Zeki, S. (1999). Inner vision: An exploration of art and the brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CYNTHIA FREELAND

Department of Philosophy

513 Agnes Arnold HallUniversity of Houston

Houston, TX 77204-3004, USAEmail: Cynthia.Freeland@mail.uh.edu

� 2009, Cynthia Freeland

Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental WorldCHRIS FRITH

Oxford: Blackwell, 2007232 pages, ISBN: 1405160225 (pbk); $24.95

Imagine this: waking one morning we discover that it is not we who are in direct

contact with the bed; not we who are open to our lover’s caress; the movements ourbodies make are not really our movements. Such privileges of direct expressive and

receptive contact with our world and companions have, we discern, been affordednot to us, but—to our brains! We must rest content, on the side of action, with mere

illusions of free will and, on the side of perception, with inspecting mere models

which present themselves as reality but which are really just illusions thrown togetherby the brain.

The consolation is that, were we actually in direct contact with the world, the taskof making sense of its complexities would just be overwhelming. Thankfully our clever

brains perform these tasks ‘‘off-stage,’’ supplying us with outputs in the form ofsimple ‘‘pictures’’ or ‘‘messages’’ clear or intelligible enough for us poor cognitive

beings to grasp. As Frith says in the conclusion of Making up the Mind—a well-

written and accessible book which fully embraces and endorses the above-describedtheorization of, and some might say nightmarish predicament for, the self, mind and

body—all ‘‘this complex activity is hidden from us. So there is no need to beembarrassed. Just go back to the party and have fun’’ (p. 193). Whether this is

consolation enough may be questioned. As Malcolm (1986) once wrote regarding

Searle’s notion that he was the brain stuck inside his own skull: ‘‘Searle says that wecan receive messages. But in that predicament, who wants messages?’’ (p. 186).

Unlike Searle the philosopher, Frith the neuroscientist aims to substantiate hisclaims not with conceptual argumentation but with empirical evidence drawn from

cognitive neuropsychology. In his own words, here are the key theses Frith takes theneuropsychological evidence to support: The ‘‘distinction between the mental and

the physical is . . . an illusion created by the brain’’ (p. 17). ‘‘By hiding from us all the

unconscious inferences that it makes, our brain creates the illusion[s] that we havedirect contact with objects in the physical world [and that] our own mental world is

isolated and private’’ (p. 17). These unconscious ‘‘inferences can be wrong,’’ even in

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‘‘an ordinary, healthy brain’’ (p. 60). Furthermore, we have no ‘‘direct

contact . . . even with our own bodies’’; this is another ‘‘illusion’’ created by thebrain (p. 81). Our ‘‘perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality’’

(p. 111) arising when ‘‘our brains discover what is out there in the world byconstructing models and making predictions’’ (p. 138). Our knowledge of the

‘‘minds of others’’ is created by our brains ‘‘in the same way’’ (p. 159). And whilst‘‘we experience ourselves as agents with minds of our own,’’ this too is an ‘‘illusion

created by our brains’’ (p. 184). Frith acknowledges that our experience of freedom,individuality and responsibility is a cornerstone of societal stability and morality,but this is simply the ‘‘final illusion created by our brains’’ (p. 193).

Such claims are prima facie extraordinary, and if the interesting neuropsycho-logical data Frith presents could substantiate just one of them, his book might cause

a major revision in human self-understanding. Yet what struck this reviewer againand again was the way in which the content of the hypotheses these data supposedly

evidenced, and the theoretical unity of the text, derived principally from unarguedand tacit metapsychological commitments which radically constrained the way the

data were interpreted.Concerning perception, Frith cites three sorts of evidence for his claim that ‘‘even

if all our senses are intact and our brain is functioning normally, [the feeling that] we

have direct access [to the physical world] is an illusion created by our brain’’ (p. 40).First, in chapter 2, he provides evidence from various malfunctions of, and curiosities

regarding, visual experience—change blindness, subliminal perception, visualillusions, synesthesia, dreams, visual hallucinations, etc. Second, in chapter 4, he

cites the fact that there is no direct mapping to be had of sensory (e.g. retinal)stimulation onto the contents of consciousness. Third, in chapter 5, he notes that we

are normally unaware of the vast amount of complex neurophysiological processing(the activation of motor programs, say) that subtends everyday experience, and infers

that ‘‘my perception [cannot be] of the world, but of my brain’s model of the world’’(p. 132).

