the ego tunnel - review

8/19/2019 The Ego Tunnel - REVIEW

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Consciousness Revolutions review of

The Ego Tunnel

by Thomas Metzinger

Introduction – The appearance of a worldThe self as self-model – Naturalizing agency – Consciousness and autonomy

These are encouraging times for secularists – atheists, humanists, freethinkersand skeptics – with recent U.S. surveys showing substantial increases in thoseunaffiliated with any mainstream religion. This might be an indication that belief ina supernatural divinity, at least of the traditional Christian variety, is on the wane.Atheists are certainly making themselves heard via billboard campaigns,

reinvigorated secular organizations, and a slew of books questioning belief in Godand the advisability of faith. Ron Aronson, author of Living Without God, argues atReligion Dispatches that there may be more secularists out there than meets theeye.

For those in the business of advancing naturalism this is of course good news, sinceatheism and humanism are significant milestones on the way to a fully naturalisticview of reality. But after God is gone there’s still a ways to go. Even after giving upbelief in the supernatural “up there,” many atheists and humanists continue toharbor quasi-supernatural intuitions about the self and free will “in here.” The littlegod of the soul, the categorically mental agent or homunculus in charge of thebrain, is still alive and well in the thinking of many secularists. As a result, some ofthe most profound developments in the ongoing project of scientific enlightenmentare still ahead of us.

Page 1 of 9Metzinger

09/11/2009http://www.naturalism.org/metzinger.htm


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I am pleased to report that Thomas Metzinger’s The Ego Tunnel is a majorcontribution to this project, written for the curious and fearless lay person wantingto know who, precisely, we are. I strongly recommend this book. Here is the selffully naturalized, a radical revision of the conventional wisdom about our essentialnature – are you ready? It’s also a must read for anyone interested in consciousnessand the mind-body problem, since Metzinger has a well-developed, empirically

supported representational theory that explains many of the puzzles aboutconscious subjectivity.

His two main themes, self and consciousness, are closely linked, and theyculminate in two rather unsettling conclusions. First, selves don’t exist in the waymost folks suppose. Second, the solid, three dimensional public reality that is sopalpably there in our waking lives turns out to be a private model of reality. OnMetzinger’s view, the self – the feeling of being a mental me in charge of thephysical body – is a module within consciousness activated by your brain’s neuralprocessing. The self is categorically not some substantial, essential invariant entity,

like a soul, spirit or homunculus. As he emphasizes, there are no such things assubstantial selves. Instead, the self is a phenomenal (that is, experiential) constructthat disintegrates entirely when you fall into a dreamless sleep, to be reactivated(usually in attenuated form) when you dream, and that reappears nearlyinstantaneously when you awake in the morning. The self is put online only whenneeded, part of a larger phenomenal reality generated by the brain as it representsthe world and you in it. This reality seems perfectly concrete, but the startling factof the matter, a challenge to naïve realists (that is, just about everybody), is that it’san appearance, a virtual reality. You, the subject conjured up by the brain, do notdirectly encounter the world. Rather, you participate in a larger brain-basedrepresentational construction – consciousness – that maps the actual world closely

enough for you-the-organism to stay out of trouble. This global simulation carriedout in each of our heads, what we can’t help but take as real, is what Metzingercalls the Ego Tunnel. Welcome to the Matrix.

Explaining consciousness: the appearance of a world

The obvious difficulty Metzinger faces is to make all this plausible, given the manycompeting explanations of consciousness and their conceptual complexity. Indeed,he quotes philosopher Daniel Dennett at the very start: “Any theory that makesprogress is bound to be initially counterintuitive” (original emphasis). He

acknowledges we’re just beginning to understand the mind-brain, but he’sconfident that his representational approach, one of the major contenders inconsciousness studies, is very likely correct in its essentials. The full exposition ofhis theory, daunting in its intricacy but ultimately very rewarding, can be found inhis 2003 tour de force Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. So if youfind The Ego Tunnel philosophically or empirically sketchy, look there. As I adviseda philosophy grad student recently: “Try Being No One, you might like it.”

