Michael S. Gazzaniga Quotes

Emergence is when micro-level complex systems that are far from equilibrium (thus allowing for the amplification of random events) self-organize (creative, self-generated, adaptability-seeking behavior) into new structures, with new properties that previously did not exist, to form a new level of organization on the macro level.

The psychology professor Richard Aslin once commented to me that he felt the idea of “consciousness” was a proxy for a whole host of variables correlated with our mental lives. We use “consciousness” as shorthand to easily describe the functions of a multitude of inborn, instinctual mechanisms such as language, perception, and emotion. It becomes evident that consciousness is best understood as a complex instinct as well. All of us come with a bucketful of instincts. Our incessant thought pattern jumps around. We have feelings about one idea, then its opposite, then our family, then an itch, then a favorite tune, then the upcoming meeting, then the grocery list, then the irritating colleague, then the Red Sox, then … It goes on and on until we learn, almost against our natural being, to have a linear thought.

I propose that what we call “consciousness” is a feeling forming a backdrop to, or attached to, a current mental event or instinct. It is best grasped by considering a common engineering architecture called layering, which allows complex systems to function efficiently and in an integrated fashion, from atoms to molecules, to cells, to circuits, to cognitive and perceptual capacities. If the brain indeed consists of different layers (in the engineering sense), then information from a micro level may be integrated at higher and higher layers until each modular unit itself produces consciousness. A layer architecture allows for new levels of functioning to arise from lower-level functioning parts that could not create the “higher level” experience alone. It is time to learn more about layering and the wonders it brings to understanding brain architecture. We are on the road to realizing that consciousness is not a “thing.” It is the result of a process embedded in an architecture, just as a democracy is not a thing but the result of a process.

There obviously is a different feel to a wave of intense emotion versus an abstract thought, but each conscious form is an experience that gives us a unique perception of reality. The pattern in which these various conscious forms come in and out of awareness gives us our own personal life story. The vast variety of conscious forms and the ubiquity of consciousness in the brain are best explained by a modular architecture of the brain. The conceptual challenge now is to understand how hundreds, if not thousands, of modules, embedded in a layered architecture — each layer of which can produce a form of consciousness — give us a single, unified life experience at any given moment that seems to flow flawlessly into the next across time.

It was only twenty-five years ago that the philosopher Joseph Levine officially dubbed it the explanatory gap, which he later described in his book Purple Haze: We have no idea, I contend, how a physical object could constitute a subject of experience, enjoying, not merely instantiating, states with all sorts of qualitative character. As I now look at my red diskette case, I’m having a visual experience that is reddish in character. Light of a particular composition is bouncing off the diskette case and stimulating my retina in a particular way. That retinal stimulation now causes further impulses down the optic nerve, eventually causing various neural events in the visual cortex. Where in all of this can we see the events that explain my having a reddish experience? There seems to be no discernible connection between the physical description and the mental one, and thus no explanation of the latter in terms of the former.2

Research has shown that 150–200 people are the number of people that can be controlled without an organizational hierarchy.23 It is the number of people one can keep track of, maintain a stable social relationship with, and would be willing to help with a favor.

After my talk, he went into some kind of rant about how the “odd human case” didn’t mean much of anything and that it was sort of a bizarre consequence of prior epilepsy, etcetera.

THE HUMAN INTERPRETER HAS SET US UP FOR A FALL. IT has created the illusion of self and, with it, the sense we humans have agency and “freely” make decisions about our actions. In many ways it is a terrific and positive capacity for humans to possess. With increasing intelligence and with a capacity to see relationships beyond what is immediately and perceptually apparent, how long would it be before our species began to wonder what it all meant — what was the meaning of life? The interpreter provides the storyline and narrative, and we all believe we are agents acting

Science results from a profoundly social process. The common portrayal — that science emerges from a solitary isolated genius, always laboring alone, not owing anything to anyone — is simply wrong.

Mother Nature has figured out a way to get rid of the extra neurons through a process called “pruning.” With appropriate input from the environment, the unnecessary neurons die off, and an acceptable number connect the two structures at the end of the developmental period. But, of course, here comes the fragility. Frequently the pruning is overdone. Indeed, evidence has accumulated that developmental mistakes in pruning lead to autism11 and schizophrenia.12 “Robust yet fragile” is everywhere, and the concept is central to realizing how the brain is organized.

Chaos doesn’t mean that the system is behaving randomly, it means that it is unpredictable because it has many variables, it is too complex to measure, and even if it could be measured, theoretically the measurement cannot be done accurately and the tiniest inaccuracy would change the end result an enormous amount.

The next phase of the work was when Joseph LeDoux and I came up with the idea of the interpreter. Twenty-five years into studying these patients we finally got around to asking the patients, "Why did you do that?" after they had a response with the left hand that was being governed by the separated, silent, speechless right hemisphere. We began to understand that the left hemisphere "made up" a story as to why the patient did what he/she did, and in that moment we began to see the cardinal feature of the left hemisphere: the ability to interpret actions generated outside its realm of conscious awareness.

Barbieri chides that “natural selection is the long-term result of molecular copying and would be the sole mechanism of evolution if copying were the sole basic mechanism of life.”15 But it isn’t. While genes can be their own template and copy themselves, proteins cannot. Proteins cannot be made by copying other proteins. The tricky thing is that only molecules that can copy can be inherited, so the information about how to make the proteins had to come from the genes. Barbieri notes that the outstanding feature of the very early protein makers “was the ability to ensure a specific correspondence between genes and proteins, because without it there would be no biological specificity, and without specificity there would be no heredity and no reproduction. Life, as we know it, simply would not exist without a specific correspondence between genes and proteins.”16

How on earth does lifeless matter become the building blocks for living things? How do neurons turn into minds? What should be the vocabulary used to describe the interactions between the brain and its mind? When humankind finds some answers, will we be disheartened by what they are? Will our future understanding of “consciousness” simply not be fulfilling? Will it be simple yet cold and harsh?

Young children by age three begin to inhibit some of their naturally altruistic behavior. They become more discriminating about whom they help. They share more often with others who have shared with them in the past.