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Consciousness Revolutions
review of

The Ego Tunnel

by Thomas Metzinger
Introduction The appearance of a world
The self as self-model Naturalizing agency Consciousness and autonomy

These are encouraging times for secularists atheists, humanists, freethinkers

and skeptics with recent U.S. surveys showing substantial increases in those
unaffiliated with any mainstream religion. This might be an indication that belief in
a supernatural divinity, at least of the traditional Christian variety, is on the wane.
Atheists are certainly making themselves heard via billboard campaigns,
reinvigorated secular organizations, and a slew of books questioning belief in God
and the advisability of faith. Ron Aronson, author of Living Without God, argues at
Religion Dispatches that there may be more secularists out there than meets the
eye.
For those in the business of advancing naturalism this is of course good news, since
atheism and humanism are significant milestones on the way to a fully naturalistic
view of reality. But after God is gone theres still a ways to go. Even after giving up
belief in the supernatural up there, many atheists and humanists continue to
harbor quasi-supernatural intuitions about the self and free will in here. The little
god of the soul, the categorically mental agent or homunculus in charge of the
brain, is still alive and well in the thinking of many secularists. As a result, some of
the most profound developments in the ongoing project of scientific enlightenment
are still ahead of us.

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I am pleased to report that Thomas Metzingers The Ego Tunnel is a major

contribution to this project, written for the curious and fearless lay person wanting
to know who, precisely, we are. I strongly recommend this book. Here is the self
fully naturalized, a radical revision of the conventional wisdom about our essential
nature are you ready? Its also a must read for anyone interested in consciousness
and the mind-body problem, since Metzinger has a well-developed, empirically
supported representational theory that explains many of the puzzles about
conscious subjectivity.
His two main themes, self and consciousness, are closely linked, and they
culminate in two rather unsettling conclusions. First, selves dont exist in the way
most folks suppose. Second, the solid, three dimensional public reality that is so
palpably there in our waking lives turns out to be a private model of reality. On
Metzingers view, the self the feeling of being a mental me in charge of the
physical body is a module within consciousness activated by your brains neural
processing. The self is categorically not some substantial, essential invariant entity,
like a soul, spirit or homunculus. As he emphasizes, there are no such things as
substantial selves. Instead, the self is a phenomenal (that is, experiential) construct
that disintegrates entirely when you fall into a dreamless sleep, to be reactivated
(usually in attenuated form) when you dream, and that reappears nearly
instantaneously when you awake in the morning. The self is put online only when
needed, part of a larger phenomenal reality generated by the brain as it represents
the world and you in it. This reality seems perfectly concrete, but the startling fact
of the matter, a challenge to nave realists (that is, just about everybody), is that its
an appearance, a virtual reality. You, the subject conjured up by the brain, do not
directly encounter the world. Rather, you participate in a larger brain-based
representational construction consciousness that maps the actual world closely
enough for you-the-organism to stay out of trouble. This global simulation carried
out in each of our heads, what we cant help but take as real, is what Metzinger
calls the Ego Tunnel. Welcome to the Matrix.
Explaining consciousness: the appearance of a world
The obvious difficulty Metzinger faces is to make all this plausible, given the many
competing explanations of consciousness and their conceptual complexity. Indeed,
he quotes philosopher Daniel Dennett at the very start: Any theory that makes
progress is bound to be initially counterintuitive (original emphasis). He
acknowledges were just beginning to understand the mind-brain, but hes
confident that his representational approach, one of the major contenders in
consciousness studies, is very likely correct in its essentials. The full exposition of
his theory, daunting in its intricacy but ultimately very rewarding, can be found in
his 2003 tour de force Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. So if you
find The Ego Tunnel philosophically or empirically sketchy, look there. As I advised
a philosophy grad student recently: Try Being No One, you might like it.
The Ego Tunnel is reasonably demanding in its own right, given the breadth of
material and its undeniable strangeness for those encountering the self-model
theory for the first time. Even for veterans of consciousness studies it offers much
thats worthwhile and likely new: some mind-stretching thought experiments;
interviews with researchers on the binding problem (the unity of consciousness),
dreams, and empathy; and an imagined conversation with a post-biotic