The Ego Tunnel is reasonably demanding in its own right, given the breadth ofmaterial and its undeniable strangeness for those encountering the self-modeltheory for the first time. Even for veterans of consciousness studies it offers much

that’s worthwhile and likely new: some mind-stretching thought experiments;interviews with researchers on the binding problem (the unity of consciousness),dreams, and empathy; and an imagined conversation with a post-biotic




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philosopher who pities us merely human thinkers, stuck in our crude realitymodels (this is just one of several well-timed dessert moments in the book).Metzinger is a first rate, albeit human, neurophilosopher, fully cognizant of mindscience as well as philosophy, and a very good writer in his second language(German the first). You might occasionally get boggled and baffled as you negotiateThe Ego Tunnel, but never bored. The main thing is that you’re getting a glimpse

behind (what you might not yet realize is) the veil of consciousness, in a senseescaping the tunnel into non-subjective reality, if only conceptually. You’re alsogetting a preview of what our lives might be like under a radically revised notion ofself, should the “consciousness revolution” Metzinger contemplates come to pass.There might be, he suggests, some profound personal and social consequences thatfollow from fully naturalizing ourselves.

The first third of the book covers the basic theoretical model: that consciousness isfor a world to appear , both in its basic phenomenal (experiential) particulars – whatare often called qualia, e.g., the redness of red, the painfulness of pain – and in itsglobal unity: we never find pain, red, or any other quality on its own, but alwayswithin a larger coherent conscious context of self-in-the-world. In contrast to anti-representationalist philosophers such as Alva Noe and Kevin O’Regan, Metzingerholds that consciousness is an internal matter, in that the brain’s neural propertiescompletely determine the subjective qualities and content of experience. Asphilosophers sometimes put it, experience supervenes locally on brain states.Although we ordinarily have experience in the context of getting around in theworld, the world itself isn’t necessary for consciousness: were your brain in thesame state it is now, absent the world, you’d be having the exact same experience.Dreams, especially lucid dreams, are evidence for this. When dreaming, the brain isconjuring up a 3-D world, with you in it, while you’re lying paralyzed in bed. In a

lucid dream, in which you know you’re dreaming, you actually experience the factthat experience is being constructed by your brain – quite an astonishing gut-levelrevelation I recommend to everyone interested in consciousness. (Metzingerdiscusses how to induce lucid dreams, about which more below.)

Metzinger likens consciousness to a tunnel since it’s a very selective, narrowrepresentation of the world:

What we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a smallfraction of what actually exists out there. Our conscious model of realityis a low-dimensional projection of the inconceivably richer physical

reality surrounding us and sustaining us. Our sensory organs are limited:They evolved for reasons of survival, not for depicting the enormouswealth and richness of reality in all its unfathomable depth. Therefore, theongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image ofreality as a tunnel through reality.” (p. 6, original emphasis)

Consciousness is an ego tunnel since it nearly always includes the experience ofbeing a self or subject – the entity to whom the world of experience appears(exceptions are more or less self-less states induced by brain disorders, meditation,drugs, or other means). Not only does the brain construct a phenomenal model ofthe world, it constructs a phenomenal model of someone in the world who interacts

with it and knows it – that is, you. The basic trick of consciousness is to hide thefact that this phenomenal self-model, and the larger reality-model it’s embedded in,is indeed a model: it’s transparent in the sense that you can’t experience it as a




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model. Rather, you look right through it and simply find yourself present in aworld. For the conscious subject, reality is just that which can’t be experienced as aconstruction.

For Metzinger, subjectivity – the “who problem” of being a self – is the most

difficult and profound aspect of consciousness in need of explanation, but there areother general features of consciousness which he explores in a “tour” of the EgoTunnel. Consciousness is always an experienced unity; it’s always now, that is,temporally present; it convinces us that it’s real, not a representation; it transcendsour ability to describe its basic elements, so is ineffable in some respects; and it hascome about via evolution, thus is natural and adaptive. In laying out theseparameters, Metzinger is taking care to specify the explanatory target of his theory,something too many consciousness researchers gloss over. It’s only by getting aclear fix on the phenomenal properties of consciousness that we can make progressin explaining it. Although his explanations are cursory compared to what’s offeredin Being No One, the basic strategy is to connect the phenomenology (e.g.,

experiential unity) with neuro-computational functions (making informationglobally available to different control systems) and their neural instantiation (the“global workspace” of the thalamo-cortical network). Conscious experience is, hesuggests, a biological data format that, by generating a subjective reality for theorganism, supports adaptive behavior that would otherwise be impossible:

