“Ever since Galileo’s time, and at his urging, science has cordoned off the mind—or the soul, as it was then known—leaving it to the exclusive jurisdiction of the priests and poets. This was both a political move and a practical one—political because it would (Galileo hoped) avoid bringing the hammer of the Church down on the scientific enterprise, and practical because (as Galileo foresaw) more progress could be made in the investigation of nature by focusing on objective qualities that could be measured rather than subjective qualities that could not.”

The separation between the physical work and the mental (or spiritual) world first posited by Galileo, and later picked up by Descartes, is a crucial element of Western rational thought that deeply impacts every aspect of science and philosophy in Western culture. This split is an acknowledgement of science’s inability to access mental processes. However, it also forms a critical bias in science that hinders research moving forward, thus contributing to both the themes of The Limits of Western Rationality and the Impact of Biases on Science.

“I sometimes wonder if the quest to find the wellsprings of consciousness is but a socially (and scientifically) acceptable proxy for the search for the soul.”

Pollan suggests that the mind/body split created by Galileo and Descartes has led to a preoccupation in science for the mysterious nature and origins of consciousness. The current inability of science to locate consciousness in physical matter implies a search for spiritual origins, but with more rationally acceptable terminology. This reflection contributes to the later warning against the search for magic.

“One reason why consciousness has proved such a hard nut for science and philosophy is because the only tool we can use to crack it is consciousness itself. There is literally no way of getting around it. Consciousness might feel like a transparent window on the world, but as we will discover, the world that appears to us is the product of consciousness.”

Pollan highlights one of the limitations of science in its efforts to understand consciousness. This limitation is explicitly addressed in the philosophical subfield of phenomenology, which acknowledges the impossibility of examining consciousness from the outside and instead studies subjective experience from within.

“Western science’s ‘blind spot’—its failure to take lived experience, or phenomenology seriously […] has made it difficult, perhaps impossible, for the physical sciences to reckon with consciousness. There is a large irony here: By subtracting subjective experience from ‘the real world,’ five hundred years of reductive science and philosophical dualism have inadvertently elevated consciousness, unmoored from nature, into something very much like magic.”

This passage more explicitly discusses the way that the mind/body split has created a bias in favor of the physical sciences. Pollan suggests that this split has led to the unintentional conclusion that consciousness cannot be explained rationally and may be magical. He considers this a failing at the beginning of his research but ultimately believes that consciousness may truly be a metaphysical element beyond science’s ability to explain.

“Calvo and his colleagues in plant neurobiology are writing the next chapter in ‘The History of Increasing Humiliation.’ Their project entails breaking down the walls between the kingdoms of plants and animals, and it is proceeding not only experiment by experiment, but also term by term, beginning with intelligence and culminating with consciousness, that supposed pinnacle of what it means to be human.”

In this passage, Pollan references Martin Amis’s novel, The Information, which discusses a character’s concept of ‘increasing humiliation’ (19). He uses this reference to underscore the way that consciousness research has contributing to a long history of scientific discoveries that erode human’s assumptions of supremacy in nature, thus contributing to the theme of Sentience as a Challenge to Human Uniqueness.

“Panpsychism is the belief that everything—every grain of sand, every molecule of ink on this page, indeed every particle of matter or energy in the universe—possesses some teensy-weensy quotient of psyche, or mind, and these scintillas of psyche combine in some as yet undetermined way to form the subjectivity of complex beings like ourselves.”

Panpsychism is a controversial theory of consciousness that borders on the spiritual rather than the scientific. Pollan expresses significant skepticism for such theories, which attribute consciousness to all of existence. However, by the end of the book Pollan has begun to take such ideas more seriously, as with Christof Koch’s concept of idealism, indicating Pollan’s shifting confidence in rational explanations to his conclusion about The Limits of Western Rationality.

“Like Levin, [Friston]’s a confirmed gradualist, refusing to draw sharp lines between living systems and other kinds. Here is where I part ways with both scientists. It seems to me that only living, mortal systems—those that can die, in other words—have true goals or intentions, survival and reproduction being the most universal. To the extent that a thermostat has a goal, it is a secondhand one: the goal we have given it. Machines—so far, at least—are extensions of human minds, augmenting our senses, inferences, predictions, and actions.”

This passage is a prime example of Pollan’s method of exploring various scientific theories about consciousness while simultaneously applying his personal views and analysis. Though he treats each theory with thoughtful consideration, he is transparent about the way his own assumptions (about life, for instance) color his opinions of the concepts discussed.

