Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Author	Anil Seth
Language	English
Genre	Philosophy, psychology, neuroscience
Publisher	Faber and Faber
Publication date	September 2, 2021
ISBN	978-0-57133-770-5

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness is a 2021 non-fiction book by neuroscientist Anil Seth, published by Faber and Faber. It explores the author's theory about consciousness and the self which has three components: conscious level, conscious content, and conscious self.

Conception

Seth's interest in consciousness began when he was a child.

In an interview with the Guardian, Seth stated he wanted to understand himself and others. His multidisciplinary team in Sussex helped in writing the book, all wanting to develop a "satisfying scientific explanation of conscious experience." He described the book as a means to weave multiple threads of ideas together.

The book itself took three years to write. Seth said the process was difficult due to other commitments, but the Wellcome Trust provided him with an Engagement Fellowship which helped him find time to write.

Contents

The book has six parts, each giving a broad overview of various philosophical and scientific positions that Seth relates to his own conclusions. Personal stories are also used to illustrate his points. Conscious level, conscious content, and conscious self are what Seth consider to be the three core properties of consciousness.

Prologue

Seth discusses general anesthesia, mechanical brains, Descartes's animal machine, and Sigmund Freud's "three strikes against human exceptionalism," that being Copernicus's heliocentric theory, Darwinian evolution, and Freud's own theory of the unconscious mind.

Level

Paris Observatory where in a cellar Edme Mariotte performed his experiments

Conscious level is Seth's measurement of how conscious a being is, from being comatose or brain dead to being fully awake and aware.

This part discusses Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, and gives brief introductions to GWT, higher-order theories of consciousness, David Chalmers's hard problem of consciousness, philosophical zombies, NCC and various philosophical positions. Seth ultimately identifies himself as a physicalist.

He also details Edme Mariotte's experiments in the Paris Observatory cellar—which would later lead to the creation of the thermometer—before talking about the various attempts at direct measurements of consciousness (a "thermometer" for consciousness), such as using Lempel-Ziv complexity algorithms, the perturbational complexity index (PCI), the work of Martin Monti and Adrian Owen, and the usage of psychedelics by Albert Hofmann. He concludes that none of these methods are perfect, however found Tononi (1998) (which he later derived his own measure of consciousness he calls "casual density") to be a compelling route to pursue.

Seth recalls a talk he had with Tononi in Las Vegas 2006 about integrated information theory, which Seth describes as "deeply mathematical and unapologetically complex." He elaborates what IIT is, how some predictions may be testable, and gives various interpretations on the theory. Seth concludes that while skeptical about its larger claims, he is interested to see how the theory develops.

Content

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1929), who drew the comparison between Copernican heliocentrism and how perception does not dictate what reality is

Conscious content is said to be about what a person is conscious of: senses, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs. This part focuses on Seth views the mind as a "prediction machine" and how the contents of consciousness are "controlled hallucinations."

Seth begins by detailing what he calls the "how things seem view" where the brain receives information via sensory input. However, he quotes an exchange between Ludwig Wittgenstein and G. E. M. Anscombe where Wittgenstein, using Copernicus's heliocentrism, illustrates how things seem may not be how they actually are. He then talks about Hermann von Helmholtz's unconscious inference, which Seth relates to controlled hallucinations.

A controlled hallucination, as Seth explains in the book, is made up of three "ingredients:" the brain making predictions, sensory signals that keep these predictions tied to their causes, and subjective experience via "top-down" predictions rather than "bottom-up." He then makes references to this process using the dress, Adelson's Checkerboard, and a Mooney image. Seth follows this by listing two objections to the controlled hallucination concept, the first being it denies undeniable aspects of the real world and the second being that it means we are trapped in the perceptual world of the already expected. He, however, refutes these.

Seth describes the brain as a Bayesian-like prediction machine. Using Gaussian probability distribution, Seth defines a standard of optimality for perceptual interference, however cannot establish how a brain neurally gets these guesses. He details three core components of brain predictive error minimization to see how it does so: generative models, perceptual hierarchies (from large scale to low scale characteristics of something), and precision weighting of sensory signals (influence adjustment of each sense).

Self

The Great Chain of Being (1579) by Fray Diego de Valades, which illustrates the traditional cosmological hierarchical system held by the Catholic Church

Conscious self is defined as the sense of being you, that is having a conscious awareness of the self.

