Consciousness as a Wave: a book review

This is a review of a book by Jonathan Edwards, How Many People are there in My Head? and in Hers? an exploration of Single-Cell Consciousness. It was the the subtitle, “single-cell consciousness,” that drew me in in the first place. Now, having finished reading this book, the main title, the folksy question, annoys me more than ever. In fact it’s a very ambitious, largely speculative argument that is grounded in human physiology, but goes on to consider what it might mean to step back from the idea of a single, more-or-less durable self. Edwards does not abandon the idea of personal identity altogether; rather he proposes that any one of us “is” at an intersection of  patterns, or waves of particles — constantly changing, interacting with their surroundings and with one another.  Instead of searching for some kind of located, physical central administration, then, we could more productively wonder how we came to be so fiercely, intractably loyal to the idea of a single, unified self.     

The main contention — argued largely on physiological grounds — is that consciousness cannot be located in a single place — despite a long, intense and erudite history of efforts to do so (The voice in these places reminded me of someone like William Harvey, in 1600, arguing that blood in the human body circulates, rather than passing through the cardiac septum, the belief that had previously prevails for millennia.). The next, closely related proposal is that single neurons meet the conditions normally set for awareness (not, at this point, consciousness).  A single-celled animal, such as a paramecium, is understood to be aware, that is, it “notices” and responds to changing conditions. Edwards quite rightly goes to some trouble to insist that when he proposes that single cells are aware, he is NOT saying  that single cells think. Thinking — often taken to be a synonym for consciousness — emerges as an effect of millions of interdependent nerve cells, each independently, constantly affecting and being affected by other cells — filtering, “remembering,” “deciding”, changing, learning (each of these terms presents a bit of a risk, given the inevitable associations with a full-bodied, thinking consciousness).

A reader willing to accept the idea of consciousness dispersed among millions of cells begins almost immediately to ask huge questions. If there is actually no single, coherent self, for example, why is it so extremely difficult NOT to believe it?  If, rather than a central administration, there is at most something like a wave energy that generates order, shape, continuity among tremendous numbers of cells, how are decisions made? Who or what is responsible for those decisions? What are the implications?

Edwards suggests that the illusion of one singular, coherent self is a permanently encoded feature of human beings (he refers, by analogy, to Chomsky’s well-known contention that language is encoded, readily adaptable to the specific sounds of the specific language the specific organism encounters.). The sense of a single, coherent self probably had a substantial evolutionary advantage, he suggests. Moving on into far more speculative terrain, he proposes the self as effectively a story, “the story of me”; millions of brain cells then function as listeners,  constantly “hearing” this story, and occasionally contributing to it, generating and maintaining a being with a sense of its own location in time and space.  Edwards draws on physics for some of his most memorable metaphors, perhaps the most memorable — and perhaps not strictly metaphorical — being the idea that I might think of myself as a wave (a far more attractive potential title!). Elsewhere, he speaks of a personality in terms of a bubble, held in place by attractions and repulsions, gravity, air currents, necessarily moving, changing constantly in shape and size, and still in some sense coherent.

I did not understand everything. And I’m pretty sure Edwards did not expect that I would. He doesn’t seem entirely sure he does either. That’s one of many reasons I very much admire this book.  It acknowledge the potential difficulties readers are likely to encounter, difficulties seem likely to vary as widely as the readers themselves. I suspect I didn’t follow the science very well — the supporting arguments involve cell biology, neurophysiology, physics, and probably more. On the other hand, I found the philosophical arguments clear and persuasive; readers at ease in one or more sciences are likely to find different rewards and resistances. Whatever the obstacles, in any case, what is at stake is nothing less than a radically new, and scientifically at least plausible account of human consciousness, one that promises to overturn a great deal of received wisdom and open a great many new possibilities for understanding ourselves and our relationships to the environment and one another. It’s a lot. It’s worth persisting.