JUST now, when you turned the page in this magazine, you probably thought You
Yourself did it鈥攖hat is, the conscious being that is the sum of your
experiences, thoughts and dreams, the self that perceives the shape and colour
and pageness of this page; the self that thinks, therefore it is, the self that
you know lives in your head, just behind your eyes. But You Yourself didn鈥檛 turn
the page or reach out to pick up your teacup a few moments ago. The Zombie
did.
The Zombie in question, of course, is just a metaphor. But it is a powerful
one that is increasingly being used by psychologists and neuroscientists to
capture a division in our mental life that is at one level mundane, and at
another, deeply strange. The division is between what your conscious self sees,
smells and hears as you go about your daily life and what your brain and body
unconsciously register is 鈥渙ut there鈥� and needs dealing with. The two are not
always the same.
As is sometimes very clear. By the time you notice a spider in the bath, it
should be obvious that your unconscious brain and body鈥攁lias the
Zombie鈥攈ave already 鈥渟een鈥� it and begun to flinch. And by the time your
conscious self realises that you are blushing, sneering or giggling
inappropriately at a cocktail party, it鈥檚 too late to preserve your
dignity鈥攖he Zombie within let loose the emotion without consulting You
Yourself.
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Yet reflex reactions and hair trigger emotions are merely the flashier of its
talents. As psychologists and neuroscientists probe the mind more deeply, they
are uncovering evidence of subtler unconscious perceptions and abilities of
which science has been only dimly aware until now. Even now unconscious circuits
of the brain are processing sensory information You Yourself knows nothing
about, and initiating little movements on the sly.
鈥淲e have this assumption about ourselves that mind and consciousness are
synonymous, that we鈥檙e aware of everything that鈥檚 important,鈥� says Philip
Merikle, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, who studies
unconscious perception. 鈥淭he more we establish the unconscious influence, the
more we realise we鈥檙e not [aware].鈥�
And if you鈥檙e wondering where all this enthusiasm for the unconscious mind
comes from, don鈥檛 worry. When researchers like Merikle speak of the unconscious,
they are referring to perceptual and information processing skills rather than
anything darkly Freudian. And these unconscious skills are handled in many areas
of the brain, from its evolutionarily ancient innards to the outer cortex: there
is no one neural circuit that can be called the home of the unconscious.
For now, though, most researchers are concentrating on building a fuller
picture of the Zombie鈥檚 talents. Even this is no small challenge. The true scope
and skills of the unconscious mind are often hard to pick out amid the hubbub of
a normal conscious mind, so psychologists frequently turn to people with
neurological problems. The idea is that a stroke, tumour or accident
can鈥攊n rare cases鈥攌nock out one small fragment of normal conscious
perception and reveal hidden skills in the rubble that remains. These patients
allow experimenters to probe whether the Zombie knows something the self does
not.
And often, it does. Some patients lose the ability to recognise faces, for
example, yet their brains and bodies still produce the physical signs of
emotions when experimenters show them photographs of their loved ones鈥攁
sure sign that the Zombie recognises the faces even though the self does not.
Similarly, amnesiacs may not remember that just an hour ago an experimenter held
up a board with a simple word like 鈥渃otton鈥� written on it. Yet, when asked to
fill in the blanks in 鈥渃ot . . .鈥�, the same individuals will unthinkingly mouth
the word. And the Zombie鈥檚 repertoire of skills continues to grow.
Recently, some labs have been using such observations to investigate whether
normal brains can learn unconsciously as well as recall knowledge unconsciously.
It鈥檚 controversial, but if true, studying the Zombie could lead to a scientific
explanation for intuition.
But it is in research into visual perception where the Zombie is really
coming into its own鈥攁nd where the consequences of the divided mind become
truly counterintuitive. For years, psychologists and philosophers have been
fascinated by a phenomenon called blindsight, in which people with rare and
precise forms of brain damage can point to or track the movements of light spots
which they cannot 鈥渟ee鈥�. The Zombie seems to see even if they don鈥檛, raising
questions about the nature of vision and consciousness. Armed with brain
scanners and other techniques, psychologists are competing furiously to
discover what鈥檚 going on.
The notion of unconscious seeing will always seem somewhat paradoxical and
bizarre. But one way of coming to terms with it is to recognise just how skilled
our brains and bodies are at doing things behind the back of our conscious
selves.
So read on, leaving it to the Zombie to turn the page鈥�.