“The big thing I took away from my afternoon with Friston was the conviction that sentience, or something like it—the ability to sense, to infer, to predict—reaches all the way down to the very simplest creatures and emerges when life does, if not before.”

Pollan’s reflection on the ubiquity of sentience among all living beings encapsulates the main point of Friston’s (and others) concept of homeostasis as a the foundation of consciousness. It also contributes to the theme of Sentience as a Challenge to Human Uniqueness as a good example of the way scientific research has removed the boundaries between humans and other kinds of life, decreasing their status as unique or superior.

“Whatever else it is, a new science of consciousness will likely be a hybrid enterprise, informed by the values of empiricism and experiment but also by philosophy, imagination, and the arts (as Levin suggested); Indigenous epistemologies; Buddhism and other spiritual traditions; personal experience and intuition; and, yes, altered states of consciousness too.”

Extending from Evan Thompson’s argument in favor of expanding beyond Western modes of thought, Pollan suggests that more effective coconsciousness research will need to include a variety of other ways of thinking and methods of examining the world. This expansion would help researchers escape the limitations of Western thought and eliminate some of the biases that have thus far influenced and hindered science.

“Be wary of the desire for magic.”

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert warns Pollan of a desire to find magic in the inexplicable nature of consciousness. He argues that some harbor a hope that consciousness will remain mysterious and inaccessible to science because it would science a human wish for magic to exist in the world. However, he claims that science will one day locate the origins on consciousness within physical matter even if it has not done so yet.

“Descartes’ error, according to Damasio, was to depict thinking as the ground zero of our existence: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ In Damasio’s view, Descartes would have been closer to the mark with ‘I feel, therefore I am.’ Feelings, he contends, are the vital bridge linking mind and body, a mental phenomenon deeply rooted in our flesh.”

Damasio once again points to the biases within Descartes’s mind/body split, in which Descartes gives higher value to rational thought than to base emotions, which exist in the body as much as in the mind. Damasio instead argues that feelings, not thought, are the foundation of consciousness. He adds that mind/body bias has convinced the scientific community to ignore feelings and dismiss his research.

“Consciousness is felt uncertainty.”

This line is Solms’s succinct summary of the concept of homeostasis as devised by Solms and Friston. They argue that homeostasis—the method by which systems resist entropy or uncertainty—is the basis for feelings and therefore consciousness. Solms’s quote thus posits that feelings are the sensation of entropy within homeostasis which thus give rise to consciousness.

“Metaphors can be powerful tools for thinking, but only as long as we don’t forget they are metaphors—imperfect or partial analogies likening one thing to another. The differences between the two things are as important as the similarities, but these differences seem to have gotten lost in the enthusiasm surrounding AI.”

Pollan summarizes the finding of the Butlin Report on conscious AI, which is built on the foundational assumption that brains are basically computers. However, Pollan then critiques this finding but noting that brain-as-computer idea is a metaphor that has not been proven and should not be taken as fact. This is another example of the way a bias creates misconceptions within the scientific community, thus hindering its research.

“I realized there’s more going on in consciousness than I can hope to build with my dinky little machine. A robot can act like it’s in love, but it’s still a puppet being pulled by strings. And believe me, I was always that annoying atheist guy. But I came out of it convinced there’s a spark of the divine in us, and nothing we could build is going to be at that level.”

In a conversation with Pollan, consciousness researcher Kingson Man acknowledges that his ideas about physical reality and the ability of science to capture consciousness have shifted following a psychedelic experience in which he came to believe that the universe is made of a substance of love. His surprising shift from staunchly defending AI research to a more metaphysical view contributes significantly to the theme of The Limits of Western Rationality.

“I’m beginning to think that most theorists of consciousness make a promise they cannot keep. They start out by promising to explain the mysteries of subjective experience […] Yet what they actually deliver is considerably less than that.”

As Pollan continues his exploration of consciousness research, he finds more examples of the ways that they fail to answer the hard problem or adequately account for the complexities of consciousness and subjective experience. His accusation that these theorists make large claims they cannot then defend leads to his eventual conclusion that Western science is incapable of solving the mystery of consciousness at all.

