While I found Revonsuo’s style engaging
and the subject matter fascinating — although I must admit to having a vested
interest in this type of consciousness research — I found myself somewhat
disappointed with the philosophical meat of Inner Presence. Revonsuo’s main
thesis concerns the development of a new metaphorical framework for
consciousness, the ‘world-simulation metaphor’ (p. 119), which, allegedly,
provides us with a new internalist conception of experience. However, I am
getting ahead of myself.

Revonsuo’s project, or at least his
intended project, is to provide an account of consciousness as a biological
phenomenon within the brain, and to go some way to unifying what has become a
melting pot of philosophical, psychological, neuroscientific and cognitive
scientific research — much of which, like ships passing in the night, fails to
receive significant, if any, recognition from the other respective disciplines.
Revonsuo’s view is that cognitive neuroscience is the vehicle for the empirical
study of consciousness, and that ‘it should be a biological research
problem after all’ (p. 9, original emphasis). This may or may not be true, but what
is admirable about Revonsuo’s book is that he is trying to take some account of
all these positions.

Chapter two, for example, has a
good section entitled ‘Basic Concepts of Consciousness’ which offers a clear
introductory explanation of some key concepts deployed in the consciousness
debate. That being said, even at this early stage Revonsuo gives particular
weight and overall significance to the concepts he intends to employ in a
fashion which is more assumption that vigorous justification. In this case I am
referring to ‘Presence’ and Revonsuo’s statement that it is ‘perhaps the most
fundamental feature of all the elements in phenomenal consciousness’ (p 33). While
I agree with the author that phenomenal experience does need to be occurent, which
is what he means by present: actually occurring, for it to have an impact on my
subjective, personal experience, that is not the same as the somewhat larger
claim Revonsuo makes that presence is the most fundamental feature of
conscious experience (a claim that I believe needs far more justification than
it receives). On the positive side chapter two does make some headway in
mapping the conceptual territory, as its title suggests, which would provide a
decent starting point for anyone interested in consciousness studies, but I
remain unconvinced that this apparent benefit outweighs the remainder of the
books quality.

The overly brief and hasty
dismissal of some alternative approaches to consciousness, in chapter eight, is
profoundly disappointing to say the least; to see robust philosophical
approaches dismissed within two to three pages never inspires confidence and,
as anyone who is even slightly familiar with the literature will tell you,
fails to do justices to the rich and vibrant theoretical approaches available.
There are also certain consequences to such brief rebuttals: the first being
that a two page account is often insufficient to even represent a given theory
accurately, let alone argue effectively against it. As a result, Revonsuo’s
account of the alternative theories trades accuracy for brevity, resulting in
the incorrect representation of certain approaches to the problem of
consciousness (in particular the section on HOT theories of consciousness is
inaccurate and conflates at least two variations of this position).
This, to the discerning eye, leaches the book of authority: why should the
reader have confidence in a thesis which misrepresents its opponents? While
this section is certainly laudable for its scope the lack of accuracy dictates
that its application is at best introductory, which is unfortunate as the
motivation behind such an endeavour is well founded but, it would seem, overly
ambitious.

Revonsuo’s positive thesis employs
dreams (and dreaming) as a model system for the exploration of phenomenal
consciousness, purporting to justify the employment of dreaming as a model
system (although perhaps not successfully) through the observation that
phenomenal consciousness is all there is in dreams. The central claim is that
the dreaming brain reveals phenomenal consciousness in a ‘very special, pure,
and isolated form’ (p. 75). Furthermore Revonsuo goes on to argue for the
following three theses:

1.      The
dreaming brain generates (or supports) phenomenal consciousness.

2.      Phenomenal
consciousness generated by the dreaming brain includes the full range of
phenomenal contents.

3.      Phenomenal
consciousness generated by the dreaming brain has similar overall form as
phenomenal consciousness during wakefulness.