Whilst the data are fascinating, they are also incapable of motivating Frith’s

theoretical claims, which are instead consistently driven by a ‘‘homuncular’’conception of the self constantly invoked in the data’s interpretation. By

‘‘homuncular’’ I mean a conception of the subject’s relation to its brain whichharnesses (a) a mentalistic conception of the immediate contents of perceptual

consciousness as ‘‘inner images’’ or ‘‘internal representations’’ occurring ‘‘in ourminds’’ to (b) a causalist construal of such immediate contents as the final products,

delivered to the mind, by a central nervous system (CNS) which has worked overinformation originally received by the sense organs (Kenny, 1984). Conceptionsof consciousness as an inner stage (or ‘‘Cartesian theatre’’; Dennett, 1991) populated

by inner visibilia are of course unlikely to explicitly posit an actual homunculus as anaudience. The philosophical concern here is, however, not ontological but

methodological (Kenny, 1984): that theories deploying the conception do notneglect to demonstrate how, rather than simply assert that the very phenomenon, or

an inner analogue of it, which is supposed to be being explained (which here is our

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perceptual consciousness) is not in fact just simply being presupposed and

reduplicated.The following are representative examples of homuncularism taken from Making

up the Mind. Sense organs are said to work ‘‘just like a video recorder [transmitting]information about the physical world . . . to our minds’’ (p. 21). The brain is

described as ‘‘showing us false information’’ (p. 49); as not ‘‘telling us everything itknows’’ (p. 42); as ‘‘not simply transmit[ting] knowledge to us like a passive TV

set . . .[but as] actively creating pictures of the world . . . from the very limited andimperfect signals provided by the senses’’ (p. 85). My ‘‘brain manages to create forme the experience of a constant, unchanging world through which I move’’ (p. 110).

It also ‘‘constructs models’’ (p. 138) of both the physical and the ‘‘mental worlds’’ ofothers (p. 159).

Accordingly, when dreams or illusions are offered (in chapter 2) as evidence thatwe have no direct visual access to the world, the conception which constrains the

interpretation of the data already presupposes that, if we are not always witnessingthe world accurately, then we must (with some kind of further and as-yet-

unexplained perceptual system?) nevertheless be accurately witnessing inaccuratemental images of the world. Or when (in chapter 4) the facts are cited that retinalimages are inverted or two-dimensional or duplicated—or that movements of these

images are as it were ambiguous between movements of the perceived objects andmovements of the eye or head—it is simply presupposed that, since perception is

construed, in a homuncularist manner, as input to consciousness, the work of thevisual system must be understood as one of ‘‘undoing’’ the infelicities introduced to

this alleged input at the sensory surfaces. Or when it is pointed out (in chapter 5) thatthe vast complexities of the CNS’s information processing are completely unknown

to us, the inference is straightway drawn that therefore what we are aware of must beneither the world around us, nor our neurological processes, but the supposed

illusory upshots of the latter.Perhaps I should confess that I am convinced that what Kenny calls the

‘‘homunculus fallacy’’ is indeed a fallacy, and that Dennett is right to deconstruct the

‘‘Cartesian theatre.’’ Whilst in confessional mode I might also relate that Frith’sdescription of the mere brain as engaged in personal-level activities (knowing,

believing, interpreting, deploying Bayesian inferences, etc.) strikes me as implicatinghim in another (‘‘mereological’’) fallacy—that of ascribing to a part (the brain) what

can only coherently be ascribed to the whole (the person) (Bennett & Hacker, 2003).1

Yet my intent is not to foist my Wittgensteinian sensibilities onto the reader, but

merely to relate that Frith’s striking theses regarding the allegedly illusory nature ofour experience of the world are quite simply not a function of the data he presents,but rather of the homuncular framework used to interpret them—whatever we make

of that framework. Perhaps it is a harmless metaphor—and if so this may also be thebest way to take Frith’s theories.

