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• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  10 February 2008 | 02:52

  Dear Esther:

  As far as I know there is no complete model yet. I have tried to post to this group notices about the main theoreticians and recent empirical findings – please check our notices section.
  A transdisciplinary approach is very important in this area, but most of the researchers are limited to one discipline – philosophy, computation, neuroscience, etc…
  An attempt to construct a broader approach can be found in a 1995 book by Harry Hunt – please click here
  Anthony Freeman, one of the Journal of Consciousness Studies Editors, has an introductory book on consciousness. You can read a review here
  Another JCS editor, Chris Nunn, recently published “From Neurons to Notions”. You can read the Introduction from his Home Page
  Gerald Edelman´s recent books are also a good introduction to the big picture.

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo

• Esther Allerton

  10 February 2008 | 16:22

  Thanks for that, Alfredo, it’s very much appreciated. I’ve ordered the Neurons to Notions book and put the other two on my wish list. I finished reading Edelman’s A Universe of Consciousness last week – it was really something and if I do construct a complete model, I suspect about half of it will be based on that book! I’m currently struggling with David Chalmer’s The Conscious Mind and am finding the writing style really hard going as it’s written as philosophy not science and I’m not used to it – it’s almost as difficult as learning Portuguese ;-)

  Like I said, maybe I have bitten off too much, but nothing ventured nothing gained. And at least if I do manage to get a complete model, if it’s the first it won’t be so bad if it’s not quite right – it will be something to build on if nothing else.

  Muito obrigada!

• SUNIL THAKUR

  10 February 2008 | 19:37

  Dear Esther

  Your project is quite ambitious given that we know next to nothing about consciousness scientifically. While various books suggested by Alfredo can be of great help yet what we need is a fresh perspective and one of things that I would like to explore is whether consciousness has anything to do with physical reality and if you want to go farther than this then whether consciousness is a physical reality?

  I think that as suggested by Alfredo, you will have to have an inter-disciplinary study and that must include physics as certain experiments like some of the advanced version of Double-Slit experiment have thrown up the possibility that if we were to take a broader view of the term consciousness then all particles seem to have consciousness. Then there are some experiments prove Bell’s theorem and now one experiment has revealed that entangled atoms that have never been part of the same system can also have instant communication.

  I am working on the physical aspects of consciousness and exploring various possibilities.

  I wish you success in your project and hope that your project. I hope that you are interested in just another project to meet the acamedic requirements.

  Sunil Thakur

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  11 February 2008 | 08:47

  Dear Sunil and Esther:

  Like Chris Nunn, I think that entanglement is the (physical) basis of consciousness, or better, the physical evolution of entanglement leads to the emergence of life and consciousness.
  But what is entanglement? Is it the product of a previous interaction of the particles or an effect of absolute space on them? Is it just a reduction of possibilities (combined loss of superposition of two or more particles) or could it be a way to generate more complex waveforms? (I call the first alternative “monomodal” and second “multimodal entanglement”).
  And this leads us to the ultimate metaphysical question: is the physical world eternal and the generator of consciousness, or is consciousness primitive (“God”) and the creator of the physical world?
  The problem with a complete theory of consciousness is that it would inevitably have to deal with this kind of scientifically “impossible to decide” issue.
  Chalmers was very successful discussing the Hard Problem in 1995-6, but today it is clear that his approach is philosophically weak because it oscillattes between physicalist (monist) and dualist (property dualism) positions.

