Nov 13 2009
Tracking Down Consciousness
The holy grail of modern neuroscience, and perhaps one of the toughest scientific problems we face, is understanding at a fundamental level the nature of consciousness. What is it about our brain function that makes us aware of our own existence?
It is not simply an emergent property of having enough neurons wired together. A popular notion in science fiction is that artificial intelligence may unexpectedly emerge out of a sufficiently powerful computer – such as Vger or SkyNet. But this scenario is highly unlikely. Consciousness appears to be a specific function of thinking systems, not just a consequence of complexity.
For example, the cerebellum is a specialized part of the brain involved with motor coordination. It contains about the same number of neurons and connections that the cortex does, but the cerebellum itself is not conscious nor does it appear to contribute to consciousness.
Neuroscientists and psychologists have also been able to demonstrate experimentally for years that some brain processes are conscious – we experience them as our own thoughts and sensations; while others are entirely subconscious – we have no awareness of them. While it is clear that it is brain processes that are generating consciousness, we do not know what it is precisely that is different about conscious and subconscious processes.
This question is of far more than academic interest. In some patients who are comatose but retain some brain function it is difficult to say exactly how much consciousness they may have. Our inferences from the neurological exam are probably accurate in most cases, but there is a twilight zone of brain function where a shadow of consciousness may remain but be undetected by standard exam. Studies with fMRI scans are beginning to show that such patients may actually be processing sensory input in a conscious way. This does not mean that they are fully awake and just trapped in a comatose body – consciousness is not a binary state, you can be a little conscious. Imagine yourself extremely sleepy, barely awake and on the brink of falling asleep. Or, alternatively, imagine someone who is so drunk they can barely stand. They have some consciousness, but clearly not full consciousness, and likely will not remember much in the morning.
Understanding consciousness will likely also be helpful if we ever want to build true AI. We can accomplish this by simply copying the brain, in which case we can create AI without fully understanding it, but that is a suboptimal situation. It will be to our advantage to have a very high degree of control over the properties of any AI.
Another application of understanding consciousness would be to explore the minds of animals with whom we cannot directly converse. How conscious is a cow, actually?
A new study by neuroscientists at Cambridge claims to have found a possible signature of conscious processing. What they did is compare two tasks – looking at pictures of houses and faces so that they are consciously experienced, and looking at the same pictures in a way that they are not consciously experienced. In the latter case, each eye was presented with a separate picture – one with the house or face in green on orange, and the other with the colors reversed. The conscious brain perceives these overlapping images as just a yellow blur, but the images are still processed subconsciously. In this way the researchers hoped to isolate the variable of conscious experience of the images.
This seems like a reasonable technique to me, although I am not sure how complete the isolation of the conscious variable is. Differences in visual processes are also likely to be present – separate from conscious awareness.
In any case, what they found was that with the conscious images fMRI responses were very consistent from trial to trial – each time the subject looked at the picture they displayed a similar pattern of brain activity. When the subconscious images were viewed, however, there was a much more random pattern of brain activity. From this they conclude that one signature of conscious processing is a consistency of patterns of brain activation.
If this property is reproducible across other experimental designs (you cannot really conclude much from a single such experiment) it may provide one additional piece to the puzzle of consciousness. Perhaps the consistency comes from the fact that certain brain networks core to the function of conscious awareness are always involved in consciousness. It would be nice, of course, to discover what those core networks are.
Previous studies have focused on the intensity of neural activation as a property of consciousness. This makes sense also, as it certainly appears clinically that a minimal level of cortical activity is necessary in order to generate wakefulness. Consciousness therefore appears to be a very energetic function, perhaps because it requires coordinated activation across a broad area of the cortex (not just the function of one small piece of the brain).
Slowly the nature of consciousness is coming into focus. If confirmed, this is just a baby step, but slow steady small steps is the norm for scientific progress these days (the press prefers breakthroughs and eureka moments, but these are rare).
Consciousness is likely to be a problem like the origin of life or even curing cancer – a many decade long project that will see mostly incremental advances, too slow to perceive, like watching the hour hand of a clock. But when we step back and look at the big picture, it is clear that we are slowly advancing.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Print This Post
77 Responses to “Tracking Down Consciousness”
So good to see you say consciousness is not merely an “emergent property” of the complexity of our brains. That always seemed like such a cop-out argument to me. I also agree that an understanding of consciousness is necessary to move beyond a mere “smoke and mirrors” level of AI.
pfft. Humans have known for thousands of years that our souls give rise to our consciousness. Case closed. And you should believe the billboard I passed yesterday that read, “Hell is real.”
No, but seriously, if this consciousness nut is cracked, it has some profound religious implications.
I am going to be a typical star trek dork and point out that v’ger was upgraded to AI by an alien robot race
fascinating post as always
“It is not simply an emergent property of having enough neurons wired together.”
Why not?? If we agree that the brain is the seat of consciousness, and that the brain consists of a complicated neural network….what else is there to generate consciousness?
Steven – Do you subscribe to Chalmers division of the “hard” problem of consciousness and “easy” problem of consciousness, and is this the best approach to investigate.
Also, I find many different definitions of consciousness, does there exist some standard of what constitutes consciousness so as to assess whether other species are conscious?
Draal says: “No, but seriously, if this consciousness nut is cracked, it has some profound religious implications.”
Not really. For a rational theist, there really can’t be any conflict between religion and science. If there is a creator of the universe, he/she/it created it as it is, and is the source of the natural laws we observe. In other words, if we understand how consciousness work, we have simply come to understand how God made us.
(Note: I am not a believer, at all. But I prefer to understand why I am not, and to do that, I have to understand what I don’t believe in. God doesn’t hide in the cracks, God created them. It’s entirely consistent.)
Not that this will stop the jeezmoid fundies from throwing a fit. But then, they’ll throw a fit of *something* every so often, just cuz they feel so lonely.
I do not subscribe to Chalmer’s hard problem. I think once we have solved all the easy problems, the hard problem will have been solved. There is no separate phenomenon we have to uncover.
mgillard – to clarify – consciousness definitely is a product of brain function. My point was that it is not simply a product of sufficient complexity or power. The question we have to answer is why are parts of the cortex conscious, while other parts, or the cerebellum, are not. Complexity and power alone are not sufficient.
But I don’t think there has to be anything other than brain activity either. It’s just that some kinds of brain activity contribute to consciousness, while others don’t.
Hasn’t the cerebellum been implicated recently in some cognitive behaviors which may play some type of role in consciousness? I was just at a talk at the BU medical campus where the speaker was interested in the cerebellar changes in autistic patients which may provide another way to describe some social deficits seen in them. Blew my mind. I was always taught the cerebellum = motor function black box ideal.
Here’s a couple papers from pubmed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17400009?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_MultiItemSupl.Pubmed_TitleSearch&linkpos=1&log$=pmtitlesearch4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17786820?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_SingleItemSupl.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=3&log$=relatedreviews&logdbfrom=pubmed
The cerebellum has memory (mainly for movement) and those parts of the brain that are subconscious do affect cognition and consciousness – otherwise they would be pointless, right.