Although I do not have the space in
a review to argue constructively against any of these theses (and not wanting
to fall foul of my own criticism that rebutting robust theories in a few pages
is poor practice — if indeed Revonsuo’s theory can be construed as such) it
seems to me that there are obvious problems with 2 and possibly 3. Take two,
for example: it can only be true if, prior to dreaming, the brain has had
access to the full range of phenomenal contents i.e. something already
experienced. I am appealing to the common sense assumption that it is impossible
to dream about totally unexperienced phenomenal contents. If I was unfortunate
enough to experience, say, monochrome vision (I see only in shades of black,
white and grey) then it should be fairly obvious, and uncontentious, to say
that I could not dream in color (See Frank Jackson’s seminal work on ‘What Mary
didn’t Know’, and the huge amount of accompanying literature) as I do not have
access to that particular branch of phenomenal content. Thesis two, then,
should be perhaps be more conservative and include the caveat that the
phenomenal concepts available to the dreaming brain are only those delivered by
experiences thus far enjoyed by the wakeful brain: the phenomenal content needs
to originate somewhere. If we accept this it seems to me that the dreaming
brain may indeed be an isolated form of phenomenal experience, but that it is
wholly reliant on the wakeful brain for the phenomenal contents it employs, and
thus not necessarily a good candidate as a model system. After all what use is
a model system of phenomenal consciousness that inherently has no, or almost
no, phenomenal content itself?    

Although I admit that the model of
the dreaming brain does isolate phenomenal consciousness viewed in a certain
light I am highly skeptical, and remain totally unconvinced in light of
Revonsuo’s arguments, that its application as a model is in any way useful. Our
only access to the dreaming brains of other people, in terms of phenomenal
consciousness, is via their reports, and, as Revonsuo admits — although he
argues in favour of the veracity of testimony as empirical data — these
reports are likely to be assailed by a range of extrinsic influences to do with
memory, interpretation and so on.

Whilst much contemporary opinion
subscribes to the view that the brain and consciousness are inexorably tied
together, although there are many diverse theories suggesting how this might be
explained, and that consciousness is, somehow, reducible to the brain, Revonsuo’s
metaphorical contribution to the debate seems to be wholly odd. His intention
is to build on his dream model to construct a world-simulation metaphor that ‘captures
the essential features of the phenomenon [consciousness] in a single,
captivating picture’ (p. 99), his picture being something akin to virtual
reality. Is he successful? Personally I think not. Although Revonsuo’s book
does highlight some good points — for example that, thus far, empirical
research has not achieved the reconstruction of phenomenal consciousness via
the various scans and investigative resources, aimed at that brain, it has at
its disposal — it seems to me too fanciful and problematic to gain real
purchase within the contemporary philosophical debate. I have, the reader will
notice, restricted myself to the ‘philosophical’ debate as I am a philosopher
(or philosopher in training) and not a cognitive neuroscientist nor a
psychologist, but I think that any theory that builds its explanatory force on
the foundation of dream models is going to experience problems in gaining general
acceptance, especially if you consider that the information we have about them
is totally reliant on the testimony of the dreamer.

On the whole although the style and
tone were engaging I found the brevity of what I took to be key discussions
disappointing. The metaphor while innovative remains inadequate, and lacks, in
my opinion, decent philosophical purchase. There are some positive elements to
Revonsuo’s book, but these are, for me, overshadowed by the oddity of the
positive thesis, and the lack of accuracy and depth on the dismissal of the
alternatives. This book is an ambitious project to be sure, but one which I
find unconvincing and, at times, incomplete.

 

© 2006 Nigel Leary

 

Nigel Leary is currently studying
for a PhD at the University of Birmingham, working on the AHRC funded
Metaphysics of Science Project. Broadly speaking his area of research is
Natural Kinds as they appears both in post-Kripkean philosophy of language and
in recent work in the philosophy of science and the metaphysics of laws. More
specifically his research is focused on a metaphysics of mind question of
whether Natural Kinds can be applied in any useful fashion to the problem of
mental causation, and his intention is to argue that the mental can be causally
efficacious.

Categories: Psychology, Philosophical