Recent replies to "Constructing a complete model of consciousness"

Reply from C David Fischer Jr

C David Fischer Jr — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:00:47 -0000

As an amateur, but an affectionate one to the field, I would pass on to Esther a number of books that I have enjoyed.

First off, there is Nicholas Humphrey’s 1992 book, “A History of the Mind”, which is subtitled “Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness”. The book is marvelously approachable, and Humphrey’s illustrations are a delight.

Next, I would suggest Stuart Kauffman’s 2000 book “Investigations”. Here, Kauffman proposes two ideas. First, he defines an autonomous agent as “a self-reproducing system able to perform at least one thermodynamic work cycle”. He then goes on to state that “I suspect that biospheres maximize the average secular construction of the diversity of autonomous agents and the ways those agents can make a living to propagate further”. Emergence is a recurring theme.

Finally, I would suggest a trio of books by Antonio Damasio. First is “Descartes’ Error”, in which he opines that “I feel, therefore I am” is the true understanding of the human condition. Rationality only comes from the brain as receptor of feelings, and when this is interfered with, rationality is impaired. The second book is “The Feeling of What Happens”. Finally, consider his third book, “Looking for Spinoza”, in which he discusses “Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain”.

Best Wishes for a successful hunt.

Reply from marvin kirsh

marvin kirsh — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:32:53 -0000

In response to the topic of constructing a complete model of consciousness I have, at least satisfied myself that I know what conscious awareness means in light of the paradoxes of experience verses logical additions. I will try to outline my understanding:

1) If one tries to define behavior in the terms of mechanical science the natural inclination is to assume it is built of parts that add up to a whole; one immediately comes to paradox :

=first= paradox derived from the great complexity involved in defining living entities.

=second =a seduction for those who like puzzles from the vast amount of scientific knowledge accumulated from evolutionary theory, biological studies etc… that always appear to lead a trail for the answers of deductively arrived at question though with the thought in mind that potential answers are still limited in character with respect to a total picture. We arrive at a point of nitty grittness with a humongous theoretical mathematical complexity resembling a layout of the universe as if it were an economic big business with a million departments and subdivions each with a million separate other departments- An infinite sized department store we tr to capture on paper.

2) I think that before this nitty grittyess is approached one need to better capture what he is attempting in philosophical terms. I have done with an analogy “the uncontained container” that goes...if one considers all the possible paths taken by nature to the present one may view it as contained, with nothing beyond it but what has not occured yet. Thus (all the possible) smooth and continuous possibile paths (in thought etc) have and have not a limit, are contained to present with nothing beyond ... the non understood soul as aproduct of the humongous paths taken by nature to the present... reptresented in all facets of th world, scientific topics, the inside and outside of all things=all things come about that way whether aspects of vision, sight,touch perception of self etc. ..and have a single one sided surface based as we know life the universe as a model physical structure=open volume that is containe a one sided surface one could aliken to a belt with a twist that is balled up to have specific shape hat it encloses. But this is from a perspective of knowledgeless location ignorant nature-from the perspective of the balled=up belt the world is instead a dualism as it itself is not one sided, has volume and distinct faces and forms man ver higher order complexes-exists because it repels itself, each point is unique inside and out and does not overlap by virtue of a force that with respect to the forces we might measure in a lab; depends on angles of approach of surfaces ,densities and maybe of vast complexity but all depending, time, motion, etc on the existence of a world of unique particulars that are only classifyable in to genera by virtue of likeness of assembly with regards to surfaces and forces but conceptually the world cannot be captured from these likeness, it diverge, depart from the classifications of observation (though too far if the classifications are good=i.e. constructed with these thoughts in mind such that categories are not too compulsively formed are arrived at with the open perspective I suggest that we know in advance what the meaning of the categories are) but cannot be known from these classifications=might find new paths of emergence. With a reorientation one might construe that the transmissions=bouncing around of=reflections of light sound =whatever=is elementary to all and beyond the chemistries and physical laws we start with to define cognition and consciousness..instead all is manifest of witness processes to be taken in parallel not series with the orderings of science=both(the sciences and cognition) emanated form the same that is given as God in older philosophy which purport to prove his existence=do prove though that a universal exists as necessiy for he existence of matter that though not an omnipotent perceiving all knowing God, is perceiving nature which is no more than transmissions and reflections of energy, many types of which have become very familiar scientifically(light, sound, heat, etc). Einstein came to paradox with the dualism of special and general relativity in his failure to recognize and relate the volume with an elemantal force as the construction unit of life and consciousness as also one and the same as the space/universe he tried to define. In my perceptions the dualism created by Einstein is very similar in description to the dilemma of active verses passive reflection, we cannot conceive of a cetain two volumes at the same instant=ourselves and the external if we try to write absolutes about either each individually=an overlap results that is like volumes imposed on one another in to the same space ==is threatening(re: the post modern phenomenologys, paradoxes solisticisms ( that one cannot know anything beyond the self) In my personal manuscripts http://www.marvinekirsh.com I have proposed that aside from this normal paradox of nature in a normal situation, the earth, civilization has been functioning under an additional stress of a phyical kind that is congruent in description to that that is described that is normal, affects our thinking and behavior, involves ordinary, at last not especially mystical scientifically, phenomenon in the earths environment that is grown through us in all aspects, a second thorn that is not conceived of to exist, but might not be difficult to uncover if suspected. Our aggressions on nature in this light are worse than we contemplate based on the way we have defined things and have come to think , and are causing many of the problems ourselves via applied scientific attention, by means of the attention, and subsequent applications themselves. It is only from this broader perspective that I think we would be able to sort out what is appropriate in the relations that cause living problems, otherwise the view is a dead straight line of seek and kill, observe and surmount.=a constant and easily taken turning towards the leftside of nature and ourselves. We are half way along a path of self annihilation= a better perspective, awareness lends awareness and inhibition, loss of interest in what once might have drawn inappropriate curiosity. Focus in consciousness studies should always be from a medical and healing perspective and with a perspective to know what trails to pursue ,they do not always follow logic, all of natures defects and sufferings are not amenable to scientific curiosity, cures non disruptive to the total depend on how problems emerged, in analogy untying a knot depends more on knowledge of the loose ends and where they lead than the unraveling each of connected knots=some may turn out not to have as many surfaces in the twines as they appear and remedies may cause more disturbance in total that comes about from contrast with the sure path of nature to force collisions and subsequent increased trouble and failure from an imposed changes in total surfaces and volumes. A doctor may consider such thing in the treatment of a patient what to overlook to consider sources unknowns , to tailor his treatments to a necessary minimal from the acquired wisdoms of his learned skill, but a scientist may have no such learned wisdoms to apply, especially in the wake of non matured concepts preceding and guiding his endeavors, wherein ordinary common sense and life lesson yield in a science fiction like manner to the mysterious. Whether a mass activity for the accumulation of knowledge, or the activity of a single individual one should direct his focus as if the topic were himself, whether the patient is others empty space, imbiciles, zombie animals etc. especially when one can hardly define much less contain a topic conceptually. Some questions can be answered in advance with only philosophical considerations for the better allocation of energies, for a real betterment in general. A confusing point in consciousness is an appropriate awareness itself that must be present from the outset, of ones spaces personal spaces , a concept of space/volume itself the construction unit of all, feelings,senses thought etc, that it is a universal, a universal concept, a unity, as uniqueness defines the framework of self

