Minds, Brains and Science

John Searle’s Minds, Brains and Science is a collection of the six Reith Lectures that he gave in 1984 on the relation between our conscious, meaningful, phenomenal experiences and the backdrop of nonconscious, meaningless, objective physical reality against which all of the former inevitably play out. Essentially, the problem is this: We experience things, but everywhere else we look in the universe, we do not see experiences. How do we explain this seemingly trivial fact and make consciousness fit in with everything else we know?

This is inevitably a question that he is unable to provide a clear answer for, but, nonetheless, this was a successful, and worthwhile, work. The lectures were intended for a lay audience, so they are largely non-technical, but as far as I can tell, none of the necessary content was lost. Searle is still able to explicate each of the sub-problems and arguments very well. He manages to minimize caricaturing his opponents while simultaneously keeping the focus on what, he thinks, are the real issues. All the while, he manages to introduce several new ideas. His remarks on the social sciences and the freedom of the will are especially noteworthy.

In its entirety, the read comes down to less than a hundred pages, making it a perfect introduction to the problem at large. At the same time, it retains enough depth to catch the eye of even the most weathered philosopher-scientist—and for that, I give it five out of five stars.

Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist

Christof Koch’s autobiographical work Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist is just that: his confessions relating to his career, and why he does what he does. I’m going to keep this review short, since this book is not primarily about his own theories. Instead, he takes this book as a chance for him to drop his professional guise and explain why, deep down, he believes certain facts about the universe to be the way that they are. He does not pretend to have pristine motives, or that he only ever disagrees with other researchers based purely on an objective, reflective foundation. He states very clearly his most fundamental beliefs about the topic at hand. He talks, quite honestly, about his lifelong struggle with religion, about his relationship with Francis Crick, about his love of dogs—about anything and everything that he thinks is relevant to, as before, why he does what he does.

For anyone fed up with the sterility and impersonal nature of research on consciousness, this will be a long-needed breath of fresh air. It will be especially useful, I think, for those partaking, or aspiring to partake, in the great quest for consciousness themselves. In particular for those still aspiring, it may be nice to see, explicitly, that a larger-than-life researcher, decades into his own quest, still has some of the same doubts and moments of personal struggle that you may be faced with ever too frequently. Of note, this same researcher who spent 30 some years of life searching for a truly “reductive” explanation of consciousness endorses in this book, quite clearly, property dualism. Take that as you will.

Five out of five stars, one of my new personal favorites. Be sure to check out the cover art, it’s quite impressive.

Consciousness is…

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable … Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

Thomas Nagel, in his paper “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”