A Universe of Consciousness

by Giulio Tononi and Gerald M. Edelman

Book Overview

In A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman builds on the radical ideas he introduced in his monumental trilogy-Neural Darwinism, Topobiology, and The Remembered Present-to present for the first time an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness. He and the neurobiolgist Giulio Tononi show how they use ingenious technology to detect the most minute brain currents and to identify the specific brain waves that correlate with particular...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465013775
• ISBN13: 9780465013777
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A scientific explanation of consciousness and its properties

This is a very important book. Although the authors recognize that there is still awfully much tot do, their analyses and hypotheses are a big step forward in our understanding of consciousness.It is certainly not an easy book. One should have a basic knowledge of the constitution and the working of the brain.I, personally, would have liked more concrete examples, like those for instance in the book of C.J. Lumsden and E.O. Wilson 'Promethean Fire'.This book doesn't explain how consciousness arises, but what it is (properties) and how it works.Consciousness is not a thing or a property, but a process (of neural interactions).One of the reviewers here compares consciousness to a car. But a car is a thing, not a process.Consciousness is a private, integrated, coherent, differentiated, informative, continually changing process.The authors make also the opportune distinction between primary (animal, unconscious) and higher-order consciousness (the ability to be conscious of being conscious).Crucial for the authors are re-entrant interactions, degeneracy (recategorical memory), and a part of the brain 'the dynamic core' (a subset of neuronal groups responsible for consciousness).The dynamic core provides then a rationale for distinguishing conscious processes from unconscious ones (e.g. the circuits that regulate blood pressure).This book shows clearly that the brain is not a computer and that it doesn't work as a computer program or algorithm.It has also very important philisophical consequences, which the authors summarize as follows: being is prior to describing, selection is prior to logic and doing is prior to understanding.I also fully agree with the authors that Darwin's theory is the most ideologically significant scientific theory ever written.Although this book is rather technical, it should not be missed by those interested in the real nature of the conscious process.I should also recommend the work of V. Ramachandran 'Ghosts in the Brain', for its multiple examples of (un)conscious behaviour and its philosphical implications (the body/mind problem).

Breaks new ground

The title quotes A. Damasio from the front cover. In my view Gerald Edelman has the best theory of consciousness there is. It is strongly grounded in biology, evolution, the nature of the brain and nervous system. Firstly, consciousness is not a thing, it's a process. Consciousness is private, unified, and informative. It is private because no two are alike and its workings are dependent on its own history. It is unified or integrated because it arises from a variety of sources, e.g. the different senses and a body which provides a built-in value system. The unified integration is the result of global, reciprocal mappings among diverse groups of neurons. It is informative and highly differentiated because of these various sources. Conscious awareness arises from a lot of unconscious processing, along the lines of information theory (a branch of mathematics) with importance to the organism driving what is selected. Edelman holds there are two levels of consciousness -- primary and higher-order. The primary level generates a mental scene with much diverse information for the purpose of directing present or near-term behaviour. It includes perceptual categorization, but no sense of self or use of language. Other animals have it, too. Higher-consciousness is built atop the primary level, includes a sense of self, awareness of a past and future, and language capability. It is supported by the evolutionary newer structures of the brain. It gets pretty technical at times. There is quite a bit about the brain and neural processes. Information theory is introduced. An earlier book, The Remembered Present, might be a better introduction to his work. In any case, A Universe of Consciousness is founded on his previous works, but adds a lot more. It is a mighty blend of a firm empirical ground and a highly integrated and coherent theory.

