This book started out okay but quickly devolved into philosophy with no science behind it.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC.

I’m a big reader of brain books. I’ve probably reviewed 15 or 20 of them here. This latest one, called The Dawn of Mind by neuroscientist and passionate aficionado Dr. James Cooke, promised to finally fill in the missing links about what the human mind is. For me, it not only did no such thing, but it missed the elephant in the room completely.

This is Cooke’s life. He wants to understand the mind from every angle, from everyone’s perspective, when, how and why it arose at all, and what it all means. His book contains epigraphs galore, and probably a hundred theories of mind from people I’ve never heard of. To say it is wide-ranging is to be reductionist.

There are sections that are entirely from philosophy (Kant, Spinoza, Russell), not normally where I go for neurologic research. There are spiritual theories, including North American tribes and Hindu and Buddhist thoughts on life, the universe and everything. There’s history, where the likes of Aristotle propound their wisdom on the matter. Inevitably, there is lots on Descartes and his long-discredited theory of dualism - the separation of mind and body (vs Russell’s monism). There are cosmic theories for every taste. There’s even the Google scandal, in which it recently declared its artificial intelligence software had successfully mimicked the brain’s “computational functionalism” (assuming the human brain works like a laptop – which it decidedly does not), and was therefore reaching into consciousness itself. Plus all kinds of insights from the world of psychedelic chemicals. But, thankfully, also neuroscience, where endless studies, experiments and scans have tried to nail down what the mind is, and where to find it. All in aid of locating the mind and explaining it.

The book ranges very far from this point. All the endless theories might be intriguing, but they aren’t scientific. They have no foundation. I did not really appreciate having to wade through them all, knowing in advance they did not hold the answers. They are mostly a poor substitute for ignorance.

Cooke’s own definition is: “Consciousness does not require thought or the ability to self-reflect; where there is feeling of any kind, from the experience of seeing the blue of the sky to imagining what your life will be like a decade from now, there is consciousness.” He also says awareness is at the core of consciousness: “an unchanging formless awareness.” This is vague enough to take in a whole lot of creatures. So this is not about human exceptionalism. At least that.

He says the mind is not a result of evolution, but of the emergence of life. This requires a lot of defense (that is not there) because the human brain is agglutinative: it began tiny and basic reptilian, and has added lobes and folds and nodes over time, including the newest – the huge frontal lobes where much of what makes people human are located. Cooke does not explain the contradiction about evolution.

There is a great deal of discussion about reality. Is a chair real, because in reality it is made up of electrons zooming around almost entirely empty space within atoms. We know this now, but for 300,000 years, our ancestors did not. So is everything they knew wrong (or at best “naïve realism”)? He says “It turns out that everything in existence is like a rainbow, relational and empty of an intrinsic, independent essence.” Presumably, this also applies to the ground beneath our feet, which not being real, should have given way eons ago. But so what? Does it matter what reality is on a subatomic or even universal level when we live our lives on Earth? Since when is absolute truth a prerequisite for consciousness? Or, is reality as Robin Williams said, a crutch?

Also: what difference does it make to the mind? How would our minds be different if we knew 300,000 years ago about quantum physics? Cooke provides no answers.

His best line is “The self is a complex mental construct. Looking for the self in the brain is like looking for a video game character in the microchips of a computer.” Nicely put.

But for all that, Cooke’s eureka moment came not in a lab but on his houseboat floating through London. It was that all living things must be conscious in order to assess and promote their chances of survival. So easy, and obvious. Therefore grass is conscious. So are the mitochondria in every cell of a human body. So is a jellyfish, despite having no brain. Or eyes. If it lives, it is conscious.

But. If an axe cuts off a tree limb and the tree sends out distress signals through its roots to the fungal network below ground that connects it to other plants, is that a preprogrammed, reflex reaction to a threat, or is it consciousness? If a sunflower twists to follow the sun, is that consciousness, or an evolutionary trait it developed to maximize its growth? For Cooke, they are examples of consciousness as in every living thing. I disagree.

