Professional Documents
Culture Documents
World, Philosophical
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 our bodies make are not really our movements. Such privileges of direct expressive and receptive contact with our world and
companions have, we discern, been afforded not 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
The consolation prize is that, were we actually in direct contact with the world, the task of making sense of its complexities would just be
overwhelming. So thankfully our clever brains perform these tasks “off-stage,” supplying us with outputs in the form of simple “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: How the
Brain Creates Our Mental World — a well-written and accessible book which notwithstanding fully embraces and endorses the above-described
theorization 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 be embarrassed. 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 we can receive messages.
Unlike Searle the philosopher, Frith the neuroscientist aims to substantiate his claims not with conceptual argumentation but with empirical
evidence drawn from cognitive neuropsychology. In his own words, here are the key theses Frith takes the neuropsychological 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 have direct 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 “an ordinary, healthy brain” (p. 60).
Furthermore, we have no “direct contact… even with our own bodies”; this is another “illusion” created by the brain (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 by constructing models
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 neuropsychological 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 again and 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 unargued and 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, visual
illusions, 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 instead appear to be 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 which harnesses a) a mentalistic conception of the immediate contents of perceptual consciousness as ‘inner images’ or
‘internal representations’ occurring ‘in our minds’ to b) a causalist construal of such immediate contents as the final products, delivered to the
mind, by a CNS which has worked over information originally received by the sense organs (Kenny, 1984). (Conceptions of consciousness as an
inner stage (or ‘Cartesian theatre’; Dennett, 1991) populated by inner visibilia may not explicitly posit an actual homunculus as an audience. The
philosophical concern is however not ontological but methodological (Kenny, 1984): that theories deploying the conception do not neglect to
demonstrate how, rather than simply assert that, they do not reduplicate the very phenomenon (perceptual consciousness) they aim to explain.)
The following are representative examples 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 it knows” (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 and imperfect signals provided by the senses.” (p. 85). My “brain manages to create for me 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
Accordingly, when dreams or illusions are offered (in ch. 2) as evidence that we have no direct visual access to the world, the conception which
constrains the interpretation of the data already presupposes that, if we are not witnessing the world accurately, then we must (with some kind of
further and as-yet-unexplained perceptual system) be accurately witnessing inaccurate mental images of the world. Or when (in ch. 4) the facts
that retinal images are inverted or two-dimensional or duplicated are cited – or when movements of these images are as it were ambiguous
between movements of the perceived objects and movements of the eye or head – it is simply presupposed that, since perception is construed as
input to consciousness, the work of the visual system must be understood as one of ‘undoing’ the infelicities introduced at the sensory surfaces.
Or when it is pointed out (in ch. 5) that the 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 be neither the world around us, nor our neurological processes, but their supposed
illusory upshots.
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’s description of the mere brain as engaged in
personal-level activities (knowing, believing, interpreting, deploying Bayesian inferences, etc.) strikes me as implicating him in another
(‘mereological’) fallacy – that of ascribing to a part what can only coherently be ascribed to the whole (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 of our 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 set of harmless metaphors – and if so this may also be the best way to take
Frith’s theories.
Similar presentations of interesting data recruited by tacitly homuncular theorizations of the self arise throughout the book, whether we are
considering perception (ch. 1, 2, 5), interpersonal understanding (ch. 6, 7), planning (ch. 4), or action (ch. 3, 6). For example, chapter 6 relates
that an alleged everyday “experience of agency”— 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 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 (that which he quotes:) Ian McEwan’s marvelous description, in his novel Atonement, of Briony’s contemplation of her
She raised one hand and flexed its fingers and wondered… how this thing, this machine 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 her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in
the instance before it moved, the dividing 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.” Our actual everyday experience of agency is rather characterized by the immanence of
intention in 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 is drawn not from everyday experience but from an alienated theorization
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
For me it seems as if I am fully in control of my actions. This is why it is so hard to get rid of the idea of a homunculus. It is the dominant part of
my experience that I am in control. … This is the brain’s final illusion: to hide all those ties to the physical and social world and create an [illusion
relation between subject and body constantly inscribed within his theories.
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.
References
Malcolm, N. (1986). Nothing is hidden: Wittgenstein’s criticism of his early thought. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1 Both Kenny (1984) and Bennett & Hacker (2003) run together two conceptually distinct alleged ‘fallacies’: the ‘homunculus fallacy’ of tacitly
reduplicating our relation to perceptibilia on a mental stage, and the ‘mereological fallacy’ of ascribing psychological properties to a part rather