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• Sumeet Jindal

  11 September 2007 | 15:03

  Why just a second life?

  Why not two lives in parallel?

  There have been cases of two consiousness in one body. The other way around should also be possible.

  I will like to live in two bodies at the same time.
  That will be more FUN!!

• Michael Bland

  11 September 2007 | 19:37

  Hi Sumeet,

  I’m interested in what you’ve written. I take it that you’re thinking of so-called ‘split-brain patients’. Is that right?

  Or are there any other cases you’re thinking of? (I hope not.)

  I have pasted some quotes below which you may find interesting, perhaps especially the final quote. (Perhaps Alfredo too may find them interesting, since I believe he has an interest in schizophrenia). And then I’ll have a serious question to ask you.

  We have seen thus far that autistic thinking is not bound by the laws of logic and reality. It is unlogical, and permits the greatest contradictions with the outer world and in itself. The [schizophrenic] patient may empty the slops in the asylum and at the same time believe himself to be the emperor of the world … . (Bleuler 1913:881)

  In the usual hallucinatory conditions, more validity is, as a rule, ascribed to the illusions; yet the patients continue to act and orient themselves in accordance with reality. (Bleuler 1911:66)

  Thus we have to distinguish between realistic and autistic thinking which exist side by side in the same patient. [In realistic thinking the patient orients himself quite well in the time and space of reality; he adjusts his actions accordingly, to the extent that to us they appear normal.] The autistic thinking is the source of the delusions, of the crude offenses against logic and propriety, and all the other pathological symptoms. The two forms of thought are often fairly well separated so that the patient is able at times to think completely autistically and at other times completely normally. (Bleuler 1911:67) (Nb. The passage in square brackets is my own translation – cf. page 55 in the original German text.)

  In milder cases the real and autistic worlds exist not only side by side, but often become entangled with one another in the most illogical manner. (Bleuler 1911:67)

  The affects themselves, like their expressions, have frequently lost their unity. A patient who had murdered her child, which she loved as her own but hated as the child of her unloved husband, afterwards for several weeks was in a condition in which she wept in desperation with her eyes and laughed with her mouth. Once I even saw such a splitting of the emotional expression shown on two sides of the face. Milder disturbances of the unity of the feelings are more frequent. (Bleuler 1916:381 – the emphasis of the sentence, though not of the single word ‘unity’, is my own.)

  Okay, here’s what I’d like to ask you:

  Imagine you’re a medical practitioner and you have a patient whose behaviour most of the time is perfectly normal. But when you get this person to talk on a certain subject, his behaviour changes radically. (And I should emphasise that I am thinking here mostly, though not entirely, of linguistic behaviour.)

  So, for example, you can ask this person if he’d mind closing the door behind him as he steps into the sugery. Or you can ask him where he has a mind to go on holiday this year. Or you can ask him, if he seems distracted, whether he has anything worrisome on his mind. And he might say similar things to you.

  But on certain occasions, he’ll turn around and say that he thinks he does not have a mind. Indeed he’ll say no-one does. (I know this sounds rather bizarre!) He’ll say that the mind does not exist: that there is no such thing. And when he writes of these strange ideas – which, as I say, he’ll only give expression to on certain occasions – he’ll even make a point of putting the word ‘mind’ in scare quotes: he’ll write in terms of a so-called “mind”.

  Now, does this strike you as a possible example of ‘dual consciousness’?

  Please note: I put the words ‘dual consciousness’ in scare quotes because, although I’ve picked a somewhat surreal example, I actually believe it’s not so abnormal: it’s an example of what I’d call self-deception. Normal people will, on certain occasions, emphatically say things which they demonstrably do not really believe, and yet they will not be lying. And moreover, by virtue of the means of language, such paradoxical behaviour may even be communicated: it may sometimes affect people en masse.

  I believe this to be of importance to the research of this group for the following quite obvious reason: unless one gets one’s head around how the paradox of human self-deception is possible in normal, adult humans (small children, I believe, are by-and-large not susceptible to it) – and perhaps sometimes even on a mass, cultural scale – then one is much more vulnerable to self-deception than one might otherwise be.

  Indeed if anyone should be on their guard against the possibility of ‘dual consciousness’, surely it should be the researcher into consciousness!

  And moreover, understanding how such a thing is possible might put them on the right track to at least begin to understand what they really want to know.

