Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist by Christof Koch (PDF)

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A fascinating exploration of the human brain that combines “the leading edge of consciousness science with surprisingly personal and philosophical reflection . . . shedding light on how scientists really think”—this is “science writing at its best” (Times Higher Education). In which a scientist searches for an empirical explanation for phenomenal experience, spurred by his instinctual belief that life is meaningful. What links conscious experience of pain, joy, color, and smell to bioelectrical activity in the brain? How can anything physical give rise to nonphysical, subjective, conscious states? Christof Koch has devoted much of his career to bridging the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the physics of the brain and phenomenal experience. This engaging book—part scientific overview, part memoir, part futurist speculation—describes Koch’s search for an empirical explanation for consciousness. Koch recounts not only the birth of the modern science of consciousness but also the subterranean motivation for his quest—his instinctual (if “romantic”) belief that life is meaningful. Koch describes his own groundbreaking work with Francis Crick in the 1990s and 2000s and the gradual emergence of consciousness (once considered a “fringy” subject) as a legitimate topic for scientific investigation. Present at this paradigm shift were Koch and a handful of colleagues, including Ned Block, David Chalmers, Stanislas Dehaene, Giulio Tononi, Wolf Singer, and others. Aiding and abetting it were new techniques to listen in on the activity of individual nerve cells, clinical studies, and brain-imaging technologies that allowed safe and noninvasive study of the human brain in action. Koch gives us stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness as well as his own reflections on a variety of topics, including the distinction between attention and awareness, the unconscious, how neurons respond to Homer Simpson, the physics and biology of free will, dogs, Der Ring des Nibelungen, sentient machines, the loss of his belief in a personal God, and sadness. All of them are signposts in the pursuit of his life’s work—to uncover the roots of consciousness.

