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Nagel - Unity of Consciousness
Nagel - Unity of Consciousness
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THOMAS NAGEL
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 397
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398 THOMAS NAGEL
optic chiasma
corpus callosum
Fig. 1. A very schematic top view of the eyes and cerebral cortex.
the exception of the head and neck, which are connected to both sides.
In addition, the left half of each retina, i.e. that which scans the right half
of the visual field, sends impulses to the left hemisphere, and impulses
from the left half of the visual field are transmitted by the right half of
each retina to the right hemisphere. Auditory impulses from each ear are
to some degree transmitted to both hemispheres. Smells, on the other
hand, are transmitted ipsilaterally: the left nostril transmits to the left
hemisphere and the right nostril to the right. Finally, the left hemisphere
usually controls the production of speech.
Both hemispheres are linked to the spinal column and peripheral nerves
through a common brain stem, but they also communicate directly with
one another, by a large transverse band of nerve fibres called the corpus
callosum, plus some smaller pathways. These direct cerebral commissures
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 399
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400 THOMAS NAGEL
gating auditory input, since each ear seems to signal more powerfully to
the contralateral than to the ipsilateral hemisphere. As for output, the
clearest distinction is provided by speech, which is exclusively the product
of the left hemisphere.4 Writing is a less clear case: it can occasionally be
produced in rudimentary form by the right hemisphere, using the left
hand. In general, motor control is contralateral, i.e. by the opposite hemi
sphere, but a certain amount of ipsilateral control sometimes occurs,
particularly on the part of the left hemisphere.
The results are as follows. What is flashed to the right half of the visual
field, or felt unseen by the right hand, can be reported verbally. What is
flashed to the left half field or felt by the left hand cannot be reported,
though if the word 'hat' is flashed on the left, the left hand will retrieve
a hat from a group of concealed objects if the person is told to pick out
what he has seen. At the same time he will insist verbally that he saw
nothing. Or, if two different words are flashed to the two half fields (e.g.
'pencil' and 'toothbrush') and the individual is told to retrieve the corre
sponding object from beneath a screen, with both hands, then the hands
will search the collection of objects independently, the right hand picking
up the pencil and discarding it while the left hand searches for it, and
the left hand similarly rejecting the toothbrush which the right hand lights
upon with satisfaction.
If a concealed object is placed in the left hand and the person is asked
to guess what it is, wrong guesses will elicit an annoyed frown, since the
right hemisphere, which receives the tactile information, also hears the
answers. If the speaking hemisphere should guess correctly, the result is
a smile. A smell fed to the right nostril (which stimulates the right hemi
sphere) will elicit a verbal denial that the subject smells anything, but if
asked to point with the left hand at a corresponding object he will succeed
in picking out e.g. a clove of garlic, protesting all the while that he smells
absolutely nothing, so how can he possibly point to what he smells. If
the smell is an unpleasant one like that of rotten eggs, these denials will
be accompanied by wrinklings of the nose and mouth, and guttural
exclamations of disgust.5
One particularly poignant example of conflict between the hemispheres
is as follows. A pipe is placed out of sight in the patient's left hand, and
he is then asked to write with his left hand what he was holding. Very
laboriously and heavily, the left hand writes the letters P and I. Then
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 401
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402 THOMAS NAGEL
can feel them move; so a response produced in the face or head by the
right hemisphere can be detected by the left, and there is some evidence
that they send signals to one another via this medium.)7
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 403
(2) The patients have only one mind, associated with the left hemi
sphere, but there also occur (associated with the right hemisphere) isolated
conscious mental phenomena, not integrated into a mind at all, though
they can perhaps be ascribed to the organism.
(3) The patients have two minds, one which can talk and one which
can't.
(4) They have one mind, whose contents derive from both hemispheres
and are rather peculiar and dissociated.
(5) They have one normal mind most of the time, while the hemispheres
are functioning in parallel, but two minds are elicited by the experimental
situations which yield the interesting results. (Perhaps the single mind
splits in two and reconvenes after the experiment is over.)
I shall argue that each of these interpretations is unacceptable for one
reason or another.
IV
Let me first discuss hypotheses (1) and (2), which have in common the
refusal to ascribe the activities of the right hemisphere to a mind, and
then go on to treat hypotheses (3), (4), and (5), all of which associate a
mind with the activities of the right hemisphere, though they differ on
what mind it is.
The only support for hypothesis (1), which refuses to ascribe conscious
ness to the activities of the right hemisphere at all, is the fact that the
subject consistently denies awareness of the activities of that hemisphere.
