Your Brain and You

On July 7, 2012 a “prominent international group” of brain scientists issued The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness. The full document has four paragraphs of justification, leading to the declaration itself, which follows.

We declare the following: “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. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess the neurological substrates.”

Back in the 90’s I published a paper under the title “Some Nonhuman Animals Can Have Pains in a Morally Relevant Sense”. (In case you’re wondering, that view had been denied by Peter Carruthers in a paper in a top tier journal.) So, not surprisingly, I am quite sympathetic to the sense of this declaration.

I also approve of the declaration’s prioritizing of neurological similarities over behavior. The philosophy textbook presentation of the supposedly best reason for thinking that other people have minds goes like this:

1. When I behave in certain ways, I have accompanying thoughts and feelings.

2. Other people behave in ways similar to me. Therefore, very probably,

3.  Other people have accompanying thoughts and feelings that are similar to mine.

This argument is often criticized as very weak. Part of my paper’s argument was that we have a much better reason for thinking our fellows have minds, namely:

1. Stimulation of my sense organs (e.g., being stuck with a pin) causes me to have sensations (e.g., a pain).

2. Other people are constructed very much like me. Therefore, very probably,

3. Stimulation of other people in similar ways causes them to have sensations similar to mine.

If one approaches the matter in this second way, it is natural to extend the argument to nonhuman animals to the extent that they are found to be constructed like us. This is the main line of approach in the Cambridge Declaration (although some of the lead-up paragraphs also sound like the first argument).

In sum, I am inclined to accept the sense of the Cambridge Declaration, and to agree that the evidence and reasoning presented make its stand a reasonable one.

But still, there is something peculiar about this Declaration, even aside from its being unusual for academic conferences to issue position statements. The question is, Why? Just what is odd about it?

One of the Declaration’s authors, Christoph Koch, recently gave an interview on the radio. (The link is to the written transcript.) In it, he characterizes fMRI scans as a “very blunt” instrument. The point is that the smallest region that can be resolved by an fMRI scan contains about half a million neurons, some of which may be firing quite actively while others are hardly firing at all. So, our scanning techniques do not tell us what neural firing patterns occur, but only where there are some highly active neurons.

Ignorance of neural patterns is relevant here. Another point that Koch makes in the interview is that there are many neurons – about three quarters of what you have – in the cerebellum. Damage to this part of the brain disrupts smooth and finely tuned movements, such as are required for dancing, rock climbing and speech, but has little or no effect on consciousness.

So, it is not just many neurons’ being active, or there being a complex system of neural activations of some kind or other that brings about consciousness. It is some particular kind of complexity, some particular kind of pattern in neural activations.

I am optimistic. I think that some day we will figure out just what kind of patterned activity in neurons causes consciousness. But it is clear that we do not now know what kind of neural activity is required.

The peculiarity of the Cambridge Declaration, then, is that it seems to be getting ahead of our actual evidence, yet it was signed by members of a group who must be in the best position to be acutely aware of that fact. Of course, ‘not appear[ing] to preclude’ consciousness in nonhuman animals is a very weak and guarded formulation. The remainder of the declaration, however, is more positively committal.

The best kind of argument for consciousness in nonhuman animals would go like this:

1. Neural activity patterns of type X cause consciousness in us.

2. Certain nonhuman animals have neural activity patterns of type X. Therefore, very likely,

3. Those nonhuman animals have consciousness.

Since we do not now know how to fill in the “X”, we cannot now give this best kind of argument. The signers of the Declaration must know this.

[The radio interviewer is Steve Paulson, and the date is August 22, 2012. The paper of mine referred to above is in Biology and Philosophy (1997), v.12:51-71. Peter Carruthers’ paper is “Brute Experience” in The Journal of Philosophy, (1989) v.86:258-269.]

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2012 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Brain scans, consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.