The locality of thoughts inside the head

January 24, 2005 5:44 PM

Why is that thoughts seem to occur in the physical place inside one's head? Do blind or deaf people experience the physical locality of consciousness in the same way that others do?
posted by swift to religion & philosophy (25 comments total)

I was told that certain ancient peoples put the centre of consciousness in the heart region, and sometimes the stomach. I suspect it's just where you're told "you" are that thoughts seem to occur.

This is a poorly researched answer, sorry.
posted by bonaldi at 6:16 PM on January 24, 2005

Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame) authored another book which begins with this very question, and follows it through several hundred engaging pages. It's called "The Mind's I", and deals with the ramifications of exactly this kind of question.

Unfortunately, I read it so long ago, I can't remember what the term for the perceived location of consciousness is.  Stupid brain.
posted by Aquaman at 6:33 PM on January 24, 2005

My thoughts don't seem to take place inside my head. I'd never thought of it till now but my thoughts just are. I would guess that for people who feel that thoughts are in their head bonaldi's answer would probably be correct.
posted by substrate at 6:38 PM on January 24, 2005

In "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", Richard Feynman describes his attempt to move the mind (ie the "source" of his thoughts) out of the head. He somewhat succeeds, IIRC, and gets it to go down to the stomach and finally out of the body. I'm doing a poor job of describing this, but you should look it up.
posted by dhruva at 6:52 PM on January 24, 2005

Humans are a very visual species. My pet theory on this one is that I experience my consciousness as located in my head beacuse that's where my eyes are. (Your question about blind people is of interest here, and I'd be curious to hear an answer to it.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:05 PM on January 24, 2005

Oliver Sacks had an article in the New Yorker last year that said, essentially, that there is no single blind or deaf experience. Some people have a mental life that they describe as being qualitatively similar to what it was like before they went blind; others find it much different.

Douglas Hofstadter didn't author The Mind's Eye, he co-edited it with Dan Dennett. It contains a transcription of Dennett's talk Where Am I?, which is about what you seem to be interested in (excerpt here - well, it says it's an excerpt, but it looks like the full thing to me).

Space representation - how we come to represent space as being "out there" and locate consciousness in our heads - is a topic that has been picked up as of late by phenomenologist cognitive scientists who are interested in what they call "extended cognition." (Alva Noe, Evan Thompson, Andy Clark, etc.). The extended cognition thesis is a functionalist thesis that states that cognition can extend beyond the boundary of the brain. Here's a paper (pdf) by Alva Noe that might interest you. This is an area of philosophy that really excites me, though I haven't really decided yet what it comes to.

You might also want to consider picking up some Julian Jaynes. He's pretty out there and science fictiony in a lot of respects -- he claims that consciousness only recently evolved and that the ancient Greeks were not conscious as we understand it, which is why they located thought in the torso instead of the brain -- but he's very, very interesting and not to be dismissed.
posted by painquale at 7:05 PM on January 24, 2005

Harlan Ellison wrote a story about (or at least containing) this idea too, but I don't remember its name. In the story a man calls up a late night radio show complaining that his consciousness is slowly moving down his body towards his feet.

Anyway, in the story, somebody mentions that the seat of consciousness for the Greeks was the liver, hence the specific punishment for Prometheus.

My theory on it, I guess--though I haven't given it too much thought--is that the fact that most of the senses are located in the head has a lot to do with it. The metaphor is that our head is like a house with windows to the outside world in the form of eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and "we" are inside the house, catching glimpses through those windows. Couldn't really say that about the liver, could you?

It makes sense to me that we should place our consciousness in the head, although it's probably impossible for me to know whether that's prima facie or whether it merely seems intuitive cause that's what I've learned from other people.
posted by Hildago at 7:06 PM on January 24, 2005

If you are a panpsychist of some sort (like I am) or Donald Hoffman, then the question is why's the head/brain the central inner phenomenon?
posted by Gyan at 7:15 PM on January 24, 2005

Mmm. Depends what you call consciousness, doesn't it? Even now, we feel emotion in our hearts, we have gut feelings, we can experience emotion literally viscerally.

I would put money on this being culturally conditioned.

When you point to yourself, in a me Tarzan way, you point to your heart, not your head. Why's that, huh?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:30 PM on January 24, 2005

Smell's in there, hearing's there, vision's there, taste is there, talking happens there. Why wouldn't we associate our consciousness with the place where most of the exciting stuff is?

