In two minds

Recently I accomplished a long-term goal by finally articulating what I think free will really is. In my view, it means the capacity for mind over matter : for our thoughts, the things we subjectively experience, to change our behaviour and thus give us a limited measure of mental control over the external, objective world. I see consciousness as a sort of field-like thing, highly localised to within our own brain, and only able to affect (and be affected by) the material that gave rise to it. This then prevents any sort of mysticism, albeit while keeping consciousness itself thoroughly mysterious.

Thanks to a comment on that post, I started pondering my way down a rabbit-hole of implications as to what this view might mean. I'll give a shout-out here to this very nice blog : from what I've seen, I disagree with much of it but find it hugely interesting and provocative. So now I'm wondering if, though the idea of field consciousness seems sound enough in itself, the same can be said for its consequences.

What started to nag at me was the idea of split brain memories. This is the bizarre finding that some animals appear to store and access memories in different sides of the brain, depending on how they were formed : e.g. an animal seeing something with one eye responds differently than the case of seeing it with the other eye. And this phenomenon occurs in humans too. When certain connections between the two hemispheres are severed (as is occasionally done through medical procedures to treat severe epilepsy), patients behave as though they have two distinct minds, with one side trying to physically stop the other from doing things. In humans this is . Example 1 :

When Sperry and Gazzaniga presented stimuli to the right visual field (processed by the speaking left hemisphere), the patient responded normally. However, when stimuli were presented to the left visual field (processed by the mute right hemisphere), the patient said he saw nothing. Yet his left hand would draw the image shown. When asked why his left hand did that, the patient looked baffled, and responded that he had no idea.

In some animals a similar condition is perfectly normal. Example 2 (from "Other Minds", which I briefly review here) :

The pigeons were trained to do a simple task with one eye masked, then each pigeon was tested on the same task while being forced to use the other eye. In a study using nine birds, eight of them did not show any "inter-ocular transfer" at all. What seemed to be a skill learned by the whole bird was in fact available to only half the bird; the other half had no idea.

And it's not a straightforward binary condition either. Example 3 (also from "Other Minds") :

An octopus trained on a visual task using just one eye initially only remembered the task when tested with the same eye. With extended training, they could perform the task using the other eye. The octopuses were unlike pigeons in that some information did get across; they were unlike us in that it did not get across easily... The special kind of mental fragmentation seen in split-brain humans seems to be a routine part of many animals' life.

It's also worth recalling blindsight, when visual information is processed only subconsciously; reverse blindsight, when no subconscious processing is applied to the received images such that they simply make no sense, like being unable to read text but applied to everything; and flatworms, who can apparently literally eat memories.

So what's going on here ? Does this point towards an even more materialistic interpretation of consciousness, where it's strictly limited to matter over mind and never the other way around ? Naively, I would think that if consciousness is any sort of field, be that generated by the brain or only received by it, it ought to be able to convey information throughout itself. It seems extremely strange to say that it could only access information with such extreme locality; that part of the field would know things that the rest didn't.

Of course, idealism has no problem with this since everything is imaginary anyway. Illusionism denies consciousness exists, so again, no problem. Compatibility with panpsychism is harder to determine, since it's not obvious how consciousness is combined from its constituent atoms. But it definitely does appear to be a problem for any dualistic field theory of consciousness, be that generated or received by the brain.

However, we also know about blindsight. And as I've suggested, this may not be so uncommon - we all run on autopilot sometimes, lost in thought but for the most part still managing to avoid bumping into tractors and stray hippos. So our brain is definitely capable of sophisticated data processing without conscious intervention. Maybe, then, the physical splitting of the brain simply prevents certain memories from reaching the consciousness at all, so that it's handled by the brain's other faculties that don't require awareness. After all, we're not exactly fully aware of all the signals our brain sends out : we don't feel nerve impulses sent to our arms or lungs or feet, yet they all manage to get by perfectly well without is. 

This makes it at least conceivable that someone could draw something they genuinely weren't aware of, without invaliding conscious field theory (if I may give it an unnecessarily grandiose title) at all. I think this idea would depend on how far it can be pushed - could someone solve differential equations without being aware of them ? A bigger and more fundamental problem might be that something has to make a choice : part of the brain has to decide whether or not to commence drawing, and to be unaware that this choice was made seems extremely strange. The part of the brain that enacts drawing must furthermore understand the instruction to draw... all in all, it would have to behave suspiciously similarly to someone who was fully conscious themselves.

Of course, splitting the brain could just outright split the consciousness. This doesn't invalidate its field nature though : the two halves of the brain would then either generate (or a receive) an additional consciousness to the original state, with the original also being changed by the change of its receiver/generator equipment. And, since they're split, each consciousness will only ever report the experience of being one person, by definition, regardless of whether it does so in writing or speech. So an individual will never feel like they're two people, even if there are multiple consciousnesses coexisting inside their singular head.

This seems perfectly reasonable in cases of medical intervention, but bizarre in the animals that are like this anyway : why should a pigeon have multiple awarenesses ? Of course it might, but this doesn't feel very plausible.

A third possibility relates to how consciousness, in this model, interacts with the external world depends on the exact nature of its receiver/generator. The conscious field is mediated by the brain, so that if the brain is damaged then the field can't interact with the external world in the same way : even if the connections to the arms, hands etc. are themselves undamaged. In this interpretation the field itself would be fine, with no change in awareness or memory, just unable to control the body as it did previously. Likewise, an animal could exist in this state perfectly naturally, without surgical intervention or multiple consciousness in its head, just unable to control itself as a more naïve interpretation would expect. It would be a bit like being left-handed, only taken to an extreme : not unwilling or unaware of what was going on, but simply unable to express a particular memory or perception.

This would seem to be unsatisfyingly strange and quite unprovable, however, it is perhaps not as weird as it might first appear. Recall reverse blindsight, where those restored to sight after a long absence are unable to "read" the world around them, to perceive it but not assign anything any meaning. Or foreign accent syndrome, or dyslexia - it is quite possible to perceive something, to be aware of it, and not understand it, and thus not be able to communicate (i.e.) express it. The major difference being that in those situations people are generally aware of the difficulty.

In short, explanations could be :

• The brain processes some information without it ever reaching the conscious mind. The brain would have to receive external information, decide on a course of action, and then enact it all without conscious intervention. To some extent it can do this anyway, but it raises the question of how far this can go - and of course, ultimately whether consciousness is really required at all.
• Multiple consciousness coexist alongside one another. Each is singular and has access (usually) to the same basic information, but each can only perceive itself. This would be radically at odds with how we normally perceive ourselves, and one wonders why a pigeon would need to have multiple minds - and why I can't let a secondary consciousness take over when I'm bored.
• There is only one conscious field and it is always privy to the memories of the entire brain, but since the field's interaction is governed by the material substance of the brain, its capabilities can be changed in surprising ways. The mind may be perfectly aware of what's going on but unable to express itself due to the limitations of the mediating brain.

I think it fair to admit, though, that while this phenomenon certainly doesn't rule out a consciousness as a field, it does lend credence to a more materialist, illusionist perspective : passive consciousness. Either way, it points to a clear separation of consciousness and memory. Now I pointed that out in the original post, but I think this still leaves a distinct... uneasiness. Yes, there's more to identity than memory. But if I lose all my memories, can I really still call myself the same person ? If my "soul", for want of a better word, need not even be aware of anything I've ever done, in what sense is it really "mine" ?

I don't know. For my part this isn't nearly enough to persuade me that illusionism is anything other than mad. But consciousness does seem, at the very least, to be even stranger than we give it credit for - and that's saying something.