  Michael

  Ps. Here are the works quoted from:

  Bleuler, Eugen (1911), Dementia Praecox oder die Gruppe der Schizophrenien (Berlin: Springer), translated by J. Zinkin (1950), Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (Madison: International Universities Press).

  Bleuler, Eugen (1913), ‘Autistic Thinking’, American Journal of Insanity, vol. 69, pp. 873-886.

  Bleuler, Eugen (1916), Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (Berlin: Springer), translated by A.A. Brill (1924), Textbook of Psychiatry (New York: MacMillan).

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  12 September 2007 | 00:57

  Dear Michael:

  Thank you for the excellent post that adds a new dimension (my apologies for the ’cliché’) to the discussion.
  I did not know that Bleuler himself used the term ‘autistic’ in this sense. There are actually several types of autism, with different characteristics. With Bleuler’s quotations you clarified to me what you mean by ‘autistic’.
  You pointed to a central aspect of the human mind (not only of people with mental disorders): the capacity of shifting (mildly or radically) between diferent ‘modes’ of functioning.
  My default explanation is that the shifting is caused by the dominance of different classes of transmitter/membrane receptor/ion channel systems at different times. For instance, in my theoretical study on ketamine effects with Gene Johnson (the reference is in my profile) we arrived at the conclusion that hallucinations that occur in schizophrenia (or, more precisely, in the context of the experimental model of schizophrenia, by means of using low doses of ketamine) are caused by predominance of calcium ion entry in neurons through voltage-gated channels (instead of the ‘normal’ dominance of NMDA channels, which are both ligand and voltage-gated).
  Does this explanation make sense to you?

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo Pereira Jr.

• Sumeet Jindal

  12 September 2007 | 15:47

  Hi Michael Bland,

  I was talking about ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’

  I watched a movie in which a person would undergo personality change depending upon the circumstances.

  There were three persons A,B,and C in the same body. And they bear a very intersting relationship.

  Person A and C are not aware of any other person inside the body.

  ‘A’ is a very simple Guy
  ‘B’ is a Karate Champion
  ‘C’ is a Romantic person

  Person B is aware of presence of A and C whenever he is active. i.e. he has access to all the previous conscious experiences of person A and C.

  Some of the events in the movie.
  1. Person A usually finds himself at different places and can’t figure out why he is at a different place all of a sudden.

  2. Person B know about the bad happening with person A and takes revenge on behalf of him(A).

  3. Person C occasionally activates and is having a love affair with a girl.

  I can explain more if required.
  In this scenario there is nothing like loss of perception of reality or contradictions.

  You may not be interested in this very scenario since it’s hypotheical but I would like to know if such a real case is encountered will it change your perspective regarding ‘consiousness’

  Let me understand the scenario posted by you.

• Sumeet Jindal

  12 September 2007 | 16:04

  Hi Michael,

  I will consider your scenario as a case of singe-consiousness with a wired set of behaviours.

  For me, a complete shift in behaviour which looks very abnormal is not a criterion for declaring the ‘presense of another consiousness in the body’

  Thanks
  Sumeet

• Sumeet Jindal

  12 September 2007 | 16:12

  Michael Bland:
  [..]unless one gets one’s head around how the paradox of human self-deception is possible in normal, adult humans.

  Sumeet: Can u please tell what paradox exactly are you talking about. Do u mean to say that what we feel as ‘self’ is a delusion?

  Thanks
  Sumeet

• marvin kirsh

  13 September 2007 | 08:52

  I am not sure that self deception is involved in all cases “‘multiple referal’”. In this case one might seeks answers to this with regards to differential meaning of the referals and the subject, in full awareness and consciousness may not have an adequate answer. “My life is a drag” “They just dont know whats going on around town.” “Whose they?” “I dont know”? "The person/entity that monitors my existance"? "Ones who tails me?" “the authorities?”

