Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 16 Number 2, August 2015
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Torey, Zoltan. The Conscious Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. (The MIT Press essential knowledge series). 191 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-52710-1 (softcover).
Reviewed by
Valparaiso University
This book series reminds me of another publisher series from another time: the Penguin Classics series, which was meant to provide easily-accessible, easily-understood books on the classics of literature to the populace, especially those who commuted to work by train or bus and had reading time on their hands on a daily basis. The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series is built on that same concept, except that it synthesizes specialized and sometimes complex subject matter for everyday readers, and engages the reader in critical topics that often seem out-of-reach or overly technical, in a pocket-sized, beautifully produced book.
The topic of this particular tome is the conscious mind, which could fill up many books and volumes of series with complex and exhaustive arguments. The author has concentrated current knowledge on this subject into a model that accounts for the human story and the breakthroughs in consciousness, mind, and language. It is based on his book The crucible of consciousness (1999, Oxford University Press; 2009, MIT Press). Our feeling of an inner self, our sense of free will, and our physical mind are all areas that are briefly touched upon. After providing a background on the identity of consciousness, awareness, and human evolution, the author focuses on a number of “givens” in the field:
the idea that human consciousness is not a unitary phenomenon but a composite process effect (chapter 2)
language is not a system of animal communication, but an exclusively human (off-line) brain response (chapter 3 and 4)
the move from homo erectus to homo sapiens was one of reorganization within the brain of the human infant, not a matter of increasing brain size. This reorganization focused upon speech and motor abilities and empowered the brain to manage itself (chapter 3)
how language developed (chapter 4-7)
the development of the human mind (chapter 8)
introspection and self-deception (chapter 9)
free will is the conscious awareness of the human mind’s active role in the brainstem’s decision-making, not the work of an uncaused causal agent (chapter 10)
the self is not a social construct or agent that dwells within (chapter 11)
some of the current arguments related to these “givens” (chapter 12), and
the unfolded singularity (or cosmic system) that generated us, also constrains us to seek answers that are internal to it (chapter 13).
Quite a bit is packed into this 191-page book, and even given the directness and simplicity that the author tries hard to instill into this topic, I still felt quite stupid trying to understand exactly what the current research on the conscious mind actually entails. I did find it interesting that all my internal thoughts and meditations on my own humanity, existence, and self were just shooting neurons and thoughts being bounced around between my brain and my brainstem. Guess that kind of knocks any kind of bigger deity or man’s religions right off their foundations. Given that, I can only say that this is the kind of book that one has to come to with an openness and somewhat scientific background in order to truly understand what is being discussed.