But they themselves are not conscious. Their processing is subconscious.
Your statement consciousness is not binary is illogical.
You can have water in various states (liquid, gaseous, solid), you can have a little (a drop) or a lot (an ocean): but you have some or you don’t– binary. There is no reason to think consciousness is not like that. ie existing as different forms and in different quantities
John Lorber found numerous people with little brain (perhaps 50 grams instead of the usual 1.5 kilos) who seemed to be conscious. It seems to me that a study of similar people (one showed up in France not long ago) would be a good way to study how much and what type of brain material are needed for consciousness. (Certainly his findings would bring into question the whole “complexity” arguement.)
http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm
sonic – I think that is a terrible analogy. The examples I gave demonstrate this. Consciousness is not a concrete thing, like water. It is a dynamic state. It’s not as if there are units of consciousness, and you can have more or less of them.
“When the subconscious images were viewed, however, there was a much more random pattern of brain activity. From this they conclude that one signature of conscious processing is a consistency of patterns of brain activation.”
Is it not also possible that they were seeing the brain trying to make sense of otherwise nonsensical visual data? Trying to recognise patterns by ’scanning’ different areas?
I think one implication of understanding consciousness is the potential to manipulate and recreate it. Say engineering a primate to be sentient or your house hold pet (i.e. Island of Dr. Monroe). That’s what I’m referring to by religious implications. God no longer is needed to create consciousness/soul.
>>How conscious is a cow, actually?
Although it’s more in the vein of a philosophical speculation, Nagel’s What Is It Like To Be a Bat? (which I’m sure you’ve read) attempts to address this question. He says, of course, that we can never really know because we are not, and never will be, bats.
Nagel’s point is that there is a constraint on what it is to possess the concept of a mental state, namely, that one be directly acquainted with it. (ex-Wikipedia)
Of course this is addressing the quality of a state of consciousness, not its ‘quantity’, so to speak. We could hazard a guess that any cow is in possession of more consciousness than any ‘AI’ we’ve managed to make, so we’ve got a long way to go there. But I’m inclined to think (along with Nagel, I would suggest) that it’s just a matter of complexity. When we get enough neural circuits on the boil, something like consciousness will emerge. My bet is that it will arise first in the internet, as I have speculated elsewhere. Will we recognize it? Would we accept it as ‘consciousness’?
What is it like to be a bat?
(On a side not, one of your regular readers suggested to me that I should also point out the consciousness of this cow. I apologize in advance for the self promotion
oops. sorry about the borked html. forgot to close the first link.
Cognitive science is so fascinating to me that I almost think I might be sad to have it explained. Almost. There are always new mysteries, but this one is so very near and dear that it’s very exciting to uncover.
Aren’t Orangutans already self-aware? They understand that something they do can have an effect later on down the road. To me, that’s definitely in the realm of the conscious. Certain species of dolphin are thought to be self-aware also. I wonder organizationally if there’s any correlation between our brain and theirs when it comes to higher cortical functions specifically cortical layer I.
english is such a clunky language for neuroscienctists to work in … the concepts around mind, awareness, consciousness are so much more graceful, precise, and accurate in sanskrit ..
research in the west would go so much more quickly if it were based in a higher quality conceptual system ..
and, good luck with objectivity in the investigation of consciousness .. it is, after all, pure subjectivity
gregorylent said: “english is such a clunky language for neuroscientists to work in…”
I agree. Steven, you should try rewriting this in pig latin. That should help clarify your thought a little.
“For example, the cerebellum is a specialized part of the brain involved with motor coordination. It contains about the same number of neurons and connections that the cortex does, but the cerebellum itself is not conscious nor does it appear to contribute to consciousness.”
That’s a good point. (Although of course we’d look pretty silly if it turns out the cerebellum is concious, and mine is sitting there right now thinking “you idiot!”)
Watcher, Consciousness in humans can be measured. I don’t know any orangutans or dolphins personally, but I can measure human mental status, which is consciousness. I judge one’s appearance, behavior, affect and mood, perception, and thinking. Each of these categories can be further broken down into finer categories based on analysis/examination.
True, I guess I was more speaking to the neurobiological basis of consciousness. Just wondering how other species evolutionarily “happened” onto it and if there’s any correlation to our own. I guess that would require a greater understanding of our own brains and how consciousness is achieved.
Watcher, Researchers whose work may interest you include S.I. Franz, C.F. Jacobsen, H.W. Nissen, & D.O. Hebb.
@HHC
What units are your measurements of consciousness in?
Two questions:
1) What is the neurological function of consciousness? I can’t seem to think of any processing that can’t be done with consciousness, or that will be done more poorly. So it appears to me that the only way evolution can wrought consciousness is as a spandex.
2) How do you think the Hard Problem will be solved by solving small problems? I can’t think of any way that it can be. If we discover consciousness to correspond to certain brain circuits, or certain activation of them, for example – how will that solve the hard problem of why these processes are accompanied with consciousness, while others are not?
I have always found the following response/analogy/question to be especially stimulating in a Zen fashion for my interlocutors who raise this topic by asking questions similar to “where is consciousness located?”, as though it were a conceptual process rendered reified:
“Where is Running?”
I refrain from appending the epithet “Cricket”, of course.
Perhaps all this talk about ‘consciousness’ being a product of the brain is a dead end idea. For an interesting new approach to the mind/body problem see “Physics from Consciousness” by Donald Hoffman (located at http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ ). I quote from the abstract of his talk:
“Scientific investigation of the classic mind-body problem has failed to produce a viable theory. As McGinn puts it, “We know that brains are the de facto causal basis of consciousness, but we have, it seems, no understanding whatever of how this can be.” I propose that the obstruction is commitment to a physicalist ontology: It is not possible to obtain consciousness from unconscious ingredients. I propose instead the ontology of conscious realism: Consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Matter, brains, and space-time are among the contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their existence. For a conscious realist the mind-body problem is to show precisely how conscious agents construct the macroscopic and microscopic physical world. I propose a mathematically rigorous account of conscious agents and their dynamics, and of their construction of the physical world. In particular, I propose that the physical world is a species-specific user interface, and that quantum physics represents properties of the stable dynamics of conscious agents. Symmetries of these stable dynamics are the source of the symmetries studied in quantum physics. I present a concrete dynamics for pairs of conscious agents that exhibits SL(2,C) symmetry, and from this obtain a physical representation of the dynamics in terms of relativistic spin half particles. This representation allows one to canonically associate a discrete patch of Minkowski space-time to each such pair of conscious agents, and suggests that, at the smallest scale, space-time is discrete. This suggestion comports well with current approaches to quantum gravity.”