  “I dont know?”
  A bell suspended above ones head that always swings/rings/presses at a change of referal could be a they. the morning sun at 11:00 AM at the same time the ground hog moves when the sun falls on him" .the ground hog is “they” and responds differently depending on the seasons and the position of the sun.
  In presenting the multiple referal (maybe perceived as a changed orientation and not regarded as either illogical, deceptive, ?) a person acknowledges witness which does not necessarily have to be of exclusive internal originand also have no logical explanation or even a significant depth of personal meaning an also no other language with which to express any meaning at all to his experience.
  In terms of pathology, if it is true that this(above) is potentially normally factual of anyone, medically, I’d not only suspect a physical origin, but something on the anatomical scale rather than biochemical, as such phenomenon most likely always involve a chronic physical perception associated with an events(s)…cranial pressure, internal foreign material, etc and a normal biochemistry. Both modern medicine and science, seem to have an unbroken record in pursueing fundamental changes, falsely ordering concepts, and maybe are lead around the same way by a perception of “‘they’”.
  One might extrapolate this to implicate factors affecting the whole planet and could be found correct, but I think of the greatest priority is the deleterious effect of high population compared to the past, that the most practical application for scientists and doctors first is a natural means of population control(abstainance, education, condoms, etc) and that any other efforts are not only very extravagant, will prove worthless if not negative via the expendature of excessive resources which are not assessed correctly by virtue of the same above mentioned confusion(if one does not know of the ground hog it is not added as a part of the total.) The expensive search for cold dark matter and energy can used comically in comparison-even if found, and on any time scale it will not cure immediate ills-maybe provide insights to this social dilema, but is very indirect to arrive at the most pertinent answers second from searching the atom when answers can found from philosophy ..is almost a lazymans self deception.

  Marvin K.

• Michael Bland

  14 September 2007 | 18:57

  Dear Alfredo,

  Thanks for that lovely use of cliché: directly to the point, and very witty! (I’d like to return to the important issue of humour – or more specifically, laughter – another time; for this has an evidential bearing on what I write below, relating to the nature and make-up of the human psyche.)

  I certainly don’t have a problem with clichés per se. (One is very hard pressed never to use a cliché!) What I have a problem with is cliché’d thinking – whereby people unwittingly allow clichés to do their thinking for them, so to speak. (I acknowledge that that stands in need of explanation, but it will have to do for now.)

  Eugen Bleuler coined the name ‘autism’ almost exactly a century ago. He used it to characterise the profound disturbance of environmental and social contact that is sometimes manifest in extreme form in schizophrenia. (Of course, Bleuler also coined the name ‘schizophrenia’.) But note that Bleuler’s concept of autistic thinking is by no means restricted to the purely pathological. In his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, under the heading Das autistische Denken, he wrote: “Whenever we give free rein to our fantasy, as happens in mythology, in dreams, or in some pathological states, our thoughts are either unwilling or unable to take cognisance of reality, and they follow paths laid out for them by instincts and affects.” (In later editions, he unfortunately replaced his brilliant coinage ‘autistisch’ with the jargonesque word ‘dereistisch’. I believe this was under the perhaps not entirely benign influence of Sigmund Freud, who I suspect to be responsible for the coinage of the ersatz word. The word used in my copy of the English version, Textbook of Psychiatry, translated by A.A. Brill from a later edition, is, sadly, ‘dereistic’.)

  Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger both adopted Bleuler’s coinage, independently of each other, in 1943 and 1944 respectively. (The former was working in the USA; the latter, in Nazi-occupied Austria.) And as I noted previously, Hans Asperger wrote: “The name ‘autism’, coined by Bleuler, is undoubtedly one of the great linguistic and conceptual creations in medical nomenclature.” But he emphasised that the pathological autistic thinking described by Bleuler of acute schizophrenia does not play a significant role in the type of disorder which he (Asperger) described. (“At most,” he wrote, “there may be occasional hints of this particular type of thought disturbance.”) And in Kanner’s syndrome especially – ie. classic childhood-onset autism – the benign autistic thinking that’s characteristic of normal, childhood, make-believe play is conspicuous by its absence – or at least by it’s failure to develop properly. In other words, there appears to be a definite inverse relationship between severe cases of the developmental disorder now known as ‘autism’ and the occurence of benign autistic thinking. Moreover Asperger speculated, of the developmental disorder which he described, versus the mental disorder of schizophrenia: “It could well be that these two disorders of the will are closely related!”

  Accordingly, I believe it’s misleading to say – as you wrote – that there are several types of autism. I think that’s a bit like saying that there are several types of handedness. Of course, some people – most people – are strongly right-handed; some people are left-handed; and some people are ambidexterous. So are there just three types of handedness?! I believe it’s more appropriate to say that there’s a fairly complex spectrum of human handedness. (I know of someone who uses his right hand for writing, but when using cutlery he holds his knife in his left hand and his fork in his right.) And I believe it’s the same in the case of autism. In fact I tend to believe that the concepts of autism and handedness are comparable.