http://www.marvinekirsh.com

Reply from Hans Ricke

Hans Ricke — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:35:57 -0000

This is from an email by Bob Campbell, who has difficulties posting here:

“Defining consciousness is a knotty question. One is also entitled to ask what constitutes a definition? From whence does meaning of any kind derive? Is there a key word in the dictionary that defines all others? There must be an underlying structure to phenomenal experience that prescribes the basis of meaning. This underlying cosmic order must implicitly specify the meaning in language according to how we have evolved so it must also specify the structural dynamics of the evolutionary process. It must be ubiquitous. So it is by no means confined to language. To attempt a verbal definition of consciousness thus requires bootstrapping in the extreme. There are nevertheless things that can be said about it even though consciousness defies reduction to a separate phenomenon for scientific study as a distinct thing.

There is a difference between consciousness and what we are conscious of. Sensory input is coupled to the recall of appropriate archetypal patterns that have emotional content. These are reflected into specific intuitively recognized patterns in cerebral awareness via the primitive Limbic System and they may just as quickly find automated behavioral responses at the spinal level. Or they may require considerable cerebral reflection before an appropriate response can be formulated. But there are always three focal points involved in the integration of sensory input with appropriate response, one emotional, one intuitive, and one behavioral. These three focal points generally correspond to the Limbic emotional brain, the intuitive right hemisphere and the linguistic or behavioral left hemisphere, which have their correlates at the spinal level.

One can become conscious of this universal pattern in their private experience. Consciousness has universal characteristics. It can be shared. We share through the mutual experience of universal values to the extent that we have acquired access to them. We can share love, harmony, unity, truth, compassion, justice, mercy, etc. as well as their opposites with one another. To a considerable extent we can even share them with the family dog. Even a bug knows when we intend to kill it. There is a sharing of intensions associated with values that transcend the individual. We can be aware of this as well, so this does not in itself define consciousness. Some things language can not reach. In a universal sense values transcend and subsume physical circumstance.

Conscious awareness is behind phenomenal experience of every kind. The cosmic order is in communication with itself on many levels. This includes varieties of spiritual experience that can not justifiably be dismissed as vagaries of nervous function such as those that may be chemically induced. Genuine spiritual experiences generally fall into two broad but distinct categories, organic and cosmic. The organic variety is much more common. It involves organic processes in the human body even if the experiences carry with them transcendent elements of a universal nature as they often do. In the quite rare cosmic variety organic feedback to cerebral awareness is totally suspended. There is a clear and awesome perception of universal import that transcends and subsumes this physical universe including one’s body. This is not a higher form of consciousness. This same consciousness is there and intensely aware of what it perceives. It is the content of conscious perception that is different, not consciousness itself. That remains as elusive as ever.

One can say that consciousness is an inherent knowing, or awareness, or perception that is implicit in the nature of being and that defies rational analysis. It has universal characteristics associated with structural requirements implicit in the nature of universal wholeness. There is more on this in the website article Unified Theories, Fantasy, & Cosmic Order at the “website”:http//www.cosmic-mindreach.com. The article explores the relationship of epistemology to the ontological basis of being. I think it is reasonably instructive on the role and limitations of theories, as distinct from personal realization in phenomenal experience.

There are also articles on the website that show how phenomenal experience is meaningfully integrated by the nervous system, synapse by synapse at the spinal level and also how the cerebellum mediates integration of spinal and sensory inputs with cerebral function synapse by synapse. However these show how the content of consciousness works regardless of circumstance, not consciousness itself.

A quest into the nature of consciousness is essentially a quest into the nature of truth. I feel, perhaps with others, that it can prove informative so long as it doesn’t close the doors on the quest. We have never been able to package consciousness into language and treat it as something objectively distinct. It is a subjective phenomenon even at the most profound levels of awareness.

Best regards,

Bob”

Reply from Hans Ricke

Hans Ricke — Sat, 17 May 2008 04:41:43 -0000

Dear Alfredo, Dear Kolothuparambil,

actually I do not try to understand consciousness as such, completely etc. I conceive that as futile as to understand life, existence, matter and so on. I think our understanding – as far as we are getting – is very useful though, it can be at least.
What I am most interested in are aspects of consciousness that lead to a more conscious life of individuals and humanity ( which in times of globalisation becomes more of a sociological agent quite quickly ). What makes us more conscious, what less? What are the issues we need to be conscious about, which ones are less important? Which issues are crucial, life-threatening?
As a young physician I was very much interested in ground-breaking topics, and my efforts and ideas were acknowledged by quite a few people. But one day my boss said, I that I need to learn to set better priorities – wow! Consciousness as a topic does seem the right priority these days.

