Consciousness and the Social Brain

neural machinery of the audience members and the performer. It is assigned a spatial location inside the puppet. The impulse to dismiss the puppet’s consciousness derives, I think, from the implicit belief that
real
consciousness is an utterly different quantity, perhaps a ghostly substance, or an emergent state, or an oscillation, or an experience, present inside of a person’s head. Given the contrast between a real if ethereal phenomenon inside of a person’s head and a mere computed model that somebody has attributed to a puppet, then obviously the puppetisn’t really conscious. But in the present theory, all consciousness is a “mere” computed model attributed to an object. That is what consciousness is made out of. One’s brain can attribute it to oneself or to something else. Consciousness is an attribution.
    Indeed, we might say that the phraseology is at fault. Things don’t strictly “have” consciousness, nor “are” they conscious. Instead, informational models of consciousness are constructed in the brain and attributed to objects.
    It is difficult to pry oneself away from the idea that consciousness is an intrinsic property of a person. Somehow it is easier to get at the concept when thinking about a property like beauty. We all know that beauty is, proverbially, in the eye of the beholder. Nothing is intrinsically beautiful. Instead, beautiful implies a relationship between the beholder and the beheld. A narcissist might behold beauty in him- or herself (we might call it beauty type A), but just because it is self-beheld does not make it more real. You might behold beauty in someone else (we might call it beauty type B), but just because it is attributed to something outside yourself does not make it less real. Whether you see beauty in yourself or in something else, it is all more or less the same property. Beauty is an attribution.
    I admit that the suggestion is counterintuitive. I seem to be saying that a puppet can be conscious. A tree can be conscious. A hunk of rock can be conscious. They can all be conscious in more or less the same sense that a human is conscious. The reason is that, according to the attention schema theory, human consciousness is not quite what we think it is. It is not something a person has, floating inside. It is an attribution. It is a relationship between an attributer and an attributee.
    In some ways, to say, “This puppet is conscious,” is like saying, “This puppet is orange.” We think of color as a property of an object, but technically, this is not so. Orange is not an intrinsic property of my orangutan puppet’s fabric. Some set of wavelengths reflects from the cloth, enters your eye, and is processed in your brain. Orange is a construct of the brain. The same set of wavelengths might beperceived as reddish, greenish, or bluish, depending on circumstances. (For a particularly good set of illusions that demonstrate the subjective quality of color, see the work of Dale Purves displayed on his Web site. 10 See also his book. 11 ) To say the puppet is orange is shorthand for saying, “A brain has attributed orange to it.” Similary, according to the present theory, to say that the puppet is conscious is to say, “A brain has attributed consciousness to it.” To say that a tree is conscious is to say, “A brain has constructed the informational model of awareness and attributed it to that tree.” To say that I myself am conscious is to say, “My own brain has constructed an informational model of awareness and attributed it to my body.” These are all similar acts. They all involve a brain attributing awareness to an object.
Awareness and Evolution: What’s It Good for?

    In the attention schema theory, awareness is a model of attention. It helps track and predict attention. This knowledge is of obvious value. If you understand someone else’s attentional state, you can better predict that person’s behavior. If you can better predict that person’s behavior, then you can choose your actions more effectively, survive more effectively, and pass on genes more effectively. Likewise, if you understand your own attentional state, you can better predict and guide your own behavior. Awareness has an evolutionary advantage. It has a
use
.
    I will now take a step in the reasoning that is not legitimate and not correct but is so easy to make that many people may inadvertently slip in that direction—and I think many people do.
    Suppose you