  For one thing, there is the question of why the name ‘autism’ has transferred so naturally, so rapidly, and all but completely, from application to a form of mental disorder an aspect of which it was primarily coined for, to a form of developmental disorder which it has subsequently come to name. (Eg. For the sake of clarity, I felt it necessary to replace Bleuler’s original word ‘autistic’, in the first quote of my first posting above, for the word ‘schizophrenic’ – which I put in square brackets.) And to address this question it seems to be instructive to compare the concept of autism to the concept of manual dexterity, or manual adroitness.

  Some people are exceptionally dexterous and adroit mainly in their use of their left hand; and some people are ambidextrous. But the typical form of manual dexterity in humans is, of course, right-handed dexterity. And so, somewhat conundrumically, one may say that the typical form of manual dexterity in humans is, well, dexterity – ie. right-handedness. (Nb. The English word ‘dexterity’ has a sense meaning ‘right-handedness’; and ‘dexterous’ has a sense meaning, simply, ‘right-handed’. But clearly, using different senses of those words, left-handers and ambidexters can show dexterity/dexterousness just as well as right-handers. So at least in the case of English, the potential for confusion here seems to parallel that of the word ‘autism’.) And this conundrum, at least, is surely a function of the very nature of human language – not to mention the nature and make-up of the human psyche – and the way it has evolved, right?

  Anyway, it seems clear that (amongst other things) Bleuler had noticed, in his patients, a tendency towards a somewhat pathological form of mental dexterity, or mental adroitness, through which an extraordinarily extravagant form of imagination may find expression. (It therefore seems that the form of autism originally identified by Bleuler is, so to speak, a left-handed/ambidextrous form.) But conversely, and apparently hand in hand with the somewhat pathological paucity of imagination that’s characteristic of the developmental disorder, the strictly non-pathological mental dexterity of an autistic savant – at least within their peculiar areas of special interest (but nowhere else) – is out of this world.

  Finally, according to Bleuler the pathological forms of autistic thinking were not restricted to clinical cases: in 1919, he wrote a book called Autistic-undisciplined thinking in medicine, and how to overcome it. (However, ‘undisciplined’ – ‘undisziplinierte’ – was surely the wrong word to use; for famously, there’s method in all kinds of madness. So surely the right word is this: ‘ill-disciplined’ – ie. ‘schlecht disziplinierte’.) It’s not a great book; but considering the immensity of what he was effectively taking on, I believe that’s not surprising. For clearly, if there can be the presence of systemic and institutionalised autistic pathology in medicine, then one can be sure that the same will be present elsewhere in human culture. Indeed, the world had then just been through four years of madness. And in the not too distant future, there would be more of that to come: primarily (though not exclusively) at the inspiration of Stalin on the one hand, and Hitler on the other hand. The likes of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in particular, I believe, show that insanity of the human psyche is not always mental: it can also be developmental. (I’m bearing in mind here the history of the English word ‘insanity’; there’s a note in The Oxford English Dictionary entry for that word: “Orig., called insanity of mind.”) In any case it can sometimes be communicated: it can be socially shared. And I believe the failure hitherto to recognise this is itself a developmental failing on the part of the collective human psyche. So accordingly I believe that the general recognition of such might signal the initiation of a cultural change of evolutionary significance.

  With regard to the explanation you mention, the first thing I’d say is that I wouldn’t talk about hallucinations being caused by anything neurophysiological: the words I’d use are ‘effected by’. What’s the difference? Well, if you use the word ‘cause’ with reference to hallucination in the context of discussing neurophysiology, then this makes it appear that hallucinations themselves belong to that same neurophysiological context. But clearly, hallucinations are mental phenomena; they are not neurophysiological phenomena. What’s the difference? Well, surely there’s a world of difference. As a child I experienced an hallucination during a bout of tonsillitis: I believed I saw snakes crawling up my bedroom wall. But clearly, the experience of hallucinating snakes depends upon one’s experience of having seen actual snakes or pictures of snakes. And the experience of veridically seeing a snake, or a picture of a snake, is no more a neurophysiological phenomenon than is the experience of holding a snake in your hand; indeed it’s no more a neurophysiological phenomenon than is the snake itself. But if the hallucination of a snake were properly called a neurophysiological phenomenon, then surely the veridical seeing of a snake, and the actual snake itself, would have to be neurophysiological phenomena too.