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philosopher who pities us merely human thinkers, stuck in our crude reality
models (this is just one of several well-timed dessert moments in the book).
Metzinger is a first rate, albeit human, neurophilosopher, fully cognizant of mind
science as well as philosophy, and a very good writer in his second language
(German the first). You might occasionally get boggled and baffled as you negotiate
The Ego Tunnel, but never bored. The main thing is that youre getting a glimpse
behind (what you might not yet realize is) the veil of consciousness, in a sense
escaping the tunnel into non-subjective reality, if only conceptually. Youre also
getting a preview of what our lives might be like under a radically revised notion of
self, should the consciousness revolution Metzinger contemplates come to pass.
There might be, he suggests, some profound personal and social consequences that
follow from fully naturalizing ourselves.
The first third of the book covers the basic theoretical model: that consciousness is
for a world to appear, both in its basic phenomenal (experiential) particulars what
are often called qualia, e.g., the redness of red, the painfulness of pain and in its
global unity: we never find pain, red, or any other quality on its own, but always
within a larger coherent conscious context of self-in-the-world. In contrast to antirepresentationalist philosophers such as Alva Noe and Kevin ORegan, Metzinger
holds that consciousness is an internal matter, in that the brains neural properties
completely determine the subjective qualities and content of experience. As
philosophers sometimes put it, experience supervenes locally on brain states.
Although we ordinarily have experience in the context of getting around in the
world, the world itself isnt necessary for consciousness: were your brain in the
same state it is now, absent the world, youd be having the exact same experience.
Dreams, especially lucid dreams, are evidence for this. When dreaming, the brain is
conjuring up a 3-D world, with you in it, while youre lying paralyzed in bed. In a
lucid dream, in which you know youre dreaming, you actually experience the fact
that experience is being constructed by your brain quite an astonishing gut-level
revelation I recommend to everyone interested in consciousness. (Metzinger
discusses how to induce lucid dreams, about which more below.)
Metzinger likens consciousness to a tunnel since its a very selective, narrow
representation of the world:
What we see and hear, or what we feel and smell and taste, is only a small
fraction of what actually exists out there. Our conscious model of reality
is a low-dimensional projection of the inconceivably richer physical
reality surrounding us and sustaining us. Our sensory organs are limited:
They evolved for reasons of survival, not for depicting the enormous
wealth and richness of reality in all its unfathomable depth. Therefore, the
ongoing process of conscious experience is not so much an image of
reality as a tunnel through reality. (p. 6, original emphasis)
Consciousness is an ego tunnel since it nearly always includes the experience of
being a self or subject the entity to whom the world of experience appears
(exceptions are more or less self-less states induced by brain disorders, meditation,
drugs, or other means). Not only does the brain construct a phenomenal model of
the world, it constructs a phenomenal model of someone in the world who interacts
with it and knows it that is, you. The basic trick of consciousness is to hide the
fact that this phenomenal self-model, and the larger reality-model its embedded in,
is indeed a model: its transparent in the sense that you cant experience it as a