It is easy to overlook the causal relevance of this first evolutionary step,the fundamental computational goal of conscious experience. It is the onenecessary functional property on which everything else rests. We cansimply call it “reality generation”: It allowed animals to representexplicitly the fact that something is actually the case. A transparent world-

model lets you discover that something is really out there, and byintegrating your portrait of the world with the subjective Now, it lets yougrasp the fact that the world is present. This step opened up a new level ofcomplexity. Thus, having a global world-model is a new way ofprocessing information about the world in a highly integrated manner.Every conscious thought, every bodily sensation, every sound and everysight, every experience of empathy or of sharing the goals of anotherhuman being makes a different class of facts available for the adaptive,flexible, and selective form of processing that only conscious experiencecan provide. (p. 59)

One such fact, of critical importance, is that we come to see ourselves as thinkersand knowers who can distinguish between appearance and reality:

By consciously experiencing some elements of our tunnel as mere imagesor thoughts about the world, we became aware of the possibility ofmisrepresentation. We understood that sometimes we can be wrong,since reality is only a specific type of appearance. As evolvedrepresentational systems, we could now represent one of the mostimportant facts about ourselves – namely, that we are representationalsystems. We were able to grasp the notions of truth and falsity, of

knowledge and illusion. As soon as we had grasped this distinction,cultural evolution exploded, because we became ever more intelligent bysystematically increasing knowledge and minimizing illusion. (p. 61)




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Despite Metzinger’s confidence that the phenomenal level of representationconstituted by consciousness was a major adaptive breakthrough, and is thusexplicable by an evolutionary account, doubts can be raised. Evolution requiredsimply that the neuro-computational representational functions carried out by thebrain confer survival and reproductive benefits that outweighed their metabolic

costs (the cognitive functions associated with consciousness use lots of glucose).What extra benefit does conscious phenomenology, which presumably superveneson these functions, or is somehow entailed by them, provide? If consciousness is insome sense identical to higher level neuro-computations, then yes, we can sayevolution selected for it, and so it’s adaptive. But if we assign phenomenalexperience an ontological reality distinct from neuro-computation, as Metzingerseems to, its contribution to reproductive success becomes obscure. After all, it’s the physical world-representing, behavior-controlling system of the brain that’sengaging with the environment and conspecifics, not phenomenology. So it’s hardto see how consciousness per se is adaptive over and above the fitness conferred byits neural correlates. I raise this point simply to illustrate the difficulties of

explaining consciousness – a quintessentially subjective, private, qualitativephenomenon – using concepts and terms that are objective, public and quantitative,the coin of naturalistic theories. Supernaturalistic and panpsychist theories thattake consciousness as somehow basic to reality, whether in souls or in “psychons,”avoid this problem, but thus far lack any evidential support. As far as we know,consciousness is strictly associated (thus far) with biologically evolved systems;there’s no evidence that any of their constituent parts are conscious.

The self as self-model

With his theory of consciousness sketched out, although of course by no meansproven, Metzinger takes a look at the self-model problem in more detail, includingthe question of the minimal conditions for phenomenal selfhood. This involvesfascinating accounts of research into out-of-body experiences (OBEs), until recentlythe scientifically suspect domain of parapsychology, but now a legitimate field ofstudy in its own right. That one’s felt location of self can shift outside the body inresponse to perceptual cues supports the hypothesis that phenomenal selfhood is amutable representation, constructed by the brain. Of course committed dualists willsimply argue that in OBEs the soul is out on excursion, and indeed there’s no wayto categorically disprove this hypothesis. But there’s also no good scientificevidence for it, and the commitment to science and other varieties of evidence-based inquiry is taken for granted by Metzinger. Those not making thiscommitment will undoubtedly look elsewhere for explanations of consciousness.

