Conscious by Annaka Harris (Deep Book Summary)

This is a book summary of Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind by Annaka Harris (Amazon):

This isn’t the easiest book to summarize, so I recommend reading it in full because it’s short. For a video intro to Annaka Harris, check out:

Quick Housekeeping:

All content in quotation marks is from the author unless otherwise stated.
All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

Book Summary Contents: Click a link here to jump to a section below

About the Book
What is Consciousness?
Binding
The Self
Psychedelics
Split Brains
Parasites
Free Will
Panpsychism

**Mystery of the Mind: Conscious by Annaka Harris (Book Summary)**

About the book Conscious

“This book is devoted to shaking up our everyday assumptions about the world we live in. Some facts are so important and so counterintuitive (matter is mostly made up of empty space; the earth is a spinning sphere in one of billions of solar systems in our galaxy; microscopic organisms cause disease; and so on) that we need to recall them again and again, until they finally permeate our culture and become the foundation for new thinking.”

“Our experience of consciousness is so intrinsic to who we are, we rarely notice that something mysterious is going on. Consciousness is experience itself, and it is therefore easy to miss the profound question staring us in the face in each moment: Why would any collection of matter in the universe be conscious? We look right past the mystery as if the existence of consciousness were obvious or an inevitable result of complex life, but when we look more closely, we find that it is one of the strangest aspects of reality.”

What is Consciousness?

“The most basic definition of consciousness is that given by the philosopher Thomas Nagel in his famous essay ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,’ and it is how I use the word throughout this book. The essence of Nagel’s explanation runs as follows: An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.”

“In other words, consciousness is what we’re referring to when we talk about experience in its most basic form.”
“It’s this simple difference—whether there is an experience present or not—which we can all use as a reference point, that constitutes what I mean by the word ‘consciousness.'”
“Is it like something to be a grain of sand, a bacterium, an oak tree, a worm, an ant, a mouse, a dog? At some point along the spectrum the answer is yes, and the great mystery lies in why the ‘lights turn on’ for some collections of matter in the universe.”
“We can even wonder: At what point in the development of a human being does consciousness flicker into existence? Imagine a human blastocyst just a few days old, consisting of only about two hundred cells. We assume there is probably nothing it is like to be this microscopic collection of cells. But over time these cells multiply and slowly become a human baby with a human brain, able to detect changes in light and recognize its mother’s voice, even while in the womb. And, unlike a computer, which can also detect light and recognize voices, this processing is accompanied by an experience of light and sound. At whatever point in the development of a baby’s brain your intuition tells you, OK, now an experience is being had in there, the mystery lies in the transition. First, as far as consciousness is concerned, there is nothing, and then suddenly, magically, at just the right moment . . . something. However minimal that initial something is, experience apparently ignites in the inanimate world, materializing out of the darkness.”
“One thing is certain: it’s possible for a vivid experience of consciousness to exist undetected from the outside.”
“Complex behavior doesn’t necessarily shed light on whether a system is conscious or not.”
“The problem is that both conscious and nonconscious states seem to be compatible with any behavior, even those associated with emotion, so a behavior itself doesn’t necessarily signal the presence of consciousness.”

Binding

“As we go about our daily lives, we experience what appears to be a continuous stream of present-moment events, yet we actually become conscious of physical events in the world slightly after they have occurred. In fact, one of the most startling findings in neuroscience has been that consciousness is often ‘the last to know.'”