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model. Rather, you look right through it and simply find yourself present in a
world. For the conscious subject, reality is just that which cant be experienced as a
construction.
For Metzinger, subjectivity the who problem of being a self is the most
difficult and profound aspect of consciousness in need of explanation, but there are
other general features of consciousness which he explores in a tour of the Ego
Tunnel. Consciousness is always an experienced unity; its always now, that is,
temporally present; it convinces us that its real, not a representation; it transcends
our ability to describe its basic elements, so is ineffable in some respects; and it has
come about via evolution, thus is natural and adaptive. In laying out these
parameters, Metzinger is taking care to specify the explanatory target of his theory,
something too many consciousness researchers gloss over. Its only by getting a
clear fix on the phenomenal properties of consciousness that we can make progress
in explaining it. Although his explanations are cursory compared to whats offered
in Being No One, the basic strategy is to connect the phenomenology (e.g.,
experiential unity) with neuro-computational functions (making information
globally available to different control systems) and their neural instantiation (the
global workspace of the thalamo-cortical network). Conscious experience is, he
suggests, a biological data format that, by generating a subjective reality for the
organism, supports adaptive behavior that would otherwise be impossible:
It is easy to overlook the causal relevance of this first evolutionary step,
the fundamental computational goal of conscious experience. It is the one
necessary functional property on which everything else rests. We can
simply call it reality generation: It allowed animals to represent
explicitly the fact that something is actually the case. A transparent worldmodel lets you discover that something is really out there, and by
integrating your portrait of the world with the subjective Now, it lets you
grasp the fact that the world is present. This step opened up a new level of
complexity. Thus, having a global world-model is a new way of
processing information about the world in a highly integrated manner.
Every conscious thought, every bodily sensation, every sound and every
sight, every experience of empathy or of sharing the goals of another
human being makes a different class of facts available for the adaptive,
flexible, and selective form of processing that only conscious experience
can provide. (p. 59)
One such fact, of critical importance, is that we come to see ourselves as thinkers
and knowers who can distinguish between appearance and reality:
By consciously experiencing some elements of our tunnel as mere images
or thoughts about the world, we became aware of the possibility of
misrepresentation. We understood that sometimes we can be wrong,
since reality is only a specific type of appearance. As evolved
representational systems, we could now represent one of the most
important facts about ourselves namely, that we are representational
systems. We were able to grasp the notions of truth and falsity, of
knowledge and illusion. As soon as we had grasped this distinction,
cultural evolution exploded, because we became ever more intelligent by
systematically increasing knowledge and minimizing illusion. (p. 61)

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Despite Metzingers confidence that the phenomenal level of representation

constituted by consciousness was a major adaptive breakthrough, and is thus
explicable by an evolutionary account, doubts can be raised. Evolution required
simply that the neuro-computational representational functions carried out by the
brain confer survival and reproductive benefits that outweighed their metabolic
costs (the cognitive functions associated with consciousness use lots of glucose).
What extra benefit does conscious phenomenology, which presumably supervenes
on these functions, or is somehow entailed by them, provide? If consciousness is in
some sense identical to higher level neuro-computations, then yes, we can say
evolution selected for it, and so its adaptive. But if we assign phenomenal
experience an ontological reality distinct from neuro-computation, as Metzinger
seems to, its contribution to reproductive success becomes obscure. After all, its the
physical world-representing, behavior-controlling system of the brain thats
engaging with the environment and conspecifics, not phenomenology. So its hard
to see how consciousness per se is adaptive over and above the fitness conferred by
its neural correlates. I raise this point simply to illustrate the difficulties of
explaining consciousness a quintessentially subjective, private, qualitative
phenomenon using concepts and terms that are objective, public and quantitative,
the coin of naturalistic theories. Supernaturalistic and panpsychist theories that
take consciousness as somehow basic to reality, whether in souls or in psychons,
avoid this problem, but thus far lack any evidential support. As far as we know,
consciousness is strictly associated (thus far) with biologically evolved systems;
theres no evidence that any of their constituent parts are conscious.
The self as self-model
With his theory of consciousness sketched out, although of course by no means
proven, Metzinger takes a look at the self-model problem in more detail, including
the question of the minimal conditions for phenomenal selfhood. This involves
fascinating accounts of research into out-of-body experiences (OBEs), until recently
the scientifically suspect domain of parapsychology, but now a legitimate field of
study in its own right. That ones felt location of self can shift outside the body in
response to perceptual cues supports the hypothesis that phenomenal selfhood is a
mutable representation, constructed by the brain. Of course committed dualists will
simply argue that in OBEs the soul is out on excursion, and indeed theres no way
to categorically disprove this hypothesis. But theres also no good scientific
evidence for it, and the commitment to science and other varieties of evidencebased inquiry is taken for granted by Metzinger. Those not making this
commitment will undoubtedly look elsewhere for explanations of consciousness.
As mentioned above, lucid dreams offer another route to understanding
consciousness that Metzinger, a self-confessed psychonaut, pursues with
enthusiasm. The descriptions of dreams are not to be missed, but their explanatory
contribution is no less compelling. The lucid dreamer wakes up to the fact that the
dream is her own brains doing, or put another way, her reality-model is suddenly
no longer transparent, but opaque: it becomes experientially available to her as a
model because she has direct, non-inferential (not just conceptual) knowledge of
the fact that shes dreaming. In lucid dreams we actually have more direct access to
the underlying processing of consciousness than when waking, when were pretty
much barred from experiencing experience as a construction.