  Your proposed explanation of hallucination does make sense to me. (I’d never heard of these ‘alternative signalling pathways’, so I’ve learnt something there.) I can certainly imagine that some such neurophysiological mechanism as you’re talking about might well be involved in the explanation of hallucination. But even if your proposed explanation is correct so far as it goes, I think you go way too far in seeing that alone as being a potential explanation for what you call “the capacity of shifting … between different ‘modes’ of functioning”. (To my mind, incidentally, that’s a jargonistic cliché. But maybe you were just trying to be delicate!) I believe that the explanation of the paradoxy of behaviour which you seem to allude to with those words must somehow involve reference to the functional relationship between the two cerebral hemispheres. (Incidentally, although I don’t have much idea of its validity, I have read of tentative evidence that the corpus callosum in people who develop schizophrenia tends to be partially enlarged; and in the case of the developmental disorder of autism, I’ve read of the converse.)

  In fact I believe that the potential for the resolution of the paradox of self-deception – however this is manifested, and on whatever scale (ie. at the individual level or otherwise) – is partially indicated by the sometimes surreally paradoxical behaviour of split-brain patients. But if that’s so, then the difficulty of convincingly demonstrating it to be so is clear. Indeed, it seems that split-brain patients can sometimes express an awareness of the occasional extreme paradoxy of their behaviour (especially that of their manual behaviour) which for the intact individual who deceives himself about something or other would be, for an impartial observer, a vainly-hoped-for profound insight. Indeed if there’s one thing which we normal, adult, humans are liable to deceive ourselves about more than anything else, it’s the nature and the extent of our capacity for self-deception. (I’ll refer to this presently, in my response to Sumeet.)

  Incidentally, the paradoxical capacity which I wrote of in my last posting is not just a capacity of the human mind. (That’s the word you used.) Rather, it’s a capacity of the human psyche. What’s the difference? Well, the human mind is (so to speak) only half of the human psyche, and it’s certainly the less vital half. (I’d like to emphasise that I am speaking figuratively when I speak in terms of ‘half of the human psyche’.)

  The mind is like the leaves and branches of a tree – as opposed to the trunk of the tree, whose roots are normally firmly embedded in the earth, and upon which the vitality of the leaves and branches depend immediately and absolutely. And when the branches wave and the leaves rustle, that’s very often mediated – even in science (and it certainly is here, in this Nature Network group) – by a factor that’s common to all: the means of language.

  Best wishes,
  Michael

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  14 September 2007 | 20:23

  Dear Michael:

  Your message is very informative to me, and a pleasure to read.
  A friend, who lived in England for some years, ofter uses (informally) the word “autistic” to refer to “benign autistic thinking” (not the developmental disorder). She believes that this kind of personality is more common in English than Brazilian males.
  One interesting aspect of your post is the observation that this kind of autism can be socially shared. This property of autism contrasts with hallucinations, which are private.
  I agree about my ‘abuse’ of words, when I stated that hallucinations are caused by a neurophysiological event.
  Maybe the situation could be better described by saying that they are triggered by brain events.
  The differences of brain hemispheres exist, but I do not believe that the shiftings that occur in schizophrenia are related to a change in hemispheric dominance, neither that autism is related to excessive inter-hemispheric communication. Even if true, these explanations would have to advance to the point of showing that each hemisphere has a different “personality”.

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo

• Michael Bland

  15 September 2007 | 15:16

  Hi Sumeet,

  You asked me to explain what I was referring to when I mentioned the paradox of self-deception. So I’ll define it for you:

  People may sometimes show an absolute tolerance of inconsistency regarding what they will say, what they actually do, and what they demonstrably know: we may show an absolute indifference to – or an obliviousness of – paradoxy, sometimes even en masse.

  Now I’ll try to illustrate the paradox to you, using a sublimely symbolic example:

  First, I’d better warn you: I’m going to ask you a question, and I will try to catch you out!

  You know about the structure and mechanics of the solar system, of course. You know that the planets are in orbit of the sun; and you know the the Earth – our planet – is rotating, axially, once every twenty-four hours.

  So, does the sun ever really traverse the sky above you?

  (I hope anyone reading this will send in their answer!)

  Best wishes,
  Michael

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