As mentioned above, lucid dreams offer another route to understandingconsciousness that Metzinger, a self-confessed “psychonaut,” pursues withenthusiasm. The descriptions of dreams are not to be missed, but their explanatorycontribution is no less compelling. The lucid dreamer wakes up to the fact that thedream is her own brain’s doing, or put another way, her reality-model is suddenlyno longer transparent, but opaque: it becomes experientially available to her as amodel because she has direct, non-inferential (not just conceptual) knowledge of

the fact that she’s dreaming. In lucid dreams we actually have more direct access tothe underlying processing of consciousness than when waking, when we’re prettymuch barred from experiencing experience as a construction.




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Why is this? Metzinger’s elegant hypothesis is that it’s functionally necessary forthe organism, when moving about in the world, to have an unquestionable baselinephenomenal reality constituted by transparent representations – what he calls“world zero.” We have to have something as given, as untranscendablyreal, bothto guide behavior from moment to moment and against which to test hypotheticalscenarios of action that we rehearse in imagination. When dreaming, this constraint

is relaxed since we’re not moving about, so the representational system constitutedby the brain is free(er) to represent the reality-model itself as a representation. Butnote that the lucid dreamer doesn’t transcend the self-model in her dream; she’s stillthere as the subject, having the dream. Moreover, her experience is still fully anduntranscendably qualitative: reds are red, blues are blue, perhaps even more sogiven the heightened intensity of experience often reported by lucid dreamers. Thisraises the intriguing question: how far can a self-maintaining representationalsystem go in directly appreciating the fact that it simulates reality, including itself ,instead of directly encountering it? Metzinger says late in the book:

The bigger picture cannot be properly reflected in the Ego Tunnel – itwould dissolve the tunnel itself. Put differently, if we wanted to experiencethe theory as true, we could do so only by radically transforming ourstate of consciousness. (p. 209, emphasis added). [1]

Naturalizing agency

The idea that the self is an online model generated by neurocomputation, not a soulor mental essence, challenges conventional notions of human agency. Notsurprisingly, Metzinger concludes that the naturalistic turn in our self-understanding leaves no room for free will in the contra-causal sense of being able

to transcend the mechanisms of our brains and bodies. We might experienceourselves as uncaused causers, capable of initiating causal chains de novo, and asbeings that could have done otherwise in a situation as it arose, all conditions asthey were, but:

The unsettling point about modern philosophy of mind and the cognitiveneuroscience of will, already apparent even at this early stage, is that afinal theory may contradict the way we have been subjectivelyexperiencing ourselves for millennia. There will likely be a conflictbetween the scientific view of the acting self and the phenomenalnarrative, the subjective story our brains tell us about what happens whenwe decide to act. (p. 127)

And:

From a scientific, third-person perspective, our inner experience of strongautonomy may look increasingly like what it has been all along: anappearance only. (p. 129)

Metzinger considers the ramifications of the conflict between science andcommonsense, including how it might affect notions of responsibility andpunishment. Taking the scientific view would, he says, expose retribution as a“Stone Age concept” (p. 128), since retribution is ordinarily premised on the ideawe could have done otherwise in a situation as it arose. For progressives such asmyself, this would be a welcome development given the retributive excesses of our




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criminal justice system. Metzinger is not so sanguine since he suspects a false beliefin contra-causal free will might be necessary to ground a fully functional notion ofmoral responsibility. I happen to disagree, and there’s growing anecdotal evidencethat people can live perfectly responsible, meaningful lives without being deceivedas to their fundamental nature. In any case this is a matter of ongoing debateamong philosophers and psychologists concerned with where skepticism about free

will might take us.[2]

Consciousness and autonomy

Such doubts are just one consequence of the consciousness revolution Metzinger ishelping to foment with this book, a vivid and profound exercise in what he callsrational neuroanthropology. Neuroscience is rapidly reshaping our image ofourselves, and where will it all end? After an illuminating chapter on the neurallyembodied basis of empathy and social cognition, the last third of the book looksahead: can we, and should we, build artificial conscious systems? How can we

assimilate the growing understanding of our neural mechanisms and therealization that we fundamentally are such mechanisms?