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⭐Christof Koch is a German-American neuroscientist who is president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and was formerly a professor at the California Institute of Technology.He wrote in the Preface to this 2012 book, “What you’re holding in your hand is a slim exposition on the modern science of consciousness… you can inform yourself about where we natural scientists stand with respect to unraveling one of the central questions of our existence—namely, how do subjective feelings, how does consciousness, enter into the world?… What is it about the brain inside your head that makes you conscious of colors, of pain and pleasure, of the past and of the future, of yourself and of others?… This book is not just about science, however. It is also a confession and a memoir… I learned over the past years how powerfully my unconscious inclinations, my beliefs, and my personal struggles and failings have influenced my life and the pursuit of my life’s work.”In the first chapter, he explains, “In this book, I highlight stories from the front lines of modern research into the neurobiology of consciousness… as I shall describe, the unconscious can profoundly influence our behavior. I also dwell on the related problem of free will, the feeling of having initiated an action, and on how physics, psychology and neurosurgery are untangling this metaphysical knot… Finally, I describe a plausible quantitative theory of consciousness that explains why certain types of highly organized matter, in particular brains, can be conscious. They theory of ‘integrated information,’ developed by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi… The theory has profound consequences that bear some resemblance to the prophetic ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin…” (Pg. 6-7)He recounts, “I have encountered numerous philosophers who are utterly convinced of the truth of their ideas. Such confidence … is rare among natural scientists… Still, at some unconscious level, those arguments had an effect on me. They suggested that in seeking to understand the phenomenal world, science had finally met its match, that consciousness was resistant to rational explanation, immune to scientific analysis, beyond the ken of empirical validation. This was the entry point for religion. Religion has an intuitive, plausible explanation for the phenomenon of mind: We are conscious because we have an immaterial soul, our true, inner self… The soul strives to be united with God at the end of time. These were the traditional answers that I, growing up in a devout Roman Catholic family, was raised to believe in… I have a confession to make… I now realize that what drew me to studying consciousness was a compelling… desire to justify my instinctual belief that life is meaningful… I was going to demonstrate to my own satisfaction that science is inadequate to the task of fully understanding the nature of the mind-body divide… In the end, this is not how it turned out.” (Pg. 3-5)He further explains the term, ‘romantic reductionist’: “reductionist, because I seek quantitative explanations for consciousness in the ceaseless …. Activity of billions of tiny nerve cells… romantic, because of my insistence that the universe has contrails of meaning that can be deciphered… Meaning in the sweep of its cosmic evolution, not necessarily in the lives of the individual organisms within it. There is a ‘Music of the Spheres’…” (Pg. 8)Later, he continues, “over the years, I began to reject more and more of the church’s teachings. The traditional answers I was given were incompatible with a scientific world view… this tension left me with a split view of reality… These two frameworks, one divine and one secular… did not intersect… It is only in recent years that I have managed to resolve this conflict. I slowly but surely lost my faith in a personal God. I stopped believing that somebody watches over me, and intervenes on my behalf in the world… I lost my childhood faith, yet I’ve never lost my abiding faith that everything is as it should be! I feel deep in my bones that the universe has meaning that we can realize.” (Pg. 12)He suggests, “I furthermore assume that many animals, mammals especially, possess some of the features of consciousness… I am confident of this for three reasons. First, the behavior of many mammals kindred, though not identical… Second, the structure of the nervous system is comparable across mammals… Third, all extant mammals are closely related to each other… Homo sapiens is part of an evolutionary continuum, not a unique organism that dropped, fully sentient, from the sky.” (Pg. 35-36)He goes on, “Some scholars conclude that from this lack of [animal] self-awareness that the vast majority of the animal kingdom is unconscious… only humans, and not even their young ones, are truly conscious. One among many observations makes this conclusion implausible. When you are truly engaged with the world, you are only dimly aware of yourself.” (Pg. 37)He observes, “not just any cortical activity is sufficient for conscious sensation. Even though a million neurons … are busily firing away… [this] may not give rise to an experience… More is needed. Maybe this activity has to exceed some threshold? Maybe a specific set of special neurons … have to establish a reciprocal dialogue with neurons on the frontal lobes? Maybe these neurons have to be jointly active… I suspect all three conditions must be met for information to be perceived continuously.” (Pg. 48)He notes, “Let me now broach a key facet of the mind-body problem … namely, the question of how much freedom the brain has in its actions. Free will … is a topic that, sooner or later, confronts each one of us. Surprisingly, a key aspect of this problem is reducible to a question of perceptual consciousness. To me, this constitutes a major advance in one of the most disputatious problems in metaphysics.” (Pg. 90) Later, he adds, “Indeterminism has profound consequences. It implies that some human actions cannot be foretold… Personally, I find determinism abhorrent… [and] evokes in me a feeling of complete helplessness.” (Pg. 101)He suggests, “The only real possibility for libertarian-style free choice is for the mind to realize one quantum mechanical event rather than another, as dictated by Schrödinger’s equation… Given our current interpretation of quantum mechanics, a Popper-Eccles mind could exploit this idiosyncratic freedom. The mind would be powerless to change the probabilities, but it could decide what happens on any one trial… If these speculations are along the right lines, this would be the maximal freedom afforded to the conscious mind. In a choice balanced on a razor’s edge, a tiny shove one way or another could make a difference. But if one outcome is vastly more likely than the other, the whispering of the conscious mind is too inconsequential to fight the odds…:” (Pg. 104) Later, he says, “in the laboratory, the brain decides well before the mind does; the conscious experience of willing a single act … is secondary to the actual cause… How the decision is formed remains unconscious. Why you choose the way you do is largely opaque to you.” (Pg. 111)He acknowledges, “The endpoint of my quest must be a theory that explains how and why the physical world is capable of generating phenomenal experience. Such a theory… must be concrete, quantifiable, and testable. I believe that information theory… is capable of such an enormous feat, analyzing the neuronal wiring diagram of any living creature and predicating the form of consciousness that that organism will experience…. And, surprisingly, it provides a grandiose view of the evolution of consciousness in the universe.” (Pg. 114-115) He adds, “I believe that consciousness is a fundamental, an elementary, property of living matter. It can’t be derived from anything else; it is a simple substance… You and I find ourselves find ourselves in a cosmos in which any and all systems of interacting parts possess some measure of sentience. The larger and more highly networked the system, the greater the degree of consciousness.” (Pg. 119-120)He admits, “When I talk about panpsychism, I often encounter blank stares of incomprehension… Panpsychism has an ancient and storied pedigree… This brings me to the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin… His ‘law of complexification’ assert that matter has an inherent compulsion to assemble into every more complex groupings. And complexity breeds consciousness… Teilhard does no stop with molecules. No, the ascent of the spirit continues. This primitive form of consciousness becomes more highly developed in animals by the force of natural selection… There is no reason why complexification should cease at the boundary of our blue planet… [Teilhard] believed that the entire cosmos evolves toward what he terms ‘the Omega point,’ when the universe becomes aware of itself by maximizing its complexity, its synergy.” (Pg. 132-134)He asserts, “The possibility of a Supreme Being turning water into wine is so outlandish that it can be rejected using Occam’s razor… Miracles are not in the cards. The fabric of everyday reality is woven too tightly for it to be pulled asunder by extranatural forces. I’m afraid that God is an absentee cosmic landlord. If we want things to happen down here, we had better take care of them ourselves.” (Pg. 157-158) He continues, “I am doubtful that intense religious experience… reveals anything about the actual existence of God… I am equally skeptical when turning to Holy Scripture… The idea that the experiences and thoughts of men who lived thousands of years ago are relevant to our understanding of the universe … strikes me as quaint.” (Pg. 158-159)He concludes, “I am saddened by the loss of my religious belief… But my loss of faith is an inescapable part of growing up, of maturing and seeing the world as it is. I’m cast out into the universe, a glorious, strange, scary, and often lonely place. I strive to discern through its noisy manifestations… the eternal Music of the Spheres.” (Pg. 166)This book will be of keen interest to those studying consciousness, and neuroscience.

