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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Now You See It, Now You Dont: Commentary by

Nicholas Humphrey (London)
Nicholas Humphrey

Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics,
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Nicholas Humphrey (2000) Now You See It, Now You Dont: Commentary by Nicholas Humphrey
(London), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:1, 14-17, DOI:
10.1080/15294145.2000.10773275
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14

Nicholas Humphrey

Now You See It, Now You Don't: Commentary by Nicholas Humphrey (London)

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Those of us who have been arguing for some years

for the position that Francis Crick and Christof Koch
arrive at in this paper, namely, that phenomenal consciousness occurs only at the level of sensation, and
that higher mental processes (including thinking and
perception) have no conscious phenomenology at all,
have made singularly little impact on the current
debate.
In 1992, in A History of the Mind (Humphrey,
1992), I summarized my own views as follows:
1. To be conscious is essentially to have sensations: that is, to have affect-laden mental representations of something happening here and now to me.
2. The subject of consciousness, "I," is an embodied self. In the absence of bodily sensations "I"
would cease. Sentio, ergo sum-I feel therefore I am.
3. All sensations are implicitly located at the
spatial boundary between me and not-me, and at the
temporal boundary between past and future: that is,
in the "present."
4. For human beings, most sensations occur in
the province of one of the five senses (sight, sound,
touch, smell, taste). Hence most human states of consciousness have one or other of these qualities. There
are no nonsensory, amodal conscious states.
5. Mental activities other than those involving
direct sensation enter consciousness only in so far as
they are accompanied by "reminders" of sensation,
such as happens in the case of mental imagery and
dreams.
6. This is no less true of conscious thoughts,
ideas, beliefs ... Conscious thoughts are typically
"heard" as images of voices in the head-and without this sensory component they would drop away
[p.97].

Yet, arguing these points at a conference at Kings

College, London in Spring 1999, I found myself a lone
voice against philosophers John Searle, Ned Block,
David Chalmers, and others who, to a man, continued
to insist that consciousness extends to higher levels of
mentation and in particular that thoughts and percepNicholas Humphrey is a Research Fellow, Centre for Philosophy of
the Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics, Houghton
Street, London WC2A 2E.

tions have conscious qualia attached to them in their

own right.
I confess that, on the basis of some of Crick and
Koch's own earlier writings (e.g., Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994), I had assumed that they too
were failing to see how restricted the realm of conscious qualia really is. And I was hardly reassured to
find them beginning this paper with the advice that "it
is better to avoid a precise definition of consciousness," followed not long after by the clueless suggestion that "self-consciousness is probably a special
case of consciousness." Anyone who has been long
in this field will know the sinking feeling that arises
when yet another author claims, as here, that' 'everyone has a rough idea of what is meant by consciousness" and proceeds to make a virtue out of having it
all ways.
I was therefore surprised and happy to read
on-and to find Crick and Koch, far from taking their
own advice, instead making a pitch for a very precise
definition of consciousness: a definition of what is
conscious and what is not, which turns out to depend
on nothing other than the presence or absence of sensory phenomenology. Indeed in the end I found their
paper doubly refreshing-both as evidence of two major scientists coming over to a correct, if unfashionable, point of view, and for its clear discussion of some
of the theoretical and empirical implications.
Crick and Koch are obviously aware that they
are doing something unconventional and possibly theoretically dangerous. I think that it is in fact quite
dangerous, and that there is one area in particular
where they need to be careful how they go. This is
when it comes to making the elementary but crucial
distinction between (conscious) sensation and (unconscious) perception.
The remarkable fact that human beings-and
presumably many other animals also-make use of
their bodily senses in these two quite different ways,
was first brought to philosophical attention two hundred years ago by Thomas Reid, who wrote:
The external senses have a double province-to make
us feel, and to make us perceive. They furnish us with
a variety of sensations, some pleasant, others painful,
and others indifferent; at the same time they give us
a conception and an invincible belief of the existence
of external obiects....

