Chapter 20 Chapter 18 Dr. Crick's Sunday

"What really matters as human beings is our own subjective spiritual life, including our senses, feelings, thoughts, and volitional choices." —Benjamin Ribet Research on the question of consciousness is already on the agenda.We have seen the complexity of the visual system and how visual information is processed in a quasi-hierarchical fashion (only partially understood).I also outline several ideas about the neural mechanisms of visual perception and outline several experiments that may help unravel its mechanisms.We obviously haven't quite solved the problem yet, so what have we achieved so far?

What Koch and I are trying to do is to convince people, especially those scientists who have a close relationship with brain research, that it is time to take consciousness seriously.We suspect that general discussions of consciousness, rather than detailed proposals, may be useful.The assumptions discussed in this book are not elaborate, coherent views.Instead, they are still developing.I believe that we have not yet discovered the exact way to conceptualize consciousness, but are only groping in that direction.This is one of the reasons why experimental evidence is so important.New results lead to new perspectives, but also make us aware of the mistakes in old ideas.

Philosophers are certainly right to try to find better ways of solving this problem and to point out the fallacies in our current thinking.But they've made little real progress because they're looking at the system from the outside.This makes them use the wrong term.Thinking in terms of neurons, examining their internal components and the way they interact in complex and unexpected ways, is what matters.Only when we finally truly understand how the brain works will it be possible to come up with near-high-level explanations of how we perceive, think, and behave.This will help us understand all behaviors of the brain in a more correct and rigorous way, replacing the vague vulgar ideas we have today.

Many philosophers and psychologists believe that it is premature to consider the question of consciousness at the neuronal level.However, the reality is just the opposite.It is premature to try to describe how the brain works in a black-box way, especially in everyday language or in the language of digitally programmed computers.The "language" of the brain is based on neurons.To understand the brain, you have to understand neurons, especially how huge numbers of neurons work together in parallel. Readers may accept all these points, while complaining that I talk about consciousness more in terms of speculation than hard facts, and avoid the most puzzling issues in the final analysis.I rarely deal with perceivable characteristics (such as the "red color" of red), but just push it aside and hope for the best.In short, why is the "astonishing hypothesis" so astonishing?Are there aspects of the structure and behavior of the brain that can suggest to us why it is so difficult to understand perception neurally?

I think it exists.I have described the general workings of this complex machine, the brain.It can quickly process a huge amount of information within a perception time.The brain is a rich carrier of interrelated information, many of its contents are continuously changing, yet the machine manages to keep a record of the various operations it has just made.We have not come across any machine with these properties beyond our very limited experience through our own introspection.It is not surprising, then, that the results of introspection appear rather peculiar.Johnson-Laird makes a similar point (quoted in Chapter 14).If we could build a machine with these amazing properties and track its work precisely, we would find it much easier to grasp how the human brain works.Just as the mysteries of embryology have largely disappeared now that we understand the functions of DNA, RNA, and proteins, so will the mysterious properties of consciousness.

Obviously this begs the question: Will we be able to build such a machine in the future?If so, do they appear to be conscious?Ultimately, I believe this is achievable, although there may be technical hurdles that we will almost never be able to overcome.My guess is that in the short term the machines we can build are likely to be very simple in terms of their capabilities compared with the human brain, and therefore they are only likely to have very limited forms of consciousness.Perhaps they are more like the brains of a frog or even a lowly fruit fly.Until we understand the mechanisms by which consciousness arises, it is unlikely that we will be able to design an adequate form of artificial machine, nor will we be able to draw correct conclusions about the consciousness of lower animals.

It should be emphasized that the "surprising hypothesis" is a hypothesis.We already know enough to make it plausible, but not enough to convince people of it in the same way that science has confirmed many new ideas about the nature of the world, especially in physics and chemistry.The evidence for other hypotheses about human nature, especially those based on religious belief, is even weaker, but this in itself is not a conclusive argument against them.Only the certainty of science (with all its limitations) can finally free us from the superstitions of our ancestors. It will be criticized that scientists do believe in "amazing hypotheses", no matter what they may say.This is true only in a limited sense.You cannot successfully solve a scientific problem without some prescient thought guidance.So, broadly speaking, you embrace these views.But for a scientist, this is only temporary faith.He does not follow them blindly.Instead, he knew that at some point there might be real progress in overturning a cherished view.I don't deny that scientists have a tendency to preconceive scientific explanations.This tendency makes sense, not just because it underpins their (scientific) beliefs, but mostly because science has been so amazingly successful in recent centuries.

The next thing to emphasize is that the study of consciousness is a scientific problem.There is no unbridgeable gulf between science and consciousness.If there is one lesson to be learned from this book, it is that we now see that this question can be explored experimentally.It is unreasonable to think that only philosophers can solve this (1) point of view.Philosophers have had such a poor record over the past two millennia that they had better appear humble rather than condescending as they often appear.There is no doubt that our tentative ideas about how the brain works need to be clarified and expanded.I wish more philosophers would learn enough about the brain to come up with ideas about how the brain works and to abandon their favorite theories when they contradict the scientific evidence.Otherwise they will only be mocked.