Now that the neurosciences have irrevocably dissolved the Judeo-Christian image of a human being as containing an immortal spark of thedivine, we are beginning to realize that they have not substitutedanything that could hold society together and provide a common groundfor shared moral intuitions and values. An anthropological and ethicalvacuum may well follow on the heels of neuroscientific findings. (p. 213)

In the face of what he sees as a very present danger, Metzinger offers his own

recommendations for how to cope with the new science of mind, demonstrating hisown very humanistic, progressive sensibility. We should not, he argues, buildconscious systems because in so doing we may well create new subjects ofsuffering. It’s to Metzinger’s credit that he draws attention to this basic ethicalproblem, widely unrecognized in the artificial intelligence community. Unless wecan be sure that the systems we create won’t suffer, we should hold off creatingthem – there’s quite enough pain experienced in the world as it is.

To fill the anthropological and ethical vacuum left by the dissolution of the soul,Metzinger says we must address fundamental questions in the new field ofneuroethics: What is a good or desirable state of consciousness? How much control

should we assume over our own conscious states? How much should we enhanceour mental capacities, and by what means? With new understanding comes newresponsibilities, since it’s very unlikely that we can block the arrival ofconsciousness technologies. We need a viable ethics of consciousness soon, onegrounded in the facts as science reveals them.

Metzinger’s ethical anchor is the protection and enhancement of individualautonomy, despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) that our very notion of theindividual is now radically revised. Even if we don’t have souls, we remain distinctpersons, and each of us has a brain with an untapped potential for millions ofdifferent conscious states. From this perspective, a significant dimension ofautonomy consists in the freedom to explore one’s own experiential landscape. Butsince we live in moral community, we can’t escape the question of whether andhow much such exploration is a good thing. Should it include, as Metzinger argues




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it should, the safe and responsible use of psychoactive drugs? Similarly, knowingthat we are bio-psycho-social constructions, should autonomy include the right toreconstruct ourselves, and what if any limits should we place on such a project?Metzinger says “We may no longer be able to regard our own consciousness as alegitimate vehicle for our metaphysical hopes and desires.” (213) If not, then thepursuit of autonomy could take us to transhumanism, and not just the redesign ofthe body, but of the mind.

More immediately, Metzinger worries about the encroachment of moderncommunications technology on individual consciousnesses, as advertising andentertainment place more demands on our limited reserves of attention. We canfight back by becoming more intentional in defending the personal space ofsubjectivity, for instance by teaching children such things as meditation,mindfulness and relaxation techniques:

…now that we know more about the critical formative phases of thehuman brain, shouldn’t we make use of this knowledge to maximize theautonomy of future adults? In particular, shouldn’t we introduce ourchildren to those states of consciousness we believe to be valuable andteach them how to access and cultivate them at an early age? Education isnot only about academic achievement. Recall that one positive aspect ofthe new image of Homo sapiens is its recognition of the vastness of ourphenomenal-state space. Why not teach our children to make use of thisvastness in a better way than their parents did – a way that guaranteesand stabilizes their mental health, enriches their subjective lives, andgrants them new insights? (p. 236)

More generally, Metzinger argues that it’s only by assimilating the naturalistictruth about who we are that we can defend individual autonomy against massculture and its potential for manipulation. Facing the scientific facts about the selfalso expresses a central human value: maintaining our cognitive dignity andresponsibility as knowers, what he calls “the will to clarity.” The philosophical,scientific, and moral issues raised in this book couldn’t be more demanding, butMetzinger exemplifies how we can best meet the challenge: by an unflinchingcommitment to rational and empirical investigation, wherever it leads, carried outwithin a democratic, open society of individuals informed about their true nature.Whether or not it’s completely right about the mind, The Ego Tunnel models theintellectual and ethical virtues that will be required of us, as Metzinger puts it, to

"ride the tiger" of the consciousness revolution.

TWC , May, 2009

Notes

[1] Some speculations on this in the context of lucid dreaming are here.

[2] About this debate, see Don’t forget about me: avoiding demoralization by

determinism.




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