Originally created 16th January 2024
My posts on the topic of Consciousness:
Physicalist Consciousness - third attempt on the problem of Consciousness (You are here)
Originally created 16th January 2024
Questions in Experience Realism - some questions about Qualia - Consciousness and Formlessness - Metaphysics
Originally created 13th January 2024
Evolved Existence Programming - second attempt on the problem of Consciousness
Originally created 11th January 2024
Evolved Emergent Qualia - first attempt on the problem of Consciousness
Originally created 5th January 2024
I think that biological neuroscientific data is helpful for generating and guiding theories of consciousness, as well as evolutionary theory and possibly systems theory.
I think that theories on even the hard problems of consciousness may be able to generate testable predictions, if experimenters are able to repeatedly test the predictions on their own consciousness.
I think new Physics or a reinterpretation of some of current Physics will need to be theorised. Once it is discovered, we will call it (part of) Physics.
I think that organisms have evolved to generate and experience an integrated consciousness directly in their own Physics.
I think the primary, but not only, evolutionary benefit was as a mechanism to make larger organisms more able in their evolutionary competition. Relying on learned models alone for decision making must not be as effective. An intelligent being who relies only on DNA information to guide its values will find its values will not give it a sufficient survivability in a complex world. Feeling can provide values that remain beneficial to the organism in complex, changing environments a long time after birth. But it may in fact be the very first hours after birth that are most crucial, where being conscious of feeling gives an edge, against a relatively unmodeled brain which is not conscious.
Because of this, it is imperative that the brain itself is the experiencer of consciousness - it should not happen "elsewhere", as in a dualist (or, arguably, a functionalist) interpretation.
Our conscious experience is integrated from the processed input signals and is used to help decide next actions (output signals). This means that we can expect the integration to occur in a way which minimises delay in the more computationally-heavy and potentially urgent input scenario. The best candidate for this is in and around the intralaminary nuclei of the thalamus. The central location minimises delay of processed signals from processing centres all across the brain, and it has excellent communication links and blood flow. It's well protected, and as there are two mirror sides, seems plausible that it can be at least a bit fault tolerant (though a neuroscientist would need to confim). Areas of the thalamus have been found to be a direct neural correlate of consciousness in the past. For many of these reasons the brain stem is also a very good candidate.
I think that non-dualist and non-functional explanations are best for describing how a brain might be the direct experiencer of conscious experience. The candidates that I'm aware fitting best would be Orchestrated Objective Reduction and/or Biological Naturalism and/or Cosmopsychism.
Integrated Information Theory is the Cargo Cult of Consciousness Theory. Manage to create something complex and informationey? Congratulations! You have created a conscious being! For a few more seriously put arguments against, please see Scott Aaronson's Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist. (I agree with most but not all of what Aaronson says. I hold reasonable confidence there is not a cyan teapot circling the moon at this precise moment, and I have no reason as yet to believe I won't eventually have similar confidence in what is and is not conscious, once a theory is better understood. Even though I'm not saying I am certain there is no cyan teapot circling the moon).
The aim of this discussion (and my earlier discussions) is provide supporting arguments as to why these 3 theories, of the half-dozen or more major theories, should be the ones to lend most credence to. It still remains for proponents of the theories to gain the definitive success.
A more distant possibility is that the brain works in dualistic symbiosis with an intelligent consciousness. I haven't ruled that out, but while conceptually simple it seems a more opaque explanation and has it's own difficulties (mind-body problem).
Suppose that conscious experience is something evolution (accidentally) stumbled upon and settled on because it was helpful in itself for evolutionary survival.
If that were so, either conscious experience is somehow informationarily useful to an organism, or it is useful as an incentivisation mechanism, or both.
As an information processing mechanism, it might well happen to be the case that the most efficient and unified state model (for efficiency purposes) that evolution could arrive upon, also happened be one where that unified information was a harmoniously integrated experiential reality.
- However, this formulation still seems to have the experience itself as more or less a byproduct of the information storage, therefore I think if this were the only reason then the conscious experience of humans would be considerably more erratic, like the experiential equivalent of a dockyard with cranes and containers going all over the place.
As an incentivisation method, a Will would be required, and physical aspects of the brain obeying at least some of its instructions, for there to be survival value. At a minimum this must be some reflection on the current experience, and a decision as to whether this is a) harmoniously integrated experience, and b) good for survival.
- One option is that the Will is metaconscious - it is conscious of our experience. This would allow a straightforward answer for how it can be a judge of experience.
- It seems hard to imagine a metaphysical Will and its implementation, but on the other hand it would be hard to imagine anything like red experience for someone born blind.
- Another answer is that the Will is implemented by the brain, but evolution has given it great skill at understanding what the physical signs of a well integrated experience should look like.
- A metaphysical Will certainly raises further questions, whereas a purely physical brain-based explanation doesn't seem out of reach.