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Why is this? Metzingers elegant hypothesis is that its functionally necessary for
the organism, when moving about in the world, to have an unquestionable baseline
phenomenal reality constituted by transparent representations what he calls
world zero. We have to have something as given, as untranscendably real, both
to guide behavior from moment to moment and against which to test hypothetical
scenarios of action that we rehearse in imagination. When dreaming, this constraint
is relaxed since were not moving about, so the representational system constituted
by the brain is free(er) to represent the reality-model itself as a representation. But
note that the lucid dreamer doesnt transcend the self-model in her dream; shes still
there as the subject, having the dream. Moreover, her experience is still fully and
untranscendably qualitative: reds are red, blues are blue, perhaps even more so
given the heightened intensity of experience often reported by lucid dreamers. This
raises the intriguing question: how far can a self-maintaining representational
system go in directly appreciating the fact that it simulates reality, including itself,
instead of directly encountering it? Metzinger says late in the book:
The bigger picture cannot be properly reflected in the Ego Tunnel it
would dissolve the tunnel itself. Put differently, if we wanted to experience
the theory as true, we could do so only by radically transforming our
state of consciousness. (p. 209, emphasis added). [1]
Naturalizing agency
The idea that the self is an online model generated by neurocomputation, not a soul
or mental essence, challenges conventional notions of human agency. Not
surprisingly, Metzinger concludes that the naturalistic turn in our selfunderstanding leaves no room for free will in the contra-causal sense of being able
to transcend the mechanisms of our brains and bodies. We might experience
ourselves as uncaused causers, capable of initiating causal chains de novo, and as
beings that could have done otherwise in a situation as it arose, all conditions as
they were, but:
The unsettling point about modern philosophy of mind and the cognitive
neuroscience of will, already apparent even at this early stage, is that a
final theory may contradict the way we have been subjectively
experiencing ourselves for millennia. There will likely be a conflict
between the scientific view of the acting self and the phenomenal
narrative, the subjective story our brains tell us about what happens when
we decide to act. (p. 127)
And:
From a scientific, third-person perspective, our inner experience of strong
autonomy may look increasingly like what it has been all along: an
appearance only. (p. 129)
Metzinger considers the ramifications of the conflict between science and
commonsense, including how it might affect notions of responsibility and
punishment. Taking the scientific view would, he says, expose retribution as a
Stone Age concept (p. 128), since retribution is ordinarily premised on the idea
we could have done otherwise in a situation as it arose. For progressives such as
myself, this would be a welcome development given the retributive excesses of our

