Consciousness and the Social Brain

produce an awarenessof something? Granted that the brain processes information, how do we become aware of the information? But any useful theory of consciousness must also deal with Arrow B. Once you have an awareness of something, how does the feeling itself impact the neuronal machinery, such that the presence of awareness can be reported?
    One of the only truths about awareness that we can know with objective certainty is that we can say that we have it. Of course, we don’t report all our conscious experiences. Some are probably unreportable. Language is a limited medium. But because we can, at least sometimes, say that we are aware of this or that, we can learn something about awareness itself. Speech is a physical, measurable act. It is caused by the action of muscles, which are controlled by neurons, which operate by manipulation and transmission of information. Whatever awareness is, it must be able to physically impact neuronal signals. Otherwise we would be unable to say that we have it and I would not be writing this book.
    It is with Arrow B that many of the common notions of awareness fail. It is one thing to theorize about Arrow A, about how the functioning of the brain might result in awareness. But if your theory lacks an Arrow B, if it fails to explain how the emergent awareness can physically cause specific signals in specific neurons, such that speech can occur, then your theory fails to explain the one known objective property of awareness: we can at least sometimes say that we have it. Most theories of consciousness are magical in two ways. First, Arrow A is magical. How awareness emerges from the brain is unexplained. Second, Arrow B is magical. How awareness controls the brain is unexplained.
    This problem of double magic disappears if awareness is information. The brain is, after all, an information-processing device. For an information-processing device to report that it has inner, subjective experience, it must contain within it information to that effect. The cognitive machinery can then access that information, read it, summarize it linguistically, and provide a verbal report to the outside world.
    One of the nice properties of a description is that almost anything can be described, even things that are physically impossible or logicallyinconsistent or magical. Such as Gandalf the Wizard. Or Escher-like infinite staircases. Or a squirrel in the head. Such things can be painted in as much nuanced detail as one likes in the form of information. Even if these things don’t exist as such, they can be described. If awareness is
described
by the brain rather than
produced
by the brain, then explaining its properties becomes considerably easier.
    Suppose that you are looking at a green object and have a conscious experience of greenness. In the view that I am suggesting, the brain contains a chunk of information that describes the state of experiencing, and it contains a chunk of information that describes spectral green. Those two chunks are bound together. In that way, the brain computes a larger, composite description of experiencing green. Once that description is in place, other machinery accesses the description, abstracts information from it, summarizes it, and can verbalize it. The brain can, after all, report only the information that it has. This approach to consciousness is depicted schematically in Figure 2.3 .

    FIGURE 2.3
Awareness as information instantiated in the brain. Access to the information allows us to say that we are aware.

    This approach is deeply unsatisfying—which does not argue against it. A theory does not need to be satisfying to be true. The approach is unsatisfying partly because it takes away some of the magic. It says, in effect, there is no subjective feeling inside, at least not quite as peoplehave typically imagined it. Instead, there is a description of having a feeling and a computed certainty that the description is accurate and not merely a description. The brain, accessing that information, can then act in the ways that we know people to act—it can decide that it has a subjective feeling, and it can talk about the subjective feeling.
The Awareness Feature

    Let’s explore further what it might mean for awareness to be a description constructed by circuitry in the brain. The brain is an expert at constructing descriptions. When you look at an apple, your visual system encodes and combines many sensory features. Some of these features are