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Nicholas Humphrey

Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness Hardcover – February 20, 2011

by Nicholas Humphrey (Author)

20 customer reviews

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How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche.?

Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all--how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature, Soul Dust is an uncompromising yet life-affirming work--one that never loses sight of the majesty and wonder of consciousness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Humphrey (Seeing Red), the psychologist who discovered blind sight, combines the latest research on neurology and psychology with age-old philosophical questions about the nature of perception and sensation. In answer to the quandary of how human consciousness evolved, since much of our mental activity occurs unconsciously (fight or flight; intuition; biases), he suggests that sensual pleasure and the perception of beauty add value to our lives and enhance our desire to survive. Because we externalize our perceptions ("projecting sensations onto objects") we believe that our lives have meaning. He argues that the "magical interiority of human minds" is not merely a pleasurable bonus to the business of survival but creates the foundation for human existence and our ability to "acknowledge and honor the personhood of others." Though he rejects the existence of the supernatural, Humphrey sees a "soul niche," made possible by the development of complex neurological feedback loops, as the evolutionary home of the human species. This is a fascinating affirmation of the existence of the human soul and a difficult read, but well worth the effort.
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Review

Humphrey's writing is as elegant and hypnotic as that cool jazz stacked on the record player. His argument feels as crystalline and bracing as that double martini going down. --Alison Gopnik, New York Times

[W]hat, on the face of it, looks like an attempt to validate spirituality using the language of science turns out to be a way to expand the domain of science by accounting for spirituality --Caspar Melville, New Humanist

Humphrey begins where Crick and others have left off. He audaciously aims to provide a theoretical basis for understanding the level of consciousness that corresponds with one's personal qualitative experience. --Michael Proulx, Science

Humphrey is absolutely right to reintroduce the concept of the soul to contemporary discussion of consciousness. This elusive entity still haunts the science - and scientists - of the mind. --Adam Zeman, Standpoint

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Product details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; 1St Edition edition (February 20, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691138621
ISBN-13: 978-0691138626
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 20 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,874,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2545 in Medical Neuropsychology
- #3311 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
- #3180 in Popular Neuropsychology

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Jon G. Allen

Ten Stars

February 16, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I am glad Humphrey did not stop with his prior book on consciousness, Seeing Red. He has been a major contributor to our understanding of the evolution of consciousness over a period of decades. In the mainstream account, our advanced human consciousness evolved owing to its adaptive function of enabling complex problem solving. As Humphrey recognized long ago, social cognition is the extraordinarily complex arena that places a premium on complex problem solving. But Humphrey makes a major leap forward in Soul Dust, articulating beautifully the intrinsic survival value of the sheer experience of consciousness. Hence he makes full use of artists' (especially poets') works in illuminating the value of consciousness. I don't recall seeing the word, "mindfulness," in this book; yet it's the best book on mindfulness I've read (and I've read many). Do not be misled by Humphrey's use of the concept of soul. He declares himself a materialist and there is nothing supernatural here. But he is a materialist with a twist, arguing persuasively for (a now well-established) metaphor of consciousness as a theater, generated by the brain in ways that we are gradually coming to understand. I recommend that readers interested in an up-to-date account of the neuroscience of consciousness anchor themselves first in Stanislas Dehaene's (2014) book, Consciousness and the Brain. But those who want to appreciate the human significance of consciousness would do well to read Soul Dust. It has changed the way I think about consciousness and greatly enhanced my appreciation for it. This is the book on consciousness for the humanists among us.

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Setting aside the brilliant IDEAS for a second, I wish to praise...

April 25, 2011

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

...very specifically the WRITING. This is an impossibly difficult topic. In a world full of hard problems, consciousness is actually called "the hard problem." So that's a damned hard problem.

I can't imagine an approach or tone better suited to taking intelligent, curious--but otherwise relatively clueless--readers by the hand and bringing them step by sensible, well-explained step, to a series of eureka points. Humphrey has a DELIGHTFUL style. It's hard to capture, but I thought a moment earlier in the book helped exemplify it, when he asked (paraphrasing), "Were you as surprised as I was just then that we'd already arrived at Plato's Cave? I hadn't thought we'd be getting there until much later!"

Much of the book is written in that style. He's not some superior intellect lecturing us on what he arrogantly wishes to convince us is true. He is the excited ring-leader of a gang of intrepid explorers, taking us by the hand and saying, "Did you just see that?! I wonder what THAT could have been!" And then patiently working through with us the various possibilities until we arrive--together--at a likely but provisional conclusion. It is astonishingly effective, and I only wish that other writers of philosophy and neuroscience could emulate the approach if not the exact features. (Humphrey's style strikes me as the type that if it were not genuine would be instantly insufferable.)