Dawn of a new era

This book marks the end of many thousand years of theological, philosophical, and psychological speculations about man's soul. In three previous books Edelman has laid the foundation of his own theory of the human mind. Now, together with his colleague at the Neurosciences Institute in California, Giulio Tononi, he offers a neat and very readable survey of his ideas. Edelman has laid the foundation of a scientific, biological approach to the study of consciousness, the mind. And we might add, the soul. What used to be looked upon as a complete mystery is now becoming amenable to purely scientific inquiry. In other words, the mental can, at long last, be be treated in biological, concretely material and quantitative terms. The authors' presentation of their complex subject is admirably clear. Each of the six main parts is introduced by an overview which places it in a wider perspective. Also, each of the seventeen fairly short chapters is introduced by a brief summary. The reader can thus start by getting a broad idea of what the authors are aiming at, and is placed in a position to read the individual chapters with full attention to the often intricate details. Edelman's first lauched his basic ideas in his1987 book Neural Darwinism, where he applied Darwin's revolutionary theory of Natural Selection, not only to the formation and evolution of species, but also to the individual cells in the brain. The development of the brain cells are of course under general genetic control. The genes themselves, naturally, have developed as a result of the natural selection of the organism which has carried them through thousands or millions of generations. Darwin's Natural selection replaced former mentalistic or theological ideas, involving a purposeful Mind, by a thoroughly scientific explanation in terms of a random variation subjected to selection by means of the survival and continued reproduction of those best fitted to the environment in which the organism happened to live. Neural Darwinism extends this idea to the population of billions of neurons, and their billions of billions of connections with other cells. The brain adapts to the kinds of operations it sets going And just as Darwin's theory dispensed with the philosophically unacceptable idea of a Purposeful Mind giving rise to the successive evolutionary variations of species, Edelman's idea dispenses with the equally unacceptable idea of a kind of General Director inside the brain. The British philosopher Gilbert Ryle, in 1947, somewhat flippantly named this entity "The Ghost in the Machine". Behaviorist psychologists, realizing that the Ghost could not be observed, decided to use only objectively observable behavior in order to find out the secrets of what they, in turn, called "The Black Box". Without much success. Edelman goes much further than just outlining his theory. He and Tononi subject it to experimental tests. First, they utilise recent techniques for registering in detail th

Neural Darwinism reaching out to the mind.

This new volume provides a biologically-based perspective on consciousness. Although Edelman & Tononi may often appear to lead the reader into believing that a `selector' is needed in order for one to choose between the many alternative possible behaviours that one might act out, there is no room for a Humunculus (the little man inside the man `seeing' solutions) of any sort here. For those unfamiliar with Edelman's previous writings (all of which I would recommend) there are plenty quotes from his earlier self, the principle idea here being a logical extension of his thesis developed over the last 20 yrs. Coming clean right from the start, the data acquired from introspection is rejected as a technique to be subjected to any robust empirical analysis, but consciousness is here identified not solely with brain states/activity (there is a clear need for interactions with others and the world `out there') - the authors putting forward a model of consciousness as being a `particular kind of brain process'; unified/integrated, yet complex/differentiated.The early parts of the book discuss the `impasse' reached by many philosophers in their attempts to explain the `mind-body' problem whilst rejecting both strong dualist and reductionist positions: "..consciousness requires the activity of specific neuronal substrates .......... but is itself a process, not an object". There is a clear appeal to holistic thinking here (`the whole is greater than the sum of its parts') - but the message is more subtle. What Edelman & Tononi are pointing out is that, still in need of explanation is the fact that although the contents of consciousness change continually, its possessor remains continuous. The problem of how one discriminates between our vast repertoire of conscious states (and how one is `selected' for experience in real time from this pool) is the main evolutionary question being addressed. Assumptions are not ignored (reflexes are allowed to operate in certain circumstances), but emphasis is placed upon the integration function of the human brain, rather than the clearly identified anatomical segregations long known to exist. For example, there have been at least 36 different visual areas reported in primate brain, each linked by more than 300 connection/projection pathways, 80% of which have recurrent-colateral or re-entrant connections. These latter findings are the focus of Edelman's developing theory of consciousness. For a long time now, many researchers have come to believe that distinct, distributed patterns of neuronal firing give rise to the integration of perceptual and motor processes - but how such patterns are strengthened to provide routinised behaviour and expertise remains unclear. The data presented with respect to the detailed nerve receptor-level changes re growth and the known pharmacological effects of certain natural transmitter substances and drugs are welcome and well written for the la