Epiphenomena

Figure 1

This prompted by a reading of the paper at reference 1, with Halligan and Oakley having worked together over this ground for some years now and with references 2, 3 and 4, this last from 2000, being by way of previews of the present paper. Reference 4 was also the source of the picture above.

A review paper which also seeks to dethrone the subjective experience, together with the associated sense of a self which is in charge, from its present prominent position in our understanding of the human world and to have us regard this subjective experience more as an accidental by-product of all the other goings on in the brain, rather than as the apex of some pyramid, the crowning glory of a human being. An accidental by-product which doesn’t have much if any impact on what that brain gets up to. An accidental by-product which nevertheless results in most of us believing in this non-existent self, something rather like the soul of the Christians. A getting up to which sometimes includes generating a personal narrative (PN) and a personal awareness of some or all of that narrative (PA). Which we are invited to believe is not the same as saying that PN is what the brain thinks that the subject needs to know. That there is some need, that the brain has some purpose in its mind, one that the subject doesn’t get to know about.

Some people use the term ‘epiphenomenon’ where I have used by-product. A term briefly recognised in much this sense by my (first edition, that is to say old) OED, but which attracts a substantial discussion at reference 10 – a discussion which includes a more sophisticated version of the A and B remark which follows below.

Along the way, they remind us of some of the many scenarios turned up in recent years involving processes once thought to involve or need conscious attention, to need the presence of consciousness, running along quite happily in the unconscious, under the hood as it were. 

This included reminding us of the complicated relationship between what is happening out in the real world and our subjective experience of same. Particularly if one indulges in trickery, experimental or otherwise.

Along the way, they also take a swipe at the notion that we have free will. A subject on which I offer some of my own swipes at references 5, 6 and 7 below.

Dethrone but not to deny. The paper allows that it would be interesting to know exactly how we come to have conscious experience and why, as seems likely, a reasonably sophisticated fungus like Ophiocordyceps unilateralist of reference 8 does not. But we are cautioned about getting too hung up on it – and the last sentence of the abstract reminds us ‘that most brain processes are not accompanied by any discernible change in subjective awareness’.

A position with which, having failed to come up with any very satisfactory reason for consciousness myself, I have much sympathy. Nevertheless, I would not be so quick to rule out a function for consciousness, for the subjective experience. At the very least it may well be that state of being A is necessary and sufficient for action B to follow and also that A reliably generates subjective experience S. We do not get from A to B without S, but it is not the case that S causes B, any more than the fall in the barometer causes rain.

It just seems a bit unlikely to me that evolution would go to the bother of creating something so pervasive and so seemingly important as consciousness without there being some point, some breeding advantage for selection to bite on. Or at the very least, having stumbled upon it, not to have gone on to find some use for it – rather as when writing complicated computer programs one sometimes finds oneself using a chunk of code for something which has nothing to do with whatever one wrote it for in the first place. My understanding is that the evolution of our bodies is littered with this sort of thing. Why not our minds too? So for me, just writing consciousness off as an evolutionary accident, as Halligan and Oakley themselves point out, is indeed counterintuitive.

Figure 2

Then contrariwise, unlike the old version of their diagram, Figure 1 above, the latest version of their diagram, Figure 2 just above, tells us that communication with the rest of the world which has been critical to our evolutionary success passes through consciousness, that is to say PN and PA. While I prefer Figure 1; I would prefer to say that communications are often available to consciousness, perhaps after the event, which is not quite as strong as saying they pass through consciousness or that they are mediated by consciousness. Sometimes we speak without thinking and we only get to look at the transcript afterwards – while at other times we write the script out before we speak. A process which, I believe, Winston Churchill took so far as to mark emphases, stresses and pauses on top of the raw words.

Contrariwise again, the abstract of reference 2 talks of consciousness driving autobiographical memory, at least in the sense that S causes B above: ‘… The personal narrative provides information for storage in autobiographical memory and is underpinned by constructs of self and agency, also created in non-conscious systems. The experience of consciousness is a passive accompaniment to the non-conscious processes of internal broadcasting and the creation of the personal narrative…’. Broadcasting which brings to mind Baars’ Global Workspace Theory (GWS).

And then there all the non-verbal communications, all the sub-texts, which may be far from the consciousness of the communicator, but which may be available to the observant observer. I associate to the way that professional gamblers are said to be able to read the body language of their less professional opponents.

I fairly commonly experience something that may be relevant. That is to say that I do not often think in a very active way. But I do often sit down at the computer and start typing – when words just seem to flow out of the brain, into my fingers and onto the screen, with my having anything much to do with it consciously. Sometimes the words so written read back again well enough afterwards. A point which is made at rather greater length in reference 4.