Similar presentations of interesting data recruited by tacitly homunculartheorizations of the self arise throughout the book, whether we are considering

perception (chapters 1, 2, & 5), interpersonal understanding (chapter 6 & 7),

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planning (chapter 4), or action (chapters 3 & 6). For example, chapter 6 relates that

an alleged everyday ‘‘experience of agency’’—an experience of being in control of our

actions, making decisions to act, and acting on these decisions—is actually an illusion

created by the brain. In truth, we are told, the brain distinguishes between intentional

and non-intentional movement by measuring sensorimotor timing differences. These

differential responses to the timings of causes and effects in perception and action

are, it is said, translated for us into alleged experiences of agency, providing an

illusion of free will.

The experimental data (pp. 151–155) are again fascinating. But it is instructive

that Frith appears to take his phenomenology of intentional action from cases such as

(which he quotes:) Ian McEwan’s marvelous description, in his novel Atonement, of

Briony’s contemplation of her relation to her moving body:

She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered . . . how this thing, thismachine for gripping, this fleshy spider on the end of her arm, came to be hers,entirely at her command. Or did it have some little life of its own? She bent herfinger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instance before it moved, thedividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect.It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought,she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge.

What Frith seems to miss is that such descriptions are precisely not of everyday

intentional action—but rather of an extremely alienated state of mind. Briony has

dissociated from her lived bodily experience, becoming a disembodied homuncular

spectator consciousness experiencing the body as merely a distant mechanism or

‘‘fleshy spider.’’ Contrast with this our actual everyday experience of agency which is

typically characterised by the immanence of non-reflective intention in unpreme-

ditated action. Accordingly, the striking conclusion Frith draws—that the timing

experiments reveal a genuine aspect of our self-conception to be illusory—is

misplaced, for the conception of agency on offer here (of making decisions to act

which are then realised in deliberately controlled willed movements) is drawn not

from everyday experience but from an alienated theorization of it presupposed by his

interpretation of the data.The very idea that we have control over our actions is taken by Frith, in a curious

epilogue, to entail that there is supposed to be an inner homunculus enjoying a direct

causal impact on a merely mechanical outer body:

For me it seems as if I am fully in control of my actions. This is why it is so hardto get rid of the idea of a homunculus. It is the dominant part of my experiencethat I am in control. . . . This is the brain’s final illusion: to hide all those tiesto the physical and social world and create an [illusion of an] autonomous self.(pp. 188–189)

But what I suggest is the real reason for Frith’s struggle to rid himself of the

homunculus is the unacknowledged homuncular conception of the relation between

subject and body constantly inscribed within his theories.

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Early in the book Frith tells us that he is ‘‘not a philosopher,’’ that he does ‘‘not

expect to persuade people of truth by the power of argument,’’ and that the ‘‘only

arguments [he] accepts] come from practical experiments’’ (p. 15). What Making up

the Mind reveals, however, is one of the principal risks of eschewing philosophical

reflection: that one’s theories will then be even more driven, and potentially vitiated,

by tacit philosophical commitments which no amount of experimental data can

evidence, challenge or extirpate.

Notes

[1] Both Kenny (1984) and Bennett & Hacker (2003) run together two conceptually distinctalleged ‘‘fallacies’’: (1) the ‘‘homunculus fallacy’’ of tacitly reduplicating our relation toperceptibilia on a mental stage, and (2) the ‘‘mereological fallacy’’ of ascribing psychologicalproperties to the brain.

References

Bennett, M. R., & Hacker, P. M. S. (2003). Philosophical foundations of neuroscience. Oxford:Blackwell.

Dennett, D. (1991). Consciousness explained. London: Penguin.Kenny, A. (1984). The legacy of Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell.Malcolm, N. (1986). Nothing is hidden: Wittgenstein’s criticism of his early thought. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell.

RICHARD G. T. GIPPS

Honorary Associate Professor

Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health ProgrammeUniversity of Warwick

CoventryUK

Email: r.gipps@inpponline.org� 2009, Richard G. T. Gipps

Bioethics and the Brain

WALTER GLANNON

Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006

248 pages, ISNB: 0195371941 (pbk); $24.95

In Bioethics and the Brain, Walter Glannon discusses various philosophical and

ethical questions related to the relatively new field of neuroethics. He focuses on such

issues as predictive brain imaging, psychopharmacological enhancement, neuro-

surgery, and brain death; and provides us with a wealth of scientific data related to

these issues.

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