There's a lot going on in your brain that you aren't aware of. Enough thinking to accomodate a second 'person'?
Psychology experiments give us a good reason to think that there are multiple streams of thought going on in our minds. For example the classic experiment where the brain stem is cut, separating the right and left hemisphere, demonstrates that the two sides of the brain can continue to function and perform plenty of tasks without contact between the two. The left side of the brain is clearly conscious in these cases and can carry out a conversation on its own. The right hemisphere is a less familiar beast as it lacks the ability to speak but it can process images and do spatial tasks similar to before. If you are willing to admit those who can’t speak as conscious, then you could reasonably say that each hemisphere was a largely separate consciousness after such a cut. Of course, in normal brains, these two streams are intimately linked, sharing lots of information about language and images back and forth, making any boundary invisible.
This lovely video demonstrates the above:
Might a normally functioning brain have a similar split to this one – one which we don’t even notice? We commonly talk about our ‘subconscious,’ and infer its existence from conclusions that come to us on topic we have never contemplated consciously. Is it possible that this ‘subconscious’ is another stream of consciousness having a similar experience of life to us, the ‘conscious’ part? I don’t see why not. Indulge me in some speculation.
Our subconscious probably exists in order to make it easier for our conscious mind to deceive others. As an example, if you are befriending someone powerful you otherwise don’t like because you are planning to take advantage of their power, that is something you might not want to give away to them. However, if your conscious mind had to decide whether to befriend them in the first place by calculating how useful they would be in the future, it would be very aware of the ploy it was trying to pull and that knowledge would leak through in what you said and how you behaved. In the arms race between deceivers and those trying to catch them out, there would have to come a point where the best and perhaps only remaining strategy for deceivers was to believe their own lies. If your conscious mind really believes that it likes this person and has no intention to exploit them, and it is the part controlling your signalling behaviour, then there’s no way to catch the deceiver at their game! Evolution would then could build a mind that is split into two decision makers, with our conscious part thinking mostly nice things, and the subconscious sitting to the side doing its ‘dirty thinking’ and passing on instructions. “Be helpful to this (hot) woman.” “Of course you love Jazz (just like these high status people do).” “Be helpful, (because people are watching).” All the while the self-serving motivations for our actions are hidden from us so that we are at no risk of giving away our true intentions. If ever our behaviour seems peculiar to our conscious mind, there’s no problem, because as shown in that video above we are brilliant rationalisers who are always able to explain away our own self-serving behaviour.
How sophisticated would this subconscious have to be to serve its role? At a first glance, it would have to be pretty smart! We need this subconscious to process almost the same information that comes in to us, scour it for useful bits, and then processing it into simple impulses it can send to its conscious counterpart. Unless most of this processing is being done by the conscious with occasional memos sent down to the subconscious for its consideration, then the subconscious would need the broad range of skills that our conscious minds need - language, spacial and visual skills, planning, social awareness, etc. In this possible design at least the subconscious is an incredibly Machiavellian mirror of ourselves, doing the thinking we pure beings can’t do.
There are problems with this approach though: our subconscious might be a dumb rule follower (people = act nice) rather than a smart mind that processes each individual situation on its merits; or it could be outsourcing most of its ‘thinking’ to other parts of the brain and just piecing together simple little bits of information it receives without having an ‘enunciated’ stream of thoughts. How might we detect the level of sophistication of our subconscious? To test whether it is an unsophisticated rule follower you would hand it ever more compliated calculations to make and see how good it is at determining what is in its carriers self interest. If it is easily tricked into sending us bad advice when there are conflicting issues it has to weigh up, that would be an indication we have a rule follower. If, on the other hand, it is able to adapt to new and unusual circumstances easily and always produce a sensible result, that is evidence for a smarter mind.
As for how aware of itself the subconscious would be, and how much information processing it would need to do, I have no idea, nor do I know how this could be tested. So over to you to help me think of some experiments!
UPDATE: Robin Hanson proposes that the image and action parts of the brain are more integrated and different triggers activate different patterns of thought.
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September 4, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Robert Wiblin
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/902/4
“For many years, researchers thought that the division of labor in the brain, known as cerebral lateralization, was unique to humans. But recent research has shown that such lateralization is actually pervasive in vertebrates. A leading theory suggests that the attribute leads to faster, more accurate problem-solving. The theory holds true for minnows–the ones whose brains are lateralized are better at catching shrimp while simultaneously keeping an eye out for predators–but many other species haven’t been tested.”
September 4, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Robert Wiblin
Here is a paper to get started researching this:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2440575
“The unconscious mind is still viewed by many psychological scientists as the shadow of a “real” conscious mind, though there now exists substantial evidence that the unconscious is not identifiably less flexible, complex, controlling, deliberative, or action-oriented than is its counterpart. This “conscious-centric” bias is due in part to the operational definition within cognitive psychology that equates unconscious with subliminal. We review the evidence challenging this restricted view of the unconscious emerging from contemporary social cognition research, which has traditionally defined the unconscious in terms of its unintentional nature; this research has demonstrated the existence of several independent unconscious behavioral guidance systems: perceptual, evaluative, and motivational. From this perspective, it is concluded that in both phylogeny and ontogeny, actions of an unconscious mind precede the arrival of a conscious mind—that action precedes reflection.”
September 7, 2009 at 2:23 am
Robin Hanson
That second link you gave is great. It suggests the unconscious is quite smart.
September 17, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Jordan
I think its more accurate here to think not in terms of the conscious and unconscious, but in terms of which processes in your brain get access to the speech centres.
I would guess the “right-brain self” of the gentleman in the video would be perfectly sophisticated and intelligent, better at some tasks than the “left brain self” and worse than others based on the various specialised processing areas. It would probably also be “concious”, in the sense of self-aware – it would have a sufficiently reflexive theory of mind, in the way most animals do not (e.g. if you put them in front of mirrors, they do not deduce that their reflection is “them”… quite likely they may not even have a concept of “me”).
The difference is who gets to answer the questions you pose to the person. “Left brain self” has access to the brain’s switchboard. It can even internally verbalise a question to itself, like “why did I draw a saw?”, and then come up with a linguistic rationalisation of why it drew the saw – with or without prompting from the experimenter. Of course in reality is deluded – it didn’t draw the saw, the other half of the brain did.
To me this ties in with studies showing that psychosis in Schizhophrenia patients tends to result in elevated right brain activity, while in Bipolar patients the left brain is elevated. Schizophrenic delusions are more typically rationalised in terms of external forces – God or Satan is controlling me, making things happen in my life and inserting thoughts into my brain – whereas Manic delusions are generally self-described as the reverse – I am God or Satan, my thoughts are controlling the universe.
Its the same basic process – some part of the brain is generating highly unusual thoughts – but, from the speech centre’s point of view, in the former case they are verbalised as being foreign ideas but in the latter they are described as native.
In a normally functioning, non-damaged brain, the high level of communication and co-ordination between the different segments of the brain results in a much more effective and continuous illusion of self.
October 27, 2009 at 5:54 am
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