Historically, religious beliefs have had such a poor record in explaining scientific phenomena that there is little reason to believe that these traditional religions will do better in the future.It is entirely possible that many aspects of consciousness, such as perceivable qualities, cannot be explained by science.We have learned to live with such limitations in the past (for example, those of quantum mechanics), and they will remain with us.That doesn't mean we're going to be forced to be religious.Not only are most popular religious beliefs contradictory, but they are based on evidence so flimsy in terms of scientific norms that only the blindly loyal accept them.If the believers really believed in life after death, why didn't they design some powerful experiments to prove it?Maybe they can't succeed, but at least they can try.History shows that many mysterious phenomena (such as the age of the earth) that the church once thought only they could explain have now been replaced by scientific exploration.Furthermore, the true answers are often far from those given by traditional religions.If religions have ever revealed anything, it is that they are usually wrong.This situation is particularly strong in scientific exploration of the question of consciousness.Now, the only question is how to go about it and when.I strongly advocate that research should be started now and immediately.

Of course, there are quite a few educated people who think that the "amazing hypothesis" is so plausible that it's nothing amazing.I touched on this briefly in Chapter 1.I suspect that these people often do not understand the full substance of this hypothesis.I myself sometimes find it hard to avoid the idea of ​​a dwarf "I" in my head.It's easy to slip into that point of view. The "amazing hypothesis" says that all aspects of brain behavior arise from the activity of neurons.This is not to say that, having explained all the various complex stages of visual processing in neural terms, we can rashly assume that some features of the act of "seeing" need no explanation because it is indeed "me" doing it .For example, unless there are some neuron firings that mark a defect in your brain, you cannot be aware of the defect, and there is no independent "I" that does not rely on firing to recognize a defect.Likewise, you often don't know where something is happening in the brain because there are no neurons in the brain whose firing marks where they or other neurons are located in the brain.