I now associate to the behaviourists, part of whose creed, as I understand it, was that it is much better to focus on what people do than on what they say, particularly about themselves, this last being particularly unreliable.

An interesting and thought provoking paper – even if my own view is that it might be salutary rather than helpful to describe consciousness as an epiphenomenon. Salutary in the sense that it takes us down a peg or two. Rather in the way that Copernicus did when he reorganised the solar system.

And talking of pegs, I read only yesterday, in a review of a book about fungi in the NYRB (reference 14), that some biologists worry about whether it makes sense to talk about a plant or an animal as a single, independent entity. What about all the essential micro-life, the millions of other entities, including fungi, working away near, on and in the plant or animal in question?

Additional matters

As with consciousness, we dethrone but do not deny personality. There may not be some bit of the brain which does personality for us, there may be no soul and there may be no commander-in-chief lurking in the interior of the brain, but humans – and most larger animals – do exhibit characteristic personalities. And we tend to be wary of people who do not have, do not seem to work within such personalities.

I am reminded that consciousness in humans precedes language – ask a parent of a toddler – and the large animals which we presume to be conscious after a fashion do not have language at all. But maybe there is some rapid change in the quality of consciousness as the toddler learns first to gesture and then to talk,

Halligan and Oakley talk of consciousness as a by-product of the brain’s various processing systems. By way of contrast, LWS-R of reference 9 suggests a data structure and processing arrangements dedicated to producing the stream of what it calls frames of consciousness. A consciousness module. A data structure which might well meet some of the objectives of the GWS, but for which I offered no purpose beyond generating the subjective experience. Which one might argue – as I already have above – was a bit extravagant: why go to all that bother for no apparent end? A difficulty which Halligan and Oakley try to duck with talk of by-products.

Figure 3

We are pointed to the AST (attention schema theory) of Graziano and his colleagues, to be found, for example, at reference 11. A theory which appears to be built on, inter alia, the long life, the persistence of folk theories of mind, plausible enough and long enough to become embedded as structures in real minds. Some of this is suggested in the snap from reference 11 above. With the result that our expectations about minds are reflected in our subjective experience of our own minds. Something which is perceived as being in charge, being in control – whatever the facts on the ground might actually be.

Figure 4

One relic of these folk theories is the way we talk of someone facing someone else down, perhaps a gang of unruly drunks, as if some power were emanating from the person doing the facing down, typically from the eyes. One example is the way that in many early paintings of the annunciation, for example that above by Crivelli, first noticed at reference 14, the Virgin Mary is impregnated by what appears to be a ray of strong light, emanating from either the Lord or one of his doves.

Differences in ancestry notwithstanding, this attention schema does not seem to be that far from the LWS-R, already mentioned.

We are also pointed to the illusionism of Frankish, to be found at reference 12. I had less sympathy with this one, and did not get further than the first few paragraphs.

References

Reference 1: Giving Up on Consciousness as the Ghost in the Machine – Peter W. Halligan and David A. Oakley – 2021. 

Reference 2: Chasing the rainbow: the non-conscious nature of being - Oakley, D. A., and Halligan, P.W. – 2017.

Reference 3: Consciousness evolved for the greater good, not just the self – Oakley and Halligan – 2015. A piece in New Scientist. Not traced.

Reference 4: Greatest myth of all - Peter W. Halligan and David A. Oakley – 2000. Available for a fee at https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16822653-700-greatest-myth-of-all/. Or for free if you poke around a bit.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/11/free-will-1.html. 

Reference 6: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/11/free-will-2.html. 

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/free-will-3.html. 

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis. With thanks to the NYRB for drawing my attention to this fungus.

Reference 9: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html. 

Reference 10: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/. 

Reference 11: Toward a standard model of consciousness: reconciling the attention schema, global workspace, higher-order thought, and illusionist theories – Graziano, M., Guterstam, A., Branden, J., and Wilterson, A. – 2019.

Reference 12: Illusionism as a theory of consciousness – Frankish, K. – 2016. A chap who is coy about his age.

Reference 13: https://aeon.co/. We are told Frankish contributes to this online magazine, inter alia, a collection of exotic bits and pieces. They say: ‘we are committed to big ideas, serious enquiry and a humane worldview. That’s it’.

Reference 14: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/05/ascolan-cucumber.html. With thanks to the National Gallery for the use of their picture.

Reference 15: Entangled life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our future – Merlin Sheldrake – 2020. A chap whose father was well known for his research into the paranormal and for his promotion of panpsychism. The usual small prize to readers who can say what that last is, in words of not more than three syllables, without asking Wikipedia.