Aside from that other exciting stuff, of course.
posted by interrobang at 8:00 PM on January 24, 2005

the fact that most of the senses are located in the head has a lot to do with it

Most of the sense organs are located in the head, you mean. Most people are giving this as their answer, and I think it's a great answer; even if our brains were located miles away (as in that Where Am I? paper), we'd still identify our points of view with where our sense organs were, not where our brains were. However, I'd phrase it a little differently: I'd say that we tend to locate our points of view in our heads because we represent the information coming in from our sense organs as existing around our heads.

Because most of the information we get about the world comes from our heads, and because we've evolved to have our brains represent the world veridically, we represent the world mostly as being around our heads. But note that we don't have to have such a tight fit between our sense experience and our sense organs. Our sense of balance is a function of bones within our ears, but we don't locate our experience of balance within our ears. Phantom limb patients experience sensation where nothing exists. In these cases, there isn't an isomorphic link between experience and sense organs. Most of the time, there is.
posted by painquale at 9:23 PM on January 24, 2005

Aristotle definitely states that the center of consciousness is in the chest area, centered on the heart. He notes the brain's convoluted shape and correctly deduces that it is a way of increasing the surface area in a fixed volume, but then goes on to posit that this is to make it a more efficent radiator of heat.
posted by ikkyu2 at 9:36 PM on January 24, 2005

Your head's isn't just where your eyes are, it's also the one part of your body that you really can't see for yourself. Off the top of my seat-of-consciousness, I would speculate that this has something to do it.

Of course, you can't see your own ass, either, and it's also possible my speculation comes from there.
posted by coelecanth at 11:28 PM on January 24, 2005

Important to remember that you don't have much tactile sense of your brain cavity at all. The "sense" that they take place up there is all... in your head? Of course, there are emotions people typically describe as being in their chest, and it's been suggested that nerve endings throughout the abdomen are not only responsible for that, but for "gut feelings" as well - our brains really do extend into our gut. Haven't you ever heard news that made you want to vomit? There are definitely cognitive/associative functions you experience elsewhere in your body than behind your eyes. And what you do experience as "behind your eyes" is hard to describe or put your finger on. POV for the audio/visual senses probably is a lot of it, combined with learned associations between the head, brain and thought.

I've wondered this for a long time, too.
posted by scarabic at 11:40 PM on January 24, 2005

R, B, Onians touched on this in his The Origins of European Thought : About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate--the Greeks, he contended, divided consciousness between head and heart, or more properly heart and lungs--the phrenes--as they saw intelligence and feeling being breathed into men by the gods and cites passages from Homer where characters engage in discussion with not only the gods but their phrenes. That is my admittedly garbled and short hand version. Here's a somewhat woo woo neopagan text about Ghreek chakras which alludes to Onian's thesis in places: The Parts of the Soul.

It's hard to find references to Onians online which are not neo-pagan but ah, here is Psychological Ideas in Antiquity from the Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
posted by y2karl at 2:41 AM on January 25, 2005

I also just came across Science Incarnate • Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge which seems pertinent to the topic.
posted by y2karl at 2:51 AM on January 25, 2005

I don't know the answer to "Why is that thoughts seem to occur in the physical place inside one's head?" other than for me that's quite true.

Quite long, sorry...

If I'm thinking about a problem I'm trying to solve I can "feel" things ticking over right at the front of my brain. If I decide to forget about the problem and do something else, I can physically feel the thought process slide from the front to the back left side of my brain just futher back from my ear, where it keeps on ticking at a much slower pace.

Even while doing other things, I'm aware of the problem still ticking over, as an everso slight warm tingling in what feels like that part of the brain. If that part comes up with a solution the thought and feeling will move back to the front. If I'm busy thinking about something else, it'll politely wait until there's room to move in and take over nearly the whole thinking space.

Other thoughts or problems set aside will be placed further back still, filling up the back of my head. I can feel when it's full, I can only store about 12 there at a time. Each one can be left alone for the brain to work on, but the further back the less thought it gets given. I can swap these around if I feel they need move thought given to them. Again the prioritizing and moving of the thought feels as though they are physically moving through different areas in my head. Once placed on the "back burner" I don't need to activily given them an conscious thought that I'm aware of, the brain just work on it itself without needing any help from me, I can feel it working away without me.

The majority of the right hand side of my brain feels empty (apart from the very back and front bits). No thoughts ever move around in that area. However, that is where an inner voice appears and says wholly inappropriate things that I have to stop myself from saying. And when I say "appears" I mean in the form of a horses head, a yellow horses head. Suddenly a yellow horses head will apear in that normally empty space, say something, and vanish again.

