Greatest Myth of All

by Peter Halligan & David Oakley

New Scientist, 18 November 2000.

Halligan and Oakley (HO) assert that a person’s experience of consciousness is an elaborate self-deception, it is an assertion based upon research into certain types of damage to the brain that shows many of our actions and perceptions originating in the unconscious parts of our brains. HO ‘suggest that all thoughts, ideas, feelings, attitudes and beliefs traditionally considered to be the contents of consciousness are produced by unconscious processes — just like actions and perceptions. It’s only later that we become aware of them as outputs when they enter our consciousness.’ They say that: ‘You may prefer the notion that you are in charge of your own mind. But where did that idea come from? If you stop to think about it, you’ll probably find that it just popped into your head — like all your thoughts. Perhaps you have decided to read the rest of this article. But did you really make that choice? Keep reading, if you can. You may never think of yourself in quite the same way again.’ It is the view of HO that ‘speaking, writing and all of the brains information processing activities occur at an unconscious level, only later giving rise to a continuous conscious experience of the world and of yourself.’

What HO assert about consciousness is not startling in the least when one looks at the brain and self as a whole. Our senses receive a cacophony of information about the environment in which we live; that this information is reported to some unconscious ‘Central Executive Structure’ is no surprise: to do necessary filtering, ordering, and sorting of the information at a conscious level would be to drive us mad. What we are getting at the conscious level is an executive summary of the sub-conscious deliberations of our brains on the current situation outside the body, weighed against the historical information stored within. Our brains develop according to the accumulated stimuli received since birth, a combination of nature and nurture. Each of us is the sum of our histories. Most of us are free to choose the environment in which we live, once we are free of our need for parental care. Most of us are free to choose the stimuli we allow to impinge upon the mind within our brain. Almost all brain work is done at a sub-conscious level. All a person has to do is to give the brain proper stimulation, ask the questions, sit back and wait for the answers to appear.