⭐I was pleasantly surprised to find this book. I have been following the work of Guilio Tononi for some time and that involves reading articles co-authored by Christof Koch as one his main collaborators. There also have several excellent videos available on YouTube where they discuss consciousness and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness. In this book we learn about Koch’s personal and professional trajectory in the field and several of his influences. He is currently the President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science and a Professor of Biology and Engineering at Caltech. His academic credentials are available at the link to his web page and they are reviewed in this book as a backdrop to how he came to the field of consciousness studies.The layout of the book is 10 chapters over 166 pages. It is well written in that it contains technical terms but they are well explained for the novice. On the other hand there are also higher level concepts pertaining to consciousness that will probably not be obvious to many readers that are well explained and worthwhile reading for anyone who is not an expert in the field. The text reminds me of a slim guide to neuropathology that one of my med school professors claimed was the only book he studied to pass his subspecialty boards exams. In other words, the more you bring to a book like this, the more you may take away. At the same time it is interesting reading for a novice.A typical chapter is organized around clinical and scientific observations, associated philosophy and the personal experience and meaning to the author. I thought about characterizing the writing as a very good blog, but this writing by one of the top neuroscientists of our time is several levels above that. Koch writes from the perspective of admiration of some of the best scientists in the world when it is clear that he is among them. He adds a unique perspective referencing his training, his family and social life, and the relationships he has with colleagues and mentors. In the final chapter he describes how his career and experience has impacted on his belief system and personal philosophy.I will touch on a couple of examples of what he covers and the relevance to consciousness. Chapter 5: Consciousness in the Clinic is a chapter that is most accessible to clinicians specializing in the brain. He briefly summarizes achromatopsia and prosopagnosia or face-blindness. He discusses prosopagnosia from the perspective of clinical findings and associated disability, but also consciousness. For example, patients with this lesion do not recognize faces but they do have autonomic responses (galvanic skin resistance) when viewing faces that they know (family or famous people) relative to unknown people. This is evidence of processing that occurs at an unconscious level that he develops in a subsequent chapter. He describes the Capgras delusion – as the “flip-side” of prosopagnosia in that they face is recognized but the patient believes the original person has been replaced by an impostor. In this case the expected increase in galvanic skin resistant is lacking because there is no autonomic response to unconscious processing.In the same chapter he details the problem of patients in a coma, persistent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) and how some new developments in consciousness theory and testing may be useful. From a consciousness perspective coma represent and absence of consciousness – no arousals and no sleep transitions. Persistent vegetative state result in some arousals and sleep-awake transitions. In the minimally conscious state there are awakenings and purposeful movements. The minimally conscious person may be able to communicate during the brief arousals. At the clinical level being able to distinguish between the persistent vegetative state and the minimally conscious state is important from both a clinical and medico-legal perspective. He discusses the use of fMRI in the case of apparently unresponsive patients who are able to follow direction to think about very specific tasks and produce the same brain pattern of activation seen in controls. In a subsequent chapter Tononi and Massimini use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) for the same purpose. This technique is considered proof of IIT as well as a clinical test to differentiate PVS from a minimally conscious state. In normal awake volunteers the TMS impulse results in brief but clear pattern of reverberating activation that spreads from the original stimulation site to surrounding frontal and parietal cortex. The pattern can be viewed in this online paper (see figure 1). In the patient who is in non-REM sleep there is no cortical spread from this impulse and the total impulse duration is less, illustrating a lack of cortical integration required for a conscious state. When applied to PVS versus MCS patients, the MCS patients show the expected TMS/EEG response that would be seen in conscious patients. The PVS patients do not. He describes the TMS/EEG method as a “crude consciousness meter” but obviously one that probably has a lot more potential than traditional clinical methods.There are many other clinical, philosophical and scientific issues relevant to consciousness that are discussed in this book that I won’t go into. I will touch on a recurring theme in the book that gets back to the title and that is science and reductionism. Philosophical perspectives are covered as well as the idea that the origin of consciousness may not be knowable by scientific methods. Koch’s opinion is that most everything is knowable by science and that science generally has a better track record of determining what is knowable. That is certainly my bias and I am on record as being an unapologetic reductionist rather than a romantic one.This is a book that should be read by psychiatrists and residents. These concepts will hopefully be some of the the mainstays of 21st century psychiatry. It can be read at several levels. I was interested in the development of Koch’s ideas about consciousness. I wanted to learn about his relationship with collaborators. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we had similar thoughts about popular media, philosophy, and and psychodynamic psychiatry. I have had career long involvement in neuropsychiatry and behavioral neurology so the description of cortical localization and clinical syndromes was second nature to me. But even against that background, he makes it very clear where consciousness comes in to play. One of my concerns about psychiatric training is that there is not enough emphasis on neuroscience and consciousness. Condensed into this small book there are number of jumping off points. Each chapter has a collection of annotations and there is a list of about 100 scientific references at the end. It may take some work, but this book is a brief syllabus on how to get up to speed in this important area and greatly extend your knowledge of how the brain works.George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

