IS THE BRAIN IN THE WORLD, OR THE WORLD IN THE BRAIN?

Max Velmans, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New

Cross, London SE14 6NW. Email: m.velmans@gold.ac.uk, Web:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/psychology/staff/velmans/

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26(4): 427-429 (2003)

(A commentary on Lehar, S. (2003) Gestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of the

Subjective Conscious Experience: A Gestalt Bubble Model. Behavioral & Brain
Sciences 26(4), 375-444).

Abstract: Lehar provides useful insights into spatially extended

phenomenology that may have major consequences for neuroscience.
However, Lehar’s biological naturalism leads to counterintuitive conclusions
and he does not give an accurate account of preceding and competing work.
This commentary compares Lehar’s analysis with that of Velmans, which
address similar issues but draws opposite conclusions. Lehar argues that the
phenomenal world is in the brain, and concludes that the physical skull is
beyond the phenomenal world. Velmans argues that the brain is in the
phenomenal world and concludes that the physical skull is where it seems to
be.

Is the phenomenal world in the brain, or is the brain in the phenomenal world? As
William James (1904) noted, the issue is controversial. To decide, the observer should

“... begin with a perceptual experience, the 'presentation', so called, of a physical

object, his actual field of vision, the room he sits in, with the book he is reading as
its centre, and let him for the present treat this complex object in the
commonsense way as being 'really' what it seems to be, namely, a collection of
physical things cut out from an environing world of other physical things with
which these physical things have actual or potential relations. Now at the same
time it is just those self-same things which his mind, as we say, perceives, and the
whole philosophy of perception from Democritus's time downwards has been
just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is evidently one reality should
be in two places at once, both in outer space and in a person's mind.
'Representative' theories of perception1 avoid the logical paradox, but on the
other hand they violate the reader's sense of life which knows no intervening
mental image but seems to see the room and the book immediately just as they
physically exist”.

James championed the common sense view that the room that one sees is itself part of
conscious experience (one does not experience an additional inner replica of the
room)—and consequently developed a form of neutral monism, in which the
phenomenal world can be regarded as being either “mental” or “physical” depending
on one’s interest in it. If one is interested in how the appearance of the perceived room
depends on perceptual processing one can think of it as mental (as a psychological
effect of that processing). If one is interested in how some aspect of the perceived
room relates to other aspects of the room (e.g. via causal laws) one can think of it as
physical. Lehar, by contrast, defends “biological naturalism” (a form of
“physicalism”)—the view that the experienced room and the experienced universe
surrounding it are literally in the brain.

The difference is fundamental. But whatever view one ultimately takes about where
to locate the perceived world, one fact is clear: the 3D world we see around our
bodies that we normally think of as the “physical world” is part of conscious
experience not apart from it. This perceived world is related to the unperceived
world described by physics (in terms of quantum mechanics, relativity theory, etc.)
but it is not identical to it. This is potentially paradigm shifting, for the reason that it
redraws the boundaries of consciousness to include the perceived physical world,
with consequences for our understanding of mind/body relationships, subjectivity
versus objectivity, science, epistemology, and much else (see extensive discussions in
Velmans, 1990, 1991a, b, 1993, 1996a, 2000a, 2001, 2002a, b). As Lehar notes in his
target article, this conceptual shift also has consequences for neurophysiology. An
accurate phenomenology of consciousness is a prerequisite for an adequate
understanding of the neural processes that support that phenomenology. In this,
Lehar’s gestalt bubble model provides an interesting, original and potentially useful
step forward.