On a different note I like questioning definitions. But one was missing in Kolothuparambils list: model.
Models can be very simple and yet complete. That maybe the only way Esther could get somewhere in a reasonable time frame. Gobal Workspace Theory looks like a quite complete model, as far as I understand it. But maybe there are a few more steps possible in the directions I see when Chalmers mentions a flowchart. When we know the essential parts of the model, we would point out how they are linked.
One part I am convinced that it should belong to the model is memory, which I did not see the same way o short while ago.

Yours friendly
Hans

Reply from Alfredo Pereira Jr

Alfredo Pereira Jr — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:25:31 -0000

Dear All:

This Forum has received several interesting contributions. Kolothuparambil makes correct criticisms and ends with a good suggestion to Esther.
It seems that we all are – in one sense – Esthers, looking for a full understanding of consciousness – and failing.
I hope the sum of activities in this group will contribute to an advancement in the understanding of the causes of our persistent ignorance – and then we will know a bit more about consciousness…

Best

Alfredo

Reply from Kolothuparambil Madhusoodanan

Kolothuparambil Madhusoodanan — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:29:44 -0000

A complete model of consciousness? That sounds like three problems to me.
First problem is to define “completeness”. Second is defining consciousness and the third, defining the term “complete model of consciousness”. For thousands of years, from monks to philosophers to scientists have tried to understand the state identified by the term “consciousness”. Each person may define it in their own way. I figured that even if I put neuroscience, neurobiology, psychology, philosophy and evolution, together with my own subjective experiences, I still cant come up with a reasonable definition of “consciousness”. I guess any attempt to define consciousness will also have to cross the boundaries of relativity and uncertainty. The world of “complete model of consciousness” may be where relativity and uncertainty collapses, where one may travel infinite distance in 0 time and yet experience everything with infinite precision.
My suggestion is to start building from a partial model and then try to take it to a more complete model. I am sure that this complete model will never be established. Rather, there will be partial models that will be subject to continuous evolution through generations due to the existence of “time”.

Reply from chris lofting

chris lofting — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:12:05 -0000

Thomas, please consider:

Spontaneous flies

Maye A, Hsieh C-h, Sugihara G, Brembs B (2007) Order in Spontaneous Behavior. PLoS ONE 2(5): e443. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000443

Abstract:

“Brains are usually described as input/output systems: they transform sensory input into motor output. However, the motor output of brains (behavior) is notoriously variable, even under identical sensory conditions. The question of whether this behavioral variability merely reflects residual deviations due to extrinsic random noise in such otherwise deterministic systems or an intrinsic, adaptive indeterminacy trait is central for the basic understanding of brain function. Instead of random noise, we find a fractal order (resembling Le´vy flights) in the temporal structure of spontaneous flight maneuvers in tethered Drosophila fruit flies. Le´ vy-like probabilistic behavior patterns are evolutionarily conserved, suggesting a general neural mechanism underlying spontaneous behavior. Drosophila can produce these patterns endogenously, without any external cues. The fly’s behavior is controlled by brain circuits which operate as a nonlinear system with unstable dynamics far from equilibrium. These findings suggest that both general models of brain function and autonomous agents ought to include biologically relevant nonlinear, endogenous behavior-initiating mechanisms if they strive to realistically simulate biological brains or out-compete other agents.”

An extract:

“We show here that random noise cannot be the sole source of behavioral variability. In addition to the inevitable noise component, we detected a nonlinear signature suggesting deterministic endogenous processes (i.e., an initiator) involved in generating behavioural variability. It is this combination of chance and necessity that renders individual behavior so notoriously unpredictable. The consequences of this result are profound and may seem contradictory at first: despite being largely deterministic, this initiator falsifies the notion of behavioral determinism. By virtue of its sensitivity to initial conditions, the initiator renders genuine spontaneity (‘‘voluntariness’’ [30]) a biological trait even in flies” page 5

IDM comment:

The standard brain model developed from neurology covers differentiating/integrating and as such the indeterminate (differentiating realm, anti-symmetric) vs determinate (integrating realm, symmetric).

IDM brings out the JOINING of these into an asymmetric dichotomy brings out a dimension of POSSIBLE categories for the derivation of meaning. Thus we have synonyms of differentiate/integrate as:

Chance(possibilities)/necessity – [maps to MODAL logic]
Indeterminism/determinism
Parts/wholes
Local-context/non-local-context
Probabilities thinking induction/abduction)/deductive thinking
XOR/EQV
Difference/sameness
Far-from-equilibrium/equilibrium
Bottom-up/top-down
Free-will(singular)/determinism(particular-general)
Anti-symmetric/symmetric
What(who,which)/Where(when,how)

Oscillations across these dichotomies elicit categories of meaning. EXTEND that self-referencing and so go deep enough and out pops the development of languages as covered in my “Categories of Meaning” paper.

