I am a brain-supremacist. I picked up this term from my colleague. He is a neurologist but also researches stroke patients, namely patients with aphasia. Aphasia is an umbrella term for all kinds of language deficits. It might be that the patient cannot produce speech; it might be that the patient can speak but uses incorrect words (with the wrong meaning). When a neurologist sees the patient with symptoms and the patient’s brain scan with the damage, it is impossible to deny that the speech deficit is a result of the brain damage. Does it mean that the brain is the physical container for consciousness? The book that I read suggests that no. The book is titled “Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness” by Alva Noë. And I was not convinced by the arguments.

The author put forward the theory of perceptual consciousness (perceptual consciousness = what it is like to see color, for example), which he summarizes as “Perception isn't something that happens to us; it’s something we do”. The theory argues that the "feeling" of seeing or touching comes from the brain's interaction with the environment while using the body (or moving the body).

There is a disagreement between the author and conventional, brain-centric neuroscience over several points.

1. The immaterial soul has been replaced by the material brain, but no more understanding of consciousness has been added by doing this. Valid point. Consciousness still lacks a clear neuroscientific explanation.

2. Neuroscientists are unable to explain consciousness because the underlying assumption in studies of consciousness is that consciousness arises from the brain. To support this attack, the author discusses the locked-in patients. These are people who, due to a stroke, have lost all ability to move. Sometimes, they cannot even move their eyes. Doctors and brain scientists cannot reliably distinguish conscious and completely alert people who are unable to signal their alertness from people in a vegetative state (where presumably no awareness is present). Yes, we don’t have the right instruments. The author concludes from that that consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain. I fail to see how from our inability to explain consciousness follows that consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain. Locked-in syndrome is an epistemic problem about consciousness (a non-knowing problem), not a metaphysical proof (that consciousness is somewhere else). I reject this criticism.

3. When it comes to the brain cell, the same neurons may “generate” different kinds of conscious activity. As support, the author describes several unrelated experiments. In the first experiment, the eyes of ferrets were rewired to connect to auditory cortices instead of visual cortices. The operation was performed on toddler ferrets, and when they grew up, they “started to see with the auditory cortex”. In the second experiment, patients with phantom limb syndrome were observed. Those patients felt their missing limb when they were touching their face. Presumably, it occurred because the face area in the sensory cortex invaded the hand area, but the hand area was still a hand area, and referred sensations to the hand. In the third experiment, blind individuals were equipped with vibrating disks on their spines. They learned to orient themselves in space or to “see” with vibration. (If interested, search Bach-y-Rita experiments or click here). The author concludes from this that neurons do not produce perceptual consciousness. Instead, perceptual consciousness is in part a skillful manipulation of objects in the environment. However, it’s hard to believe that those conscious experiences were exactly the same as normal vision or touch. No one asked ferrets, and, in Bach-y-Rita experiments, a detailed phenomenological characterization was actually quite limited. Moreover, I don’t think that any neuroscientists will be arguing against reorganization. Of course, the same neurons may be involved in several functions. So I agree with the premise but reject the conclusion.

4. Because neuroscientists think that neurons produce experiences, they believe that it is possible to produce conscious perception by directly stimulating the brain. However, they are far from doing so. Indeed, for instance, transcranial magnetic stimulation of the visual cortex will elicit phosphenes, subjectively described as flashes of light, which are short-lived and primitive. The author shapes the following reasons to disagree: it's possible to produce only simple conscious perception with this stimulation; it's the brain and the stimulation (action of a scientist) that produce hallucinatory events, not only the brain; by stimulation, the consciousness stream is affected, but nothing is created out of nothing. These reasons, in my view, are unjustified. Production of more complex perception is an epistemic issue (we don’t know), but it is still possible in principle. The brain can stimulate itself. It’s called imagination. No scientists are needed to produce hallucinatory events. Yes, the conscious stream is affected during stimulation, but still, a new conscious perception is created. Just as much as a stroke in the speech region of the brain, phosphenes are a great example that the brain is causally involved in perception, so I refuse to accept the reasons.

5. Similar to imagination, dreams are within brain events. Even though dreams arise from the brain, they don’t look like reality. The author argues that the surroundings in dreams are unstable, while in the real world, things don’t just appear out of thin air. The conclusion follows that seeing in dreams cannot be called “seeing”. Also, cannot agree with that. The experience is clearly there: the experience of the dream. This experience occurs without any external stimulation. Yes, maybe it is not exactly like the real world, but vibration on the spine is not “seeing-as-in-real-world” either (see point 2). I reject this critical point.

Admittedly, the author indicates in the introduction that the book is for the general reader, and detailed argumentation can be found in his papers. I didn’t take a look at his papers, although I’m familiar with Kevin O’Regan’s work on the same topic (which I also disagree with). Still, I acknowledge that there could be counter-arguments to my arguments.

There was one argument that I found somewhat convincing - the explanation of inattentional blindness. If you don’t know the original experiment, pause here and go to YouTube and search “selective attention test” or click here. The original experiment testing this involved people playing a ball-passing game and a gorilla. The participants were instructed to count the number of passes of the ball made by the team wearing white t-shirts. Unknown to the participants, midway through the video, a man appears dressed as a large black gorilla, walks around, and then disappears. Approximately 50% of participants failed to notice the gorilla-suited person. The author explains this with the lack of access. Perception is an exploration of the environment by moving eyes and limbs, and thereby gaining access to objects in the environment. However, one still may argue that perception happens after we move our eyes, not together with the eye movement. Moreover, it’s possible to look directly at the object with our eyes but not see.

At the same time, some arguments are created out of thin air. The author claims that mid-century philosophers and contemporary neuroscientists preach that humans are deliberative, use reason, are rational, and are habit-free; however, many of our actions are non-conscious (sub-conscious, unconscious). The author talks about expertise. Expert sportsmen, musicians, and other professionals perform the majority of actions without conscious involvement, and, when being asked to attend to their actions, miserably fail. Because habits and skills are embedded in the environment and catalyzed by it, humans, according to the author, are not deliberate thinkers but are intertwined with the environment. Perhaps, some 50 years ago, it was indeed mainstream neuroscience to think of humans as pure rational thinkers, but nowadays, no brain scientist would claim that there is only conscious processing. The problem described by the author doesn’t exist anymore.

The book is written for the general public and is very easy to read. Questions that are posed to neuroscientists are most of the time justified; it was a good opportunity for me to pause and think. Proposed solutions are unsatisfactory, though.

A quote:

“it must be admitted that we really have no reason to think Hubel and Wiesel's discoveries tell us anything at all about the brain basis of vision”

May, 2026