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puzzle
of conscious
experience
WE ARE AT LAST PLUMBING
ONE OF THE MOST PROFOUND
MYSTERIES OF EXISTENCE.
BUT KNOWLEDGE OF
THE BRAIN ALONE MAY NOT
GET TO THE BOTTOM OF IT
BY DAVID J. CHALMERS
REN MAGRITTE, THE DOUBLE SECRET, 1927; 1997 C. HERSCOVICI, BRUSSELS; ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS),
mental life. You have vivid impressions of ness might be explained by a new kind of subject discriminate sensory stimuli and
the colors and shapes of the images. At theory. The full details of such a theory react to them appropriately? How does
the same time, you may be feeling some are still out of reach, but careful reasoning the brain integrate information from
NEW YORK; GIRAUDON/ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK (preceding pages); DUSAN PETRICIC (this page)
emotions and forming some thoughts. and some educated inferences can reveal many different sources and use this in-
Together such experiences make up con- formation to control behavior? How is it
sciousness: the subjective, inner life of PEERING into our inner that subjects can verbalize their internal
the mind. selves can be frustrating. states? Although all these questions are
For many years, consciousness was associated with consciousness, they all
shunned by researchers studying the concern the objective mechanisms of the
brain and the mind. The prevailing view cognitive system. Consequently, we have
was that science, which depends on ob- every reason to expect that continued
jectivity, could not accommodate some- work in cognitive psychology and neu-
thing as subjective as consciousness. The roscience will answer them.
behaviorist movement in psychology, The hard problem, in contrast, is the
dominant earlier in this century, concen- question of how physical processes in the
trated on external behavior and disal- brain give rise to subjective experience.
lowed any talk of internal mental pro- This puzzle involves the inner aspect of
cesses. Later, the rise of cognitive science thought and perception: the way things feel
focused attention on processes inside the for the subject. When we see, for exam-
head. Still, consciousness remained off- ple, we experience visual sensations, such
limits, fit only for late-night discussion as that of vivid blue. Or think of the inef-
over drinks. fable sound of a distant oboe, the agony
Over the past several years, however, of an intense pain, the sparkle of happi-
an increasing number of neuroscientists, ness or the meditative quality of a mo-
psychologists and philosophers have ment lost in thought. All are part of what
To illustrate the distinction, consider brain does not yield complete knowledge of conscious experience.
a thought experiment devised by the Aus-
tralian philosopher Frank Jackson. Sup- it is like to experience a color such as red. automaton have performed the same
pose that Mary, a neuroscientist in the It follows that there are facts about con- tasks just as well? These are questions
23rd century, is the worlds leading ex- scious experience that cannot be deduced that we would like a theory of conscious-
pert on the brain processes responsible for from physical facts about the functioning ness to answer.
color vision. But Mary has lived her of the brain.
whole life in a black-and-white room and Indeed, nobody knows why these Is Neuroscience Enough?
has never seen any other colors. She physical processes are accompanied by I AM NOT DENYING that conscious-
knows everything there is to know about conscious experience at all. Why is it that ness arises from the brain. We know, for
physical processes in the brain its biol- when our brains process light of a certain example, that the subjective experience
ogy, structure and function. This under- wavelength, we have an experience of of vision is closely linked to processes in
standing enables her to grasp all there is deep purple? Why do we have any expe- the visual cortex. It is the link itself that
to know about the easy problems: how rience at all? Could not an unconscious perplexes, however. Remarkably, sub-
the brain discriminates stimuli, integrates
THE AUTHOR
information and produces verbal reports. DAVID J. CHALMERS studied mathematics at Adelaide University in Australia and as a Rhodes
From her knowledge of color vision, she Scholar at the University of Oxford, but a fascination with consciousness led him into phi-
knows how color names correspond with losophy and cognitive science. He has a Ph.D. in these fields from Indiana University and is
wavelengths on the light spectrum. But currently in the department of philosophy at the University of Arizona. Chalmers is author
there is still something crucial about col- of The Conscious Mind and numerous articles. The book Explaining Consciousness: The Hard
or vision that Mary does not know: what Problem collects responses to the ideas in this article along with Chalmerss reply.
information expressed by the firing of the property must relate to the cells projective of prosopagnosia, the synaptic output of
neurons associated with color experience, field the pattern of synaptic connections such face neurons were blocked, the cells
at some level in the visual hierarchy. to neurons that code explicitly for related would still respond to the persons face,
It is not possible, then, to convey with concepts. Ultimately, these connections but there would be no associated meaning
words and ideas the exact nature of a extend to the motor output. For example, and, therefore, much less experience.
subjective experience. It is possible, neurons responding to a certain face might Therefore, a face would be seen but not
however, to convey a difference between be connected to ones expressing the name recognized as such.
subjective experiences to distinguish of the person whose face it is and to others Of course, groups of neurons can take
between red and orange, for example. This for her voice, memories involving her and so on new functions, allowing brains to learn
is possible because a difference in a high- new categories (including faces) and
level visual cortical area will still be associate new categories with existing
associated with a difference in the motor ones. Certain primitive associations, such
stages. The implication is that we can never as pain, are to some extent inborn but
explain to other people the subjective subsequently refined in life.
