The Mind's Past - A Book Review

[Guest guest]

Greetings:

 

I find the enclosed book review quite interesting and help us to get

broader perspective on - who am I? The reviewer starts with the right

question: "Are we just puppets controlled by our brains?"

Feel free to express your views.

 

--

Ram V. Chandran

Burke, VA

 

--------------------------

Michael S. Gazzaniga, The Mind's Past

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998,

xv+201pp, U$ 22,50

ISBN 0-520-21320-3 (hbk).

 

Joao Teixeira

 

Nothing could produce a more disheartening feeling than the idea that we

are just puppets controlled by our brains - brains so

smart that they could even produce the illusion that we control our own

thoughts and actions. This is the leit-motiv of this

book by one of the founders of cognitive neuroscience where a defense of

this most outrageous thesis is presented.

Gazzaniga's main endeavor in his new book is to present a thorough

assault on the notion of "self" and to argue that such a

notion can no longer survive the impact of contemporary brain science.

In seven elegantly written chapters the author

provides the educated layman with an overview of several themes

addressed by the new and promising field of cognitive

neuroscience. These range from a discussion of the nature of the "self",

brain architecture, the relationship between

information-processing structures of the brain and experience, to the

nature of perception, action, memory and

consciousness.

 

The first chapter is striking for its very suggestive title: "The

Fictional Self". It is devoted to a presentation of what

Gazzaniga takes to be one of his major findings in neuroscience, namely,

the existence of an "interpreter" on the left

hemisphere of the brain. Such an interpreter is not a "self" nor "part

of a self" but - as the author points out - a brain device

that accounts for a reconstruction of our past experiences, thus

"weaving its story in order to convince itself and you that it

is in full control" (p.25). Furthermore, by providing us with some kind

of personal story or an experience of an ongoing

narrative the interpreter or "what amounts to a spin doctor in the left

brain" (p.26) gives us the sensation that the "self"

exists, detached from the brain. Such a "detached self" is, nonetheless,

illusory - a sheer by-product of brain activity

attempting to gather the multifarious output of cortically based

automatic systems working outside of conscious awareness.

 

The second chapter focuses on "brain construction" and it aims to show

that most of the development of brain structure and

functioning is due to genetic pre-programming. The brain is not a tabula

rasa nor is it mostly shaped by the environment.

Less emphasis should be assigned to environmental factors in the

development of our mental devices. This is surely one of

the most controversial ideas presented in this book - an idea that

clashes with some current trends of contemporary

neuroscience. By assigning excessive importance to the role of both

environment and brain plasticity, experimental

psychologists have mistakenly urged the conclusion that "genetic

specification plays little or no role in the development of

our mental devices" (p.13). In accordance with such a view, "the brain

is idling in neutral until it experiences the

world"(p.38).In the nature/nurture debate that still pervades

neuroscience, Gazzaniga argues in favor of nature, by

emphasizing that nurture alone is not enough to shape brain function. He

advocates a prominent role for modularity, adaptive

specialization and genetically driven mechanisms in the

ontogenetic/phylogenetic development of the brain. In several

passages of Chapter II pro-nurture arguments are acrimoniously

ridiculed, either as an article of popular science or as an

hypothesis at odds with more accurate empirical evidence.

 

The third chapter returns to the main thesis of the book. The task faced

is that of showing that our brain - and our brain

mechanisms - control our cognition and behavior and not vice-versa. The

contention is presented in the opening sentence of

this chapter: "By the time we think we know something - it is part of

our conscious experience - the brain has already done

its work. It is old news to the brain, but fresh to us" (p.63). We are

not the masters of our own mental processes and

whatever we "decide" to do next our brain has already decided for us a

few milliseconds ago. The "self" as a result of our

mastering of our cognitive processes is nothing over and above a

delusive aspect of our own cognition - a delusion ultimately

produced by the working of our brains.

 

One of the brightest chapters of Gazzaniga's work bears on the nature of

memory (Chapter 6). By dismantling the current

conception of memory as the immense archive of recollections - a

conception still largely inherited by many cognitive

scientists - Gazzaniga achieves one more step in his assault to the

notion of "self". Most of our memories are re-invention

i.e., a reconstruction to fill out gaps in the narratives we produce

about ourselves. So viewed, most of the puzzle of memory

storage and retrieval that puzzles psychologists, neuroscientists and

cognitive scientists is just a false riddle, whose roots

are to be found in the popular conception of the memory as an immense

storage of recollections dutifully organized.

 

Gazzaniga's sober scientific prose could mislead the reader to the idea

that no philosophical controversy lurks beneath his

approach to the main themes of cognitive neuroscience. No doubt one

could contend that there is not very much novelty in

this book except for a suitable presentation of his ideas for a broader

audience. Nevertheless, the philosophical gist of

Gazzaniga's theses crops up once we consider that his book raises a

mostly controversial and disquieting issue for

philosophers and cognitive scientists: Will the success of cognitive

neuroscience in the explanation of mental/cognitive

phenomena entail that the notions of "mind" and "self" are doomed to

disappear? Will the ideas of mind and of self become

obsolete scientific concepts in the same way that the discovery of

oxygen led to the superseding and obsolescence of the

notion of "phlogiston"?

 

Recent developments of contemporary brain science may incline us to

believe that some traditional philosophical problems

may be ultimately reduced to scientific ones i.e., amenable to the tools

of empirical science. An illustration of such a change

of conceptual status in the history of science would be provided by the

notion of vacuum. In the seventeenth century

discussions concerning the nature of vacuum were a matter of

philosophical dispute until modern physics could approach it

as a scientific, empirical issue. According to such a view, the notion

of vacuum was initially infested with

philosophical/ontological presumptions concerning the conceivability of

"nothingness". Such philosophical presumptions

prevented the clarification of the notion of vacuum by thwarting its

conception as an empirical entity. Once such

presumptions were shunned as secondary or parasitic, the conundrum was

solved: The notion of vacuum became a

scientific, empirically tractable problem. The same movement would be

pursued by contemporary brain science by seeking

to show that concepts such as consciousness, representation, self, etc.,

can undertake the same change of conceptual

status once we find their neural correlates.

