Christof Koch (Hachette UK; Basic Books (US))
A FEW weeks ago, during a journey on the Eurostar, I started reading a new book about consciousness. I had barely begun when the man sitting opposite asked about it. He told me – a consequence perhaps of the unique way that train travel can create short yet oddly close friendships – that, after a near-death experience, he became interested in the mind.
He asked if I knew what consciousness was, and I said I had no idea – quoting instead a line I had heard early in my studies of philosophy about “awareness of awareness”. I added, embarrassed by his recognition of this formulation, that I hoped to find out and would report back.
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I am happy to say that after reading Then I Am Myself the World: What consciousness is and how to expand it by neuroscientist Christof Koch, I feel somewhat closer to the first of these aims.
Koch, with his wide-ranging knowledge of neuroscience, physics, computer science and psychology, explains his view of what consciousness is, relying on metaphors that elucidate complex ideas such as computational functionalism and one of the leading hypotheses about consciousness, integrated information theory (IIT). In fact, the two form the opposition that creates a foundation for the book.
Functionalism, championed by many of the wealthy and powerful who make up Silicon Valley and those who research artificial intelligence, sees consciousness only in terms of outputs. That idea is at the heart of another leading hypothesis, global neuronal workspace theory, says Koch. If AI successfully imitates a conscious being by the way it responds to questions (inputs), it is conscious.
IIT, by contrast, focuses on the ability of an entity to create change, to be an agent with causal power, and also on the way information is stored within that entity. In Koch’s opinion, AI has little or no causal power – only the imitation of it. So while these tools can mimic how humans speak and interact, they aren’t agents of change and therefore aren’t conscious.
Koch writes: “Consciousness is the launching pad for everything else – not its physical substrate, the brain. This starting point is what makes [IIT] so different from contemporary theories that start with the brain and then seek to squeeze the juice of consciousness from it using computational functionalism.”
Simulating consciousness, then, no more produces consciousness than simulating gravity produces gravity’s raw causal powers, he says. This view may be unfortunate for AI-obsessed investors, but is plausible despite the billions weighing against it.
Koch’s own focus has been on understanding what he calls the neural correlates of consciousness – the biological mechanisms that underlie it. To date, these have proved elusive, though the possibility that they exist drives his arguments.
Yet despite the effectiveness of Koch’s arguments and the evidence he gives to support his views, at times he seems guilty of the conceptual biases he notes in others. For example, he dismisses philosophy as a field that moves too slowly without approaching consensus on such important questions as how to define the mind. As a recovering philosopher, I sympathise, but believe that view is unwarranted.
Koch also makes contentious claims about psychedelic drugs, like LSD and psilocybin. He argues that they lead to expanded consciousness, much like religious rites or the near-death experience of my train companion. Despite Koch’s clear and impassioned defence of these claims, I found them unconvincing, and it is around these sections that his writing becomes a bit over the top.
Nonetheless, Then I Am Myself the World is an impressive and sometimes exuberant work, showcasing decades of his research – and that of others – that has effectively bridged many fields to lead to a cohesive view of the human mind. If I ever see my train companion again, I hope to more fully answer his questions.
Jonathan R. Goodman is a writer and an interdisciplinary researcher at Darwin College, Cambridge, and at Cambridge Public Health
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