Interested to know what anyone thinks of this, especially physicists and mathematicians, since I don’t really understand it…
Also found this paper re Donald D. Hoffman, http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/PhysicsFromConsciousness.pdf
I agree that consciousness is not likely to emerge spontaneously in any old sufficiently complex system. However, the brain is a very special sufficiently complex system. This system is attached to a relatively graceful and functional frame with sensory organs that can collect real-time data in greater detail than is ever needed. A first person perspective should be expected; it’s the only one that makes any real sense (3rd person?… I can’t see my back). The brain deals with millions of durable concepts related to each other by a massive dynamic, self altering network. This probably gives us the ability to remember things about how the world works, how you work (your personality/preferences), and how others work and relate to you. We have a powerful and substantial ability to process and learn information, and a language to express it in… made possible by the most useful, flexible, and functionally most powerful computer on the planet. We then use these memories to adjust our behavior and alter the stream of information our brains process day to day.
If you look at what the brain has had to do in the past, it makes sense that it would be a universal computer capable of representing in its structure so much conceptual detail that we can analyze ourselves and adjust our properties to suit our environment. For this reason, I don’t think the hard problem is really a problem after all. It just is that way. Why does gravity attract instead of repel? There probably is no good answer, but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact. There is no other way for homo sapiens sapiens to be, really. We need to consciously manipulate ideas or we wouldn’t be able to function. Non-human animals spend most of their time trying not to die, so their experience might be substantially different, but there are probably also similarities that aren’t merely superficial.
We’ve already identified the basic unit of cortical circuitry in rat cortex. We’ve known about the structure of visual cortex for decades. I’d be willing to bet the basic functional units are similar in all brains, we just have lots of them in ours. I’m just trying to be parsimonious here– DNA replication enzymes, liver enzymes, immune systems: all similar in most mammals at least. Our brain is probably just really good at doing what brains do, but is basically the same as other ones. When we can finally have a detailed look at the ultrastructure of a developed human cortex (array tomography?? *crosses fingers*), how structure leads to function will become far more clear. This is biology. Structure implies function in every other organ system; why not the CNS? We just aren’t there yet… give it some time.
davidsmith – that is philosophical masturbation. First, it replaces an apparent hard problem of consciousness with an even harder problem of how consciousness creates material reality.
Second, and more importantly – what predictions flow from this view? How does this actually solve anything?
Regarding why I don’t buy Chalmer’s “hard problem” – I discuss that here: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=309
M. Davies, The “unit” is measured on a continuum. The descriptive category is present or not, occassionally observable or marked.
A good point. Which is why it may be a good idea to explore how other species came about self-awareness to compare back to our own. Basically to get the n>1.
@HHC
M. Davies, The “unit” is measured on a continuum.
I don’t think you (and I mean you personally) can measure consciousness at all. Ranking consciousness from ‘most conscious’ to ‘not conscious at all’ absent any specifiable metric is just your attributions of degrees of consciousness without any way to verify them independently.
The descriptive category is present or not, occassionally observable or marked.
By ‘descriptive category’ I assume you mean your previous list of “appearance, behavior, affect and mood, perception, and thinking.” I’m not sure whether these are mutually exclusive, nor how many of them (if any) are relevant to consciousness, by which you mean ‘human mental status’. For example, I don’t know what an observation of ‘appearance’ tells you about consciousness – you might infer consciousness based on appearance somehow, but that doesn’t mean your inference is valid, nor does it mean you’ve measured anything. An observation of ‘thinking’ as evidence of consciousness just begs the question.
It sounds to me like you are saying ‘I know consciousness when I see it’.
@steve
Are you saying that consciousness arises from cognitive processes or is it those processes in themselves?
Steve said,
“davidsmith – that is philosophical masturbation. First, it replaces an apparent hard problem of consciousness with an even harder problem of how consciousness creates material reality. ”
I don’t agree. The ‘hard problem’ is one of conceivability – it is just not conceiveable to entail qualitative properties of experience with physical explanations. Unless you firstly define qualitative properties of experience to be something that they are not (quantitative), but then any proposed explanation will always fail.
On the other hand, it is entirely conceivable that physical reality is dependent on experience – all knowledge and concepts of physical reality are constructed from experienced after all. The problem of how consciousness creates physical reality is then rather one of complexity – the conceivability problem no longer exists.
“Second, and more importantly – what predictions flow from this view? How does this actually solve anything?”
Who knows what predictions follow from this view! You would have to ask Donald Hoffman that question. I guess he might have some interesting answers. But I think it’s pretty obvious that this approach solves the ‘hard problem’ by removing the need for it.
davidsmith-”On the other hand, it is entirely conceivable that physical reality is dependent on experience – all knowledge and concepts of physical reality are constructed from experienced after all. The problem of how consciousness creates physical reality is then rather one of complexity”
If I follow your logic here, there would be no physical reality prior to consciousness. So either consciousness either preceded physical reality (what would that look like?), and then created it somehow, or they emerged simultaneously, or have always existed together. This also sounds like the idea of physical reality is just illusory. That, physical reality is just a very persistent phantom that gets passed down from one conscious entity to another as we all die off, but remains fairly intact or maybe becomes permanent outside of the conscious entities that ‘created’ them.
That seems way beyond my personal definition of “entirely conceivable”, so I guess that I am missing something here, or just misunderstanding the concept. I don’t doubt that what constitutes the whole of physical reality, is way beyond my puny ability to grasp it, but that hypothesis, would need a lot of buttressing, I believe, before it could become a workable theory.
davidsmith-
Donald Hoffman’s approach is consistent with physics.
Steven-
I’m sorry, the water analogy is just that-an analogy.
Are you suggesting that there isn’t a state of “not conscious”?
I think I can be more conscious at sometimes than others (just barely awake, fully awake…)
Aren’t these examples of ‘more or less ‘ consciousness?
Perhaps the term is so poorly defined that it really isn’t valuable.
davidsmith – as a physicist, Hoffman seems to be talking about *interaction* dynamics. There isn’t really anything about consciousness in his work, all talk about consciousness can be filed away as metaphysical verbiage and we’ll be left with dynamics of interaction. As a model of interactions that supposedly underlies our current physical theories, his model seems rather arbitrary and I don’t think it offers a real advantage, conceptually, over our current models of interaction. Moreover, it seems that his theory will be a “hidden variables theory”, which is not something I’m keen on; it doesn’t sit well with quantum mechanics. I’m most disappointed by it due to its apparently not employing the vast lessons I think current physics taught us already – about the importance of symmetry, and the quantum many worlds interpretation (which I think is correct); but these are not necessarily actually flaws, maybe Hoffman is right in his theory and these insights are false. Ultimately – there are many such “theories of everything” around, but they are difficult to evaluate and so won’t deserve scrutiny until their proponents manage to actually derive predictive, experimental, conclusions.