Readers are right to complain that the issues discussed in this book rarely concern the human soul as they understand it.I didn't say anything about the most characteristic human ability, language, or how we solve mathematical problems, or problem solving in general.Even for the visual system I have said little about the visual imagination, or our aesthetic sense of painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.There is no word for the real pleasure we get in contact with nature.Topics such as self-awareness, religious experience (which can be real, though often misinterpreted), are completely ignored, let alone falling in love.A Christian may assert that his relationship with God is all that matters to him.What can science say about this? Now such criticisms are entirely justified, but their inclusion in this book would appear to lack a proper understanding of the scientific method.Koch and I chose to consider the visual system because we felt that, of all possible options, this was the easiest to achieve an experimental breakthrough.This book makes it clear that while this breakthrough is not easy, it does have a chance of success.Our other hypothesis is that once we fully understand the visual system, it will be easier to study those more fascinating aspects of the "soul".Only Time will tell whether this judgment is correct.New approaches and perspectives may make other avenues of inquiry more attractive.The purpose of science is to explain the behavior of all aspects of the human brain, including the brains of musicians, mystics, and mathematicians.I don't think it's going to happen anytime soon, but I do believe that as long as we keep up the quest, we'll get to this understanding sooner or later.This day may be in the 21st century.The sooner we start, the sooner we can gain a clear understanding of nature's nature. Of course, some people will say they don't want to understand how the mind works.To understand Nature, they believe, is to desecrate her, since it removes from her the sense of mystery and instinctive awe that we experience in the presence of things that are impressed by how little we know; they prefer Ancient myths, even if they have clearly contradicted modern science.I do not agree with this view.To me, the modern view of the universe—much older and larger than our ancestors imagined, and filled with wondrous, unpredictable objects like rapidly spinning neutron stars—makes the early Earth This new knowledge does not diminish the sense of awe in which the centered world appears too arrogant and narrow, but greatly increases it.Our detailed biological knowledge of plant and animal structures (especially our bodies) does the same.The writer of the hymn writes, "How wonderful and wonderful I am!", but he is only glancing very indirectly at the nature of delicate and delicate molecular structures.The process of evolution contains many miracles that our ancestors knew nothing about. The mechanism of DNA replication, for all its incredible simplicity and elegance in its nature, has become enormously complex and sophisticated in the course of evolution.One must be insensitive if one sees these and is not marvelous.Thinking that our behavior is based on a vast array of interacting neurons does not diminish our view of ourselves, but greatly expands it. It is reported that a religious leader saw a large schematic diagram of a single neuron and exclaimed: "This is what the brain looks like!" Although a single neuron is a sophisticated, well-designed wonderful molecular machine , but our brains are not made of individual neurons.In the real brain, there are billions of neurons interacting in complex and ever-changing patterns, and the details of how those neurons are connected to each other vary from person to person.The abridged and approximate ways we usually use to describe human behavior are just a vague description of our true selves.Shakespeare said, "What a work of art is man!" Had he lived in modern times, he would have written us heartfelt poems celebrating all these great discoveries. And if the "astonishing hypothesis" turns out to be true, it is unlikely to be widely accepted unless it is expressed in a way that appeals to the public's imagination and satisfies their need to form an objection in a way they can easily understand. A harmonious view of the world and itself.Ironically, while the goal of science is precisely such a unified view, many people find most current scientific knowledge too impersonal and difficult to understand. This is not surprising, since most science studies fields such as physics, chemistry, and related disciplines (such as astronomy), which are somewhat removed from most people's daily lives.This will change in the future.We can expect to understand more precisely the mechanisms of mental activities such as intuition, creativity, and aesthetic enjoyment, so that we can grasp them more clearly and, hopefully, enjoy them better.Free will (see postscript) will no longer be a mystery.That is why our hypotheses, if taken in an all too naive way, can be misleading and lead to nothing.Gaining insight into the mind's miraculous complexities, which we are only dimly aware of today, can produce wonder and admiration. While we may not be able to infer human values ​​from scientific facts alone, it would be unconvincing to pretend that scientific knowledge (or non-scientific knowledge) has no effect on how we form values.We need inspiration and imagination to form a new world system, but imagination built on the wrong foundation will not succeed in the end.We can dream, but reality knocks relentlessly on the door.Even though the reality we perceive is mostly a figment of our brains, it has to align with the real world, or we end up feeling more and more dissatisfied with it. If the scientific facts are clear enough, well established, and support the "amazing hypothesis", then the idea that man has a physical soul is as unnecessary as the ancient idea that man has "life force" .This is in direct contradiction to the current religious beliefs of hundreds of millions of people.And how does one take up such a radical challenge? One might take comfort in the belief that most people would be persuaded by experimental evidence to immediately change their views.Regrettably, history shows the opposite.Today's evidence for the age of the earth is inconclusive, but millions of fundamentalists in the United States still stubbornly cling to the naive view that the earth is relatively young according to the literal meaning of the Bible.They also deny the evolution and drastic changes of plants and animals over this long period, although this has long been established.It is difficult to believe that their statements about the process of natural selection are unbiased, because their views have been predetermined by religious dogma. In my opinion, there are several reasons why people stubbornly cling to these old ideas.Views in general, and moral views in particular, which have influenced us in childhood are often ingrained in our minds.It is very difficult to change them.This helps explain why religious beliefs are passed down from generation to generation.But how did this view come about in the first place?Why are they so often wrong? One reason is that we have a very instinctive need to fully explain the nature of the world and ourselves.Religions provide such an explanation in a way that is easily understood by ordinary people.It should be remembered that our brains developed greatly during our hunter-gatherer days.In the cooperation of small groups of people, and in the hostilities of neighboring competing tribes, there are strong selective pressures everywhere.Even in this century, in the Amazon jungle, in the backwoods of Ecuador, the leading cause of tribal death is injury from fighting among tribes.In this environment, a common belief can increase the cohesion among tribal members.It's unlikely that this need was built into our brains by evolution. After all, our highly developed brains are only smart enough to survive and reproduce. It didn't evolve to discover scientific facts. From this point of view, these common beliefs don't have to be perfectly accurate as long as people believe them.Our most distinctive ability is our ability to handle complex language fluently.We can use language not only to express things and events in the external world, but also to express more abstract concepts.This ability leads to another remarkable human characteristic, our almost unlimited capacity for self-deception, which is seldom mentioned.Our brains evolved to guess the most plausible explanations from the limited evidence available, and its essential features make it almost inevitable that, in the absence of training in scientific research, we will fall into false conclusions, especially for things that are rather abstract. The final result remains to be seen, perhaps the "amazing hypothesis" will prove to be correct; perhaps, some views close to religion will become more reasonable.There is, of course, a third possibility that the facts support an entirely new alternative view of the mind-brain problem from a perspective that differs markedly from the materialist and religious views that many neuroscientists now embrace.Only time and more scientific work will enable us to make a decision.Whatever the answer, the only practicable way to arrive at it is through detailed scientific research.All other avenues are nothing but whistling to embolden yourself.Human beings have an insatiable curiosity about the world, and no matter how fascinated traditions and religious rituals may have been for a while to dispel our doubts about their plausibility, we can never be satisfied with yesterday's guesswork.We must keep pursuing until we have a clear and reasonable picture of the vast universe in which we live and ourselves. ①The original text is "Dr. Cricks Sunday Momingservice". In the West, people go to church to worship on Sunday morning.The clergy of the church are responsible for preaching to the believers. This chapter is the last chapter of the main body of the book, where the author summarizes the main ideas of the "amazing hypothesis".Therefore, it is used as a metaphor for worshiping and preaching. ——Translator's Note ①You're welcome, he said, that philosophers are usually the kind of people who prefer imaginary experiments to real ones, and think that explaining such a phenomenon in everyday terms is sufficient.