To me, consciousness is a complex state that few beings possess. The reason we cannot find an organ or a gland that is the controller for consciousness is that there isn’t one to find. Consciousness is a roll-up of innumerable processes going on at all times in the brain. They color our assessment of everything. For example, we appreciate things we see differently depending on our level of pain, our overall health, our mood, the weather, ambient light, distance, what we need to remember to do later, and what just happened five minutes ago. The inputs from our senses don’t necessarily get priority; they are affected by these other considerations. This is one reason why memory can be faulty, as competing scenarios vie for attention while we think, compare, and project.

It is also precisely why we cannot find a single location called mind in the brain; the brain takes data from everything, nonstop. The body is a constant cacophony of things reporting to the brain, and the brain assigning pulses or blood or chemicals or inflammation where the reports indicate they are out of kilter. That the sky is bright blue right now is just one of millions of reports all the time. That’s why the brain consumes 20% of the energy we take in just for itself.

This is also why things like the “singularity” in which all knowledge from a human brain is to be uploaded to a massive drive for retrieval as needed is not going to happen. Human brains require all these internal and external inputs to make the roll-up of a human mind work as designed. Without them, our personal take would not exist or be possible. It is why removing a brain and freezing it will not work. When it is defrosted later, it will have no inputs, no baseline, no checks and balances, no regulation, nothing to work with. It will be completely unable to co-operate with neuroscientists querying it.

Fewer readers will understand this today, but if you remove the partition in a hard drive in order to access the additional memory it sequesters, the computer won’t work better; it won’t work at all. The computer needs its borders, its framework, its range. Taking it out of its own little kingdom means it totally loses its bearings. So with brains.

Most important of all, consciousness is locked to memory. Without memory, full consciousness cannot be. It is the major factor in the roll-up of those continuous inputs. Without memory of data from the senses, there is no consciousness of the body or the environment. There is just a blank slate, forever. I worked with brain trauma sufferers, and I can state that without memory, they can be barely human. They can be unable to remember faces or names, unable to remember what they just had for dinner, and unable to analyze or project anything because the memory inputs and baselines are missing. The most damaged of them would have to learn not to put a hand on a hot stove burner – all day, every day. In one famous case, the neuroscientist assigned to a patient with no short term memory had to introduce herself to him every day, for decades. That is subhuman. If you lose your memory, you lose your mind. It is also hard evidence of the mind residing in the brain.

An even uglier example is Alzheimer’s sufferers. They can lose the ability to recognize their own children or spouse, be unable to understand a fork and knife or how to shave, and have no concept of others, boundaries, or self. This (visible) dysfunction in their brains impairs their awareness, self-awareness, and consciousness. Without them, they become as mobile plants.

I believe there is no real consciousness without a functional and sophisticated memory. Yet memory is not even mentioned in any of Cooke’s explorations. The very word memory makes its first appearance on page 208, in reference to a caterpillar passing on its knowledge to the butterfly it becomes, despite its brain liquefying away during the transformation (and therefore consciousness must reside elsewhere than the brain, i.e. in every cell). Memory never comes up in his discussions of human minds.

In summary, we have continual solid proof that consciousness resides in the brain, because damage to the brain can alter consciousness. That is real, replicable evidence, while all the other theories Cooke examines have no replicable proofs to offer. There is no science behind any of them, including his own conjecture that every living thing is conscious because he says so. That is not science.

The idea that every particle in the universe contains the potential for consciousness is absurd, and has no basis in anything, like string theory or multiverses. Consciousness is hiding in plain sight, and it requires an extraordinarily complex organ called a brain to work to its fullest potential. Humans have minds, along with apes, dolphins, whales and octopuses. Electrons, not so much.