What THIS particular paper, “Order in Spontaneous Behavior”, brings out is the oscillations in the brain of a fly just as we have such in the brain of a zebra-fish or human. SAME patterns, different scales, and so showing scale invariance in GENERAL and the presence of POWER law dynamics and THAT comes out of self-referencing an ASYMMETRIC dichotomy (aka a trichotomy with one element being that of mediation). With this comes the only asymmetric logic operator, IMP (implies) and so prediction dynamics in the form of choices. The more neurologically/cognitively advanced the life form the more choices it can make (or derive categories to serve as a pool of possibles and local context extracts a ‘best fit’ actual)

What they have not developed is the self-referencing and going DEEP enough to generate analogy-making and so use of pattern-matching and so forecasting with HIGH precision where these patterns are hard-coded in that they reflect the use of all possible categories to flesh-out finer details in each category. (a fly or zebra fish do not have the neural complexity to go so deep and make fine level distinctions at a universal level and utilise those ‘out of the box’ of some specialisation)

Some further extracts:

“The variability in spontaneous fly turning behavior is not solely due to nonlinearity; rather, the nonlinear processes controlling the behavior also have to operate at just the right parameters to produce instability.
Moreover, the number of these nonlinear processes has to be small, as nonlinear signatures disappear with increasing superposition of multiple nonlinear processes [59,60]. Thus, flies are more than simple input/output machines. Similar to flies, human brains also are notorious for their variability and even devote most of their energy budget to intrinsic processing [21]. Our study supports the hypothesis that the nonlinear processes underlying spontaneous behavior initiation have evolved to generate behavioral indeterminacy: The choice of what behavior to produce in the next moment is rarely determinable exactly, but only probabilistically [17,19,20]. Implicitly, game theory, the biological study of choice behavior and neuroeconomics have incorporated this feature on an empirical basis [61–65].
If our results from a small fly brain hold also for more complex brains, they suggest that the biological basis of the widespread phenomenon of behavioral indeterminacy can be investigated” page 6

IDM comment:

The above gets into dynamics of self-referencing and the Chaos game. What I have covered before is that with increased distinction making comes border creation and so letting loose complexity/chaos dynamics and so emergences where LOCAL context will prefer some emergences over others and so drive/select behaviours. In humans the internalisation of these dynamics are in turning the reactive into the proactive – as covered in the control dynamics of out pre-frontal cortex and frontal lobe complexity.

“Because theoretical work suggests a range of competitive advantages for indeterminate behavior in virtually all animals [19,61–65,71], the structure of the indeterminacy should be incorporated explicitly into models of general brain function and autonomous agents” page 7

IDM comment:

Sure – it is hard coded into the neurology in general and clearly identified in our brain asymmetry re probabilities thinking (Bayesian statistics, part-whole dynamics) vs deductive thinking. See abstract at the end of this email.

“Our data raise the suspicion that future models of the brain may have to implement this or a related component for spontaneous behavior initiation, if they strive to be biologically realistic, outcompeting other models/agents” page 7

IDM comment:

The nature of our singular nature and so personal consciousness is our freedom of choice and so open to spontaneous decisions (the randomiser nature of consciousness and so the ability to be innovative in our creativity)

“The tedious distinction between random noise and unstable nonlinearity is worthwhile, because the former points to extrinsic origins of variability, whereas the latter indicates intrinsic origins. Technical advances frequently lead to a significant increase in signal to noise ratios. Such advances would increase the predictability of a brain where the main source of variability stems from noise. In contrast, noise reductions will only marginally change the predictability of a nonlinear brain whose output is fundamentally indeterministic, despite the deterministic rules that govern it. Given that there is a cost associated with producing indeterminate behavior [61], it is a straightforward inference that these latter rules have evolved specifically to generate varying degrees of behavioural indeterminism…” page 7

IDM comment:

The ASYMMETRIC dynamic is unstable and allows for the paradoxical due to its oscillation dynamics across part-whole relationships that get interpreted as whole-whole and can elicit paradox as such. These issues are tolerated due to the overall success of the asymmetric in dealing with information and in development languages. The benefits of the language derivation are in the transcendence nature of such, but the price will be uncertainties in such due to the perpetual transcendence ability!

The ANTI-symmetric realm covers the mereological where it includes the concept of the ‘unique’.

“This notion of brains operating on the critical edge between determinism and chaos has also been used to describe human magnetoencephalographic recordings [78]. Analogous to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle [79,80], much behavioral variability arises not out of practical constraints, but out of the principles of evolved brain function. Given these considerations and that our data imply a memory for past events influencing behaviour initiation, it is tempting to perceive such mechanisms of spontaneous behavior initiation as the basis for operant behavior, operant conditioning and habit formation” page 8

IDM comment:

... as covered in the IDM focus on increased distinction-making in that it creates borders and so increase in complexity/chaos dynamics through oscillations across those borders and so MORE mediation, MORE asymmetry.

From the distinctions comes conversion of DIFFERENCE to SAMENESS through extraction of essential elements to support the refinement of instincts/habits overall – and so an INCREASE in symmetric perspectives, the price of which is overall ‘dumbing down’. This is a threat to consciousness in that it leads to mediation being no longer required as more ‘law’ is learnt! Perfection as such is ‘death’ to us. So …. viva la difference! – the issue THEN is the increase fragmentation of the species and its collectives but that can also lead to phase transition states and re-configuration of existing forms into new ones but still within the symmetry of the species. As more and more re-configurations happen so we run out of ‘new forms’ and start repeating old ones – this repetition being a property of symmetry!

The Categories of Mediation paper )

takes us much deeper into the dynamics of self-referencing and the emergence of language – as it does the degree of determinism present where such is brought-out in the XOR material.

As such I dont see consciousness as we know it manifest in insects etc due to lack in complexity required for high level differentiations necessary for consciousness to function BUT the presence of neurology makes it easy to detect isomorphic patterns of behaviours shared by all neuron-dependent life forms.

Reply from Thomas Brody

Thomas Brody — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:56:22 -0000

Since consciousness is likely to be present in invertebrates or emergent from systems present in invertebrates, a good place to start your investigations might be the inner workings of mental events in insects. You could begin with well worked out systems such as photoperiod response in the fly or reception and processing of odorant cues. As an introduction, a summary of behavioral pardigms is available in The Interactive Fly.

Reply from Mark Peaty

Mark Peaty — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:31:38 -0000

sorry, I somehow edited out the link to Steve Lehar’s page after pasting my spiel into the input box

http://cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/cartoonepist/cartoonepist.html

BTW Hans,
1/ thanks for bringing me to this thread,
2/ have we corresponded before? Was I really the person you were trying to lead here? if not … serendipity!

