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The Conscious Brain: How Attention Engenders Experience
The problem of consciousness continues to be a subject of great debate in cognitive science. Synthesizing decades of research, The Conscious Brain advances a new theory of the psychological and neurophysiological correlates of conscious experience.
Prinz's account of consciousness makes two main first consciousness always arises at a particular stage of perceptual processing, the intermediate level, and, second, consciousness depends on attention. Attention changes the flow of information allowing perceptual information to access memory systems. Neurobiologically, this change in flow depends on synchronized neural firing. Neural synchrony is also implicated in the unity of consciousness and in the temporal duration of experience.
Prinz also explores the limits of consciousness. We have no direct experience of our thoughts, no experience of motor commands, and no experience of a conscious self. All consciousness is perceptual, and it functions to make perceptual information available to systems that allows for flexible behavior.
Prinz concludes by discussing prevailing philosophical puzzles. He provides a neuroscientifically grounded response to the leading argument for dualism, and argues that materialists need not choose between functional and neurobiological approaches, but can instead combine these into neurofunctional response to the mind-body problem.
The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions, while also surveying, challenging, and extending philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. All readers interested in the nature of consciousness will find Prinz's work of great interest.
Prinz's account of consciousness makes two main first consciousness always arises at a particular stage of perceptual processing, the intermediate level, and, second, consciousness depends on attention. Attention changes the flow of information allowing perceptual information to access memory systems. Neurobiologically, this change in flow depends on synchronized neural firing. Neural synchrony is also implicated in the unity of consciousness and in the temporal duration of experience.
Prinz also explores the limits of consciousness. We have no direct experience of our thoughts, no experience of motor commands, and no experience of a conscious self. All consciousness is perceptual, and it functions to make perceptual information available to systems that allows for flexible behavior.
Prinz concludes by discussing prevailing philosophical puzzles. He provides a neuroscientifically grounded response to the leading argument for dualism, and argues that materialists need not choose between functional and neurobiological approaches, but can instead combine these into neurofunctional response to the mind-body problem.
The Conscious Brain brings neuroscientific evidence to bear on enduring philosophical questions, while also surveying, challenging, and extending philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness. All readers interested in the nature of consciousness will find Prinz's work of great interest.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published July 27, 2012
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238 people want to read
About the author
Jesse J. Prinz
11 books43 followersJesse J. Prinz is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and director of the Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies at the City University of New York, Graduate Center. He lives in New York.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 1, 2013
Just as disclosure, I took a course with Jesse Prinz that covered and discussed a fair amount of the material in this book; my opinions are informed in part by that coursework and by the relationship with him.
Prinz's The Conscious Brain is one of the most thoughtful theories of consciousness that I've read in quite a while. For various reasons, the subfield of consciousness can often feel very redundant, especially if you tend to read a lot of the same people, because the theories are informed in the same sorts of ways over and over and leave themselves in a position to see the same sorts of objections. The discussion of traditional theories in the conscious brain, especially in the first few chapters, does a good job at explaining this history and giving a very informed take on why it is that many of the objections pop up in the field again and again.
The major methodological departure, at least from a large portion of the east coast school of philosophy of mind, (though it's not a radical departure, and not a completely novel move) is to focus on the empirical literature surrounding consciousness and perception in order to inform a theory of consciousness. Prinz is of the view, as he discusses in the last few chapters of the book, that the programme of armchair philosophy about mind is really hugely misguided; the sorts of things that we have to seriously address in philosophy of mind require serious empirical study. This is a jab that is taken at a handful of philosophers in particular, and definitely speaks to an ideological alignment that Prinz has with a few different schools of thought, but Prinz is very much his own theorist when he is dealing with his account of consciousness.
There is a fair amount of literature coming out now, especially in cognitive science, that has emphasized the importance of attention in human cognition, but Prinz focuses especially on how attention can be used to present a theory of consciousness. That, alone, makes for a fairly interesting account; the account that he presents of intermediate level perception strikes me as a little more dubious, but he does a very good job defending it, and illustrating the way that intermediate concepts are supposed to fit in with everything else in the contemporary theorizing about mind. That ability makes these sorts of accounts much more plausible.