“Visual, auditory, and other kinds of sensory information move through the world (and our nervous system) at different rates. The light waves and sound waves emitted the moment the tennis ball makes contact with your racket, for example, do not arrive at your eyes and ears at the same time, and the impact felt by your hand holding the racket occurs at yet another interval … Only after all the relevant input has been received by the brain do the signals get synchronized and enter your conscious experience through a process called ‘binding’—whereby you see, hear, and feel the ball hit the racket all in the same instant.”
“Your perception of reality is the end result of fancy editing tricks: the brain hides the difference in arrival times. How? What it serves up as reality is actually a delayed version. Your brain collects up all the information from the senses before it decides upon a story of what happens. . . . The strange consequence of all this is that you live in the past. By the time you think the moment occurs, it’s already long gone. To synchronize the incoming information from the senses, the cost is that our conscious awareness lags behind the physical world.” — David Eagleman

The Self

“When we talk about consciousness, we usually refer to a ‘self’ that is the subject of everything we experience—all that we are aware of seems to be happening to or around this self. We have what feels like a unified experience, with events in the world unfolding to us in an integrated way. But, as we have seen, binding processes are partly responsible for this, presenting us with the illusion that physical occurrences are perfectly synchronized with our conscious experience of them in the present moment.”

“Binding also helps solidify other percepts in time and space, such as the color, shape, and texture of an object—all of which are processed by the brain separately and melded together before arriving in our consciousness as a whole.”
“Without binding processes, you might not even feel yourself to be a self at all. Your consciousness would be more like a flow of experiences in a particular location in space—which would be much closer to the truth. Is it possible to simply be aware of events, actions, feelings, thoughts, and sounds—all coming in a stream of awareness? Such an experience is not uncommon in meditation, and many people, myself included, can attest to it. The self we seem to inhabit most (if not all) of the time—a localized, unchanging, solid center of consciousness—is an illusion that can be short-circuited, without changing our experience of the world in any other way. We can have a full awareness of the usual sights, sounds, feelings, and thoughts, absent the sense of being a self who is the receiver of the sounds and the thinker of the thoughts. This is not at all at odds with modern neuroscience: an area of the brain known as the default mode network, which scientists believe contributes to our sense of self, has been found to be suppressed during meditation.”
“Most people who have had sufficient training in meditation realize that an experience of consciousness needn’t be accompanied by thoughts—or any input to the senses, for that matter. It seems possible to be acutely aware of one’s subjective experience in the absence of thought, sights, sounds, or any other perception.”
“Our sense of individuality and separateness hinges on a bounded self and a clear demarcation between subject and object. But all that may be a mental construction, a kind of illusion.” — Michael Pollan

Psychedelics

“There are other ways to suspend the sense of self. Psychedelic drugs—such as LSD, ketamine, and psilocybin—are known to quiet a circuit in the brain that connects the parahippocampus and the retrosplenial cortex in the default mode network, which explains why people describe losing their sense of self while under their influence.”

“Psychedelics also quell the communication among neurons in other areas beyond the default mode network, making activity in the brain less segregated in general.”
“Many people assume that consciousness and the experience of self go hand in hand, but it is clear that in those moments when people report dropping the self, consciousness remains fully present.”
“The more precipitous the drop-off in blood flow and oxygen consumption in the default mode network, the more likely a volunteer was to report the loss of a sense of self … The psychedelic experience of ‘non-duality’ suggests that consciousness survives the disappearance of the self, that it is not so indispensable as we—and it—like to think.” — Michael Pollan
“If the distinctness of the bodily self can be tampered with via such mechanical means (i.e., psychedelic drugs, a stroke, or a neurological disorder), then we must begin to accept that the bodily self—that feeling we are whole, inviolate beings—is not due to some special soul, or ‘I,’ resident behind our eyes.” — Michael Harris

Split Brains

“After surgery, split-brain patients can experience something called ‘hemispheric rivalry,’ in which they are seen attempting opposing behaviors with their left and right hands in a disconcerting battle—such as trying to button up their shirt with one hand while the other hand is busy at work unbuttoning; attempting to hug a spouse with one arm while pushing him away with the other; and simultaneously opening and closing a door with opposite hands.”