  In my interpretation, in order to understand ‘The Conscious Mind’ better it is necessary to begin with the previous work of Jaegwon Kim (an influential philosopher in America), who advocated Non-Reductive Physicalism in the 1980’s, and later turned to Reductive Physicalism a few years before Chalmers’ work. This move gave the impression that the only alternative to Reductive Physicalism was some kind of Dualism. At that time Chalmers was a Mathematics graduate who studied with Daniel Dennett in Boston. Dennett adopted a reductionist view of consciousness, arguing that ‘qualia’ are mere illusions. Chalmers perceived he had a good opportunity to diverge from Dennett, at a time when the theme of consciousness was beginning to attract scientists from several areas – the beginning of the Journal of Consciousness Studies and Tucson biannual meetings, and also the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. The first group followed Chalmers’ intuition that Reductive Physicalism is wrong. However, the whole idea was based on a fallacious argument presented by Kim against Non-Reductive Physicalism! Recently this history has been made clear, and Non-Reductive Physicalism is alive again (I will distinguish these philosophical positions for you in another post – this one is already too long).

  [Some Portuguese for Esther] Obrigado pelas contribuições!

  Best Regards

  Alfredo Pereira Jr.

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  11 February 2008 | 09:01

  Clarification on Philosophical Positions

  [This is my development of a classification originally made by Joseph Polanik in the MindBrain Yahoogroups list]

  There are three main classes of philosophical theories that assume substance monism (i.e. ‘body/brain’ and ‘mind/consciousness’ refer to the same being) while diverging about physical and mental properties of such a being:

  1: Property-Monism Physicalists: physical and mental properties are basically the same. This position leads to identity
  theory (consciousness is identical to brain activity), eliminativism (neuroscience will explain all Folk Psychology terms and then eliminate them in the future), explanatory and/or ontological reductionism (mental properties can be deduced from a complete knowledge of Physics)
  and panpsychism (mind is a primitive aspect of nature);

  Possibility 2: Property-Dualism Physicalists: all conscious beings are physical, but, concerning their properties, if a
  property is physical then it is not mental, and if it is mental than
  it is not physical (I am not sure if this view is really physicalism.
  Chalmers and colleagues seems to have concluded that it is
  incompatible with physicalism, and they are probably right if they
  did; their problem is that they ignore the third possibility below);

  Possibility 3: all beings are physical; all their properties are
  physical; some of their properties are low-level physical, but other
  properties are physical AND mental (i.e., high-level physical) at the
  same time. IOW, there are two physical levels, non-mental and mental,
  and the second is different from/not reductible to the first
  (corresponding to rejection of identity/reductionism), cannot be
  eliminated with the progress of science (rejection of eliminativism),
  and requires proper evolutionary processes to be achieved (rejection
  of panpsychism). I think this is the best alternative adopted by
  contemporary non-reductive physicalists (including myself).

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo Pereira Jr.

• Esther Allerton

  11 February 2008 | 09:16

  Thanks Sunil and Alfredo – it is a huge subject and I seem to have to study so many different things.

  I’m not really much into physics but my very first taste of consciousness studies came years ago from a lecture given by Roger Penrose who basically thought that it couldn’t be solved until there was a new breakthrough in physics. Last year I read somebody’s paper (not yet published) on his ideas on an advancement of relativity, and it felt so ‘right’ to me that I thought I’d just take the plunge, assume it was right, and attempt to build a model based on it. Of course it’s starting at the other end from everyone else but maybe a new insight and a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ might be able get somewhere.

  I’m studying part time with the Open University, squeezed in between loads of other responsibilities, and I’m taking this year completely off from ‘official’ studies to concentrate on researching anything that might be of use to my ‘model’, so don’t worry Sunil – I am interested and not just doing this for academic purposes.

  As much as anything, I think I must have watched too much ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ as a kid and have decided that, as I’m going to be 42 later this year, it was time I figured out the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. Or maybe I’m just a crazy dreamer. I’ll give it my best shot anyway…

• SUNIL THAKUR

  12 February 2008 | 13:57

  Dear Alfredo

  Your analysis of the current theories is quite enlighting. I have just about completed theoretical part of my work on the ‘Nature of Reality’ and have just got it copyrighted. One of the experiment conducted by me validates my theory. I intend to conduct another experiment next week to prove another major part of my theory.

  If we believe that we are dealing with something that is ‘scientifically impossible to decide’ then I think there is no point in exploring the subject. As such, as far as physics is concerned, imagination rules the world of physics and all kinds of imaginative theories are being discussed in conferences and journals.