Mark

Reply from Mark Peaty

Mark Peaty — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:59:01 -0000

Esther hello,

About Esther’s quest

Hans Ricke just brought my attention to this very ambitious project of yours – worthy it seems, and may your life time be long enough to see its ultimate fruition.
Nah, just joking, so long as you include the word “summary” somewhere very close to the start of the opus!

Forgive me if I just make some brief notes on the story you and the commentators have made so far. The owners of the [to me] familiar names amongst them will be rolling their eyes with “Amen to the ‘brief bit!”

EA [8 Feb 08]: “I may be biting off more than I can chew,”

MP: He, he, I think the trick is going to be spitting out the bones and gristle as fast as you can!

EA [8 Feb]: “Does anyone have any pet theories they think would be useful for me to look in to?”

MP: Yes. Here is something succinct, to which I give the acronym “UMSITW” [pronounced um-see-two] which stands for Updating Model of Self In The World. I came across the basis of it in the writings of Susan Blackmore, whose style of writing and clarity of thought make her ideas on consciousness related issues very approachable.
I understand the idea of self-modelling as the basis of subjective awareness to be the essence of Thomas Metzinger’s description of C also, but I have not read much of his stuff.

The guts of the idea is that for navigational purposes, and generally in order to move in ways which increase an animal’s/person’s survival prospects, etc., the better a creature is able to model its environment and its own location within that environment then the greater are its survival prospects. This entails three types of representation: representation of significant features of the environment, representation of self, and representation of currently important relationships between self and environment.

Note: ‘Environment’ generally means anything which or who is not-self, although often the boundaries between self and not-self can be much more vague or variable than we realise. Note also that radical/eliminative behaviourists abhor the very concept of representations as such so when in their company you must say ‘responses’ or ‘behaviours’ when you mean representations.

To put it simply: subjective awareness is what it is like to be the updating of the model of self in the world. This involves the linking of currently active representations of the environment with currently active representations of self by means of processes [neural network activities] which embody representation of relevant relationships between world model and self model.

If this is true then it provides a deft answer to Thomas Nagel’s question: What is it like to be a bat? The answer is “Nothing”, because it is the wrong question. The correct question is: What is it like to be the model of self in the world created and updated within the brain of a bat? The answer then becomes: “We don’t know but there are things we can do which might enable us to get an idea. [Things like virtual reality simulation of eye-blind echo locating, or blindfolded remote control of an artificial bat/helicopter/whatever using echo location.]

EA [12 Feb]: “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, ...”

MP: I think you are getting the hang of it! I think that Edelman’s ideas of neuronal group selection, neural Darwinism, and so forth, provide a very powerful conceptual foundation for understanding the brain’s ability to host/embody repeatable, labile, and potent constructs able to BE the representations of self in the world.

I call these things in the brain dynamic logical structures. I believe they exist and they constitute the patterns of internal behaviour which ARE mental objects, percepts, motor skills. Thus – crudely put – a dynamic logical structure which currently represents the appearance of a rose for example, will BE a quale if it is entrained within a greater construct transiently representing the self looking at the rose. the construct of the potential appearance of the rose will not be a quale if it is currently active but NOT linked in as part of the model of self in the world.

Can I recommend you having a squiz at Steven Lehar’s very approachable [but challenging!] Gestalt bubble hypothesis. That terminology sounds terrible I know but his “Cartoon epistemology” gives the story in on-line cartoon format [still drawings, not animations]

D*mn! I said brief. So, I’m a liar. It’s in my genes.

Cheers,
Mark

Reply from chris lofting

chris lofting — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:05:08 -0000

“Categories … derived from … neurology’, seems to bypass psychology, which seems to be premature. Very much premature, if it can be shown at all”

(1) The developement of the neuron goes back to sponge life circa 600 million years ago; I dont think psychology is anywhere near that ;-)

(2) from basic brain oscillations across the neurology we can dervive the basics of meaning; no psychology necessary ;-) See the IDM material

Meaning does not start with us! the basic qualities are present in at least all neuron-dependent life forms.

(3) the dynamics of concepts is dependent on the presence of categories as the categories are dependent on the presence of neurology. Compared to neurosciences, psychology is a ‘soft’ science and as such is a specialisation of what the neurosciences cover. The development of psychology etc brings out the ad hoc dynamics in understanding ourselves and reality where specialisations are a natural product of such when one has no idea what one is dealing with ;-) Now we DO have an idea, a vague one but enough to deal with in making our understandings more precise. BUT to understand all of that requires understanding of neurosciences, not psychology. More so the work coming out of neurosciences/cogSci is forcing psychology to re-assess itself through the need to re-configure the specialisation in response to neuroscience research – why talk to the jockey when we know have access to getting it all direct from the horse’s mouth?

you wrote:

“Moreover consciousness is a natural phenomenon, a very basic one on top of that”

Really – and where did you get that idea from? Analysis of the development of the neuron, from basic form to complex systems (such as human brains) brings out the emergence of consciousness from increased competition and so differentiating required in mediating with that competition. As such, conscious presents more as a derived entity, not an originating entity. – or more so there is no need, at this time, for such a concept as consciousness-as-originating.

The basic brain dynamics brings out a fractal aspect in the form of information processing through part/whole dynamics with an artifact of such being consciousness as an agent of mediation and randomness – in other words Darwin’s mutation is in our heads in the form of our singular being, our uniqueness that shares space with our social being, our particular natures as species members.

Reply from Hans Ricke

Hans Ricke — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:04:35 -0000

Dear Chris,

just very quickly. You wrote:”ANY reflections on ANY concepts, and that includes consciousness, will utilise ‘in the box’ thinking where such covers the use of categories to seed concept formations. These categories are derived from the dynamics of the NEUROLOGY not the sensory systems.”

‘Categories … derived from … neurology’, seems to bypass psychology, which seems to be premature. Very much premature, if it can be shown at all.
Moreover consciousness is a natural phenomenon, a very basic one on top of that. Concepts of really existing phenomena are very much different from concepts that refer to very abstract phenomena, say ideas that exist in our mind only/in the first place and not in nature.

