What is consciousness good for?

Further to the question of conscious vs non-conscious action, here’s a recent RSA video presenting some evidence.

Nicholas Shea presents with Barry Smith riding shotgun. There’s a mention for one piece of research also mentioned by Di Nucci; preventing expert golfers from concentrating consciously on their shot actually improves their performance (it does the opposite for non-experts). There are two pieces of audience participation; one shows that subliminal prompts can (slightly) affect behaviour; the other shows that time to think and discuss can help where explicit reasoning is involved (though it doesn’t seem to help the RSA audience much).

Perhaps in the end consciousness is not essentially private after all, but social and co-operative?

Sign of the times to see two philosophers unashamedly dabbling in experiments. I think the RSA also has to win some kind of prize in the hotly-contested ‘unconvincing brain picture’ category for using purple and yellow cauliflower.

Consciousness: the underlying problem


Watch the full video with related content here.

What is the problem about consciousness? A Royal Institution video with interesting presentations (part 2 another time).

Anil Seth presents a striking illusion and gives an optimistic view of the ability of science to tackle the problem; or maybe we just get on with the science anyway? The philosophers may ask good questions, but their answers have always been wrong.

Barry Smith says that’s because when the philosophers have sorted a subject out it moves over into science. One problem is that we tend to miss thinking about consciousness and think about its contents. Isn’t there a problem: to be aware of your own awareness changes it? I feel pain in my body, but could consciousness be in my ankle?

Chris Frith points out that actually only a small part of our mental activity has anything to do with consciousness, and in fact there is evidence to show that many of the things we think are controlled by conscious thought really are not: a vindication of Helmholtz’s idea of unconscious inference. Thinking about your thinking messes things up?  Try asking someone how happy they feel – guaranteed to make them less happy immediately…