  I am interested in consciousness or for that matter in any phenomenon only and only if it could be reduced to a physical reality and I have reasons to believe that consciousness is a physical reality.

  You raise a very important question – what is entanglement? I think answer to this question has key to answers to many other important questions.

  Do we say that everything is intrinsically connected to everything else or do we say that everything is mere manifestation of one reality and hence there is no fundamental difference between A and B? Information about an object exists everywhere or in other words all objects exist at all the points in the universe as a possibility and manifest themselves whenever they find right medium (I am taking a different view than Jordan who suggests that objects exists only as a probabibility before they are observed or the act of observation produces what is being observed). I am suggesting that act of observation only manifests what is already present as a possibility.

  Thus, entanglement is a phenomenon that exists only because of our lack of understanding of nature.

  How a reality is manifested does not depend only on the properties of the reality but also on the property of the medium through which it is being manifested.

  Consciousness of an individual is the information that he can access and therefore it can expand and contract. Nothing exists, nothing moves, and nothing matters except information.

  There is only one reality. We may call it Higgs field, ether, God, or Universal consciousness. Everything else is mere manifestation of this reality. Objects cannot be created or destroyed but can only change form (natural outcome of the first law of thermodynamics) which means no new creation and destruction is possible in the universe which means physical world is eternal. Micro does not give up its physical existence when it merges with macro, however, it stops communicating with other systems individually. This is a major part of my theory. Systems communicate with each other as one unit. Atoms in an object do not lose their identity and communicate with other constituent atoms of the same system but do not communicate with other atoms of the other systems individually.

  Possibility 3 in your explanation is an extension of possibility 1. It is not the question of eliminating the mental properties through the scientific means but explaining it through the scientific means that is going to be the breakthrough that we all hope will come our way at some point of time. I do not think we need new information to understand nature; all we need is to have a fresh look at what we already know.

  Dear Esther

  About 10 years back I had asked the same questions but it is only during the last about 28 months that I have concentrated solely on these important questions. It was complete madness, kind of situation where nothing else matters. While constantly striving to update oneself on various issues, one has to be careful not to get blinded by what one knows. Veil of knowledge is the most dangerous veil. If you are able to sustain the madness over a period of time then you will find that answers you get are in conflict with current theories and then you may be tempted to believe that you are wrong but if you are convinced about something then do not bother about saying something that may not get popular votes.

  Connect to the sea of information and as far as my experience goes, only way of connecting to this sea of information is by seeking information. Seek and the sought will come to you.

  My paper ‘Nature of Reality’ has been included in the Annual April Meeting of the APS under the ‘New Ideas’ category and I am just about giving finishing touches to my theory. I think you must read all you can about the Bohr-Einstein debate on the nature of reality. It is probably the most creative and the most important debate in the history of modern science.

  I am sure Alfredo’s objective analysis, wealth of knowledge on the subject, and uncomplicated presentation will be of great help to you in your work.

  All the best..

  Sunil

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  12 February 2008 | 14:27

  Dear Sunil:

  It seems that you are finding a way between Einsten´s Realism and Bohr´s (mild) Idealism, and this is great news!
  I am in agreement with most of your ideas, with two exceptions:
  a) inter-theoretical reduction, as proposed by philosopher E. Nagel in the book “The Structure of Science”, is a complicated explanatory strategy, since it assumes that the reduced theory is going to be deduced from the more fundamental theory. But we have no idea of how psychological, “first-person” properties could be deduced from physical properties (information included). If we give up deduction and broaden our explanatory strategy to include inductive reasoning, then we move to Possibility 3, which (in my humble opinion)is actually the one that you are practicizing;
  b) when you say that “nothing exists…except information”, I interpret it as an epistemological, not an ontological statement. From what I know about physics, the basic entity is Energy. The simplest forms of energy appear to us as matter, while complex patterns appear as information. I can not imagine how matter and energy could derive from pure information! This interpretation sounds to me as Platonic Idealism, but remember that Plato needed a ‘demiurgo’ to create the material world from Ideas.
  Regarding the impossibility of scientific testing of some hypotheses, it is relative to a historical moment. I will be happy if you are able to test some that appear as impossible to my ignorance!

