ASEBL Journal – Volume 10 Issue 1, January 2014
consciousness that is the foundation for the ethical power of literature. All authors
make use of this power, but certain authors take advantage of it more than others. I
contend that one of the reasons for the success of Dostoevsky is that he uses this
universal mechanism more effectively than many other authors.
To understand how narrative is able to change us through consciousness, it is
important to keep in mind the nature of consciousness. Mind and brain are not two
different things. Consciousness is not a separate substance from the brain; it is a
product of what the brain does, even if the exact process is not fully understood.
Consciousness is affected by injury to the brain: a stroke can knock out our ability to
be conscious of highly specific things such as color, movement or even a full half of
our visual field. Even more bizarrely, people with “blindsight” can lose the ability to
see, yet still be somewhat conscious of what is before their eyes.5 Cutting the
connection between the hemispheres of the brain can result in a limited splitting of
consciousness, each hemisphere aware of a separate half of the visual field. The
variety and specificity of these possible deficits goes to show that consciousness is
part of what the brain does and that the unified, seamless thing we call consciousness
is really the end result of many separate processes, all focused on highly specific
inputs that are integrated together. These deficits show that the brain does not behave
like the old science fiction cliché of the brain in a jar. While mental functions are
localized in the brain, the brain is part of the body and is connected with it.6 The body
affects the brain and vice versa. It should come as no surprise that experiences that
have physical effects in addition to intellectual will leave a deeper mark on our
psyche.
The question it leaves is why that is the case, and how something as airy as “changing
who we are” (even slightly) can be instantiated physically. Consciousness, I contend,
is an important aspect of the relationship between the self and other because it is
where the physical and the mental, the outward and the inward, meet; it is the source
of lived experience and thus where it can become part of who we are in a deeper way
than, for instance, memory or imitation allow. It also allows for the analysis of the
subjective experience of a text, its fundamental aspect for a reader. Over the last
decade or two we have begun (but only begun) to understand what are called the
neur(on)al correlates of consciousness.7 This basis is useful in understanding how we
internalize what we take from our environments, including virtual environments.
The scientific study of consciousness is one of the most active cottage industries in
science, at least judging by the barrage of books that have come out on the topic in the
last decade or so.8 Of all the approaches to consciousness,9 the most relevant to the
processing of the arts appears to be that of Antonio Damasio. For Damasio,
consciousness as we generally think of it is the last step in a long process. At the base
of this process is what he calls the “protoself,” on top of which is placed “core
consciousness.” The protoself is essentially an unconscious neural map of a person’s
physical state at a given instant. As we go about our daily lives, the brain produces a
continually-updated map of the body. In addition, it also maps all the objects and
people we come into contact with. These various maps are the first level of
consciousness. On the next level, the brain produces a map of the relationship between
the protoself and non-self objects or people. Core consciousness is a result of this
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