by JULIET WATERS

Consciousness science is a current hot spot in the world of ideas. Consider the recent protest surrounding the invitation of the Dalai Lama to the latest meeting of the Society of Neuroscience. The idea that consciousness applied with diligence can actually change the brain throws into relief a scientific question that may never be resolved. Just how does the mind work?

You can of course go to the bookstore and buy a fascinating big book called How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker. But no matter how well Pinker presents his ideas as fact, they’re still controversial. Pinker, and science writer Malcolm Gladwell, who continues to dominate the bestseller list with Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, are doing very well from the current thirst for provocative, elegant theories. It’s far riskier to confront how murky the subject really is, as Jay Ingram does in Theatre of the Mind: Pulling Back the Curtain on Consciousness.

But first, what is consciousness? As Ingram points out, it shouldn’t be so hard to define, since even if we can’t agree on what it is or how it works, we all seem to agree on what it feels like when it shifts or isn’t there. From the feeling of being lost in thought while driving on the highway, to the shift from wakefulness to sleep, to transcendental experiences, if you’ve ever had them, to the variety of drug experiences available to us, we all seem to agree that there are different degrees and levels of it.

The more one examines how this all works, however, the less obvious it seems. We might assume that consciousness is whatever happens to be in our field of awareness in the here and now. But there is compelling evidence to suggest that there’s a half-second time lag between what the mind takes in and what the brain registers. The brain may only create the illusion of the present moment, so what you’re reading now may actually be something you read half a second ago. Moreover there’s an interesting and plausible theory that the brain may be chaotically taking in all kinds of data, but what you think you’re taking in now is something the brain has selected from the very recent past, creating only an illusion of “stream of consciousness.” Why can’t we pin this all down? Because thoughts are insubstantial until we bring them into some kind of material reality with speech, writing, art, machines etc.

The best we may ever be able to do is come up with theories about how and why thoughts become concrete. Take for instance long held theories of when human consciousness is considered to have begun. For many years there was some consensus that the process started with the first documented Ice Age cave drawings.

That changed with the case of an autistic girl with no capacity for language, but a talent for art that was eerily similar to those remarkably complex Ice Age drawings. As she became more proficient at language, her “talent” disappeared. Could it be that cave drawings were not the beginning of consciousness, but the end of a particular kind of consciousness that disappeared with the emergence of language? If so, what forms of shared consciousness do we lose every time we collectively flock to a new one? What forms could we regain?

Problems like these are endlessly fascinating or frustrating depending on one’s tolerance for scientific mystery. If you’re intent on the adventure, Ingram’s a steady, interesting guide, better able than most to put the whole debate into context. As he points out, consciousness will always be a worthy subject of inquiry, “but first, we need to understand the simpler things, like deciding right now that what you’d like more than anything is a beer. Go for it! But don’t assume your conscious mind had anything to do with it.”

Theatre of the Mind: Pulling Back the Curtain on Consciousness by Jay Ingram, hc, 293pp, $37.95