nature of any conscious experience, only Information may indeed be the key
its relation to other ones. concept, as Chalmers suspects. Greater
The other two questions, concerning certainty will require consideration of
why we have conscious experiences and highly parallel streams of information,
what leads to specific ones, appear more linked as are neurons in complex
difficult. Chalmers proposes that they networks. It would be useful to try to
require the introduction of experience as determine what features a neural network
a fundamental new feature of the world, KANIZSA TRIANGLE stimulates neurons that code (or some other such computational
relating to the ability of an organism to explicitly for such illusory contours. embodiment) must have to generate
process information. But which types of meaning. It is possible that such exercises
neuronal information produce conscious- on. Such associations among neurons must will suggest the neural basis of meaning.
ness? And what makes a certain type of be behaviorally useful in other words, The hard problem of consciousness may
information correspond to the blueness of consistent with feedback from the body and then appear in an entirely new light. It
blue, rather than the greenness of green? the external world. might even disappear.
Such problems seem as difficult as any in Meaning derives from the linkages
the study of consciousness. among these representations with others FRANCIS CRICK is Kieckhefer Distinguished
We prefer an alternative approach, spread throughout the cortical system in a Research Professor at the Salk Institute for
involving the concept of meaning. In what vast associational network, similar to a Biological Studies in San Diego. CHRISTOF
sense can neurons that explicitly code for a dictionary or a relational database. The KOCH is Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of
face be said to convey the meaning of a more diverse these connections, the richer Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at the
face to the rest of the brain? Such a the meaning. If, as in our previous example California Institute of Technology.
Objective Awareness
T H E N O T I O N may seem trivial. But as
defined here, awareness is objective and
physical, whereas consciousness is not.
Some refinements to the definition of
awareness are needed, in order to extend
the concept to animals and infants, which
cannot speak. But at least in familiar cas-
es, it is possible to see the rough outlines
of a psychophysical law: where there is
awareness, there is consciousness, and
vice versa.
To take this line of reasoning a step
further, consider the structure present in
the conscious experience. The experience
of a field of vision, for example, is a con-
stantly changing mosaic of colors, shapes
and patterns and as such has a detailed
geometric structure. The fact that we can
describe this structure, reach out in the di-
rection of many of its components and
perform other actions that depend on it
suggests that the structure corresponds di-
rectly to that of the information made
available in the brain through the neural
processes of objective awareness.
Similarly, our experiences of color
have an intrinsic three-dimensional struc-
ture that is mirrored in the structure of
information processes in the brains vi-
sual cortex. This structure is illustrated in
the color wheels and charts used by art-
ists. Colors are arranged in a systematic
pattern red to green on one axis, blue to
yellow on another, and black to white on
a third. Colors that are close to one an-
other on a color wheel are experienced as
similar [see illustration on page 100]. It
is extremely likely that they also corre-
spond to similar perceptual representa-
tions in the brain, as one part of a system
of complex three-dimensional coding
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
Because chips and neurons have the same function, they are ad absurdum of the original assumption that an artificial system
interchangeable, with the proper interfacing. Chips therefore can with identical organization and functioning has a different
replace neurons, producing a continuum of cases in which a conscious experience from that of a neural brain. Retraction of
successively larger proportion of neurons are replaced by chips. the assumption establishes the opposite: that systems with the
Along this continuum, the conscious experience of the system same organization have the same conscious experience. D.J.C.
Aspects of Information
A N A T U R A L H Y P O T H E S I S ensues.
Perhaps information, or at least some in-
formation, has two basic aspects: a phys-
ical one and an experiential one. This hy-
pothesis has the status of a fundamental
principle that might underlie the relation
between physical processes and experi- COLOR WHEEL arranges hues so that ones experienced as similar are closest. Nearby colors also
ence. Wherever we find conscious expe- correspond to similar perceptual representations in the brain.
rience, it exists as one aspect of an infor-
mation state, the other aspect of which is least two possible responses. First, we is truly fundamental, we might expect it
embedded in a physical process in the could constrain the fundamental laws so to be widespread. In any case, the choice
brain. This proposal needs to be fleshed that only some information has an expe- between these alternatives should depend
out to make a satisfying theory. But it fits riential aspect, perhaps depending on on which can be integrated into the most
nicely with the principles mentioned ear- how it is physically processed. Second, powerful theory.
lier systems with the same organization we might bite the bullet and allow that all Of course, such ideas may be all
will embody the same information, for information has an experiential aspect wrong. On the other hand, they might
example and it could explain numerous where there is complex information pro- evolve into a more powerful proposal
features of our conscious experience. cessing, there is complex experience, and that predicts the precise structure of our
The idea is at least compatible with where there is simple information pro- conscious experience from physical pro-
several others, such as physicist John A. cessing, there is simple experience. If this cesses in our brains. If this project suc-
Wheelers suggestion that information is is so, then even a thermostat might have ceeds, we will have good reason to accept
fundamental to the physics of the uni- experiences, although they would be the theory. If it fails, other avenues will
verse. The laws of physics might ulti- much simpler than even a basic color ex- be pursued, and alternative fundamental
mately be cast in informational terms, in perience, and there would certainly be no theories may be developed. In this way,
which case we would have a satisfying accompanying emotions or thoughts. we may one day resolve the greatest mys-
congruence between the constructs in This seems odd at first, but if experience tery of the mind. SA