Consciousness and the Social Brain

informational model of oneself contains inherent, inevitable simplifications, just by virtue of being a model. Models are simplifications of the things they represent. Moreover, much of the information in the brain never reaches consciousness. We frequently act without any conscious knowledge why, and then make up false reasons to explain it. Consciousness is hardly the sole controller of behavior. But in the current theory, consciousness is at least one part of the control process.
Consciousness A and Consciousness B

    In the attention schema theory, awareness is a model constructed by the social machinery of the brain. Yet there are two flavors tothis model. In a sense, the theory describes two related but different types of awareness. One (let us call it awareness type A) is the model we construct and attribute to ourselves. The second (let us call it awareness type B) is the model we construct and attribute to something else, such as when we perceive awareness to be present in another person, in a pet, in a ventriloquist’s puppet, or in some other object.
    These two types of awareness are by hypothesis similar in their construction, but they have somewhat different dynamics. As discussed in previous chapters, one difference is that the awareness we attribute to others is open-loop (it describes others without directly influencing the thing it describes), whereas the awareness we attribute to ourselves is closed-loop (it describes an inner state but also helps to control that inner state). Despite these differences, the two are related. They are different styles of the same process. When asking whether a particular object has awareness, we are therefore plagued by an ambiguity between awareness A and awareness B. The confusion is not trivial. In real circumstances, people seem to switch back and forth between the two with great ease and without even knowing it.
    For example, I had a discussion with a scientific colleague about consciousness. He was arguing against my attention schema theory and said, “A bird doesn’t have an STS or a TPJ in its brain. According to you, therefore, a bird should not be conscious. But if you watch a bird getting eaten by a cat, if you watch it struggle and cry out, how can you look at it and deny that it is conscious? Of course it is.”
    First, as far as my theory goes, a bird might be conscious. I don’t know. I don’t know if the avian brain computes an attention schema. Since at least some species of bird are highly social, I’d guess that they do compute something like an attention schema, use it to keep track of each other’s attentional states, use it to model their own attentional states, and therefore are probably conscious in some sense—even if the bird brain does lack an STS and a TPJ.
    But I have a deeper problem with my colleague’s argument. His argument conflates consciousness A and consciousness B. Whenhe looks at an animal in distress, because of the strong visual and sound cues, because of the motion of the animal and the intensity of its voice, my colleague’s social machinery is engaged. His brain constructs a model of awareness, a model of a conscious mind, a model of emotion and intention, and attributes it to that animal. He constructs consciousness type B and projects it onto the animal. The bird has consciousness type B. I am convinced. My friend has won that point. But whether the bird has consciousness type A, whether it constructs awareness and attributes awareness to itself, is much harder to figure out.
    Consider a situation that is all too real. Suppose a loved one is in a coma and the question arises, does the person still have any human awareness, or is she a mental blank? Should life support be removed or not? The family who sits at the bedside may insist that the patient has a conscious mind buried deep inside. They know it. They feel it. It is tangible. Sometimes she looks at them, sometimes she twitches a hand seemingly in reaction, sometimes her face has a look of emotion. The Terri Shiavo case 9 comes to mind. Her parents, observing her movements and facial expressions, were certain of her personhood, her conscious presence. The parents, presumably without knowing it, were reporting consciousness type B: a perceptual model of consciousness that was constructed inside the minds of the family members and attributed to the patient in a coma. It led them to feel, to intuit, to develop a vivid certainty that their loved one was aware. To