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criminal justice system. Metzinger is not so sanguine since he suspects a false belief
in contra-causal free will might be necessary to ground a fully functional notion of
moral responsibility. I happen to disagree, and theres growing anecdotal evidence
that people can live perfectly responsible, meaningful lives without being deceived
as to their fundamental nature. In any case this is a matter of ongoing debate
among philosophers and psychologists concerned with where skepticism about free
will might take us.[2]
Consciousness and autonomy
Such doubts are just one consequence of the consciousness revolution Metzinger is
helping to foment with this book, a vivid and profound exercise in what he calls
rational neuroanthropology. Neuroscience is rapidly reshaping our image of
ourselves, and where will it all end? After an illuminating chapter on the neurally
embodied basis of empathy and social cognition, the last third of the book looks
ahead: can we, and should we, build artificial conscious systems? How can we
assimilate the growing understanding of our neural mechanisms and the
realization that we fundamentally are such mechanisms?
Now that the neurosciences have irrevocably dissolved the JudeoChristian image of a human being as containing an immortal spark of the
divine, we are beginning to realize that they have not substituted
anything that could hold society together and provide a common ground
for shared moral intuitions and values. An anthropological and ethical
vacuum may well follow on the heels of neuroscientific findings. (p. 213)
In the face of what he sees as a very present danger, Metzinger offers his own
recommendations for how to cope with the new science of mind, demonstrating his
own very humanistic, progressive sensibility. We should not, he argues, build
conscious systems because in so doing we may well create new subjects of
suffering. Its to Metzingers credit that he draws attention to this basic ethical
problem, widely unrecognized in the artificial intelligence community. Unless we
can be sure that the systems we create wont suffer, we should hold off creating
them theres quite enough pain experienced in the world as it is.
To fill the anthropological and ethical vacuum left by the dissolution of the soul,
Metzinger says we must address fundamental questions in the new field of
neuroethics: What is a good or desirable state of consciousness? How much control
should we assume over our own conscious states? How much should we enhance
our mental capacities, and by what means? With new understanding comes new
responsibilities, since its very unlikely that we can block the arrival of
consciousness technologies. We need a viable ethics of consciousness soon, one
grounded in the facts as science reveals them.
Metzingers ethical anchor is the protection and enhancement of individual
autonomy, despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) that our very notion of the
individual is now radically revised. Even if we dont have souls, we remain distinct
persons, and each of us has a brain with an untapped potential for millions of
different conscious states. From this perspective, a significant dimension of
autonomy consists in the freedom to explore ones own experiential landscape. But
since we live in moral community, we cant escape the question of whether and
how much such exploration is a good thing. Should it include, as Metzinger argues

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it should, the safe and responsible use of psychoactive drugs? Similarly, knowing
that we are bio-psycho-social constructions, should autonomy include the right to
reconstruct ourselves, and what if any limits should we place on such a project?
Metzinger says We may no longer be able to regard our own consciousness as a
legitimate vehicle for our metaphysical hopes and desires. (213) If not, then the
pursuit of autonomy could take us to transhumanism, and not just the redesign of
the body, but of the mind.
More immediately, Metzinger worries about the encroachment of modern
communications technology on individual consciousnesses, as advertising and
entertainment place more demands on our limited reserves of attention. We can
fight back by becoming more intentional in defending the personal space of
subjectivity, for instance by teaching children such things as meditation,
mindfulness and relaxation techniques:
now that we know more about the critical formative phases of the
human brain, shouldnt we make use of this knowledge to maximize the
autonomy of future adults? In particular, shouldnt we introduce our
children to those states of consciousness we believe to be valuable and
teach them how to access and cultivate them at an early age? Education is
not only about academic achievement. Recall that one positive aspect of
the new image of Homo sapiens is its recognition of the vastness of our
phenomenal-state space. Why not teach our children to make use of this
vastness in a better way than their parents did a way that guarantees
and stabilizes their mental health, enriches their subjective lives, and
grants them new insights? (p. 236)
More generally, Metzinger argues that its only by assimilating the naturalistic
truth about who we are that we can defend individual autonomy against mass
culture and its potential for manipulation. Facing the scientific facts about the self
also expresses a central human value: maintaining our cognitive dignity and
responsibility as knowers, what he calls the will to clarity. The philosophical,
scientific, and moral issues raised in this book couldnt be more demanding, but
Metzinger exemplifies how we can best meet the challenge: by an unflinching
commitment to rational and empirical investigation, wherever it leads, carried out
within a democratic, open society of individuals informed about their true nature.
Whether or not its completely right about the mind, The Ego Tunnel models the
intellectual and ethical virtues that will be required of us, as Metzinger puts it, to
"ride the tiger" of the consciousness revolution.
TWC, May, 2009

Notes
[1]

Some speculations on this in the context of lucid dreaming are here.

[2]

About this debate, see Dont forget about me: avoiding demoralization by
determinism.

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