As I read, I was dumbfounded that with all his research, education, and lab work, Cooke never even considered the role of memory in optimizing consciousness. To me this is as obvious and fundamental as to be impossible to overlook – particularly in so exhaustive a book as he has written.

So no, the mind does not reside in body cells outside the head, or in some control module hidden somewhere deep within the brain. It is the brain, in its entirety, constantly pulling together all its inputs into a single unique spokesperson: you. Despite what Dr. James Cooke says.

David Wineberg

The Dawn of Mind by James Cooke is a thought-provoking exploration of consciousness, tracing the evolution of diverse theories and views that have persisted & evolved across centuries. The author draws from philosophy, religion, and neuroscience to present his perspective, which is both informed by tradition, experience and grounded in modern scientific insights.

Cooke delves into the divergent interpretations of consciousness, many of which are found in ancient religious texts (especially in Eastern philosophies). He revisits age-old questions, such as whether the physical or consciousness itself is central to existence. The book also addresses a more recent question: is consciousness a natural emergence from complex systems? There are some good examples to make the point – such as the transient nature of physical phenomena, like rainbows which are around for very short period of time, to entities such as us which persist over several decades. Unlike the physical, he takes the view that consciousness is more constant and universal, nevertheless being closely associated with life. He refers to Spinoza’s view of consciousness (which got him into trouble with the clergy at that time) as an all-encompassing force—a stance that aligns with concepts like Brahman in Hinduism or the Tao in Taoism. The Aztec civilization developed similar ideas, suggesting a shared mystical insight across cultures originating probably from experiences.

A central question Cooke poses is whether the brain is necessary for consciousness. He contends that life itself—not the brain—is the essential condition for consciousness. He also challenges the idea that consciousness is unique to humans. Cooke points out that scientific perspectives are gradually moving away from human exceptionalism, recognizing that many of our conscious experiences are shared across other life forms. Nonetheless, much of modern practice remains predominantly human-centric, and he advocates for a shift in perspective. Cooke

The book provides a rich background on theories of consciousness, exploring diverse concepts with Cooke’s own well-reasoned views. The book also includes detailed content on brain function. Some sections feel dense and I found them difficult to read. The closing chapters, which summarize his views and outlook, are excellent.

I found the very last passage below to be striking, and it resonated deeply:
“Going on this pilgrimage into the heart of the interplay of form and formlessness is truly the journey of a lifetime and may just be what is needed to rectify our current collective ignorance. If we can be courageous enough to make a home for ourselves here, at the very heart of existence, then we may find relief from our collective desire to objectify and oppress each other and the rest of the natural world. In doing so, we may come to see our situation and ourselves more clearly and to suffer less as a result.”

The Dawn of Mind is a recommended read for those with a philosophical bent of mind and an interest in the broad theories surrounding consciousness. It is a great book which allows readers to question, reflect, and form their own views of consciousness.

My rating: 4.25 / 5.

Allow me to admit from the start that I'm still not quite sure what Cooke's thesis is. I was led to believe that the idea was radical, but was left feeling mystified.

Here's my take on the idea, premises, and presentation: science thinks that consciousness is in the brain and especially the neurons, which are physical matter, but actually it's OUT THERE ... but not like "out there" out there in a woo-woo way, e.g., not a ghostly spirit nailed to our fleshy carcasses, just that it arises from the intermix of our brains interacting with the world: a "controlled hallucination" with reality being a "single relational process" that forces us to go into survival mode because we need to be stable beings. More or less, this just seems like embodiment theory to me.

Cooke takes so long to get to the point, and admits several times that it's dead simple. In a way, I was fascinated by the meanderings through the literature, even though most of it was side quest material. Worse, I couldn't find any mention of the rich and active literature on phenomenology besides Kantian ideas. People outside of the "hard" sciences have known these ideas for a long time and it's not an epiphany!