Given the fundamental nature of the issues, and the positive contributions of his
paper, it is a pity that Lehar’s review of preceding and competing positions is often
inaccurate and unnecessarily dismissive. For example, I barely recognised my own
work on these problems from his summary. Lehar writes,

“Max Velmans (1990) revived an ancient notion of perception as something

projecting out of the head into the world, as proposed by Empedocles and
promoted by Malebranche. But Velmans refined this ancient notion with the
critical realist proviso that nothing physical actually gets projected from the
head; the only thing that is projected is conscious experience, a subjective
quality that is undetectable externally by scientific means. But again, as with
critical realism, the problem with this notion is that the sense-data that are
experienced to exist do not exist in any true physical sense, and therefore the
projected entity in Velmans’ theory is a spiritual entity to be believed in (for
those who are so inclined) rather than anything knowable by, or demonstrable
to, science. Velmans drew the analogy of a videotape recording that carries the
information of a dynamic pictorial scene, expressed in a highly compressed and
nonspatial representation, as patterns of magnetic fields on the tape.” Lehar
then goes on to criticize this analogy, pointing out, for example, that “There is
no resemblance or isomorphism between the magnetic tape and the images
that it encodes, except for its information content.”

I do not revive Empedocles in Velmans (1990) and, as Lehar notes, I do not claim
perception to be something physical projecting out of the head into the world. I
argue that although information about the world is encoded inside the brain, the
world appears to be outside the brain—a subjective effect that I call “perceptual
projection.” Lehar agrees that this is how the world appears (I return to this below).
While I accept that conscious experience is undetectable externally by scientific
means (the “problem of other minds”), I also accept that it can be and is studied in
science in many other ways that combine first- and third-person evidence (c.f.
Velmans, 1996a, 2000b). I do not adopt sense-data theory, or treat conscious
experience as a “spiritual entity to be believed in rather than anything knowable by
science”. And in Velmans (1990) I make no mention of a videotape-TV screen
analogy to illustrate “perceptual projection.” I use this analogy, elsewhere, e.g. in
Velmans (1991a, b, 2000a, 2002a, b) to illustrate how identical information can be
encoded in different formats, in support of a dual-aspect theory of information that
Lehar also adopts. Lehar and I also agree that the phenomenal world must not be
confused with the world-itself, e.g. as described by physics (indirect realism), that
neural representations must be functionally sufficient to support the 3D phenomenal
world, that the information encoded within its phenomenology must also be
encoded in the brain, and that the differences between how the phenomenal world
and the brain appear can be understood, at least in part, in terms of the same
information being accessed or viewed from complementary first- and third-person
perspectives (a dual-aspect theory of information). In short, one would not guess
from his cursory summary, that apart from a few crucial differences, Lehar’s
understanding of the consciousness/brain relationship in visual perception is
virtually identical to my own.

Figure 1. A reflexive model of perception

What are the crucial differences? Consider the highly simplified model of visual
perception shown in Figure 1. Viewed from the third-person perspective of an
external observer E, light rays reflected from the surface of an entity out in the world
(that E perceives to be a cat) can be seen to innervate S’s eye and visual system.
Neural representations of the entity, including the neural correlates of
consciousness, are produced by perceptual processing in S’s brain. In terms of what
E can observe that is the end of the story. However, once the necessary and
sufficient conditions for consciousness form in S’s brain, she also experiences a cat
out in the world—so a full story of what is going on has to combine what E observes
with what S experiences (see discussion of mixed-perspective explanations in
Velmans 1996b, 2000a). If we combine E’s observations with those of S, an entity in
the world (the initiating stimulus) once processed, is consciously experienced to be
an entity in the world (a cat)—making the entire process “reflexive.”

