Framing and Responsibility in Consciousness Studies: a review of Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Dust: the Magic of Consciousness
The first book I read of Nicholas Humphrey's was The Mind's I , a short, cutesy book on the evolution of intelligence. There were little cartoon men that made complementary, cliff-note-type points in thought bubbles, always poking their head in from the edges of the text. The cutesy makes sense; Humphrey has that clipped British tradition of economic phrasing, on full display in Dawkins and Hitchens, a kind of stylistic embrasure raised against Teutonic opacity. Soul Dust , the obligatory book about consciousness that all science popularizers eventually write toward the end of their life cycle, is no different. Like all those who write about consciousness, he is motivated by an ethical, indeed, the supreme ethical concern. As Jerry Fodor said, "If it isn't literally true that my wanting is causally responsible for my reaching and my itching is causally responsible for my scratching, and my believing is causally responsible for my saying... If none of that is litera...