My own philosophical view is similar to his – I espouse what Chalmers calls “panpsychism”, which converts the hard problem into “the problem of composition”. However, I fail to see how Hoffman’s theory provides a solution to this problem (which is something I seek, but failed to find). I think Hoffman’s view fails to capture key aspects of consciousness, such as awareness-of and internal spaces of mental/physical states, as well as being a classical theory that thus fails to confront the difficulties for a quantum conception of consciousness.
However, the composition problem is not just one of complexity. It is a problem of how to get from a conscious element of reality (Hoffman’s particle) to a conscious macroscopic entity, a consciousness of many particles. This problem is not necessarily much easier than the original hard problem, and certainly won’t be solved simply be appeal to complexity.
Steven – If Hoffman’s programme, or something like it, will be carried out, then the predictions will be what kind of neural circuits will result in what kind of consciousness, what will be the content of this consciousness, and so on. This is a prediction we can examine by looking at whether the neurological findings are consistent with it, and (at least in principle) by tweaking neural pathways to change a person’s consciousness. Of course, this is not the actual state of the programme, but at least in principle it’s predictive. You can think of it as the string theory of the mind/body problem – a line of thought that always seems promising, but never quite manages to deliver
tmac57 – the idea is not that physical reality is an illusion. In a sense, it is more radical than that. The idea is that physical reality *is* mental reality, that they are one and the same thing.
I think the best way to get a handle on it is “the problem of other minds” – the fact that you don’t see other’s consciousness. This is because you only see what is going on in the others’ mind from the outside, while consciousness is on the inside. Panpsychism (which is what Hoffman and I advocate) is the idea that the same applies to any physical phenomena, not just brains – physics describes how it goes on from an outside perspective, but there is also an “inside” perspective, consciousness. Every physical interaction is also a mental interaction, every physical state is also a mental state.
Now, don’t take this to mean that every thing is a *person*. This is not the intent. Obviously, a rock doesn’t have a single, coherent, consciousness, a will, memory, intentions, or so on. We do. Rather, panpsychism merely says that every *particle* has some *mental*, conscious, aspect, something it “feels like”. Explaining how these individual sensations coalesce into a coherent macroscopic consciousness like that of a human is the problem of composition.
So it isn’t that physical reality is a phantom or illusion, a construct made up by consciousness – physical reality is simply the objective aspect of reality while consciousness is the subjective aspect of it. Reality is what it is, containing both aspects. (This is, more or less, how Spinoza put it.)
Steven – thanks for sharing your post on the hard problem. I missed it when it was posted. I’m afraid I’m still in Chalmers’ camp – I’m not sure I can say anything on this you haven’t considered already, though.
I’m afraid I just cannot see how the accumulation of mechanistic functions leads to consciousness. My computer constantly draws data from its long-term memory into its working environment – does this mean that it is conscious of these memories? This does not seem, to me, to be an empty question. There is nothing in the mechanistic description that entails *feeling* something. Piling more and more functions does not lead to subjective experience.
Yair, on the question of computer consciousness, I side firmly with Douglas Hofstadter, in that consciousness is an emergent property of complex information processing systems containing self-referential loops. (What Hofstadter terms “strange loops”.)
It’s the self-reference that makes the difference, rather than complexity in and of itself. Take a look at this conversation with SHRDLU, an early AI program: http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/ What basis do we have for saying that SHRDLU is not conscious?
Human consciousness is of course vastly more complex, but it’s still that ability to examine one’s own thoughts, rather than just one’s perceptions, that makes it what it is. And there’s nothing about that process that requires anything more than a mechanistic description, as you put it.
Pixy – I don’t get why *self*-consciousness always gets dragged to this issue. Why is it that consciousness of one’s own thoughts is held to be somehow aloft from consciousness of direct experience? As far as the hard problem is concerned – it’s all the same. It’s the very existence of consciousness, of subjective feeling-like, that matters. Its content isn’t relevant – it can be consciousness of one’s thought, of one’s body, of perceptions, of delusions…
So no, I don’t think self-reference does any work at all at explaining why some things are conscious and others are not. It seems to me to totally miss what the hard problem is, instead focusing on explaining the grandeur of our oh-so-self-aware consciousness. Yeah, our consciousness includes self-awareness. That has nothing to do with the hard problem.
Self-awareness is easy – take a pair of electrons, let them interact, and now you have an information processing process where each electron’s state reflects his own state (by second order interactions). To jump from there to saying this electron is now consciouses – you need some further argument.
The Turing-test you suggest is also not a good way to gauge consciousness – although it may be a practical one. We can imagine machines that will pass the turning test and won’t have self-reference, to use your own criteria. It is just not clear what brings consciousness about.
M. Davies, Your arguments pertain to an actual psychiatric mental status exam that is used. I gave you the most basic categories which are further refined by the exam. Psychological testing does require extensive training. You are welcome to argue about the nature of consciousness in terms of philosophy thinking. Aren’t you glad that this is just the written word that I respond to, instead of making complex observations judgments about your appearance when you type your stuff!
@HHC
So you are saying there is a psychiatric/psychology test for consciousness? Why not tell us about the test instead of making passive-aggressive comments.
Nevermind, I just looked up the MSE (mental status examination) and I am not sure how it pertains to the problems of consciousness as discussed in the original post or in the current discussion in this thread. Perhaps HHC can elaborate.
Consciousness consists of no more and no less than the sensory input that you or any other organism are functionally aware of. We are conscious of what we remember being aware of in the past at the same tine we are conscious of sensations in the present. Our emotional brain, for example, can be aware of significant input from our senses that the rational brain will only feel as an emotional response. We are conscious when an awareness is needed of the formation of abstract thought structure, and of the awareness needs of our communicative apparatus.
All life forms have some form of awareness, limited by their sensory apparatus and what the organism requires of that apparatus, including what it required to recall from memory systems, and what other systems require it to feel as part of their function.
Consciousness “emerges” from the feelings of living things. It’s not a “quality” or an emergent property of inanimate objects or non-feeling machines. Panpsychism, the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness, is so much silliness – just as the idea that consciousness can be measured as a continuum, or the idea that consciousness preceded physical reality, or that it doesn’t depend on the nature of the physical processes that require an awareness of each other as a functional necessity.
Now all we have to do is ponder the evolutionary function and nature of awareness.
Shorter version: You are only conscious of what you are able to feel and where you are able to feel it.
I’m afraid saying that certain types of machines – living things – feel, does not explain anything. You’ve failed to come to grips with the reality of modern biology – we are machines, there is no real difference between animate and “inanimate” objects. Vitalism is dead.
YairR,
Thanks for your interesting reply about Hoffman’s ideas. You said,
“as a physicist, Hoffman seems to be talking about *interaction* dynamics. There isn’t really anything about consciousness in his work, all talk about consciousness can be filed away as metaphysical verbiage and we’ll be left with dynamics of interaction.”