 

Does Gazzaniga's approach to the notion of the self entails such an

eliminativist character? There is a huge difference

between elimination and revision. As a first approximation one would be

inclined to derive from Gazzaniga's work the claim

that the major problems of philosophy of mind could ultimately boil down

to elimination. So viewed the problem of the nature

of the self would be solved if it could be rephrased as empirical

problems addressed by brain science. The problem of the

self would become nothing over and above the problem of finding its

neural correlates. However, this is a hasty

interpretation of Gazzaniga's enterprise. Indeed, he proclaims that

"Psychology itself is dead" (p. xi) and that "the grand

questions originally asked by those trained in classical psychology have

evolved into matters other scientists can address"

(p.xii). But is it all he is proclaiming? A few lines below he carefully

asserts that "we human beings have a centric view of

the world. We think our personal selves are directing the show most of

the time" (p. xiii). It is not the self per se that must be

dissolved, but the centric view of it. Such a centric view of the self

is to be superseded if we are committed to the

development of a serious scientific account of mentality. The real self

is a brain device - a very sophisticated one in so far

as it has the capability of engendering such a thing as "the centric

self". The "centric self" lures us to first-person certainty

about our own nature, leading to a mismatch between what our brain does

and how we experience such an activity. The

centric self is likely to be revealed a delusion once we find its neural

correlates and realize that there is nothing over and

above a brain device that unifies thought and action by weaving a

fictional story. We are misled to the idea of the centric self

as an autonomous originator and to the systematic illusion that we are

in full control of the activity of a multitude of

automatic systems responsive to internal and external stimuli. The

illusion of the existence of such a centric self as well of

its proclivities is what is to be shunned. But not the story it weaves

about itself, for no matter how fictional it may be it

plays a major role in our cognitive capabilities, such, as for instance,

reasoning and several others that "enabled us to

become psychologically interesting to ourselves as a species" (p.152).

 

So viewed, Gazzaniga's conception of the nature of the self does not

succumb to any strict eliminativist program. There

would be more to the notion of the self than the finding of its neural

correlates. The target does not seem an elimination of

conscious experience but, rather, that of finding from whence comes the

mismatch between the conscious experience of the

self and its possible empirical description at the sub-personal level.

 

Gazzaniga's strictly neurological approach to the nature of the self has

no explicit philosophical agenda. Nonetheless, his

view of the brain as a cluster of specialized circuits and of

consciousness as emerging from the feeling of them challenges

traditional philosophical assumptions. In his conception of the self

there is no room left for what Dennett would pejoratively

label "The Cartesian Theatre" or the centre of the mind/brain where a

central controlling unit is located - the very arena

where consciousness happens. Both Gazzaniga and Dennett would rather bet

on the hypothesis of an orchestra without a

conductor - a hypothesis that allows them to dispense with further

assumptions concerning the existence of any underlying

unifying element for our conscious experiences.

 

To what extent can Gazzaniga's left-brain interpreter provide a

full-fledged account of the nature of the self, including the

generation of the notion of a "centric self"? Or, in other words: Can a

brain device per se account for the generation of our

habitual centric self? One issue not addressed by Gazzaniga is how the

instantaneous reconstruction of the mind's past can

lead to the illusion of the centric self - an illusion inherited and

cherished by traditional philosophy of mind. For whence

comes the feeling that we are endowed with some inner initiating cause

of thought and action? For one thing, such a feeling

seems to emerge in so far as some preliminary assumption of

incorrigibility of the mental comes into play. It is hard to

conceive that such an assumption could emerge without the contribution

of culture and language - some kind of language

that forges a preliminary idea of "I" allowing us to speak and think

about ourselves as centric selves endowed with the

power to produce autonomous action. Would a culture without a word for

"I" develop some idea of a centric self? To what

extent the idea of a social construction of the self would mark an

essential dissimilarity between Gazzaniga's and Dennett's

conception of the self?

 

Surely a conception of the formation of a centric self such as Dennett's

differs from Gazzaniga's in so far as the former would

assign much more weight to "linguistic memes" in the production of a

social image of the self - the centric self deeply

inculcated by language and perpetuated by social roles. Still, from a

philosophical viewpoint there is more convergence than

dissent between Gazzaniga's and Dennett's approaches to several other

topics. Dennett construes the stream of

consciousness as resulting from a virtual serial machine installed on

the massive parallel information processing provided

by the brain. Dennett endorses multiple realizability whereas for

Gazzaniga there is more emphasis on the specificity of brain

devices in the production of experience. Nonetheless, both would agree

with some idea of a narrator. And both would agree

with the idea that the stream of consciousness is not what our inner

experience reveals, although by pointing to different

reasons. Furthermore, both would hold the view that there is much less

to mind and memory then what our current

experience mistakenly leads us to suppose.

 

All in all, Gazzaniga's book provides enjoyable, enlightening and

provocative reading. It is a book whose ultimate goal is to

rescue the science of mind from misleading propositions by showing that

there is no need to explain thought and action as

the outcome of an inscrutable self encapsulated in a shell.

 

 

Copyright J. Teixeira 1998

 

Center for Cognitive Studies,

Tufts University,

Medford U.S.A. 02155

Email: jteixe01

 

Acknowledgements

 

The author thanks John Symons for helpful suggestions and FAPESP for

financial support (grant # 97-03518-6).