Enchanted looms

Rodney Cotterill bridges the gap between the bottom-up approach to understanding consciousness, anchored in the brain's biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, and the top-down strategy, which concerns itself with behaviour and the nervous system's interaction with the environment. Equally at home describing the intricacies of neural networks, the methods of monitoring brain activity and relevant aspects of psychology, the author argues that an explanation of consciousness is now at hand, and extends the discussion to include intelligence and creativity. Those who believe that their conscious selves control their bodies will be shocked to learn that even our spur-of-the-moment decisions are made unconsciously - that we are merely captive audiences of our own muscular acts. The remarkable thing is that the underlying deterministic mechanism requires that we be conscious. Evolution's boldest trick greatly increased our competitive edge, by giving the body a conscious servant. The fascinating thing is that this ultimately opened the flood gates of our culture and our technology, including - soon - consciousness in computers.