15

Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus

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Sensation, taken by itself, implies neither the conception nor belief of any external object. It supposes a
sentient being, and a certain manner in which that
being is affected; but it supposes no more. Perception
implies a conviction and belief of something external-something different both from the mind that perceives, and the act of perception. Things so different
in their nature oUght to be distinguished [Reid, 1785,
Vol. 2, chapters 16 & 17].
For example, Reid said, we smell a rose, and two
separate and parallel things happen: we both feel the
sweet smell at our own nostrils and we perceive the
external presence of a rose. Or, again, we hear a hooter
blowing from the valley below: we both feel the booming sound at our own ears and we perceive the external
presence of a ship down in the Firth. In general we
can and usually do use the evidence of sensory stimulation both to provide a "subject-centred qualia-rich
representation of what's happening to me," and to
provide "an objective, affectively neutral representation of what's happening out there" (Humphrey,
1992).
Now, what Crick and Koch are identifying as the
core phenomenon of consciousness is clearly meant
to be the first of these: sensation, not perception. Yet,
one reason why they-and all of us-need to be so
careful is that it is so easy to muddle the two up.
Reid again:
[Yet] the perception and its corresponding sensation
are produced at the same time. In our experience we
never find them disjoined. Hence, we are led to consider them as one thing, to give them one name, and
to confound their different attributes. It becomes very
difficult to separate them in thought, to attend to each
by itself, and to attribute nothing to it which belongs
to the other. To do this, requires a degree of attention
to what passes in our own minds, and a talent for
distinguishing things that differ, which is not to be
expected in the vulgar, and is even rarely found in
philosophers [Reid, 1785, Vol. 2, Chapter 17].
To repeat: sensation has to do with the self, with
bodily stimulation, with feelings about what's happening now to me and how I feel about it; perception has
to do with judgments about the objective facts of the
external world. Things so different in their nature
ought to be distinguished. But rarely are they.
Sigmund Freud was surely looking to make just
this crucial distinction when he contrasted his two
principles of mental functioning, the "pleasure" and

the "reality principle." But, within the psychoanalytic

tradition, I believe it was Ernest Schactel who mapped
out the differences most articulately. In his book,
Metamorphosis, Schactel wrote about what he called
the "autocentric" and "allocentric" modes of experiencing the world:
In the autocentric mode there is little or no objectifi-

cation; the emphasis is on how and what the person

feels; there is a close relation, amounting to a fusion,
between sensory quality and pleasure or unpleasure
feelings, and the perceiver reacts primarily to something impinging on him. . . . In the allocentric mode
there is objectification; the emphasis is on what the
object is like [Schactel, 1963, p. 83].
Psychoanalysts have tended to prioritize sensation over perception, while cognitive psychologists
have done the opposite. But within the cognitive tradition too, some theorists at least have recognized the
basic duality of sensory experience. In the case of vision in particular, Irving Rock distinguished "the visual field" and "the visual world." David Marr
argued that the perceiver does in fact have separate
access to different stages of visual processing. And,
as Crick and Koch describe, Ray Jackendoff made
Marr's theory the basis for his own central insight that,
even though we do indeed have cognitive access to
the 3D model of the external world, what we are phenomenally aware of is the 21hD sketch that corresponds to the subjective sensation of the image at the
eye.
Even for those who do appreciate the full significance of this distinction, however, the problems are
not necessarily over. For it is one thing to understand
the distinction in principle, another to apply this understanding in the case of particular examples. And,
as it turns out, there is plenty of room still for confusion and objection. Indeed I wonder if Crick and Koch
themselves have anticipated how they are going to
cope with some of the uncertain cases.
Let me follow through in one particular direction,
so as to confront, and deal with, a simple example that
might otherwise prove to be the Achilles heel of the
whole thesis.
Suppose it is true, as we are saying, that people
are conscious only of sensory qualia experienced at
the level of sensation and not of the content of perceptions or thoughts as such. It must follow presumably
that, if and when there is in fact no change in sensation, there will be no change in consciousness, even
if there is a change in what is perceived or thought.

