Mark Solms > Quotes

“Feelings are widely taken to be necessary and sufficient conditions for ethical concern. The scientific understanding of feelings outlined in this book therefore presents us with an opportunity to think a little more deeply about animal suffering. I have mentioned more than once how the advances in affective neuroscience in the late twentieth century (i.e. the realisation that what is required for sentient being is little more than a midbrain decision triangle, something that we share with all vertebrates) altered many scientists’ views about what is and is not acceptable in animal research. It seems self-evident that the same should apply to the public’s attitude towards animal welfare more generally. For example, how do we justify industrial-scale breeding and slaughter of fellow sentient beings for the purposes of eating them? When addressing this question, we must bear in mind that consciousness emerges by degrees, so that the putative sentience of a fly or a fish cannot be equated directly with that of a human being. By the same token, however, we must remember that sheep and cows and pigs (which feature so prominently on Western menus) are fellow mammals. This means they are subject to the same basic emotions that we are, such as FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF and CARE. Mammals possess a cortex, too, which means they are capable – all of them, to some degree – of consciously ‘remembering the future’ and feeling their way through its probabilities and likelihoods. As the twenty-first century unfolds, in the absence of any higher goal – if all that we are is our consciousness – what else should we do but try to minimise suffering? Now that we have a better idea of where suffering might exist, what else could we do with this knowledge? The preservation and protection of biological consciousness is decidedly not tied to the fate of our species alone.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

“Affects tell long evolutionary stories of which we are completely unaware.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

“What you experience all the time is fluctuating pulses of feeling in response to your movement through the world, as you check whether everything is as you expected to find it - and as you try to close the gap, somehow, when it isn't.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

“I suspect that many readers find it hard to believe that what they are seeing right now is not simply what is ‘there’. I can imagine you asking: ‘Where else does my perception of these words on the page come from?’ It might help if I point out that what you are seeing right now bears little resemblance to the sensory inputs you are receiving. Those inputs start out as light waves impacting on your retinae. The photosensitive cells there (called rods and cones) respond to the light waves by generating nerve impulses. These impulses – not the light waves themselves – are then propagated along your optic nerves to the cortex, in the form of spike trains (see Figure 11). Why do you experience these trains – 001111101101 – as moving images out there in the world?”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

“we can retain the hypothesis that the cortex is the seat of ‘consciousness as experience’ by positing that being conscious in the behavioural sense of being awake and responsive is significantly different from having consciousness in the phenomenological sense – that is, being a subject of experience.”
― Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness