The World Behind the World: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Limits of Science

Neuroscientist Hoel (The Revelations) serves up a challenging overview of the science of consciousness, exploring how the tension between “intrinsic” and “extrinsic” perspectives has shaped debate for millennia. Defining the intrinsic perspective as “the frame we take on when discussing the events that occur only within the mansions of our minds,” Hoel traces this strain of thinking from ancient Egypt, where inscriptions suggest people “lacked good language for the subtleties of the mind,” to modernist novels primarily concerned with characters’ feelings and thoughts. By contrast, the extrinsic perspective views the mind “as consisting of machinery, mechanisms, formal relationships,” and was pioneered by Galileo in a 1623 manifesto that argued science should focus on “what can be measured and counted.” Delving into current research on consciousness, the author discusses how inconclusive neuroimaging research attempting to match patterns of brain activity to specific mental states has thwarted proponents of the extrinsic view, and notes that scientists are studying whether measuring the brain’s response to electromagnetic stimulation might provide a falsifiable test of consciousness. The history intrigues, but the jargon-heavy discussions of contemporary neuroscience are hard to follow (“At the macroscale, the COPY = 0 is counterfactually dependent on α = 0”). The result is a mixed bag. (July)