Downloaded by [Adelphi University] at 23:51 19 August 2014

16
But, then, the obvious test case would seem to be an
ambiguous picture, such as the Necker cube or the
duck/rabbit, where, while the visual image and hence
the raw sensation of "what's happening to me" remains constant, the perception of "what's happening
out there" may radically alter.
At the London conference Searle challenged me
directly about such cases, saying that, for example, it
was perfectly obvious to him that the Necker cube
seen in one way is a consciously different phenomenon from the same cube seen the other way-thus
proving that we can be conscious of what is perceived
as well as of what is sensed.
Well, can we? I admit on the evidence of introspective observation the answer must be Yes. When
the cube reverses in depth there is surely something
that consciously changes. And it is certainly not at the
level of sensation of the visual image (which, qua
represented image, does not even have a depth dimension to reverse).
What is this something, then? When the cube reverses, is there, as Searle would want to say, a change
in some aspect of nOllsensory perceptual consciousness-perhaps the coming and going of "cube-qualia"? (Just as, with the duck/rabbit, he might want to
postulate the coming or going of "duck-qualia" or
"rabbit-qualia"? I am not joking: some theorists are
really prepared to talk this way. V. S. Ramachandran
and Hirstein [1997], for example, write of "dog qualia"). If so, our argument is lost.
Or, is there perhaps another possibility? When
the cube reverses, is there a change not in nonsensory
qualia nor in visual qualia but in sensory qualia of
another nonvisual kind? I believe there are in fact two
ways that this could be happening.
One way of understanding it would be to take up
an idea of Mark Solms (which he himself attributes
to Freud), and to suggest that conscious experience is
comprised not only of the five basic modalities of sensory qualia but also of an additional dimension of affect. "Affective qualia," Solms writes, "(which are
calibrated in degrees of pleasure/unpleasure) are
wholly equivalent to the qualia of vision, hearing,
smell, etc., and are irreducible to them" (Solms, 1997,
p. 773). So, whenever we experience a sight or a sound
or a taste, etc., perhaps the conscious experience is
likely to consist both of the specific sensory qualia
and of whatever affective qualia are being activated.
But, while the sensory qualia are fixed solely by the
sensory stimulus, the affective qualia may be influenced not only by the stimulus but also by what is
being perceived. With an ambiguous figure, then, even

Nicholas Humphrey
though the visual sensation remains constant, when
the perception changes the affective qualia may
change too.
I think this is a nice idea, and in some cases it
might be correct. But I am not sure it will do in general. Different affective feelings for ducks and rabbits?
Well, why not. But different feelings for the two versions of the Necker cube? Unlikely.
The other way would be to take up an idea of my
own (Humphrey, 1992) and also of Patrick Wall
(Wall, 1999), and to suggest that what is crucial is not
so much affect as action. Suppose that whenever we
perceive anything (and sometimes even when we
merely think of things) we always implicitly formulate
a plan of action-for example a plan to reach out and
take hold of it. And suppose that such action, even
when implicit, always has a small but noticeable qualitative feel to it-either on its own account via somatic
sensation or through modeling of the sensory feedback
that would be expected.
Let's call this additional dimension the dimension of "agentic qualia." Then, whenever we experience a sight or a sound or a taste, etc., the conscious
experience can be expected to consist not only of the
sensory qualia appropriate to the particular sensation
but also of whatever agentic qualia are being called
into being.
This solves the problem of the Necker cube. For,
now we can postulate that, even while the visual sensation remains constant, there may be a covert change
in action plan when the perception of the cube reverses, and so a slight change in the overall sensory
qualia.
Unfortunately I suspect that Crick and Koch are
not going to like this last suggestion entirely. For I
have to note that it would complicate and maybe undermine one of the main planks of their empirical
approach to looking for the neural correlate of visual
consciousness. The reason is that Crick and Koch believe that one of the best ways to find the neural correlate of visual consciousness might be to identify
changes in the activity of the visual pathways of the
brain that are correlated with changes in the perception
of just these ambiguous figures; for example, the
Necker cube (e.g., Crick, 1994, p. 218).
But now this looks like being a mistaken effort.
For if I am right about the role of agentic qualia, or
for that matter if Solms is right about affective qualia,
then when the perception changes, the crucial change
in consciousness is not being generated by activity in
the visual pathways at all-it is almost certainly being
generated much further forward in the region of the
brain that controls action and affect.

Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus

References

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Crick, F. (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific

Search for the Soul. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Humphrey, N. (1992), A History of the Mind. London:
Chatto & Windus.
Ramachandran, V. S., & Hirstein, W. (1997), Three laws
of qualia: What neurology tells us about the biological
functions of consciousness. 1. Consciousness Studies,
4:429-457.
Reid, T. (1785), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man,
ed. D. Stewart. Charlestown: Samuel Etheridge, 1813.

17
Schactel, E. G. (1963), Metamorphosis. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Sohns, M. (1997), What is consciousness? 1. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 45:681-703.

Wall, P. D. (1999), Pain: The Science of Suffering. London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Nicholas Humphrey
Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science
London School of Economics
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE

Unconscious, Yes; Homunculus,???: Commentary by Ray Jackendoff (Waltham, MA)

In "The Unconscious Homunculus" and other works,

Francis Crick and Christof Koch make an admirable
case for attempting to discover the neural correlates of
consciousness (NCC). As they observe, their research
complements rather than supplants the sort of work I
have done on what might be called the representational correlates of consciousness-the formal organization of the computations and data structures that the
NCC instantiates neurally. And I am of course gratified that my work has played a role in their thinking.
I will offer here four brief reactions to their paper.

tional simulation. There is no question that

neuroscience brings new and important tools to the
task, and that these tools may help us reevaluate our
previous thinking; but they do not oblige us to discard
the old tools outright.
I imagine Crick and Koch would concur. But others have hastened to demean all techniques of cognitive science that do not make direct recordings of brain
activity; and therefore I find it vital to reemphasize
the importance of methodological pluralism, with the
goal of eventual convergence.

Methodology

The Valuation of a Percept

In their conclusion, Crick and Koch say, "It cannot

be overstated that Chalmers's hard problem of consciousness is unlikely to yield to a purely logical or
philosophical attack." I can certainly endorse this.
They continue: "Rather, it needs to be approached
in a reductionist, scientific manner." This must be
construed with care. If a "reductionist, scientific manner" is meant to exclude every approach but neuroscience, I would disagree. I think the problem needs to
be approached from every possible front. There is still
plenty of room in this field for careful introspection,
for philosophical analysis and thought experiments,
for traditional psychological and psychophysical experiments, for computational theory and computa-

Crick and Koch allude to the aspects of consciousness

I have called "affects" (1987) or "valuations" (1996,
1997). They speak of them as "a class of conscious
percepts which have a rather different character from
straightforward sensory percepts." Evidently I failed
to make myself entirely clear in my discussions.
Though the valuations are not too important for Crick
and Koch's purposes in this particular article, I think
they eventually have to playa crucial role in the theory
of consciousness and its neural correlates.
The notion of a valuation arises from the question: What in the mind-brain distinguishes a percept
of something in the world from an image of the same
thing? One might first be tempted to say that images
are fuzzier and more fleeting. But compare, for example, hearing music way off in the distance, which is
indeed fuzzy and fleeting, with hearing in your head
some music you know very well, right down to the

Ray lackendoff is on the Faculty of Brandeis University and was

a fellow at the Wissenschaffskolleg zu Berlin in 1999-2000 where this
commentary was written.