But here’s the puzzle: the neural representations of the cat (observed by E) are
undoubtedly in S’s brain so how can S experience the cat to be outside the brain
(“subjective perceptual projection”)? The effect is natural and ubiquitous, so there
must be a natural explanation. Lehar’s Gestalt bubble model gives some indications
of what is achieved, but doesn’t suggest how it is done—and, at present, we just
don’t know. However, there are some interesting parallels in other existing physical
systems. I have suggested for example that both virtual reality and holography
might provide useful clues (Velmans 1993, 2000a; see also Pribram, 1971, Revonsuo,
1995). Suppose, for example, that the information encoded in S’s brain is formed into
a kind of neural “projection hologram.” A projection hologram has the interesting
property that the three-dimensional image it encodes is perceived to be out in space, in
front of its two-dimensional surface, provided that it is viewed from an appropriate
(frontal) perspective and it is illuminated by an appropriate (frontal) source of light.
Viewed from any other perspective (from the side or from behind) the only information
one can detect about the image is in the complex interference patterns encoded on the
holographic plate. In analogous fashion, the information in the neural “projection
hologram” is displayed as a visual, three-dimensional object out in space only when it is
viewed from the appropriate, first-person perspective of the perceiving subject. And
this happens only when the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness are
satisfied (when there is ‘illumination by an appropriate source of light’). Viewed from
any other, external perspective the information in S’s ‘hologram’ appears to be nothing
more than neural representations in the brain (interference patterns on the plate).

The “projection hologram” is, of course, only an analogy, but it is useful in that it shares
some of the apparently puzzling features of conscious experiences. The information
displayed in the three-dimensional holographic image is encoded in two-dimensional
patterns on a plate, but there is no sense in which the three-dimensional image is itself
“in the plate”. Likewise (contra Lehar), I suggest that there is no sense in which the
phenomenal cat observed by S is “in her head or brain.” In fact, the 3D holographic
image does not even exist (as an image) without an appropriately placed observer and
an appropriate source of light. Likewise, the existence of the phenomenal cat requires
the participation of S, the experiencing agent, and all the conditions required for
conscious experience (in her mind/brain) have to be satisfied. Finally, a given
holographic image only exists for a given observer, and can only be said to be located
and extended where that observer perceives it to be! 2 S’s phenomenal cat is similarly
private and subjective. If she perceives it to be out in phenomenal space beyond the
body surface, then, from her perspective, it is out in phenomenal space beyond the
body surface.

However, to decide whether the phenomenal cat is really outside S’s head we first
have to understand the relation of phenomenal space to physical space. Physical
space is conceived of in various ways depending on the phenomena under
consideration (for example as 4D space-time in relativity theory, or as 11 or 12
dimensional spaces in string theory). However, the physical space under
consideration here, and in Lehar’s analysis, is simply measured space. Lehar agrees,
for example, that at near distances phenomenal space models measured space quite
well, while at far distances this correspondence breaks down (the universe is not
really a dome around the earth). How do we judge how well phenomenal space
corresponds to measured space? We measure the actual distance of an object
within space, using a standardised measuring instrument—at its simplest, a ruler,
and count how often it has to be placed end to end to get to the object. Although
rulers look shorter as their distance recedes, we know that their length does not
significantly alter (under normal measurement conditions) and we conclude
therefore that distant objects are really further than they seem. I presume that
Lehar agrees.

So to get to the heart of what separates Lehar’s position from my own we need to go
deeper. Lehar and I agree (with Kant) that whether we are “subjects” or “external
observers” we do not perceive things as they are in themselves—only phenomena
that represent things themselves, and, together, such phenomena comprise our
personal phenomenal worlds. In Figure 1, for example, the cat, the subject’s head,
and the neural representations in S’s brain (as they appear to E) are as much part of
E’s phenomenal world as the perceived cat is part of S’s phenomenal world. This
applies equally to rulers or other instruments that E might use to measure distance.
In sum, to carry out his science, E does not have an observer-free view of what is
going on anymore than S does. E and S simply view what is going on from different
third- and first-person perspectives. This has extensive consequences (worked out in
Velmans, 2000a), but I only have space to comment on one of these here. According
to Lehar, the 3D phenomenal world in my own analysis is “undetectable externally
by scientific means”, does not “exist in any true physical sense” and is therefore “a
spiritual entity to be believed in (for those who are so inclined) rather than anything
knowable by, or demonstrable to, science.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Data in science consist entirely of observed phenomena which occur in a spatially
extended phenomenal world, and the measurements that we make within that
phenomenal world are the only ones we have on which to ground our science.