“It seems that the same person can have two different answers to a question, along with completely different desires and opinions in general. And even more astonishing is the discovery that the feelings and opinions of each hemisphere seem to be privately experienced and unknown to the other. One ‘self’ of a split-brain patient is as puzzled by the opinions and desires of the other as another person in the room would be.”
“The split-brain literature contains many examples suggesting that two conscious points of view can reside in a single brain. Most of them also topple the typical notion of free will, by exposing a phenomenon generated by the left hemisphere that Gazzaniga and his colleague Joseph LeDoux dubbed ‘the interpreter.’ This phenomenon occurs when the right hemisphere takes action based on information it has access to that the left hemisphere doesn’t, and the left hemisphere then gives an instantaneous and false explanation for the split-brain subject’s behavior. For example, when the right hemisphere is given the instruction ‘Take a walk’ in an experiment, the subject will stand up and begin walking. But when asked why he’s leaving the room, he will give an explanation such as, ‘Oh, I need to get a drink.’ His left hemisphere, the one responsible for speech, is unaware of the command the right side received, and we have every reason to think that he does in fact believe his thirst was the reason he got up and began walking. As in the example in which the experimenters were able to cause a feeling of will in subjects who in actuality were not in control of their own actions, the phenomenon of ‘the interpreter’ is further confirmation that the feeling we have of executing consciously willed actions, at least in some instances, is sheer illusion.”
“Different sets of intentions in a split-brain patient seem to be relegated to distinct and separate islands of consciousness. In the example of a patient’s battle with herself over buttoning up a shirt, one side feels that her right hand is being controlled by ‘someone else,’ who is fighting against her action to put on a chosen shirt. The other side is rejecting a bad wardrobe choice that ‘someone else’ made. In moments such as these, a split-brain patient behaves (and probably feels) more like two conjoined twins than like a single person.”
“The human brain, under the right conditions, can seamlessly integrate foreign objects into its map of what constitutes its body (e.g. rubber-hand illusion).”

Parasites

“Another wellspring of examples that turn our intuitions upside down and challenge the typical notion of free will can be found in the study of parasites and how they affect the behavior of their hosts.”