I’m not sure I follow you. If all talk about consciousness were filed away as metaphysical verbiage then the model wouldn’t be explaining how the physical world can emerge from consciousness. In fact, it wouldn’t be explaining *anything* because it wouldn’t be refering to any ontological assumptions about reality. It would just be a mathematical excercise in explaining how certain mathematical relationships emerge from interactions between abstract entities. So I don’t see how one can get away with making no ontological assumptions about reality what-so-ever and claim that a model of reality is actually refering to reality. Even physicalist theories on reality make the assumption that reality can be regarded as *not* conscious (even though I view that approach as flawed).
So, Hoffman’s interactions are either based on fundamental entities that represent consciousness, in which it is conscious realism, or based on abstract, non-conscious entities that represent matter, in which case the model is physicalist.
At least, that’s the way I see it.
I found Michael Gazzaniga theory of consciousness put forward in his book http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/1932594019.html very convincing;
Basically he proposes a dedicated neural network to correlate/extrapolate the stream of data provided by the senses which collates it into a continuous storyline. This storyteller, according to him, is what calls itself consciousness.
Maybe I missed it, but did anyone DEFINE CONSCIOUSNESS?
Dr. Novella,
“It is not simply an emergent property of having enough neurons wired together.”
Actually, it is; it’s the WAY the neurons are attached together that’s the key.
Daniel Dennett has already gone over much of the problem in his 1991 book Consciousness Explained, and has written extensively on this topic afterward. Now, I trust neuroscientists over philosophers on the details, but Dennett has done considerable thinking on this problem after looking at the scientific evidence.
I suggest human consciousness is a spectrum of cognitive states–not an on/off switch. And here’s what’s also important to understand: there are different forms of consciousness! Someone who is born blind is certainly conscious, but it’s a different sort of consciousness than is the norm. The same can be said of the consciousness of some non-human animals. Anyone who doubts that some other animals are conscious must have a different definition than I do, or hasn’t looked at the cognitive neuroscience studies on other animals. The evidence shows that other primates, some birds (like large parrots and corvids), and cetaceans, have their own form of consciousness. They plan ahead, solve problems, and show some emotions similar to humans under controlled conditions.
Recent evidence proves that some animals do not require a neocortex for what we consider “higher” thinking. The nidopallium in corvids is anlogous to the neocortex in mammals. So I think we must be careful not to be too anthopocentric in our thinking about consciousness. And we should consider that the “problem” of consciousness may be a problem of definition. It’s a problem that’s already been solved, but most people don’t want to accept the answer, much like the question of whether or not there are supernatural agents running our lives and the universe.
Some have pointed out that unconscious brain parts appear to make a decision before the conscious parts do. But recently that earlier work has been brought into question. The work was published I think in Brain, and there was an article some time ago in New Scientist about it. The more recent evidence suggests the conscious parts often have veto power over the input from unconscious parts, and therefore we do have some free will, although it’s not contra-causal free will.
No doubt there are many details to fill in (much like the evolution of life), but the non-magical definition of consciousness has already been largely explained.
John – everything you wrote is compatible with my position. I am in the Daniel Dennett camp on consciousness.
I agree that consciousness arises out of brain function. My point is that it is not an inevitable consequence of complexity or processing power. The brain is conscious because that is part of its specific function. Again – the cerebellum is not conscious in any way we can tell. Why? It is simply not part of its function – it is not hard wired to generate consciousness.
We are zeroing in on what it is about cortical function that generates consciousness. It needs to be constantly activated, for example. Turn off the activation from the brainstem and the result is coma, even if the cortex is in perfect shape.
I also agree that consciousness is a spectrum, and there are many conscious states. Dreaming, for example, is a state of consciousness different from wakefulness.
Okay, I’m with you on AI Dr. Novella, but apparently some brain researchers do think the cerebellum is necessary for what might be called normal human consciousness. This from the 2nd paragraph of Wikipedia on cerebellum:
“However, modern research shows that the cerebellum has a broader role in a number of key cognitive functions, including attention and the processing of language, music, and other sensory temporal stimuli.”
If attention is a requirement of ones definition of consciousness, then the cerebellum needs to be active, just like the brainstem, for normal consciousness to occur.
It will be hard to satisfy everyone no matter how much detail is provided as to which areas of the brain are active when conscious. And since the brain is mapped differently in different individuals, we may never be able to say down the level of individual neurons which ones need to be active for that individual to be conscious at a given moment. Perhaps the best we can do is improve imaging technology so that we can see what areas are active in a representative sample of humans at a given time in human evolution, and then say on average what neurons are involved.
Pretty much (although we may not mean the same thing by “physicalist”). To the extent that Hoffman’s models describe mechanistic behaviour of particles (this particle can go in this direction relative to this particle, with probability x…), they describe physics, and shed no light on consciousness. They also seem to be bad physics. To the extent that his models describe consciousness, they are not theories about physics. You asked for my opinion as a physicist – I gave my answer, first and foremost, on the physics. As a physicist, the rest – the theory of consciousness – is irrelevant excess metaphysical verbiage. Physics deals with how objective things (like position) change, not with how consciousness changes.
I have no doubt he is right. But can’t you imagine a state of consciousness where the autobiographical self is silenced? I’m sure that there is some neurological disorder leading to it, and that mystics can achieve it. Autobiographical function is just one function, and like all conscious brain functions it isn’t clear why it’s accompanied by a consciousness (and why it isn’t, when it isn’t).
I’m so saddened when I read things like this, because it appears to me to miss the very idea of consciousnesses. My GPS plans ahead, solves problems, and so on; is it conscious? I suspect not. All the functions you and Dr. Novella list are often accompanied by consciousness, but do not explain why they are accompanied by consciousness. Even when we could “be able to say down the level of individual neurons which ones need to be active for that individual to be conscious at a given moment” (and I am optimistic that we could) – it wouldn’t get us closer to solving the hard problem.
I don’t understand how people can be convinced by Dennett’s eliminativism. Don’t you *feel* things? How does that follow from function? It simply doesn’t, no matter how high you pile the functions. How something behaves does not equal how something feels. No function (self-reference, autobiography construction, planning ahead, physiological stress signs, or whatever) requires subjectively *feeling* anything; functions are about relations and dynamics, not feeling and experience.
(Note I have no doubt animals are conscious, for precisely the reasons that you list – but I insist these are not good philosophical reasons to believe so.)
Again I ask – what is the function of consciousness? There is just no function, or collection of functions, to which subjective experience contributes. Functions are performed by processing information, not by feeling information.
“I’m afraid saying that certain types of machines – living things – feel, does not explain anything. You’ve failed to come to grips with the reality of modern biology – we are machines, there is no real difference between animate and “inanimate” objects. Vitalism is dead.”
Vitalism as a principle is dead. And so are biological entities that cease to live. We are mechanistic, but we are choice making and self replicating. We need awareness to continue that process. Your non-living machines have no awareness. They can’t operate without the spark that we provide. They need us to be aware of them for their very existence.