Yours friendly
Hans

Reply from chris lofting

chris lofting — Sat, 03 May 2008 09:58:17 -0000

ANY reflections on ANY concepts, and that includes consciousness, will utilise ‘in the box’ thinking where such covers the use of categories to seed concept formations. These categories are derived from the dynamics of the NEUROLOGY not the sensory systems. The sensory systems as SPECIALIST extensions of the neurology and as such are customised and can distort perceptions.

So – can we identify categories that work as universals across all sensory systems? yes we can and whats more those categories seed our concepts and so our theories of reality; in other words consciousness will reflect that seeding.

Given this focus on the neurology so we can map out as basic in development, namely what happens when we encapsulate, and so contain ‘noise’, we get spontaneous order through self-referencing and we get that across ALL scales (Google the “Chaos Game”)

In other words our neurology reflects self-referencing in the containment of information as do all specialist sensory systems – and so we are dealing with a hierarchy of containers, each more specialist than the others, each more precise, more differentiating, as we move up the neural hierarchy.

Following this path of development we notice the hierarchy takes on two forms, non-nested and nested. These seem to deal with issues of difference processing (Non-nested) and sameness processing (nested).

Close analysis of research brings out the dichotomy of anti-symmetry/symmetry (aka differentiating/integrating) that is operating in our brains. Brain oscillations bring out the derivation of categories of meaning from the mediation requirements in dealing with reality where such includes the creation of categories and from there the derivation of languages to communicate. This act brings out the emergence of consciousness from mediation dynamics where the more differentiation that goes on so the more borders are created so the more we let loose what lives on borders – complexity/chaos dynamics and so we let loose the realm of emergences.

High level consciousness is strongly correlated with differentiation skills and so improvements in resolution powers etc.

If we focus on the mediation dynamics manifest in brain oscillations so we cover an asymmetric realm operating between the anti-symmetric (parts, part/whole dynamics) and the symmetric (wholes). It this realm that consciousness has developed in and works from in that it is this realm that covers the path to any form of transcendence; all else is simply shape-shifting and so transformations.

THus we realise that consciousness is NOT from the realm of symmetry since symmetry deals with sameness and consciousness is more biased to being unique and so different but with some aspect of same!

Given this bias to differences so consciousness is associated with the realm of the anti-symmetric through ITS focus on difference management – in other words consciousness reflects a focus on LOCAL reality.

If we take a step back we can map out:

anti-symmetry = random, unknown, IS/IS-NOT, chance. Our brains reflect this in a bias in most to a left hemisphere function of probabilities thinking and so use of Baysian methods – subjective probabilities, HIGH risk, but also very fast and precise – LOCALLY.

asymmetry = uncertainties, necessities, possibilities.

symmetry = certainties, law, determinism, and so the objective, non-local.

Consciousness ‘demands’ asymmetry in that when we form habits/instincts there is no need for consciousness and habits/instincts cover issues of sameness (and that includes the use of sameness to extract patterns from differences where such aid in developing instincts/habits and so law)

Consciousness also demands high level differentiations and the skills of the frontal lobes and pfc to make things PROACTIVE more than reactive and so skills in planning and in regulating the less precise expressions of basic emotions and so our ape natures.

From the realm of the asymmetric we can map out, using self-referencing, the categories of consciousness in the form of mediation strategies that can turn into representations in the form of individual consciousness and so from there map out detials on properties and methods of each mediation strategy.

See my draft Categories of Mediation

Hope all of that can help Esther ;-)

Chris.

Reply from Hans Ricke

Hans Ricke — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:30:26 -0000

I must say, I do not like this forum software, because it makes things like quoting too difficult.

Esther, you wrote in your last post: “I too feel that qualia and consciousness are related – in fact I feel that the consciousness we experience is merely a collection of qualia, probably an individual quale from each neuron active in the brain’s ‘main circuit’ at any one time.”

Let me comment. Feeling does not look very scientific. On the other hand, what you feel makes sense. Once qualia are accepted, their releatedness to consciousness is obvious.
If you say merely, you seem to narrow it down too much. That would be one aspect of consciousness. If you look at qualia, you look at experiences in a certain sense, the quality of them.
There is another aspect, we can call that experience as such. When we do not hear, we can be still conscious of other things. When we really think and get lost in it, we may not have much of other sources of content in our consciousness. What happens in these moments to the part of consciousness that is providing conscious auditory qualia? Is it empty? Are we just not aware of it then? If we are not aware of it, why would we call it part of consciousness?
We can also look at things completely different and say conciousness is a kind of sensory organ ( system ) within humans, that provides conscious expereinces of what is built from visual, auditive etc. input.
We can also look much more different at consciousness and ask what happens when a group of people is conscious of something? If individuals are conscious of things they may have knowledge, If 200 000 000 people are conscious of something, that is called consciousness as well. Does that make sense and how would that fit in your attempt of a complete model?