The supposition is that the brain is rating the physical characteristics of the conscious experience as "positive" or "negative" based on factors which include harmonious integration of whole experience, and acting on this being possitively correlated to survival. A necessary part of this theory is that wherever the brain was not a good judge of harmoniously integrated experience (from its physical aspects), then it would be negatively correlated enough with reproduction, that only those brains which can generate harmonious experiences become the majority trait of the population.
- This seems a plausible enough rationale at first, provided the physical characteristics are amenable enough to physical detection.
- However, on review it's unclear how the brain would know what were the right feelings to use, and in what proportions, if all it knew was the data
- It also doesn't wholly explain why it would need to be a conscious experience, rather than just purely information processing.
Aside from the metaphysical Will possibility, there can be other theories - is there a more extensive conscious being which moves into the body and has more control of how it operates and generates experience, as per ideas of reincarnation, or subjectivism? It seems hard to account for the processes involved, and how it would not be like watching a game of GTA 5 online characters (inb4..).
I could more readily accept the notion of a conscious being developing from near scratch symbiotically with the body. I initially have trouble understanding how that relates to survivability, if the conscious being could generate a state of bliss using its body. But in fact the brain could be evolved to keep only sensible survival options on the table initially.
Another possibility is to view the brain more as a bed of consciousness, whereby the brain itself is the experiencer (or perhaps a better metaphor is the bed is consciousness and the brain discovers what that feels like). This is somewhat closer to IIT in nature, but I'm not convinced that theory has resolved the physicalist question coming from the other direction either. This is why I would prefer to view Consciousness as a kind of primitive Physical energy arrangement, which the brain has the necessary material hardware to generate and interpret. If the body genuinely experiences consciousness, would that concord with the theory "the body keeps the score", or only raise more questions? Probably more, due to phantom limbs, paralysis.
It's these latter 2 theories that seems most likely to me right now - that experience aids survival primarily (but not solely) from a decision-making aspect, and:
- either that it is a genuine intelligence in its own right (but somehow linked to a specific body)
- or that it is a phenomena experienced by the brain directly
I think it helps to follow the metaphor that consciousness is a bed for the brain to lie upon, enjoy. Consciousness is the apple to be enjoyed, and the brain has evolved to make the most of that apple for its own sake. Because that is what the organism wants more of (but nonetheless the organism must also fit the constraints of survivability). The brain clings to (various aspects of reality via) consciousness rather than consciousness clings to (the whole reality via) the brain.
So it is not so much for information processing (though it does have that function), and it is not so much decision making (though it also has that function), but it is for the joy of experience in-and-of itself. It, consciousness, is (literally) a sweet reward for living, for the organism. In the dynamic, nuanced and long-living world of large intelligent organisms, "reasons to live" that refer to experience give the organism an improvement in survival and reproduction during evolution.
Is it like an oil painting that one can efficiently tend to specific details, and indefinitely make efficient alterations as needed with a brush? (IIT would fall into this categorization with its state-based definition and implied fast state transitions).
- This seems far fetched and raising many new questions, however if it were possible to arrive from at from an evolutionary pathway, it also sounds very efficient.
- If the state of the picture exists globally, then how would there be access control?
- If the state exists in the brain, then where? What keeps it staying physically within the brain?
- If the state is represented by the brain, and conforming to a prescribed external logic, then why and how is that logic determined?
Or is it like an orchestra, where every musician sends out a different sound and it arrives at the conductor and audience, whose arm movement and facial expressions in turn help guide the future action of the orchestra?
- As far as efficiency is concerned, it may be fastest to send the individual signals to arrive single place (preferably simultaneously) than to travel to every source location asking N times for the latest.
- It seems like if the Will theory is taken, then the Will should be nearest the point of convergence.
Or is it like a person performing a relay-run delivering messages between two locations continuously, with the thing being relayed also having conscious experience?
- I'm unaware of a good candidate for this theory, as the spinal cord can be severed or half the brain removed without loss of consciousness. The brain stem could be a next-best candidate, but I don't know if there's an appropriate relay end-point at it's bottom? Or around the internal medullary laminar of the thalamus?
Discussions welcome!
- Upanishads - consciousness as analagous to sound (ōm)
- Thales - Arche
- Panpsychism
- Plato - Theory of form
- Epicurus - organisms are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain
- Herbert Spencer - the idea that consciousness is evolved, aiding survival through better mental processing
- Physicalism
- Delay-line memory
- Allen Newell and Herbert Simon - consciousness provides the intelligent being an edge due to better goal setting than non-conscious intelligent beings
- Searle - Biological Naturalism
- Penrose and Hammeroff - Orchestrated objective reduction
- Antonio Damasio - somatic markers (emotions aiding decision processes)
- Priority Cosmopsychism
- Mark Solms - the importance of consciousness for the survival of newly born in particular
- Please contact me by Discussions (link above), Issues or Pull Request