Reflections on Bruce Bridgeman’s insights into the Evolution of Consciousness and Cognition

Highlights

• Bridgeman’s Psychology book “Psychology and Evolution: The Origins of Mind”.

• Overview of his research on brain areas for conscious attention and motor action.

• Conscious vs. unconscious processing in temporal vs. parietal cortex.

• Relationship of consciousness to the evolution of language.

Abstract

This tribute to Bruce Bridgeman has three parts, which were selected to illustrate his diverse approaches for linking consciousness and cognition. In Part 1 Bridgeman’s research on eye movements is used to show how the visual system is functionally divided into two very different streams: the temporal pathway is available for cognitive aspects available to consciousness and the parietal pathway is available to the motor system and is largely unconscious. Part 2 provides links to his Psycoloquy article that connects language and consciousness. The Psycoloquy format has other scholars write a response and then the author responds to each one. Part 3 covers Bruce Bridgeman’s book Psychology and Evolution, which is special because it covers many areas with examples not typically treated in introductory psychology textbooks. I decided to quote directly from Bridgeman’s writings throughout this essay. I can’t think of a better way to pay tribute to him and to inspire others to read his publications.

Introduction

I am deeply pleased to write this tribute to Bruce Bridgeman, the third editor-in-chief of Consciousness and Cognition. I’ll begin by giving my history of how all three editors-in-chief, William Banks, Bernard Baars and Bruce Bridgeman have deeply influenced me. Professor Banks probably had the greatest influence on me. He inspired me to switch from my PhD field of particle physics to his field of vision research during our 12 years of overlap at the Claremont Colleges (1969–1981). It was because of that switch in research fields that I was able to get my position at UC Berkeley starting in 1987. Then starting in 1988, I had many interactions with Bernard Baars who was on the faculty of the Wright Institute, a few blocks from my office. It was just a few years later, in 1992, that Banks and Baars created the journal Consciousness and Cognition. And shortly after that, with the help of several of us from UC Berkeley, they created the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) with the first meeting in Claremont in 1994. There is no question that the two of them had a powerful impact on my deep interest and involvement in consciousness studies. I am delighted now to discuss Bruce Bridgeman, who has lately had at least as strong an impact on me as the two previous editors of this journal.

This essay for Consciousness and Cognition is my attempt to give a glimpse of how Bruce Bridgeman has also strongly influenced me through my recent reading his works. I’ll focus on just three of his writings: The first is his paper “Conscious and Unconscious Processes” that is about the dramatic differences between temporal and parietal cortical regions of visual processing. I’m unable to stop wondering and worrying about why just the temporal region is so heavily connected to consciousness. The second part focuses on his paper “On the Origin of Consciousness and Language” (1992) published in the journal Psycoloquy. I loved this article largely because of the unusual format of the journal, whereby following Bridgeman’s initial article, other scholars write a response and then the author responds to each one. That format not only provided deeper analyses of critical issues, but it also gives a flavor of Bridgeman’s personality as he responds to 14 scholars many of whom are leaders in the field. However, it was reading Bruce’s book Psychology and Evolution, which is the focus of the final section of this article that deeply connected me to Bruce the person. I found the book to be one of the most interesting and moving books I’ve read in ages. It covers many areas with examples not typically treated in introductory psychology courses. Given Bridgeman’s enviable knack for writing, the present paper will have many quotations directly from his written work. I think that it is the best way I can pay tribute to him.