Reply from marvin kirsh

marvin kirsh — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:36:46 -0000

With Regards to A Science of Consciousness

The story(the mind) and the book (the brain) Nigel http://network.nature.com/forums/bpcc/438?page=4.. my pet point comes immediately to light..especially with the “Point question” how is the book reading the story?” I wanted to point out that it is always the story reading(or trying to make sense of) the book. There is no way around my interpretation regardless of the constructs or data we assemble. Some things are not knowable: all we have (are in essence) to probe is the story (our awareness and consciousness)..my view is that regarding the functioning of nature, the success of survival…that men simply add questions like children to his observations that exceed the needs of understanding .understanding of his continuance-complete meaning-especially when his philosophy is still incomplete..and that what we do not know: the question arising from inverting book with story sums to incoherent questioning. There is always a perplexity to nature:a part of the bundle:package deal in that our certainties are not constants but variables held higher in perception because they are more prominent with respect to the rest and explain more of the time the world we do experience and are familiar with But the world is always open -the forwards path is always in the greatest diversity direction of greatest openness , more surface and volume. It is just perplexing because the truth, even to our most highest held concepts is at a90 degree tangent to the line of sight-regardless of what we interpret-or concepts (for instance a detail of the road we most travel-but there are other roads) there is more question possible. The story reading the book-the story also arrives from the book:the result is all we have is the solid earth we sense, and a perception/survival mechanism that functions at it root in a manner superfluous to it. The gene for Beta-lactosidase for example is a palindrome:reads the same forwards and reverse , and goes on to process milk even if all of the rest is inverted, the road we relate to and its actual mental-response eliciting meaning: relsted to a past road(i.e that our behavior is inappropriate to the present see Nietzsche:about (on the geneology of morals) the Jews and Arians):we keep drinking eating as long as we physically sense a road. (for this reasoning I believe inversions if not a whole ironically genetic make up(e.g chromosomes are recently shown t contract to pulling forces rather than to expand-with regards our scientific planning for nature :it works against ourself-arrives from self denigrating (incoherency bearing) abstraction :which must originate and result in this phenomenon)) are at both the root and nature of what identifies mankind… and he comes to test :crossing points possessed with blinding inversions composing his nature -pass or fail there is no mechanism to say the difference and continues with his milk etc.) I think current genome mapping and analysis will find inversions related to sight and seeing -foot and mouth etc. swallowing (ideas?)(failed births related to up down water weight, etc) pathologies etc..the possibilities are immense. And yet a correct course is only a mental motion away to know this before our storys dig in the book to damage it. It is hard tofrom the ancient dialogues if something is perceived wrong then or not :a pursuit of knowledge for its own sake or a sense of something unjust, inappropriate to pursue a topic of morality and knowledge in order to define footing in a (subtly) slanted setting. I think the best,best grounded,soundest of all if George Berkeley on Mind and Matter:he never once transgresses a limit of man with respect to nature-himself:fills in the unknown with an aware always present deity as the only logical alternative and doesn’t believe in the existence of matter an odd eccentric sounding idea that is today controversial. Why are writing prominent at sometimes and unknown at others. I don’t think these occasions involve new spontaneous revelations. There are lots of new science references with new views related to emergence that open the doors to such interpretations. The theory of relativity breathes dualisms:seeks a monism but by its very conception is a monism yet incompatible immiscible with the dualisms of it’s basic nature:is very conflicting and arousing and illogical that only the highest IQs:abstractions (incoherent to ordinary language) can assimilate relative time A basic one, appropriate to consciousness and cognition is in Scientific American% – Selective Vision: the Brains Spin Machine Starts Early Anticipating Reward: More Than Meets The Eye Susanna Martinez-Conde Nigels analogy of book and story is very rich and good focusing point.

Marvin E. Kirsh
http://www.authorsden.com/marvinelikirsh
kirsh2152000@yahoo.com

Reply from SUNIL THAKUR

SUNIL THAKUR — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:53:19 -0000

Dear Alfredo

Point noted. I absolutely agree that the idea od relativity is similar to the special theory of relativity most of which are derived from Lorentz transformations. Einstein’s observations on relative aspect of nature are exceptional. I have only been insisting that we need to find causal explanation for these observations. It is going one step beyond.

keeping in mind your instructions to avoid off-topic discussions, I am not commenting anything on general relativity.

Your observation that relativity principle corresponds to the way brain works is quite interesting. It is a very significant observation. Bang! the more I think about it the more I like it. The second component of relativity…the vital link between physics and philosophy.

Thanks Alfredo! In this quest of mine to understand truth there have been numerous so to speak, ‘divine interventions’. I think my participation in the discussion was to provide me this link…it is so important in understanding our nature. We had touched it in previous discussions but I missed it…Thanks once again.

When we speak of brain or consciousness then nothing remains outside the scope…it is not the FTL communication but the communication mechanism that is so important because then only we can understand how brain functions. FTL communication is ruled out from the two postulates of the special theory but it does not invalidate everything that Einstein has observed in special and general theory.

I had read somewhere that Einstein had once stated that there are two types of people – those who like me and those who hate me.

This is the problem. Those who follow him believe that everything that he has said is correct and those who do not follow him believe that everything he has talked is rubbish.

Whatever happens to special theory, Einstein will remain one of the biggest names in science for the sheer implications of his observations on our understanding of nature including on our understaning of consciousness.

I must thank you once again for enlightening me on several important concepts.

Sunil

Reply from Alfredo Pereira Jr

Alfredo Pereira Jr — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:51:45 -0000

Dear All:

I would like to make a synthesis of discussion in this forum topic and a recommendation.
1) Esther is in fact working on a general principle of consciousness, not a complete model. The principle is that lived experiences and their conscious contents (‘qualia’) are always relative to a spatio-temporal context. Important consciousness theorists, like Chris Nunn, seem to agree on this principle;
2) This idea of relativity is similar to the special theory of relativity introduced by Einstein;
3) However, in the general theory of relativity, Einstein introduced the idea of an absolute, four-dimensional space-time. Several scientists and philosophers did not accept this idea, including Hans Reichenbach and some of us;
4) The relativity principle corresponds to the way that the brain works. This part of the discussion is more closely related to this group´s topic;
5) The discussion about the validity of Einstein´s theory and possible violations of general relativity by particles traveling faster than light to reproduce their previous states, goes far beyond the topic of this group and should be avoided. The Nature Network staff is working on rules to avoid off-topic discussions. Soon they will be published and we will have to follow them!

Best Regards

Alfredo

Reply from SUNIL THAKUR

SUNIL THAKUR — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:00:46 -0000

Hello Esther

I think education interferes with our thinking in three ways – first, we stop asking enough whys and hows and second we are forced to believe that what we know must fit in with what is already known and finally it eliminates the possibilites because we tend to think that someone has already worked on the concept and has explained it.