We are machines that create our own purposes. Thus we define ourselves as “alive.” The ones we invent – the non”alive” – derive purpose from us. We are aware of that. They aren’t.
YairR-
Two things
1) People fall for Dennett because they believe his work is based in good science. But reading his book “Consciousness Explained” it becomes obvious that his work is based on ideas that are not in agreement with contemporary physics. His logic is fine, but his premises are false and most people don’t know the fundamental physics well enough to spot the errors.
2) The Copenhagen interpretation is still popular amongst physicists and to quote Heisenberg-
“The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.”
So a pragmatic physicist need not worry about ‘which slit did the photon go through’ because his theory is about the changes in his knowledge- not the objects themselves.
YairR, your feelings (emotions) come from what’s classically called the “limbic system” of the brain. They don’t come from some place mysterious.
sonic,
Can you provide a specific example of Dennett not agreeing with contemporary physics? I’m fairly certain that both Dennett and Dr. Novella are fine with the Copenhagen interpretation of the quantum mechanics data. I favor that interpretation too over the many worlds interpretation, although I’m willing to change my mind if there’s more evidence to support it in the future. Quantum mechanics was just discussed on the last SGU podcast and I thought they did a pretty good job in the time allowed. There’s no disagreement between that physics and a purely materialistic view of human consciousness.
Everything in the science of physics is about physical objects. The double slit experiment just shows that matter is neither particle nor wave–it’s has characteristics of both. The presence of an observer (human or instrument) does not change the probabilistic wave function of the matter.
But Dr. Novella’s post was not about quantum theory. Seems like believers in all sorts of supernatural woo need to drag some misinterpretation of quantum physics into the argument whenever their worldview is challenged. And the good doctor just blogged about Depak Chopra making such mistakes! Just goes to show you that people tend to perceive only what they want to perceive, and ignore all else.
Is there anything to the fact that memories only seem to be formed from events which are consciously perceived? Is that, for that matter, a fact? (I’m unsure, although it appears to be in my experience). Hmm…
I’m sorry, but I’m gonna have to disagree. We don’t need subjective awareness* to make choices and reproduce; bacteria do that, and I don’t think they are (subjectively) aware of anything. And bacteria operated long, long before we self-glorifying apes ever came on the scene, if anything it is we that cannot operate without them. Their existence is utterly independent of our awareness of it.
* By this I mean the subjective experience of being aware of something. I do not mean ‘awareness’ as the functional capacity of putting certain things in your working memory or so on, which according to you seems possible in non-living machines, that are not conscious.
Then they are blinded by the light. Dennett’s philosophy draws on science, but isn’t really based on science. It’s still philosophy, not science.
Absolutely. I’m one of the physicists that believe in the MWI instead. There are plenty of those too; to give my own quote, here is Tipler quoting Hawking,
“”It is well-known that if the quantum formalism applies to all reality, both to atoms, to humans, to planets and to the universe itself then the Many Worlds Interpretation is trivially true (to use an expression of Stephen Hawking, expressed to me in a private conversation).”
I’m with Hawking over Heisenberg here. The problem with the Copenhagen interpretation is not with an obscure new notion of reality, but rather with an obscure new notion of ‘measurement’, a concept that does not make sense of if quantum mechanics “applies to all reality”, as Tipler phrases it (or is “complete”, as Einstein put it).
Again, though, I emphasize – the Copenhagen interpretation, and others, are still popular among physicists. My opinion is my own, not a consensus (although it is not a fringe opinion, either).
The pragmatist physicist doesn’t talk about the quantum state as representing our “knowledge” of the system. He talks about quantum mechanics as instrumental – a means to predict the results of experiments. That’s all. Any talk beyond that is empty, non-scientific, metaphysics.
I meant “feeling” in a more general sense, anything from “I feel my own thought (cogito)” to “I feel pain!”. But the point is not that the brain does not produce the consciousness precisely as you say – it does, of course it does. The point is that we don’t understand why it produces consciousness (subjective experience, feeling, awareness of – they are all meant as synonyms) alongside the function. We can understand how the limbic system moderates physiological responses to manifest and internally represent specific patterns, which we can call “fear”, “excitement”, “lust”, and so on. But we fail to understand why this processing, this physical dynamical process of physiological change, *feels like* anything. *That* is the mystery.
Hmm. Not sure how you meant that. The presence of an observer does not change the wave-function nature of matter, matter remains a wave-function. It does change the wave-function of the matter, however – it makes the wave-function jump to a new shape, corresponding to an experimentally measured value. Collapse. That’s the measurement postulate, within the Copenhagen interpretation.
Note how it assumes two non-physical things – the existence of something called an “observer” (rather than there being just quantum physical entities), and the existence of an experimental result (again, not a quantum object – indeed, explicitly the result is not-quantum, violating superposition and so on). That’s why I (and many greater physicists, like Hawking) believe the Copenhagen interpretation must be rejected by anyone that thinks QM is complete, and some MWI to hold “trivially”.
YairR writes,
“We don’t need subjective awareness* to make choices and reproduce; bacteria do that, and I don’t think they are (subjectively) aware of anything.”
Of course bacteria are subjectively aware. They have sensory apparatus and feel the sensory input. They learn and are aware of what they have learned. They compute and make choices accordingly. The level of their awareness is limited according to the level of their needs and environment–nevertheless they are aware. All life exists because it has the capability of being aware. There would be no prospects of survival or evolution without such awareness.
It’s just that simple.
Draeger – Regarding the cerebellum, this is not the implication of that research. You can completely remove the cerebellum, and consciousness will remain intact. It is simply not necessary for consciousness.
Not all information processing, even sensory information processing is conscious. Of course, it affects the content of our consciousness, otherwise it would be pointless, but it is not conscious itself.
Sensory information is where awareness starts and where consciousness starts. If the information affects the content of our consciousness it’s because we were conscious of it at that time. Consciousness doesn’t start where awareness leaves off, except perhaps in our conceptual world where duality continues to hold a part of the fort.
We confuse consciousness with the state of being awake, yet we accept that when we sleep, we remain aware of our dreams and things that go bump in the night. That awareness is the state of our consciousness. It is not awakeness perhaps but it is consciousness.
And to that degree the organism is conscious. There is no point in saying it’s not conscious unless it is to point out that it’s not awake.
John D. Draeger –
From “Consciousness Explained”
“A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy…this principle of the conservation of energy…is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has been endlessly discussed since Descartes’ own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable flaw in dualism.”
(Note that Dennett is using an argument from Descartes day).
If I say Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, would that be enough?
YairR-
von Neumann solved some of the difficulties you refer to—You could say I’m a von Neumann-Heisenberg orthodox guy myself.
I have difficulties with MWI—everything that could happen does happen—really?
Dr. Novella – I wasn’t arguing that the cerebellum was necessary for some sort of consciousness, just that normal consciousness might be altered if it was removed. The Wikipedia reference very well could be wrong or misleading. I trust your knowledge of brain structure and function.