  Best Regards,

  Alfredo

• Esther Allerton

  12 February 2008 | 17:12

  Wow – this subject gets bigger and bigger…

  I’ll try to explain, roughly, how my ideas are starting to formulate at the moment, so you know how my mind is working. The paper I read was this one Relativity+ Like I said, I don’t know much physics and I always felt a little uneasy with what little I did know, but this felt, to me, intuitively right. It seems to take the fundamentals down a level. I just set myself a challenge to see if, assuming the ideas he presents are correct, I could build it up into a full theory of consciousness so I decided which bit of it seemed the most likely and and busy trying to build it up as high as I can go, but of course I have soooo much to learn before it can be complete.

  The important bit, as I see it, of relativity+ is that it proposes that (excuse my lack of physics-speak) in some way all matter is made of light, like a photon which is persuaded to go round and round in circles chasing it’s own tail becomes an electron, but as it’s moving at the speed of light it is massless. Only when it hits something does some of it’s energy express itself in terms of mass (hence the wave/particle duality – it has no mass until it hits something). My idea is something like if consciousness can be explained by physics, and everything is made of light, then consciousness has to be too, and this ‘chasing it’s own tail’ might be the key. Maybe anything which chases it’s own tail has the capacity to become conscious, like a microconsciousness.

  I thought of structures like benzene rings (sorry, my chemistry is pretty bad too – I’m just a home-schooling mum doing a bit of studying in my spare time) and the way the electrons seem to be shared out in a sort of cloud ‘buzzing’ round the whole ring. The first time I saw a diagram like that and read about it, it resonated with me somehow and I couls almost feel a ‘buzz’ – it seemed like magic.

  So then I began to think, how could that buzzing of a mass of electrons be related to consciousness? And of course, the firing of nerve cells involves waves of electricity moving along the outer membrane of the neurons.

  Obviously there is a whole lot more work to do to see if it is possible to construct a complete model, but the basis seems to be there. Maybe if the cell is firing repeatedly (I’ve heard something about a theory involving 40htz cycles??) then that consciousness could start to stabilize and link up with other bits of consciousness, each one in some way contributing micro-qualia which can build up into a whole symphony of experience? And of course the qualia will have to somehow associated with the appropriate input. Maybe if Mary was kept in a black and white room she would see different intensities of light as red green or blue? Maybe if our visual range was extended into the infra-red, then we would see infr-red as red and share out our current visual range betwee the green and blue? Maybe synesthesia exists because not everyone can assign the appropriate qualia as well as others.

  Edelman’s ideas about the dynamic core suggest that any neurons firing within it would contribute directly to our consciousness, but I think that the brain would also have, literally, sub-consciousness that we are unaware of, the loops that are not currently, or ever, part of the dynamic core. It is the changing patterns which create awareness, like listening to music. If all the neurons fired simultaneously, it is like listening to feedback screaming out of a loudspeaker, triggering an epileptic fit. When everything is the same, like in a crystal, there is nothing to be aware of, so maybe there is no consciousness there, but the patterns, controlled by wiring and input, create the ‘music’ of the mind that we call experience.

  Are my wafflings totally insane, or is there any hope of building something up from those sorts of ideas?

• Alfredo Pereira Jr

  12 February 2008 | 19:21

  Dear Esther:

  Your insights and intuitions are good, you should work on their justification.

  Your neuroscience picture has some problems that we can discuss here. Please try to read a good tutorial on neuron physiology, describing how synaptic activity occurs and how an action potential is generated.

  Maybe the key concept is entanglement, instead of photons “chasing their tails” like Uroboros.

  My approach to entanglement in the brain can be found here

  Good luck with your research!

  Alfredo

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