Scientific American befasst sich – einmal mehr – mit der Frage nach Natur und Funktion des Bewusstseins. Es geht auch um das Zusammenspiel von Mind, Awarness und Bewusstsein. Wie fast immer, bleibt vieles nebulös, aber die beschriebenen Überlegungen von Peter Carruthers im Interview düpfen einen sonst nie erwähnten Punkt: die Herkunft der Gedanken.

Es kommen Einfälle, Ideen etc., aber woher und wieso? Eine witzige Bemerkung, ein Einwand, eine Erinnerung etc. Wir sollten auf dem Heimweg noch Brot zu kaufen. Aber wir vergessen es, oder erinnern uns daran. Wir können diese Bewegungen im Geist beobachten, aber es ist, so Carruthers, nicht anders, als wenn wir einen anderen Menschen beobachten, der etwas sagt oder es nicht sagt. Was in seinem Kopf vorgeht ist uns nicht weniger zugänglich als die Tätigkeit unseres eigenen Geistes.

Habe mich auch schon gefragt: welche Schuld trage ich, wenn ich mich erinnere oder vergesse? Es liegt ausserhalb meines Einflusses. Aus dem Unbewussten dringt etwas an die Oberfläche, oder nicht. …

What makes you think conscious thought is an illusion?

I believe that the whole idea of conscious thought is an error. I came to this conclusion by following out the implications of the two of the main theories of consciousness. The first is what is called the Global Workspace Theory, which is associated with neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars. Their theory states that to be considered conscious a mental state must be among the contents of working memory (the “user interface” of our minds) and thereby be available to other mental functions, such as decision-making and verbalization. Accordingly, conscious states are those that are “globally broadcast,” so to speak. The alternative view, proposed by Michael Graziano, David Rosenthal and others, holds that conscious mental states are simply those that you know of, that you are directly aware of in a way that doesn’t require you to interpret yourself. You do not have to read you own mind to know of them. Now, whichever view you adopt, it turns out that thoughts such as decisions and judgments should not be considered to be conscious. They are not accessible in working memory, nor are we directly aware of them. We merely have what I call “the illusion of immediacy”—the false impression that we know our thoughts directly.

One might easily agree that the sources of one’s thoughts are hidden from view—we just don’t know where our ideas come from. But once we have them and we know it, that’s where consciousness begins. Don’t we have conscious thoughts at least in this sense?

In ordinary life we are quite content to say things like “Oh, I just had a thought” or “I was thinking to myself.” By this we usually mean instances of inner speech or visual imagery, which are at the center of our stream of consciousness—the train of words and visual contents represented in our minds. I think that these trains are indeed conscious. In neurophilosophy, however, we refer to “thought” in a much more specific sense. In this view, thoughts include only nonsensory mental attitudes, such as judgments, decisions, intentions and goals. These are amodal, abstract events, meaning that they are not sensory experiences and are not tied to sensory experiences. Such thoughts never figure in working memory. They never become conscious. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads.

Interview Carruthers / Scientific American