YairR – You seem to think that the “why” of anything existing is a mystery. Beyond an evolutionary reason, there is no why.
I meant that the wave function of matter exists whether or not there’s an observer or measuring instrument involved. You wrote: “Note how it assumes two non-physical things – the existence of something called an “observer” (rather than there being just quantum physical entities), and the existence of an experimental result (again, not a quantum object – indeed, explicitly the result is not-quantum, violating superposition and so on).” I don’t agree that it assumes anything non-physical.
By the Copenhagen interpretation, consciousness does not cause the collapse of the wave function, measurement does.
For every physicist that accepts MWI, there is another equally brilliant physicist that doesn’t. NOBODY can say for sure what’s going on at the double slits in the famous experiment – that’s why there are different interpretations. Steven Weinberg says, “The Copenhagen rules clearly work, so they have to be accepted.” I’m not a quantum physicist, so I’m just going with what experimental evidence has demonstrated to be true. MWI is largely theoretical at this point. As I said, I’m willing to buy it (as exceedingly weird as it is) if there’s some empirical evidence to support it.
I don’t see how that’s relevant. The quantum conservation of energy is *on average*, and is still violated by the any version of dualism that’s reasonable. The effects of the dual mental realm do not fluctuate and cancel each other, after all. At best, Dennett is too swift and impercise.
Dennett is also wrong that any change in acceleration requires energy (*cough* circular motion *cough*), and neglects the many other ways the mental can affect the physical (particles do more than move) – but his point is still essentially correct.
I’m not aware of any such solutions. To my knowledge, von Neumann presented axiomatic quantum mechanics that displays the problem clearly – it does not solve it, it’s just so clear that the problem becomes clear.
….what’s the difficulty? That sounds like personal incredulity, and I’m sure you know better than that.
I have greater problem with probabilistic laws – there is a lottery, that can’t be described by physics at all, happening at the background – really? If you think about it, it’s kind of a “hidden variables” theory, it’s “magic”. I much rather believe physics describes all reality, not hiding the way the lottery is done behind a veil.
But, hey, don’t get me wrong – there are problems with the MWI. Like deriving probabilities – it’s not clear at all how that happens, once you get deep enough into that. I still think it’s the better interpretation – it’s not like the others lack problems.
I’m preplexed. Are you saying that, as a physicist, I can’t answer why, say, the earth goes around the sun? This is not “why” as in “for what good”, this is “why” as in “how”. I’m deeply curious about why things are the way they are, and I’m afraid I’m gonna keep looking for those “why” answers even outside of evolution.
I am sorry you don’t see that Copenhagen does assume things that are not physical (i.e. cannot be described like other physical things in quantum mechanics). Consider describing a simple quantum experiment, with a measurement device and a decaying atom; let’s ignore the rest of the universe. Under Copenhagen, you can speak of the collapse caused by the device. If you describe the device fully as a physical device, however, and run the equations – there is no collapse. Copenhagen inserts an ill-defined concept of “measurement”, that is just not there in the physical description that quantum mechanics provides for the physical stuff. It’s not physical.
I would note the Copenhagen interpretation is NOT the “Copenhagen rules” – everyone agrees that the von Neumann (“Copenhagen”) rules work, but this supports all interpretations of QM equally. Both the Copenhagen and MWI interpretations fit the experiments equally, experiment does not establish that the Copenhagen interpretation is true. That determination has to be made on philosophical grounds, and I maintain that the MWI is superior in that it does not presume non-physical things.
I would note that while Wienberg is a great physicist, I’m not too impressed with his philosophy. This is the man who said that only science provides a way to establish truth, not realizing the paradox in his own utterance. I wouldn’t take advice on the philosophical merits of the various interpretations from him.
Draeger – I’m not sure where you got the quote by Weinberg, but in this interview he says that the Copenhagen interpretation is fundamentally flawed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPg5eTAovOo#t=6m
YairR-
You are correct about von Neumann—I am using the word ‘solve’ in a very sloppy manner—my bad.
The reason I prefer the von Neumann approach-
It presents the universe as an evolving set of possibilities and that my conscious choices (which appear to be some extent free) can have some influence on which of the possibilities becomes the actuality. For example- “I can change my mind as new evidence comes in,” would be a statement that, if true, assumes some sort of von Neumann approach, IMO.
I’m wondering what you think of this—
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9703/9703089v1.pdf
“…no plausible set of axioms exists for an MWI that describes known physics.”
(Is the conclusion of the piece…)
sethv – the quote by Weinberg come from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation#Criticisms
An explanation (interpretation) doesn’t need to be perfect to be useful.
I watched the video you sent and Weinberg doesn’t fully accept either the MWI or Copenhagen, and neither do I. All the interpretations are flawed – that’s why there are more than 1. As I’ve said on Skepticblog some time ago, neither quantum mechanics nor relativity are complete.
If string theory is right, the plethora of “particles” in the Standard Model are different frequencies of vibrating strings. That does seem more elegant. None of the top physicists know the precise nature of the wave-particles seen in the double slit experiment. There’s some evidence to support the contention that there are multiples universes, but as far as I know the evidence for MWI of quantum theory is lacking – it’s all theoretical.
sonic – your quote from Dennett just says that physics argues against dualism. Dualism is the idea that there’s a body (including brain) and a soul/spirit/new age “energy.” There’s no scientific evidence to support the concept of dualism. If you or anyone else could provide it you’d get the Nobel prize.
For those of you who accept the MWI of QM, you need to pay attention to the word “IF” in this part of the reception section of the Wikipedia article on MWI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation#Reception
“However Stephen Hawking is on record as a saying that the “other worlds are as real as ours”[45] and Tipler reports Hawking saying that MWI is “trivially true” (scientific jargon for “obviously true”) if quantum theory applies to all reality.[46] Roger Penrose agrees with Hawking that QM applied to the universe implies MW, although he considers the current lack of a successful theory of quantum gravity negates the claimed universality of conventional QM.[30]”
With that, I rest my case and have made a mental note to avoid comments on theoretical physics in the future.
I don’t think the Hard Problem has been adequately stated. The Hard Problem has to do with perception or with what Damasio terms the “movie-in-the-brain.” Dreaming has been mentioned several times already and I think it’s one of the best ways to begin to fathom what the real issue is here, so as a thought experiment let’s consider it for a minute
When you are dreaming, you are typically lying in a dark room with your eyes closed with sensory input actively inhibited and you are paralyzed. But you are experiencing dream images and scenes that are qualitatively similar to those experienced during waking. Let’s say in your dream you are looking at a red apple. It seems just like looking at an apple when you’re awake. Where is the dream apple? It’s certainly not in the room. We think that the neural activity in the brain is generating this apple-image. HOW DOES IT DO THIS?? So far, no one has any idea. This is the core of the hard problem.