Overall, the book is excellent. Prinz is a thoughtful theorist, bringing up novel ideas and presenting them well in the context of the best competing theories. There are some moments where he puts a gloss on some features of his competing theories, but often that's for literary reasons and not really consequential to the account that he's giving. The book does require some reasonably comfort with some technical language in cognitive science, though the technical language in philosophy of mind and much of the history in philosophy of mind is really well explained. That balance is a bit unusual for a philosopher of mind, and the book almost feels as though it is more targeted towards cognitive scientists and psychologists than towards philosophers. Even where the book is technically challenging, a committed reader can get through it and into a very accessible discussion of the theory, which often helps to clarify what Prinz is trying to do in the sections.
Prinz's The Conscious Brain is one of the most thoughtful theories of consciousness that I've read in quite a while. For various reasons, the subfield of consciousness can often feel very redundant, especially if you tend to read a lot of the same people, because the theories are informed in the same sorts of ways over and over and leave themselves in a position to see the same sorts of objections. The discussion of traditional theories in the conscious brain, especially in the first few chapters, does a good job at explaining this history and giving a very informed take on why it is that many of the objections pop up in the field again and again.
The major methodological departure, at least from a large portion of the east coast school of philosophy of mind, (though it's not a radical departure, and not a completely novel move) is to focus on the empirical literature surrounding consciousness and perception in order to inform a theory of consciousness. Prinz is of the view, as he discusses in the last few chapters of the book, that the programme of armchair philosophy about mind is really hugely misguided; the sorts of things that we have to seriously address in philosophy of mind require serious empirical study. This is a jab that is taken at a handful of philosophers in particular, and definitely speaks to an ideological alignment that Prinz has with a few different schools of thought, but Prinz is very much his own theorist when he is dealing with his account of consciousness.
There is a fair amount of literature coming out now, especially in cognitive science, that has emphasized the importance of attention in human cognition, but Prinz focuses especially on how attention can be used to present a theory of consciousness. That, alone, makes for a fairly interesting account; the account that he presents of intermediate level perception strikes me as a little more dubious, but he does a very good job defending it, and illustrating the way that intermediate concepts are supposed to fit in with everything else in the contemporary theorizing about mind. That ability makes these sorts of accounts much more plausible.
Overall, the book is excellent. Prinz is a thoughtful theorist, bringing up novel ideas and presenting them well in the context of the best competing theories. There are some moments where he puts a gloss on some features of his competing theories, but often that's for literary reasons and not really consequential to the account that he's giving. The book does require some reasonably comfort with some technical language in cognitive science, though the technical language in philosophy of mind and much of the history in philosophy of mind is really well explained. That balance is a bit unusual for a philosopher of mind, and the book almost feels as though it is more targeted towards cognitive scientists and psychologists than towards philosophers. Even where the book is technically challenging, a committed reader can get through it and into a very accessible discussion of the theory, which often helps to clarify what Prinz is trying to do in the sections.
Read
July 15, 2013This is a highly original work in a very complex, tricky field. I was particularly struck by Prinz's intriguing take on Damasio's accounts of self-awareness and self-consciousness, esp. in the critical account of the thalamus not so much as a locus of consciousness but rather as its precondition, or in Damasio's terms, as consciousness being located in first-order rather than second-order maps, favoring Prinz's quasi-phenomenological view of consciousness as attention and and his claim that attention comes down to availability to working memory.
January 14, 2020
Beraaaaat. Buku ini berusaha mengungkap gimana kesadaran muncul dari otak. Bagi yg nggak familiar dengan psikologi dan neurosains (mungkin neurosains) perlu effort yg besar buat pahamin buku ini.
Dengan pertanyaan dan gagasan sentral di atas, buku ini jadi antitesis bagi dualisme materialisme vs idealisme.
Masih proses baca tapi skip lama banget.
Worth reading bgt bagi yg sudinya di ranah psikologi, filosofi, dan neurosains (mungkin).
Dengan pertanyaan dan gagasan sentral di atas, buku ini jadi antitesis bagi dualisme materialisme vs idealisme.
Masih proses baca tapi skip lama banget.
Worth reading bgt bagi yg sudinya di ranah psikologi, filosofi, dan neurosains (mungkin).
October 21, 2023
I saw Prinz last year at a conference where he presented a paper. He was witty, charming, convincing. The lecture a pure delight. Naturally, I wanted to read a book by him.
The Conscious Brain tackles the problem of consciousness. A subject I am interested in, have read quite a lot about have thought about, so I was prepared to learn something new. The sad news is that after reading 340 pages I have no clue about what he is talking about.
