Laboratory psychology attacked

Posted by Simon Raggett on 2 April 2010 | 0 Comments

Tags: psychology, consciousness, freewill, Libet

Professor of psychology, Merlin Donald, attacks the laboratory approach to the study of consciousness and by implication freewill, which he sees as being exclusively focused on short-term memory and attention, plus perceptual illusions. He argues that consciousness is not just present in short bursts, but is a continuous background to social and other human processes. For instance, lengthier conversations are viewed as extended control-processes, involving attention selection, maintenance of attention and allocation of priorities. In particular, a delayed response, in contrast to an immediate response to the environment, is seen as a hallmark of consciousness. In humans, consciousness is seen as being less about responses to the external world and more about internal processing of events. This is contrasted with the mainstream view based on the Libet experiments to the effect that because brain processing for trivial actions starts up before the will to act comes into consciousness, therefore consciousness must in all cases be something that lags our actions in the real world. It is emphasised that this view takes no account of how we deal with social or other longer-term/more strategic activities. It is laboratory psychology's sole focus on the short-term trivial rather than the medium-longer-term governance of activity that is most criticised here.

Mainstream researchers are viewed as taking the automatic and unconscious nature of much of human activity as a proof of their position. He turns this argument round, arguing that much automatic behaviour is based on learned skills, and that it is consciousness or conscious learning that is initially responsible for installing a large repertoire of automatic skills.

Studies with patients suffering from brain damage demonstrate that there are many patients who retain norma short-term memory and attention, but who encounter difficulties over longer timescales, particularly where this involves self-monitoring of the appropriateness of their own behaviour. At the same time, there are examples of patients with seriously impaired short-term abilities who, by dint of conscious effort over a period extending to years, manage to overcome some of their difficulties. This again is seen as an example of the role of consciousness in longer-term activities.