I don't know how else to describe my experience of having read "Soul Dust" than to say I'm grateful. It's a small window, and we see through the glass darkly; but for once the window is at least open.

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M. Roberts

Intriguing but leaves too many questions

April 8, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Erudite and well researched. There are many angles on consciousness, and this one leans on the abstract side. I would have been happier with more emphasis on the biology and paleobiology of the creation of self-awareness in the human brain.

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Brian Felsen

A mind-expanding, life-affirming work

April 15, 2011

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Why do people have qualitative phenomenal experiences, and why is it "like something" to have sensations? And why do we feel special and spiritual, as if we existed in a "soul niche?" In his marvelous book Soul Dust, Nicholas Humphrey provides perhaps the most sensible solutions to these fundamental but seemingly-intractable questions, and he offers some credible possibilities how and why consciousness likely evolved with these features.

The first half of Soul Dust is a whirlwind tour through Humphrey's thoughts on sensation and why first-person experience feels like it does. As the author favors brevity, this part of the book is dense and requires some mental lifting on the part of the reader. Humphrey explains how natural selection could "adjust the properties of existing sensory feedback loops so as to steer the activity toward a special class of attractor states... [which] would seem, from the subject's point of view, to give sensations their phenomenal properties." Then, he illustrates multiple lines of evidence on what consciousness is for - why it may not enable you to *do* something but still has the crucial function of *encouraging* you to do something - and that primary individualism, by helping us develop a theory of mind, is beneficial for the individual *and* for the social group. Finally, he surveys the important work of scientists and convincingly argues why philosophers are still necessary, arguing that "the probability is that brain scientists would not recognize the NCC [neural correlates of consciousness] for what it is even if it were right in front of them."

With this foundation in place, it's the second half of Soul Dust which truly astonishes, for here, Humphrey shows why life can be beautiful in the face of death. Drawing on multiple lines of evidence (from types and degrees of consciousness and "presentism" in other animals; poetry; primitive art; psychological studies; and even the last meals of death row inmates), Humphrey describes how and why we take pleasure in existence in itself. If natural selection can arrange pleasure in the feeling of existing, existing can become a goal, and you can plan and go through pain or delayed gratifications to achieve or continue it. In a brilliant move, Humphrey shows how and why our experience and the structure of our minds guide the false intuitions that our "souls" could somehow live on after bodily death. This helps explain why reductionist theory is counterintuitive for so many people and how religion rides as a parasite on our natural predilection for spirituality (and not vice versa).

The beautiful final chapters provide strong evidence for how phenomenal consciousness is a "magic show" you stage in your head which lights up the world so you can feel special and transcendent, and why it's adaptive for you to feel that way (as well as even to have death anxiety). In so doing, Humphrey gives voice to the notion that there is actually beauty in being a creature which knows it's going to die. For thousands of years, people have told crazy stories to explain and to comfort each other in the face of death, tales which include positing earth-centered creation, the permanence of souls, and even consciousness as a separate fundamental element of the universe. But, to quote the film True Grit, "I do not entertain such hypotheticals, for the world as it is is vexing enough."

It can seem like a dark joke to have a subjective experience of consciousness for such a brief period of individual existence. But this book finds meaning and beauty in our brief skein not as a fairy tale or a "gallows-humor" consolation prize; it shows how this "magical mystery show" of consciousness and sensation over a limited timeframe is actually lovely, and in so doing, it gives the reader the feeling that everything is illuminated. "Sentio ergo sum" ("I feel, therefore I am") indeed!

Soul Dust is worth every minute of attention it demands, and it's a mind-expanding, life-affirming work.

46 people found this helpful

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Pavel Somov, Ph.D., psychologist, author of "Lotus Effect" and "Present Perfect"

Brilliant, Paradigm-Shifting, Will Save You Years of Reading Around

August 11, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

"Soul Dust" (and NH's "A HIstory of the Mind") are brilliantly written. Tentative, almost collegial/collaborative (para-Socratic) way of introducing difficult and provocative ideas and working through them to startling and illuminating conclusions. Brilliant, paradigm-shifting, phenomenologically rich, humanistically poignant. This book will save you years of reading around and researching and organizing your thoughts about the subject matter.

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