think out what to do. They have no conscious minds such as we say we have, and certainly no introspections. […] In fact, the gods take the place of consciousness. (1976: 72)

It's worth considering the context in which each of them are writing. Nisbett wants to establish a distinction in the cognitive processes of the individualistic west and the collectivist east, grounded partly in the differences between ancient Greek and Chinese philosophy. Jaynes is trying to trace the emergence of (access) consciousness in “the breakdown of the bicameral mind” - the moment when humankind realised that the voices they were hearing, the voices that guided their every action, were in fact their own internalised speech.

In fact, Jaynes identifies the period between the historical event of the Iliad and its first being written down as the era of the breakdown of the bicameral mind (1976: 82-3). It is this later, Homeric time that Nisbett is interested in, something that might help us reconcile the two accounts. In discussing other cultures, such as the Chinese Middle Kingdom or Europe in the Middle Ages, Nisbett tends to agree with some of Jaynes' conclusions, at least in regard to surface concepts of personal agency. However I doubt that Nisbett would want to say that European or Chinese peasants were actually devoid of agency, but rather that they were less philosophically aware of it than we are today.

So perhaps in Jaynes' defence we might want to say that some version of his theory of the bicarmel mind might have held at the time of the historic events depicted in the Iliad, but that by the time it came to be written down 300 years later the 'breakdown' had occurred. Jaynes writes that “Greek culture very quickly became a literature of consciousness” (1976: 83-4), and we might regard the supposedly non-conscious nature of the Iliadic heroes to be reflection of their own experiences, not those of the aoidos transcribing the story. This would allow us to retain both Nisbett's account of the Homeric Greeks as individualistic and Jaynes' account of the Iliadic Greeks as not even possessing conscious minds (at least in his particular sense of the word). 

Jaynes, J. 1976. The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicarmel Mind.. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Nisbett, R. 2003. The Geography of Thought. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.

Williams, G. 2011. "What Is It Like to Be Nonconscious? A Defense of Julian Jaynes." Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 10/2: 217-239.