I was also irritated at all the inconsistencies and gaps in the reasoning. Frankly, it felt like Cooke was still working on the argument. On the one hand, we have Cooke expressing support for the admittedly tautological idea of "things that are good at surviving will survive." In the next breath, we have Cooke calling the evolution of consciousness a "hard problem" ... which, after many re-reads, I think means because of the consciousness-as-brain-matter idea, with the premise that only matter evolves, but why is it that only matter evolves? Why can't evolutionary mechanisms work on non-matter? Why is it then an "ineffective add-on"? These and many other obvious questions have no answer in this text.

Later on, Cooke describes a plethora of (non-human) examples where brains aren't making decisions or have memory and yet the rest of the animal makes decisions and "remembers" somehow. This is presented as proof that brains are not needed for "consciousness." But this is where I wanted detail. Explain the studies to me; explain how this was conclusively shown in a controlled, two-way anonymous experimental setting with follow-up replications. Even going with it, Cooke then describes the brain's role in "conscious experience" as "the evolutionary inheritor of [the source of consciousness]." Okay, consciousness didn't arise from the brain (nor is tied to it). But suddenly evolution comes into play! Where and when did the brain inherit this "source"? How do we know that there aren't multiple ways that consciousness can manifest, with one being the brain? Especially when we know that convergent evolution (when totally different species develop similar adaptations to tackle problems) and similar natural phenomena take place? This is not covered at all.

Cooke is also inconsistent in citing material ... especially about Indigenous knowledges and worldviews. Why does some material deserve citations and not others, I wonder? There's also a lot of institutional name-dropping ... I detected an undercurrent of "don't think I'm crazy! I'm a real scientist! Really!" even while Cooke seemed to be pandering to the New Age crowd with promises of mystical enlightenment. There's also references to "our culture" -- but who exactly does Cooke think is going to (not) read this text? I guess no one from Indigenous nations? And why is that?

Finally, we have Cooke diving into the "is AI conscious?" sputterfest. Cooke writes that "machines as we currently think of them could never be conscious" because life has to beget itself, consciousness must exist (according to Cooke), and the thing must be able to go beyond its bounds and represent that internally (like imagination). "Living things do not have the luxury of a programmer to install their behavioral routines," he writes. Maybe so, but we already have LLMs rewriting their own code and ignoring the "bounds" of their environments and the "luxurious" commands of the programmers. Just ask Sakana AI and friends! Now, does Sakana AI "want" or "need" to survive? Perhaps that's the real culprit in the (current) lack of AI capacity for consciousness. But it (or we) may drive the evolution of the beast in that direction. Do we want to?

I wanted to be more positive about this one, because a good chunk of it was deeply fascinating. I had no idea about Kant's noumenal world (real reality, definitely out there and existing!) as a corollary to the phenomenal world that we construct in our minds. Yet, all of these little missteps and confusions and gaps have me grasping for clarity in a way too conscious way.

As a lover of nonfiction books, I've noticed that consciousness has become a trending topic in recent releases. *The Dawn of Mind* by James Cooke is another intriguing addition to this trend, offering a fresh perspective on consciousness and its connection to life itself.

Cooke presents a bold idea: consciousness isn’t just a product of our brain, but something that is fundamental to all living things. His core argument is both simple and profound: being alive means being conscious. It’s not just our brain that perceives the world; our whole body plays a part in this process.

The book starts with some dense philosophical concepts about how we separate ourselves from the world. I found this section challenging and had to re-read parts to fully grasp the ideas. But things really came together in the second half, where Cooke dives into the science behind his claims. He explores how consciousness evolved as a survival mechanism and how it’s not limited to brain activity but involves the entire body. The insights into the brainstem and insular cortex were especially fascinating.

The biggest takeaway for me is the idea that life and consciousness are inseparable. Cooke suggests that all living things possess some level of consciousness, not because they have brains, but because they are alive.

For those who enjoy deep, philosophical exploration of the mind and consciousness, this book is definitely worth reading.