How the Mind Works

. . . Special consideration is given to a study of consciousness as opposed

to unconsciousness, with many helpful hints on how to remain conscious.

Verbal humor sets readers up with one meaning of an ambiguous word

and surprises them with another. Theoreticians also trade on the ambiguity

of the word consciousness, not as a joke but as a bait-and-switch:

the reader is led to expect a theory for one sense of the word, the hardest

to explain, and is given a theory for another sense, the easiest to, explain.

I don't like to dwell on definitions, but when it comes to consciousness

we have no choice but to begin by disentangling the meanings.

Sometimes "consciousness" is just used as a lofty synonym for "intelligence."

Gould, for example, must have been using it in this way. But

there are three more-specialized meanings, nicely distinguished by the

linguist Ray Jackendoff and the philosopher Ned Block.

One is self-knowledge. Among the various people and objects that an

intelligent being can have information about is the being itself. Not only

can I feel pain and see red, I can think to myself, "Hey, here I am, Steve

Pinker, feeling pain and seeing red!" Oddly enough, this recondite sense

of the word is the one that most academic discussions have in mind.

Consciousness is typically defined as "building an internal model of the

world that contains the self," "reflecting back on one's own mode of

understanding," and other kinds of navel-gazing that have nothing to do

with consciousness as it is commonly understood: being alive and awake

and aware.

Self-knowledge, including the ability to use a mirror, is no more mysterious

than any other topic in perception and memory. If I have a mental

database for people, what's to prevent it from containing an entry for

myself? If I can learn to raise my arm and crane my neck to sight a hidden

spot on my back, why couldn't I learn to raise a mirror and look up at

it to sight a hidden spot on my forehead? And access to information

about the self is perfectly