“She is particularly sensitive to the latent politics and power dynamics in her field, as well as the unacknowledged assumptions that often determine what gets taken seriously. ‘The mind is not a neutral territory,’ she stressed. ‘There are vested interests in what we do with our own minds.’ She feels that spontaneous thought has been neglected because, compared with, say, reasoning or problem-solving, it doesn’t produce anything.”

Hadjiilieva’s explanation for why science has not given much attention to the study of spontaneous thought and mental wandering underscores another crucial bias within Western society that has influenced scientific research. She argues that the bias toward work and productivity in Western capitalist systems has convinced scientists to ignore the genuine benefits of spontaneous thought because it does not actively produce work.

“One reason we have this monologue may be to reinforce that we’re alive, to keep reminding us we’re still here. It’s a reflection of the life force. If we’re thinking, we’re alive.”

Pollan interviews Lucy Ellman, author of the stream of consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport. He argues that her deft depictions of stream of consciousness makes her an expert on consciousness in a way that scientists are not. This indicates Pollan’s shift from scientific to literary and humanist modes of exploration in the book, and a tacit acknowledgement of the limits of rational thought to properly identify consciousness.

“‘[T]he numinous experience […] is a state of openness and connection with the everyday people and things around us: we take in the richness of the world all at once, independent of ourselves and our usual goals and plans.’ It is a comparatively self-ess state that we adults, inured to the wonder of the everyday, must go to great lengths to recapture and experience again, as when we travel to new places, engage deeply with art, put ourselves in situations that evoke awe, or take psychedelics.”

Psychologist Alison Gopnik describes spotlight and lantern consciousness. She argues that children have lantern consciousness, which gives them access to numinous experiences adults have trouble reaching. She suggests, however, the experiences like meditation and psychedelics can help adults access this state, connecting her research to Pollan’s previous research in the book How to Change Your Mind, and his shift in the last sections of the book to a further exploration of psychedelics.

“If memory is the raw material from which consciousness constructs a self, that self and its memories in turn shape consciousness.”

This line briefly summarizes an important aspect of the sense of self, as argued by Michael Levin and others. Most scientists agree that a person’s sense of self arises primarily through memory, by which people create the sense or illusion of continuity. However, a this line suggests, the self also revises and alters memory, creating a cyclical or reflexive process.

“It is significant for the field, I think, that a scientist of Koch’s standing has come to doubt that scientific materialism (or physicalism, as it’s sometimes called by scientists) will ever be able to explain consciousness.”

Pollan notes that, like Kingson Man, Koch’s shift from being a staunch proponent of the physical sciences to a researcher in the concept of idealism is a crucial piece of evidence that science cannot sufficiently explain the complexities of consciousness. Koch’s conversion is yet another example of favor of the theme of The Limits of Western Rationality.

“When I confessed to Koch my fear—that after my five-year journey into the nature and workings of consciousness, I somehow knew less than I did when I started—he simply smiled.

‘But that’s good!’ he said. ‘That’s progress!’”

In the final lines of Chapter 4, Pollan acknowledges that he began his research under the assumption that science could and would solve the problem of consciousness. By the end of his research, however, he realizes that this is not the case. In fact, no human endeavor seems capable of solving this problem. Koch’s enthusiastic response to this confession is a reminder that uncertainty and mystery are not necessarily bad things.

“Here at the end of the journey, I needed to come to terms with the fact that the kind of ultimate answers I had hoped to find might not be findable. Yet all along the way, I’d been trailed by a quiet voice that every so often would whisper to me: Maybe you’re using the wrong kind of mind.”

At the beginning of the Coda, Pollan realizes that his own bias toward rationality and science has led him to ignore other avenues of exploration. However, having run into the limitations of science, he now decides to try a different approach, namely the non-Western spiritual and philosophical tradition of Buddhism.

“I came to understand that Roshi Joan had sent me to the cave because there were no words or ideas she could offer that would teach me as much as simply being completely alone with myself in the middle of these mountains […]. It was about practice rather than explanation. Her idea, I eventually saw, was to pose a kind of experiential koan for me to puzzle and, perhaps, to help me unlearn some of the things I thought I had learned about consciousness and the self.”

Echoing Koch’s response at the end of Chapter 4, Pollan’s conversations with Joan Halifax lead him to wonder if the mystery of consciousness is beneficial, allowing him to focus on the ethics and experience of consciousness rather than trying to pin down its physical explanation or origin. Halifax convinces Pollan that the point of consciousness may be to use it rather than to solve it.