Nicholas Humphrey - Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

SOUL DUST

NICHOLAS HUMPHREY

The Magic of Consciousness

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2011 by Princeton University Press

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Jacket art: Soul Dust 1, 2010, acrylic ink. By Susan Aldworth. www.susanaldworth.com

Excerpt from Yevtushenko: Selected Poems, translated by robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi (Penguin Books, 1962). Copyright robin Milner-Gulland and Peter levi, 1962. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

Excerpt from The Dog Beneath the Skin by W. H. Auden, copyright 1936, W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, reprinted by permission.

Excerpt from Aubade from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, copyright 1977, with permission of Faber and Faber Ltd, publishers.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Humphrey, Nicholas.

Soul dust : the magic of consciousness / Nicholas Humphrey.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-13862-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Consciousness. I. Title. II. Title: Magic of consciousness.

BF311.H7795 2011

126dc22 2010036759

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam; though this ill hap wait on her nativity, that she never comes into the world, but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth; till time, the midwife rather than the mother of truth, have washed and salted the infant [and] declared her legitimate.

John Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, 1643

Contents

Invitation

I wrote a short book a few years agoSeeing Red: A Study in Consciousnessthat met with unexpectedly good reviews, even from my colleagues. Philosophers tend to be charier still.

The review that pleased me best was in the American Journal of Psychology: This reviewer made at least three passes through the book, each pass yielding a new understanding. The first pass left me with a feeling of: Oh he doesnt really mean THAT! But the second pass solidified and verified: Oh yeah he really does mean that. And the third, and most rewarding pass: Oh my god, I think hes right!

They were right, of course; I had not solved the problem. Yet, who wants to have it said, as his epitaph, that his ideas were merely deeply interesting? I felt challenged to have one more go at writing the earth-shattering bookor, at any rate, the book that shows the fly the way out of the fly bottle.

This book, Soul Dust, takes off from the last few pages of Seeing Red. Since I cannot count on readers being familiar with my earlier work, I have reprised some of the ideas where needed. Apart from this, however, the arguments here are new. They are also, I must admit, largely untried by my peers. In this new book I have deliberately tried to change the game by following a different set of rules from those that have traditionally framed the discussion of consciousness. In doing this, and seeing for myself where it leads, I may say I have at times been surprised by the moves I have found myself making: I cant really mean that. But yes I really do. In which case, here we go.... In effect, the story has driven itself on. If the book readsalmost contrivedlylike a journey of discovery, that is because this is exactly what it has been in the writing.

My book is intended to be a work of serious science and philosophy, and I hope it will be judged as such. But it is also written for the general reader (while being furnished with copious scholarly notes). As it turns out, I could hardly have done otherwise than try to write a popular book. For it becomes a central part of my argument that only by connecting to the interests and anxieties of conscious human beings in general can we begin to see the evolutionary raison dtre for the existence of consciousness in the first place. So, as the book proceeds to discuss the whys of consciousness, I come to focus, naturally, on issues having to do with life, death, and the meaning of existenceissues that matter so obviously to all ordinary human beings (even if they sometimes care about them more than they dare talk about them).

The result is that Soul Dust, which begins with the most basic questions about the nature of conscious awareness and sensation, becomes a book about the evolution of spirituality and how humans have made their home in what I call the soul niche. Though I have no belief whatever in the supernatural, I make no apology for putting the human soul back where I am sure it belongs: at the center of consciousness studies.

Still, while the book does end up addressing many familiar human concerns, you should not expect it to be an easy read. There has been work to be done on my part, and it will require some work on yours. I begin the book by setting out my own account of what consciousness is and what the hard problem amounts to. This means my commencing with some relatively dry analysis and then, as the answers begin to emerge, some far-from-dry but still none-too-easy excursions into speculative neuroscience. At several points in is no more or less than a piece of magical theater, the questions about what it is for begin to look very different from those that philosophers and psychologists have been used to asking. And with very different questions come very different answers.

The answers I arrive at are certainly unlike any that science has yet had to offer. This in itself, I would have to agree, is no recommendation. Science is surely meant to be cumulative rather than revolutionary. Yet, when the fact is that previous research on consciousness has delivered almost nothing in the way of answers to the big questions people ask about the mystery of their experience, perhaps we can no longer rely on the science we are accustomed to.

The material world has given human beings magical souls. Human souls have returned the favor and put a magical spell upon the world. To understand these astonishing events, I invite you to start over.

PRELUDE

Chances are it is less than a day since you regained consciousness. It probably happened soon after the sunlight returned this morning. What was it like for you, as you came to? remember? The chink of a milk bottle, the touch of sheets, the sight of a patch of blue sky. You rubbed your eyes, stretched your limbs, and before you knew it, waves of