“Toxoplasma gondii is a microscopic parasite that can infect all warm-blooded animals but can sexually reproduce only in the intestines of a cat. While it can survive in any mammal, it must eventually make its way back to a feline to complete its life cycle. Toxoplasma most commonly infects rats, because they frequent many of the same hangouts as cats, and the parasite has evolved a brilliant and extremely creepy mechanism for overcoming the challenge of traveling from the rats, who have a deeply ingrained fear of cats, back to its reproductive home. By a neurological mechanism that scientists still don’t completely understand, Toxoplasma affects the behavior of the infected rats, causing them to forsake their fear of cats and in many cases to walk (or even run) directly toward their enemy. Toxoplasma creates hundreds of cysts in the brain of its host, causing dopamine levels to rise. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in mediating powerful emotions such as desire and fear, which helps explain much of the behavior we see in mammals infected with the parasite. It’s possible that these rats somehow feel that they are being manipulated against their will by an outside force, but it seems more likely that their neurochemistry is being altered and thus their desires and fears change: they no longer feel afraid of cats and are now, in fact, drawn to them.”
“It turns out that Toxoplasma also has an effect on human brains. As the science journalist Kathleen McAuliffe reports on observations made by parasitologists, ‘Neurons harboring the parasite were making 3.5 times more dopamine. The chemical could actually be seen pooling inside infected brain cells.’ Toxoplasma can cause a variety of behavioral changes in humans and is thought to be a trigger for schizophrenia and other mental illnesses in many people. According to McAuliffe’s reporting, ‘people with schizophrenia are two to three times more likely to test positive for antibodies to the parasite than those who don’t have the disorder.'”
“There are countless examples of other parasites affecting the behavior of their hosts. A horsehair worm will cause an infected cricket, which would normally maintain a safe distance from large bodies of water, to race toward the nearest lake or stream. By releasing neurochemicals that mimic those of a cricket, the worm urges the cricket to plunge in just in time for the worm to participate in mating season, which must take place in the water. Similarly, although pill bugs usually hide out during daylight hours to avoid being eaten by birds, those that are infected with the thorny-headed worm want nothing more than to venture out for a nice afternoon of sunbathing—on a light-colored surface, no less, where the high-contrast environment makes them easy to spot by birds flying overhead. The worms then hitch a ride back to the bird’s digestive system to lay their eggs. The larvae of the Alcon blue butterfly have a surface chemistry that mimics chemicals found on the surface of at least two species of ant larvae, causing the ants to carry the familiar-scented butterfly larvae back to their nest to feed and nurture them, often at the expense of their own offspring. And parasitic wasps cause orb spiders to build webs that differ drastically from their usual design. After the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider, the spider begins spinning a web much more suited to the larva’s needs than its own, keeping the larva safe from nearby predators and providing the perfect netting for building its cocoon. The list goes on and on.”
“There are also instances of bacterial infections causing behavioral changes in people, and scientists are continuing to discover links between infections and human psychological disorders. Streptococci bacteria, for instance, have evolved a defense mechanism enabling them to hide successfully from the immune system of children for some period. Molecules on the walls of their cells make them indistinguishable from tissues in a child’s heart, joints, skin, and brain. Eventually the child’s immune system recognizes the strep as foreign to the body, but when it launches its attack, it may mistakenly target healthy tissues in the body as well. According to studies at the National Institute of Mental Health, in these cases ‘some cross-reactive ‘anti-brain’ antibodies (may) target the brain, causing OCD, tics, and the other neuropsychiatric symptoms of PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections).’ Here, the behavior of the host isn’t supporting the goals of the parasite; rather, the strep infection results in a phenomenon with ‘unintended’ effects. But both types of examples uncover the same reality about our conscious experience, and the idea that ‘I’ am the ultimate source of my desires and actions begins to crumble.”
“With so many behind-the-scenes forces at work—from the essential neurological processes we previously examined to bacterial infections and parasites—it’s hard to see how our behavior, preferences, and even choices could be under the control of our conscious will in any real sense. It seems much more accurate to say that consciousness is along for the ride—watching the show, rather than creating or controlling it. In theory, we can go as far as to say that few (if any) of our behaviors need consciousness in order to be carried out. But at an intuitive level, we assume that because human beings act in certain ways and are conscious—and because experiences such as fear, love, and pain feel like such powerful motivators within consciousness—our behaviors are driven by our awareness of them and otherwise would not occur. However, it’s now obvious that many behaviors we usually attribute to consciousness, and think of as proof of consciousness, could actually exist without consciousness, at least in theory.”

Free Will

“There is no question that modern neuroscience is providing us with a quickly evolving view of the human mind. We now have reason to believe that with access to certain activity inside your brain, another person can know what you’re going to do before you do.”

“Findings about how decisions are made at the level of the brain—and the milliseconds of delay in our conscious awareness of sensory input and even of our own thoughts—have caused many neuroscientists, Gazzaniga included, to describe the feeling of conscious will as an illusion. Note that in such experiments, the subjects felt they were making a freely willed action that, in actuality, had already been set in motion before they felt they made the decision to move.”
“The argument that conscious will is an illusion is further strengthened by the fact that this illusion can be intentionally triggered and manipulated. Experimenters have been able to cause a feeling of will in subjects when the subjects in fact had no control. It seems that, under the right conditions, it’s possible to convince people that they have consciously initiated an action that was actually controlled by someone else. A series of such studies were conducted by the psychologists Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley. Wegner explains: ‘We have a participant in the experiment put their hands on a little board that’s resting on top of a computer mouse, and the mouse moves a cursor around on a screen. The screen has a variety of different objects, pictures from the book I-Spy—in this case little plastic toys. Also in the room is our confederate; both of them have headphones on, and together they are asked to move the cursor around the screen and rest on an object every few seconds, whenever music comes on. . . . Most of the time they hear sounds over the headphones they’re wearing, and some of these are names of things on the screen. The key part of the experiment occurs when, in some trials, the confederate is asked to force our subject to land the cursor on a particular object, so the person who we’re testing hasn’t done it, but has been forced. It’s just as though someone was cheating on a Ouija board. We play the name of the object to our participant at some interval of time before or after they’re forced to move, and we find that if we play the name of the object just a second before they’re forced to move to it, they report having done it intentionally. . . . The feeling of agency can be fooled—and yet, we go about our daily lives feeling the opposite.'” (Note: more about Wegner and free will)
“So what role does consciousness play if it’s not creating the will to move but merely watching the movement play out, all the while under the illusion that it is involved? We can see how the feeling of free will, as we typically experience it, is not as straightforward as it seems. And if we dispel this common notion, we can begin to question the idea that consciousness plays an integral role in guiding human behavior.”
“Like everyone else, I have the absurd tendency to regard ‘my body’ (including ‘my head’ and ‘my brain’) as something my conscious will inhabits—when in fact everything I think of as ‘me’ is dependent on the functioning of my brain. Even the slightest neural changes, via intoxication, disease, or injury, could render ‘me’ unrecognizable.”
“When I discuss the illusion of conscious will here, I’m speaking of the illusion that consciousness is the will itself. The concept of a conscious will that is free seems to be incoherent—it suggests that one’s will is separate and isolated from the rest of its environment, yet paradoxically able to influence its environment by making choices within it.”
“It seems clear that we can’t decide what to think or feel, any more than we can decide what to see or hear. A highly complicated convergence of factors and past events—including our genes, our personal life history, our immediate environment, and the state of our brain—is responsible for each next thought.” (Note: See the lottery of birth)
“Did I decide to write this book? In some sense, the answer is yes, but the ‘I’ in question is not my conscious experience. In actuality, my brain, in conjunction with its history and the outside world, decided. I (my consciousness) simply witness decisions unfolding.”

Panpsychism

“If we can’t point to anything that distinguishes which collections of atoms in the universe are conscious from those that aren’t, where can we possibly hope to draw the line? Perhaps a more interesting question is why we should draw a line at all. When we view our own experience of consciousness as being ‘along for the ride,’ we suddenly find it easier to imagine that other systems are accompanied by consciousness as well. It’s at this point that we must consider the possibility that all matter is imbued with consciousness in some sense—a view referred to as panpsychism … Perhaps consciousness is embedded in matter itself, as a fundamental property of the universe.”

“Modern thinking about panpsychism is informed by the sciences and is fully aligned with physicalism and scientific reasoning.”
“Once we realise that physics tells us nothing about the intrinsic nature of the entities it talks about, and indeed that the only thing we know for certain about the intrinsic nature of matter is that at least some material things have experience … the theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with the data leads us quite straightforwardly in the direction of panpsychism.” — Philip Goff
“When scientists assume they have bypassed the hard problem by describing consciousness as an emergent property—that is, a complex phenomenon not predicted by the constituent parts—they are changing the subject. All emergent phenomena—like ant colonies, snowflakes, and waves—are still descriptions of matter and how it behaves as witnessed from the outside. What a collection of matter is like from the inside and whether or not there is an experience associated with it is something the term ’emergence’ doesn’t cover. Calling consciousness an emergent phenomenon doesn’t actually explain anything, because to the observer, matter is behaving as it always does. If some matter has experience and some doesn’t (and some emergent phenomena entail experiences and some don’t), the concept of emergence as it is traditionally used in science simply doesn’t explain consciousness.”
“Even if we concede that it makes sense to view consciousness as an evolved function in aid of survival, the idea that a physical system could develop a property that is so un-material-like suggests to me that consciousness was there all along as a property to be called on by the physical system—which brings us back full circle to a version of panpsychism.”
“My own sense of the correct resolution to the mystery of consciousness, whether or not we can ever achieve a true understanding, is still currently split between a brain-based explanation and a panpsychic one.”

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