Dennet has made important contributions but his eliminativism is extreme (as mentioned it is not shared by many other philosophers, the Churchlands being a notable exception). And, while we’re on the topic, he is drawing epicycles with his cassette theory of dreams.
I share Francis Crick and Christof Koch’s view that we need to start by finding the Neural Correlates of Consciousness. And we are finding out a lot about the NCCs right now and this is very exciting (i.e. V1 is not necessary, ventral stream appears to be strongly implicated, etc). However, it is important to recognize that this in itself does not constitute an explanatory model for HOW the brain generates {dream images, qualia, sense data, experiential consciousness, movie-in-the-brain, take your pick}
As philosopher Ned Block comments: “Although finding the neural basis for visual consciousness would be exciting, it would be foolish to suppose it would immediately yield an understanding of why (how) it is the neural basis. That understanding will no doubt require major ideas of which we now have no glimmer.”
Let’s don’t kid ourselves by trying to eliminate or deny the problem. Consciousness is a real natural phenomenon that calls out for scientific explanation. According to Science Magazine this is the 2nd most important problem in all of science. We need to know more about the NCCs and then work slowly toward a theory. This is one of the next great scientific frontiers and I, for one, am really looking forward to it…
Any thoughts Steven?
John D.
And contemparary physics allows, and the orthodox interpretation entails, an interactive dualism that is in complete agreement with the known laws.
Doesn’t make it true– but the use of physics as a ‘proof” that dualism is wrong comes from a misunderstanding of the physics—
(and here I too will shut-up)
sethv – that’s an excellent way to put things, I agree with Weinberg completely there.
I disagree on two counts. First, the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) does not allow you any choices. It only allows you observations. Your change of mind is due to observation + (determinstic, classical) reason, not due to quantum “choice”. The situation is essentially the same in the MWI, so this is neither here nor there.
Secondly, this is a very bad reason to believe one interpretation over the other. We should establish what’s true regardless of what we want to be true. I accept considerations of uniformity and and so on, but the desire to have free will and meaningful choice us not a valid criterion.
My opinion of it is that I didn’t read it. To go down John D’s route, however – no interpretation is fully satisfying. I have no doubt obtaining probabilities in MWI is problematic. I still prefer it to the CI alternative.
I agree with John D. that the MWI only follows IF you assume a quantum description is complete. I think it is, to a large extent.
Precisely.
No to. The CI allows observation, not interaction. Interaction dualism is still incompatible with physics.
And now I too can rest on this issue, for now.
YairR-
I’m sorry, but I have to ask–
The experimenter can open the slit or leave it closed– this choice will determine which of the two qualities of the eletron he will observe (wave or particle). This is what I mean by interactive–
Are you claiming you have a deterministic formula that will determine which choice the experimenter will make? If so, what is it?
Why limit to ‘a consciousness’. In view of the very limited vertical connections between the neocortex and the underlying limbic system, and taken the fact that the limbic system has priority in determining danger/food/procreation in it’s environment one can deduce that there’s another complete consciousness with limited means of expression. Subconscious is a misnomer imo as it needs some pretty active decision making.
In my view the entirely autonomous limbic system is our day to day consciousness which takes care of the chores. It’s means of communication with ‘the other consciousness’ is via corporal manipulation. Apart from the obvious, such as heartrate/respiration/hormone secretion the neocortex reads out the body’s stance and facial expressions to determine what the limbic consciousness is up to.
This would explain for example why facial expressions have an effect on mood. You manipulate your facial expression, your automated facial expression reader has no knowledge if it’s origin and interprets it as coming from the other consciousness.
This would also explain the 0.5 sec gap between reaction and awareness. The limbic consciousness takes a decision and before the other consciousness can fully put all the data together that takes time.
Which gives rise to the thesis that ‘our’ consciousness is just along for the ride.
Yair, sorry for the late response, but here you go:
“I don’t get why *self*-consciousness always gets dragged to this issue. ”
What’s “self-consciousness”? I’m only referring to consciousness, that is, awareness of one’s thoughts.
“It’s the very existence of consciousness, of subjective feeling-like, that matters. Its content isn’t relevant – it can be consciousness of one’s thought, of one’s body, of perceptions, of delusions…”
That’s a self-referential process. The neural circuits in the brain effectively loop back and examine what they (and other circuits) are doing.
“So no, I don’t think self-reference does any work at all at explaining why some things are conscious and others are not.”
Well, you’re wrong. Everything you’re talking about is self-reference.
“It seems to me to totally miss what the hard problem is”
It doesn’t “miss” the “hard problem”. It ignores the “hard problem”, because the “hard problem” is a fairy tale.
“Self-awareness is easy – take a pair of electrons, let them interact, and now you have an information processing process”
No you don’t. You don’t have any sort of process. You have a solitary event.
“where each electron’s state reflects his own state (by second order interactions).”
No.
“To jump from there to saying this electron is now consciouses – you need some further argument.”
No. I say nothing of the sort. Your premise is completely false.
“The Turing-test you suggest is also not a good way to gauge consciousness – although it may be a practical one. We can imagine machines that will pass the turning test and won’t have self-reference”
No we can’t. Any such machine – like Chalmer’s “Chinese Room” – would be completely impossible. It would suffer a combinatorial explosion to such an extent that the entire Universe couldn’t model the brain of a mouse.
I disagree completely, and think we’re a lot closer to a full understanding of consciousness than we even know. Numenta founder Jeff is closing in on one key aspect – the method whereby the cortext processes information – with his work on hierarchical temporal memory, or HTM, as described in his 2004 book “On Intelligence”. Hawkins posits HTM as a repetitive feedback loop where essentially the only divergent activity is due to the appearance of novel inputs, or, “Is it new?”, a remarkably elegant and thoroughly testable description of cortical function at its most basic level.
The main thing missing from Hawkins’ work in the larger context of mind is the concept of importance, or, “Is it important?” Why importance? The answer is definitional: unlike a software program, which exists at the whim of its developer, a living creature is an independent complex system that exists separately from its environment, an environment with which it must interact in order to survive. Novelty alone is not enough in this case; the very existence of the organism is dependent upon its ability to categorize and associate inputs and input patterns in accordance with their relative importance to its survival.
Like HTM itself this idea is an excellent fit with the biology of the brain. The hypothalamus, common to all vertebrate brains, is the likely main repository of this determination, acting in coordination with the cortex via complex pathways that flows mainly through the thalamus. HTM is at work here, I believe, and most likely originated in this area, but the precise method whereby the activities of the hypothalamus and the cortex are combined and coordinated involve other mechanisms as well, including the sleep cycle common to all advanced brains.
Like HTM this concept should be susceptible to development as software. Unlike HTM alone, however, where questions of self and self-consciousness are irrelevant, these questions will soon loom large. At one extreme: efforts to create software based as closely as possible on the human brain, built around the same basic needs as human beings; at the other, software formulated around entirely different basic needs, with results we can barely imagine.
We may even see this become a reality within the next decade.