This does happen, of course, from time to time. And either the author is not clear or the reader is too thick-headed. In this case, I think, it is something in-between.
First of all, this book is scholarly. Written for professional researchers in consciousness, definitely not for the layman, not even for the interested layman. Indeed, Prinz does not talk to readers but to other “authors”.
It is very challenging. It is very dull. We are being presented with definitions and arguments and refutations of the arguments and refutations of the refutations. And for every obscure view, there is some respected “authors “defending” it. This is okay, of course, bad luck for me, that I picked up this book. (Although you might argue that with a cover like this, one might expect something more accessible.) As it is, Kant is compared to Prinz light reading.
Alright, surely I am exaggerating? So what is this book about?
About a theory called AIR (there are also theories called HOR and HOT and PANIC). But the acronym is the only thing mildly funny.
AIR stands for Attended Intermediate-level representations. And Consciousness arises when the representations are modulated by attention. Or when “they undergo changes that allow them to become available to working memory”. (p.97)
Attention is not only necessary but sufficient for consciousness. (p. 89) But who or what is it that “attends”? Isn’t this consciousness or rather the same “subject” that may also be conscious? No, attention “is defined as a process that makes the representations available for encoding in working memory” (p.334) So, attention is not something that an “I” has but a process. Indeed, “an adequate theory [meaning AIR] should allow that consciousness can arise without any experience of the self.” (p.337) Really? I must confess, that I do not get it. And I am the first to suggest, that it is because I was too lazy to follow the arguments.
There is, Prinz says, “an ocean of evidence from which we can distil detailed conclusions about where and when consciousness arises.” (p. 332) And AIR is intended to be a synthesis of what empirical literature shows.
To end on a positive note. I like this: “Dualism could be true, but it is not an explanatory theory. It teaches us very little about the nature of consciousness beyond the blanket claim about its metaphysical status.” (p. 340f.)
(One more thing: In a case like this it is silly to rate a book. My rating does only show my own inability to digest more than 2 stars worth. For the right audience this might be a straight 5 stars book.)
The Conscious Brain tackles the problem of consciousness. A subject I am interested in, have read quite a lot about have thought about, so I was prepared to learn something new. The sad news is that after reading 340 pages I have no clue about what he is talking about.
This does happen, of course, from time to time. And either the author is not clear or the reader is too thick-headed. In this case, I think, it is something in-between.
First of all, this book is scholarly. Written for professional researchers in consciousness, definitely not for the layman, not even for the interested layman. Indeed, Prinz does not talk to readers but to other “authors”.
It is very challenging. It is very dull. We are being presented with definitions and arguments and refutations of the arguments and refutations of the refutations. And for every obscure view, there is some respected “authors “defending” it. This is okay, of course, bad luck for me, that I picked up this book. (Although you might argue that with a cover like this, one might expect something more accessible.) As it is, Kant is compared to Prinz light reading.
Alright, surely I am exaggerating? So what is this book about?
About a theory called AIR (there are also theories called HOR and HOT and PANIC). But the acronym is the only thing mildly funny.
AIR stands for Attended Intermediate-level representations. And Consciousness arises when the representations are modulated by attention. Or when “they undergo changes that allow them to become available to working memory”. (p.97)
Attention is not only necessary but sufficient for consciousness. (p. 89) But who or what is it that “attends”? Isn’t this consciousness or rather the same “subject” that may also be conscious? No, attention “is defined as a process that makes the representations available for encoding in working memory” (p.334) So, attention is not something that an “I” has but a process. Indeed, “an adequate theory [meaning AIR] should allow that consciousness can arise without any experience of the self.” (p.337) Really? I must confess, that I do not get it. And I am the first to suggest, that it is because I was too lazy to follow the arguments.
There is, Prinz says, “an ocean of evidence from which we can distil detailed conclusions about where and when consciousness arises.” (p. 332) And AIR is intended to be a synthesis of what empirical literature shows.
To end on a positive note. I like this: “Dualism could be true, but it is not an explanatory theory. It teaches us very little about the nature of consciousness beyond the blanket claim about its metaphysical status.” (p. 340f.)
(One more thing: In a case like this it is silly to rate a book. My rating does only show my own inability to digest more than 2 stars worth. For the right audience this might be a straight 5 stars book.)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews