The Race for Consciousness.pdf

Preface

This book was written in the excitement of the gathering race to under-

stand consciousness. There is a feeling among scientists that the time is

now becoming ripe for the difﬁcult problem of consciousness ﬁnally to

be solved once and for all. Consciousness has led humans to many weird

and wonderful explanations, but the development of new experimental

and theoretical tools for probing the brain has produced an atmosphere

of unparalleled optimism that the job can now be done properly.

It is as part of this gathering activity that this book was written, and

in particular to explain an approach to the problem of mind and brain

on which I have been working for the last twenty-ﬁve years, originally

called the relational mind model. The book describes the complete scene

of entries, rider, punters, and racecourses, as well as developing an entry

into the race, an upgraded version of my older model, now termed rela-

tional consciousness.

But consciousness is ‘‘hard’’ in the sense that it is not clear what func-

tion it performs, or what explanation it could ever possess. Some claim

it must be regarded as an entity independent of the brain. How are we

able to prove that a machine (or other animal, for that matter) really does

possess consciousness? How can we claim that any model can ﬁnally cross

the so-called explanatory gap, that of deducing that the activity in the

model would necessarily possess consciousness by virtue of its very nature

and not by ﬁat?

These questions have to be considered carefully. Owing to recent devel-

opments in tools able to probe the brain in action, it would seem that

we are now able to set up experiments that will give us all the possible

viii

Preface

answers to guide us as far as the objective methods of science can take

us. I belong to the group who consider that such knowledge will then

allow us to attain a ﬁnal solution to the problem of how consciousness

arises from the activity of the brain.

At the beginning of my formulation of the relational mind approach

in the early 1970s, there was much opposition to the deliberate study

and modeling of consciousness among those who were most concerned

with its experimental analysis—the psychological community. It was

therefore difﬁcult to make headway. The atmosphere has, as noted above,

changed enormously; there is a wealth of interest in the subject, and con-

sciousness is no longer regarded as a dirty word among serious scientists.

At the same time an enormous wealth of data on the brain and mind is

coming from new ‘‘windows on the mind’’ achieved by the noninvasive

instruments of electroencephalography, positron emission tomography,

magnetoencephalography, and magnetic resonance imaging. These are

changing our understanding of the way the neural networks of the brain

are used in mental processing.

The main thesis I will present is that consciousness is created through

the relations between brain states. What is more, this process is a continu-

ing and adaptive one, so that consciousness emerges from past brain ac-

tivity. It is this emergence of consciousness, through a highly subtle and

delicate process, that leads to its complexity. That is explored in the book.

I hope that you ﬁnd in my ideas some grains of truth to help make a little

more sense of this exciting but confusing emerging branch of science, and

also join with me and my colleagues in our race to scale the ‘‘last Ever-

est’’—our inner selves.

John G. Taylor

King’s College, London/Institute of Medicine, Juelich

Acknowledgments

Many colleagues helped me form my ideas on brain and mind and made

me articulate the ideas of relational consciousness that are developed in

this book. There are also those whose talks on mind and brain have stim-

ulated me. All of these I would like to thank, most especially Farrukh

Alavi, Igor Aleksander, Bernie Baars, Bill Banks, Raju Bapi, Paul Bress-

loff, Guido Bugmann, Walter Freeman, Chris Frith, David Gaffan, Jean-

Phillipe Gaussier, Denise Gorse, Jeffrey Gray, Steve Grossberg, Stuart

Hameroff, Simon Hastings, Jim Hopkins, Andy Ioannides, Lutz Jaencke,

Bart Krekelberg, Dan Levine, Ben Libet, Tony Marcel, Tom Metzinger,

Robin Merris, Luchas Mihalis, Ouri Monchi, Hans Mueller-Gartner, Jim

Newman, Gerry Orchard, David Papineau, Roger Penrose, Ras Petersen,

Bill Phillips, Karl Pribram, John Shah, Tim Shallice, Neil Taylor, Ales-

sandro Villa, Doug Watt, and Stephen Zrehen. I thank Hans Mueller-

Gaertner, Director of the Institute of Medicine, Juelich, for inviting me

to work as a guest scientist at the institute for one and a half years to

search for consciousness with the new machines, and his colleagues John

Shah, Berndt Krause, Andy Ioannides, and Stephen Posse for providing

expertise, enthusiasm, and a stimulating environment during my stay

there. I also thank my late editor, Harry Stanton (I am sad to say, no

longer with us), and his replacement Michael Rutter, for being so sup-

portive, and the reviewers for making such excellent suggestions for its

improvement. Finally I thank my wife, Pamela, for her unstinting help

in editing the book through several of its drafts.

The Race Begins

Away went Gilpin—who but he?

His fame soon spread around.

He carries weight, he rides a race!

’Tis for a thousand pound!

—Wallace Cowper

The Racing Scene

The race for consciousness has started. Consciousness is the most subtle

and complex entity in the universe. With it, humans have duplicated here

on Earth the awe-inspiring methods by which stars produce their energy.

By creative thinking the forces of nature have been probed from across

the vastness of the visible universe to deep inside the atom; a beautiful

theme for the construction of the whole has been powerfully constructed:

‘‘the Universe in a grain of sand and a twinkling star,’’ to extend the poet

William Blake. By artistic imagination humans have created emotionally

satisfying alternative universes that allow us to have new and surprising

views of this one. These magniﬁcent products have all been achieved by

human consciousness.

But what is this elusive thing called consciousness, which is so impor-

tant in the process of creativity and thinking? Our very experience is

based on our being conscious. How does this subtle process, regarding

which philosophers and theologians have argued and fought for several

millennia, emerge from brain activity in what looks just like ‘‘two ﬁstfuls

of porridge’’? Or is there more to mind than mere matter? To answer

these deep questions at the basis of the human condition, science is

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