Finially, right at the base of my brain is another section that's working on something. I can feel it working on it all the time, but it's become a background hum I can ignore. But if I move my focus to that area I can feel that it's doing something. However, as far as I can tell it's a secret and my brain refuses to tell me what it's upto. I know that may sound odd, but I'm really aware that part of my brain is constantly up to something and I have no idea what it is. Again this is a real physical feeling.

My 2c

Oh and I'm pretty sure this is cultural, when I was very young when I could read very little, I used to look at a book that was all about how the mind worked. It was full of 50s stylized illustrations of the brain, which had cross sections of the brain, with large black areas on it so text and yellow arrows could be placed on it, saying and pointing to things. I'm sure that's where it all stems from.
posted by ModestyBCatt at 2:58 AM on January 25, 2005

Doh, and when I say "move my focus" above, that's refering to what I feel my consciousness is. To me it looks, (scarily) like those cursors on web pages you see that have little coloured dots following them around, but in my head. I can control my thoughts my moving it around to different tasks.
posted by ModestyBCatt at 3:01 AM on January 25, 2005

Hmmm, well that sounds actually a little freaky and amazing to me. The only time I can ever feel my brain doing anything at all is that dull angry throbbing when I wake up with a vicious hangover.

I've always been interested in the idea that other cultures located their being outside the head. To me, it seems so obvious that it's all visual - you perceive the world, at least when standing, from a spot several feet up off the floor, looking down at the rest of your body. But maybe that's just because I've been taught from early on that the brain inside my head is the seat of the mind. Do people who have been blind from birth and who perceive the world primarily though touch feel they live in their fingers? Or is it back in the head because of their ears?
posted by CunningLinguist at 4:19 AM on January 25, 2005

painquale already mentioned Jaynes, but I'd like to reiterate - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a fascinating book, full of interesting ideas and insights, whether or not you go for the central thesis, and it does address this question.
posted by mdn at 5:43 AM on January 25, 2005

Yeah, in most of the world nowdays "I" sits roughly in your head, behind your eyes. Out-of-body experiences and other forms of body alienation come more or less from your sense of self moving, and sometimes depending on what the context of the OBE is (most commonly half-asleep or on drugs), you often actually hallucinate and assume the perspective of that point instead of your own eyes.

The easiest way to pry yourself out of that point to see how it feels is to eliminate the sensory input that allows you to get the bearings that let you put it there - in Feynman's case he was in one of those sensory deprivation tank things where you float in epsom salts in perfect dark (hey, it was the 70's ;)). What you can also do is the mental trick of staying conscious while your body falls asleep until your sensory input shuts off, which is a little mind-game that's not as hard as it sounds. I talk a bit about the wake-induced lucid dream technique in my Lucid dream E2 writeup which is the same trick. It's also preached by dubious New Age circles to attain OBEs but it's quite down to earth really.
posted by abcde at 5:55 AM on January 25, 2005

I, like ModestyBCatt perceive different things happening in different parts of my brain. I didn't quite realize it until they wrote something about it.

Normally when I think, especially typing (like right now) the thoughts "feel" like they come from somewhere near the top of my head. I get the impression of a dark space there also.

However I've noticed just now, that while I listen to music (like I'm doing right now), I type alot differently, and the thoughts feel like they're coming from the base of my skull.

They also feel like they tend to congregate on the right side of my head, and not so much the left side, except for when I'm drawing, my brain feels like it's sort of humming.

These are just impressions I get now that Ithink about it. I've always kind of glossed it over until I read that other post.
posted by jackofsaxons at 6:09 AM on January 25, 2005

Painquale: But note that we don't have to have such a tight fit between our sense experience and our sense organs. Our sense of balance is a function of bones within our ears, but we don't locate our experience of balance within our ears...

Ooh, good point.

It might be relevant that when our balance is off, we don't do anything with our ears to correct it. But when we see something coming towards our face, it's a good idea to duck. So that association between vision (or even hearing or smell) and the head is a useful one to have.
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:17 AM on January 25, 2005

I would put money on this being culturally conditioned. When you point to yourself, in a me Tarzan way, you point to your heart, not your head. Why's that, huh?

That is also a culturally conditioned gesture. Ask a Japanese man to point to himself, and he'll point at his nose.
posted by vorfeed at 11:13 AM on January 25, 2005

In "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", Richard Feynman describes his attempt to move the mind (ie the "source" of his thoughts) out of the head.

Excellent book and excellent story. I think I remember he moved his center of balance an inch to the side and never quite reset himself.
posted by jragon at 11:13 AM on January 25, 2005