Seth talks about when his mother was admitted to the hospital due to undiagnosed encephalopathy which some years later led to her being in a state of hospital-induced delirium. It's through this recollection that the reader is directed to the questioning of their own self-hood, which Seth considers a special kind of controlled hallucination. Here he references Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason where Kant states that the self is not just a "simple substance," David Hume who called it a "bundle of perceptions," and Thomas Metzinger's Being No One which Seth describes as "brilliant." The split-brain phenomena is also briefly discussed.

He later writes about Clive Wearing and the effect amnesia has over personal identity. In referencing the relationship Clive has with his wife, Seth talks about the influence of social perception one has on the social self which he says is created through generative models. He then says the reason we perceive ourselves in the first place is not to know ourselves (as evidentially that perception is easily warped), but is to control ourselves.

Seth then discusses the great chain of being. Talking about Descartes, Seth states that the aforementioned chain forced Descartes, whose philosophy investigated the idea of a soul and could thereby deny the anthropocentric doctrine of the church, to rationalize the existence of God in Meditations on First Philosophy and possibly led to his disregard of the suffering of animals due to his view of them as being mere soulless machines. Seth argues that Julien Offray de La Mettrie, who included humans as animal machines, was closer to the truth.

Seth's theory of animal machines (which he refers to as beast machines) differs from Descartes: he includes humans as beast machines and that instead of the machine being life irrelevant to mind, the self is all perceptions and experiences (which are controlled hallucinations) which originate in the fluctuating predictive machine called the mind.

He spends a chapter writing about the free energy principle, its effects on neuroscience, and its relation to IIT. He comparatively summarizes both and states his idea of animal machines and controlled hallucinations as being the middle-way between both theories.

Seth then discusses the work of Benjamin Libet and his controversial volition experiment which some say disproved free will. He then discusses Aaron Schurger's 2012 paper which proposes that Libet's readiness potential was instead fluctuating brain activity that passed a threshold, causing a voluntary action. When discussing his own view on free will, Seth references Daniel Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will, and states that while he believes free will to be illusionary, expresses the need to live as if it does exist.

Other

Chapters dedicated to non-humans; animals and artificial intelligence.

Discussing Edward Payson Evans's The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, he talks about the history of animal trials and the research into the consciousness of animals. He iterates that we should be skeptical of equating intelligence with consciousness as such a view promotes anthropocentrism, anthropomorphism, and "methodological laziness." Consciousness and the ability to suffer are independent of intelligence, he says, and that something can be intelligent but not conscious.

That last point is further delved into in the second to last chapter titled Machine Minds where he discusses at what point AI can be considered conscious. He talks about the technological singularity and reiterates the disconnect between intelligence and sentience. Seth is ultimately skeptical about the ability to make a conscious machine, at least in the near future. ChatGPT and flesh-based computers are also mentioned in this chapter.

Epilogue

The book ends with Seth describing the first time he saw a living human brain as a guest during a child's hemispherectomy, which he describes as "leaving him in-awe of the magical organ before him." He then summarizes his three-part theory of consciousness before concluding with a message about making peace with the nothingness of death.

Reception

The book was well received. It was chosen as a Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg and The Economist, a Best Science Book of 2021 by The Guardian and the Financial Times, and a Best Philosophy Book of 2021 by Nigel Warburton.

Gaia Vince described the book in her review as exhilarating. Science journalist Maddie Bender, writing for Scientific American, praised Seth's "imaginative and compelling" descriptions of experiments. Felix Haas described the book as a "fantastic exposition" of neuroscience and artificial intelligence research.

Naturalist philosopher Tom Clark, while praising the book's liveliness, disagreed with some of Seth's approaches and conclusions. Julian Baggini, writing in The Wall Street Journal, describes the work as impressive, but criticizes Seth's use of words such as "hallucination" and "fantasy" as he says they invite misunderstandings.

Further reading

• Elliott, A. (2020). Concepts of the Self. United Kingdom: Wiley. Introductory book on the self.
• Purves D., et al. (2018) Neuroscience. United States: Oxford University Press. Introductory textbook.
• Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Popular science book on A.I.
• Mumford, S. (2012). Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford. Introductory text.
• Hutto, D. D. (2000). Beyond Physicalism. Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Introduction and critique of physicalism.
• Chalmers, D. J. (1997). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. United Kingdom: OUP USA. Key text on the hard problem of consciousness.