⭐The book would be ideal for someone looking for a light, up to date introduction to one the most intriguing and fascinating mysteries that remains unsolved. He is quite honest and frank at times as he discusses his personal life. Koch takes a strong scientific approach to the problem of consciousness and it’s clear he doesn’t have much time for philosophers with their millennia of armchair arguments. Despite that he discusses the important philosophical issues with a refreshing directness. The book discusses several contemporary experimental advances on the cutting edge of brain research.

⭐Dear Mr KochI have just this moment finished your book and wanted to convey to you my deep gratitude for the considerable effort and courage it must have taken to write. We will never meet but you have moved me. I suspect that from now on I will also describe myself as a romantic reductionist. I also suspect that there are many, many others out there who will come to do the same. We believe in the power and majesty of objective science, but we also live in a subjective realm that is equally majestic, equally powerful and equally wonderful. As ‘the arc of your life traces its inevitable decline’ (p9) you have tried to bring these two realms together and to do justice to each. And you have succeeded. Thank you.

⭐Intellectual, but accessible. Some plausible explanations of what it is to be conscious. Spends a lot of ink playing up the Crick connection, although perhaps in the interest of giving credit.

⭐An excellently written book! Neuroscience and life experience plus a little humour.

⭐Excellent kindle book. Up to date treatment of consciousness.

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