But to take this as proof that the activities of the right hemisphere are
unconscious is to beg the question, since the capacity to give testimony
is the exclusive ability of the left hemisphere, and of course the left hemi
sphere is not conscious of what is going on in the right. If on the other
hand we consider the manifestations of the right hemisphere itself, there
seems no reason in principle to regard verbalizability as a necessary
condition of consciousness. There may be other grounds for the ascrip
tion of conscious mental states that are sufficient even without verbali
zation. And in fact, what the right hemisphere can do on its own is too
elaborate, too intentionally directed and too psychologically intelligible
to be regarded merely as a collection of unconscious automatic responses.
The right hemisphere is not very intelligent and it cannot talk; but it is
able to respond to complex visual and auditory stimuli, including Ian
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404 THOMAS NAGEL
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 405
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406 THOMAS NAGEL
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 407
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408 THOMAS NAGEL
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 409
VI
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410 THOMAS NAGEL
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 411
Princeton University
REFERENCES
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412 THOMAS NAGEL
human brain damage along similar lines, suggested by the earlier findings with animals.
Cf. N. Geschwind and E. Kaplan, *A Human Cerebral Deconnection Syndrome',
Neurology 12 (1962), p. 675. Also of interest is Geschwind's long two-part survey of
the field, which takes up some philosophical questions explicitly: 'Disconnexion
Syndromes in Animals and Man', Brain 88 (1965) 247-94, 585-644. Parts of it are
reprinted, with other material, in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IV
(1969). See also his paper 'The Organization of Language and the Brain', Science 170
(1970), p. 940.
4 There are individual exceptions to this, as there are to most generalizations about
cerebral function: left-handed people tend to have bilateral linguistic control, and it
is common in early childhood. All the subjects of these experiments, however, were
right-handed, and displayed left cerebral dominance.
5 H. W. Gordon and R. W. Sperry, 'Lateralization of Olfactory Perception in the
Surgically Separated Hemispheres of Man', Neuropsychologia 7 (1969), p. 111. One
patient, however, was able to say in these circumstances that he smelled something
unpleasant, without being able to describe it further.
6 Reported in Jerre Levy, Information Processing and Higher Psychological Functions
in the Disconnected Hemispheres of Human Commissurotomy Patients (unpublished
doctoral dissertation, California Institute of Technology, 1969).
7 Moreover, the condition of radical disconnection may not be stable: there may be
a tendency toward the formation of new interhemispheric pathways through the brain
stem, with the lapse of time. This is supported partly by observation of commissuro
tomy patients, but more importantly by cases of agenesis of the callosum. People who
have grown up without one have learned to manage without it ; their performance on
the tests is much closer to normal than that of recently operated patients. (Cf. Saul
and Sperry, 'Absence of Commissurotomy Symptoms with Agenesis of the Corpus
Callosum', Neurology 18 (1968).) This fact is very important, but for the present I
shall put it aside to concentrate on the immediate results of disconnection.
8 It is Sperry's view. He puts it as follows: "Instead of the normally unified single
stream of consciousness, these patients behave in many ways as if they have two
independent streams of conscious awareness, one in each hemisphere, each of which
is cut off from and out of contact with the mental experiences of the other. In other
words, each hemisphere seems to have its own separate and private sensations ; its own
perceptions; its own concepts; and its own impulses to act, with related volitional,
cognitive, and learning experiences. Following the surgery, each hemisphere also has
thereafter its own separate chain of memories that are rendered inaccessible to the
recall process of the other." {American Psychologist 23, op. cit., p. 724.)
9 There is some direct evidence for such primitive ipsilateral inputs, both visual and
tactile; cf. Gazzaniga, The Bisected Brain, Chapter 3.
10 The two can of course diverge, and this fact underlies the classic philosophical
problem of inverted spectra, which is only distantly related to the subject of this paper.
A type of relation can hold between elements in the experience of a single person that
cannot hold between elements of the experience of distinct persons: looking similar
in color, for example. Insofar as our concept of similarity of experience in the case
of a single person is dependent on his experience of similarity, the concept is not
applicable between persons.
11 In case anyone is inclined to embrace the conclusion that we all have two minds,
let me suggest that the trouble will not end there. For the mental operations of a
single hemisphere, such as vision, hearing, speech, writing, verbal comprehension, etc.
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BRAIN BISECTION AND UNITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 413
can to a great extent be separated from one another by suitable cortical d?connections ;
why then should we not regard each hemisphere as inhabited by several cooperating
minds with specialized capacities? Where is one to stop? If the decision on the number
of minds associated with a brain is largely arbitrary, the original point of the question
has disappeared.
12 My research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
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