Where is this phenomenal world? Viewed from E’s perspective it is outside his head,
and the distance of the phenomenal objects within it can be measured, using
standardised instruments that operate on phenomenal space (the distance of this
phenomenal page from your eye for example can be measured with a ruler). Viewed
from E’s perspective, the phenomenal world also appears to be represented (in a
neural form) in S’s brain. Viewed from S’s perspective, things look the same: the
phenomenal world appears to be outside her head, and if she bothers to look, she
will find a neural representation of that world encoded in E’s brain. Given that the
evidence remains the same, irrespective of the perspective from which it is viewed,
one can safely conclude (along with James) that while a neural encoding of the world
is within the brain, the phenomenal world itself is outside the brain. As this is how
the natural world is formed, it is safe to assume that there must be a natural
explanation (even if we can only guess at what that might be—see above). In
Velmans (2000a) I have shown how this analysis can be developed into a broad
“reflexive monism” that is entirely consistent with science and with common sense.

Now consider Lehar’s alternative: It is widely accepted that experiences cannot be

seen in brains viewed from the outside, but Lehar insists that they can. Although
subjects are thought to be best placed to report on their own experiences, he insists
that E knows more about S’s experience than S does and S knows more about E’s
experience than E does—the phenomenal world that S experiences outside her
brain, is nothing more than the neural representation E can see inside her brain and
vice-versa. As Lehar notes, this has the consequence that the real physical skull (as
opposed to the phenomenal skull) exists beyond the phenomenal world. The former
and the latter are logically equivalent.

Think about it! Stick your hands on your head. Is that the real physical skull that you
feel or is that just a phenomenal skull inside your brain? If the phenomenal world
“reflexively” models the physical world quite well at short distances (as I suggest) it
is the real skull, and its physical location and extension is more or less where it
seems to be. If we live in an inside-out world as Lehar suggests, the skull that we
feel outside our brain is actually inside our brain, and the real skull is outside the
farthest reaches of the phenomenal world, beyond the dome of the sky. If so, we
suffer from a mass delusion. Our real skulls are bigger than the experienced
universe. Lehar admits that this possibility is “incredible.” I think it is absurd.

References

James, W (1904) Does 'consciousness' exist? Reprinted in: G. N. A. Vesey (ed.) Body
and mind: readings in philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970, pp 202-208.

Pribram, K.H. (1971) Languages of the brain: experimental paradoxes and principles in
neuropsychology. New York: Brandon House.

Revonsuo, A. (1995) Consciousness, dreams, and virtual realities. Philosophical

Psychology, 8(1): 35-58.

Velmans, M. (2002a) How could conscious experiences affect brains? (Target Article for
Special Issue) Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9 (11): 3-29.
Velmans, M (2002b) Making sense of the causal interactions between consciousness
and brain (a reply to commentaries) Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9 (11): 69-95.

Velmans, M. (2001) A natural account of phenomenal consciousness. Communication

and Cognition, 34(1&2): 39-59.

Velmans, M. (2000a) Understanding Consciousness, London: Routledge/Psychology

Press.

Velmans, M. (ed.) (2000b) Investigating Phenomenal Consciousness: New

Methodologies and Maps, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Velmans, M. (1998) Goodbye to reductionism. In S.Hameroff, A.Kaszniak & A.Scott (eds)

Towards a Science of Consciousness II: The Second Tucson Discussions and Debates. MIT
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Velmans, M. (1993) A Reflexive Science of consciousness. In Experimental and

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Velmans, M. (1991a) Is human information processing conscious? (Target Article)

Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14(4): 651-669.

Velmans, M. (1991b) Consciousness from a first-person perspective. Behavioral and

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1
For James, “representative” theories are those that propose the existence of some inner mental
image that represents the physical room “in the mind”.
2
The position of the image relative to the plate, for example, changes slightly as the observer moves
around the plate. Nevertheless, the image is sufficiently clear for the observer to (roughly) measure
its width and how far it projects in front of the plate (e.g. with a ruler).