It is not learning that creates problem because we have to trust others knowledge. Most of what we know is acquired from our family members esp. parents and we cannot question everything that they tell us.

The problem is that instead of getting to the cause we decide to attribute an observed phenomenon to the nature. Be it wave-particle duality, time dilation, oscillations of atoms or any such phenomenon, we believe that if we cannot aunderstand something then uncertainty has to be attributed to nature or at best we say that it is the tendency of things to behave in a particular manner.

Problem is that even when we see deviation from a known phenomenon we say that it cannot happen because such and such theory prohibits it. If we observe something that cannot be explained with a theory then obvious conclusion is that the theory is wrong. Theory remains an important contribution because it either opens up a possibility or closes a possibility.

Idea of education should be to develop logical thinking and not to thrust information, it should be to develop curosity not to crush it, it should be to inform the present status and not to project it as final truth.

In Physics Today, a debate was on a few issues back on why Einstein’s theories should not be termed as laws.

I think obvious answer is that it does not give causal explanations for most of the phenomenon and it does not apply ‘differential diagnosis’ enough.

I follow the crude methods like when working on my theory of light, I decided to break the prism to find out what makes it break the light into its constituent spectral colors. Glass behaves differently when arranged in different manner.

Same phenomenon can be viewed differently by different observers. Initial belief was that prism produces colors then Newton thought that colors are already present in the light and to confirm his finding he made the spectrum pass through a magnifying glass and produced white light. My understanding is that it is one type of energy that enters the prism with a possibility to manifest itself in different ways.

I think that differnt colors are produced because of variations in thermal equilibrium. Of course, the nature of energy coming in is also very important.

Light must have the property to manifest itself in differnt ways but it needs a medium for each of these properties to manifest and that is my idea of relativity.

Something exist with a possibility to manifest itself in various ways but needs an appropriate medium through which these different properties can manifest themselves.

It is the difference in the properties of the medium that brings in relativity.

Color properties of light would remain
unmanifested if objects were not selective in reflecting it (I do not agree with this theory also) or if spectrum is not produced in different conditions.

I am still working on some of the ideas of Alfredo esp. his idea of time (time is a function of transformation of energy). Philosophical view of time is that it is something that is used to describe relative development of events.

Development is nothing but transformation from one form to another even though such transformation at times cannot be noticeable but it still is a constant process.

My idea of time is quite similar that it is a constant process that changes things irreversibly. It allows me to look for something that causes things to change and that must happen with all systems.

All the best..I am looking forward to any new ideas from you.

Sunil

Reply from Esther Allerton

Esther Allerton — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 20:51:40 -0000

Good to see you here, John! For anyone who hasn’t realised, John Duffield is the author of Relativity+, the paper which I admire so greatly and has inspired me on my quest.

I too feel that qualia and consciousness are related – in fact I feel that the consciousness we experience is merely a collection of qualia, probably an individual quale from each neuron active in the brain’s ‘main circuit’ at any one time. My opinions on the matter are liable to change though. I also find it difficult to believe it’s only an illusion – I think it’s more like a dream with inputs from the outside world.

Sunil – that quote about education struck a chord with me – “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” It reminded me of something Chris Nunn said in his book about the smooth progress of education being good for creating Jobsworths but not for promoting creativity. A lot of my time is devoted to home-schooling my son in an attempt to prevent ‘education’ spoiling his learning! You said that you hadn’t done much physics so you didn’t have to unlearn too much. Now that I can understand. Physics, as it was taught at school, just didn’t seem to make any sense at all to me – it always felt like were completely missing the point somewhere. I became so disenchanted with it that as soon as I could I dropped the subject completely, though I persevered a little longer with chemistry and biology. Unlearning stuff is so time consuming…

The book also talked about creativity being stimulated when people emigrate. I can sympathise with this, too. You don’t realise how much your memes and mindset are based on your local culture and climate. When you find yourself having to learn everything again from scratch, including a new language, it makes you ‘reset your white-balance’ – things that you took as gospel now appear incredibly narrow minded and it makes you look at everything in a new light, helping you understand things at a much more fundamental level.

I used to have a mental image of my mind being like a pool of water with ideas being like crystals forming by attracting suitable molecules from those dissolved in the water, a bit like Chris Nunn’s attractor landscapes. Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance, talked about ideas crystalising suddenly from hot, supersaturated solutions as they cooled. My aim at the moment is to start off with a small idea, or seed-crystal, then heat up and supersaturate the solution by reading and discussing other people’s ideas (though I feel like I’m overloading sometimes…) and hope that something vaguely coherent will crystalise out. Hopefully I can avoid falling into the trap of ‘lazy thinking’ caused by reading too much by constantly being aware of my original ideas and just using the reading to find other ideas that fit well and can help build up something new. My son likes to build robots out of lego, and sometimes it feels like I’m playing with lego too. I’m using relativity+ as a base then taking appropriate bits and pieces from all the other kits and trying to fit them together to make something new, modifying them a bit as I go if I can’t find the bits I need. My next ‘lego kit’ is going to be The Astonishing Hypothesis – I’ll report back in a few days to let you know what useful bits and bobs I find in it!

Reply from John Duffield

John Duffield — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:02:48 -0000

Hi Esther.

You know how I said colour was a quale? One of the qualia? Well, I have this nasty sneaking suspicion that consciousness is somewhat similar. IMHO it’s loopy in that there’s some kind of recursive feedback loop in there, where you brain creates a model, and one of the inputs to this model is the model itself. But in the end it isn’t real. Just an illusion. And yet, and yet: it’s real to us. In fact is the only thing that’s real to us.

I tend to this view because I’ve had so much experience of people showing conviction and belief instead of rationality, that sometimes I swear the shutters are down and there’s nobody home. More so than people like to think… because they only think they think! LOL. There was something in my New Scientist along these lines a couple of months back, I’ll try to dig it out for you.

But of course, this isn’t my area. So I’ll bow out, and hope that others with expertise can assist.