The Emotion Machine

word we use for many types of processes, and for different kinds of purposes; we apply it to feelings, emotions, and thoughts—and to how we think and feel about them. It’s the same for most everyday words about minds, such as ‘creativity’ or ‘intelligence’.

So instead of asking what ‘consciousness’ is, or what we mean by ‘being aware,’ we’ll try to examine when and why people use those mysterious words. But why do such questions even arise? What, for that matter, are mysteries?

Daniel Dennett: “A mystery is a phenomenon that people don’t know how to think about—yet. Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. There have been other great mysteries [like those] of the origin of the universe and of time, space, and gravity. ... However, Consciousness stands alone today as a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist—and hope—that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.”

—Consciousness Explained, 1991

Indeed, many of those who ‘insist—and hope’ that consciousness cannot be explained still claim that it alone is the source of most of the virtues of human minds.

Thinker 1: Consciousness is what unifies our present, past, and future together, by making sense of all our experience.

Thinker 2: Consciousness makes us ‘aware’ of ourselves, and gives us our sense of identity; it is what animates our minds and gives us our sense of being alive.

Thinker 3: Consciousness is what gives things meanings to us; without it, we would not even know we had feelings.

Wow! How could one principle, power, or force endow us with so many faculties? It can’t—and this chapter will argue that there is no reason to suppose that all of those different abilities stem from just one common origin. Indeed, from what we know about brains, it is safer to guess that they’re each based on different machinery.

William Calvin and George Ojeman “Modern discussions of consciousness … usually include such aspects of mental life as focusing your attention, things that you didn’t know you knew, mental rehearsal, imagery, thinking, decision making, awareness, altered states of consciousness, voluntary actions, subliminal priming, the development of the concept of self in children, and the narratives we tell ourselves when awake or dreaming.”[52]

All this shows that “consciousness” does not refer to any single idea or thing, but that we use it as a suitcase-word for a great many different activities.

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§4-2. Unpacking the Suitcase of Consciousness

Aaron Sloman: “It is not worth asking how to define consciousness, how to explain it, how it evolved, what its function is, etc., because there’s no one thing for which all the answers would be the same. Instead, we have many sub-capabilities, for which the answers are different: e.g. different kinds of perception, learning, knowledge, attention control, self-monitoring, self-control, etc.”[53]

To see the variety of what human minds do, consider this fragment of everyday thinking.

Joan is part way across the street on the way to deliver her finished report. While thinking about what to say at the meeting, she hears a sound and turns her head —and sees a quickly oncoming car. Uncertain whether to cross or retreat, but uneasy about arriving late, she decides to sprint across the road. She later remembers her injured knee and reflects upon her impulsive decision. “If my knee had failed, I could have been killed. Then what would my friends have thought of me?”

It might seem natural to ask, “How conscious was Joan of what she did?” But rather than dwell on that ‘consciousness’ word, let’s look at a few of the things that Joan “did.”

Reaction: Joan reacted quickly to that sound.

Identification: She recognized it as being a sound.

Characterization: She classified it as the sound of a car.

Attention: She noticed certain things rather than others.

Imagining: She envisioned two or more possible futures.

Indecision: She wondered whether to cross or retreat.

Decision: She chose one of several alternative actions.

Recollection: She retrieved descriptions of prior events.

Reconsideration: Later she reconsidered this choice.

Selection: She selected a way to choose among options.

Apprehension: She was uneasy about arriving late.

Planning: She constructed a multi-step action-plan.

Embodiment: She tried to describe her body’s condition.

Emotion: She changed major parts of her mental state.

Representation: She interconnected a set of descriptions.

Language: She constructed several verbal expressions.

Narration: She heard them as dialogs in her mind.

Anticipation: She expected certain future condition.

Intention: She changed some of her goals’ priorities.

Reasoning: She made various kinds of inferences.

Reflection: She thought about what she’s recently done.

Self-Reflection: She reflected on her recent thoughts.

Empathy: She imagined other persons’ thoughts.

Moral Reflection: She evaluated what she has done.

Self-Imaging: She made and used models of herself.

Self-Awareness: She characterized her mental condition.

Sense of Identity: She regarded herself as an entity.

That’s only the start of a much longer list of aspects of how we feel and think—and if we want to understand how our minds work, we’ll need explanations for all of them. To do this, we’ll have to take each one apart, to account for the details of how they each work. Then each reader can decide which ones should, or should not be regarded as aspects of ‘consciousness.’

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4-2.1. Suitcase words in Psychology