What work does p-consciousness do?

[Steve Esser]

I’ve been thinking that the core of the problem with the Ned Block/David Chalmers breakdown of the problem of consciousness (access vs. phenomenal; “easy” vs. “hard”) is the pushing of subjective experience to epiphenomenal status. Why would we expect people to start accepting the ontological necessity of something epiphenomenal? The burden on those of us who think subjective experience is something fundamental in nature is then to show that P-consciousness must do some kind of work in the world – it must be associated with action and causation.

But we know old-fashioned interactionist dualism won’t succeed, so what is this work that p-consciousness does? Where does the causal closure of the physical world fail? Gregg Rosenberg’s book, which will be the topic of a different thread, is thought-provoking on proposing a general link between experience and the fundamental underpinnings of all causality. But let me ask the question here: what specific work might experience do? Alternatively, where are the traces of the impact p-consciousness has on nature?

Let me put up 2 candidates. First, the interpretation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics may necessitate the existence of an experiential element in nature. P-consciousness is necessary to do the work of quantum measurements/interactions in the world. Second, the coordinated activity of components in complex organized systems (including but perhaps not limited to humans or living things) requires a binding element which in our human case is felt as p-consciousness.

 

[ghrosenb@hotmail.com]

Hi Steve,

FWIW, my belief is close to the last part of your suggestion. If the Theory of Natural Individuals holds, the "purpose" of any natural individual is to achieve a more definite effective state for itself by reducing the number of possible joint states of its bound individuals. In the context of the brain, the hypothesized cortical natural individual has an effective state whose purpose is to initiate or modulate motor programming. We can think of its effective state as constituted by a set of interfaces between the individuals it binds and the body's motor systems. I would suppose that the cortical individual's specific purpose (i.e., why it would be selected for by evolution) is to reduce its constituent's possible joint states in a way that reflects a more reliable integration of all the relevant information being fed to the cortex.

--Gregg

I’ve been thinking that the core of the problem with the Ned Block/David Chalmers breakdown of the problem of consciousness (access vs. phenomenal; “easy” vs. “hard”) is the pushing of subjective experience to epiphenomenal status. Why would we expect people to start accepting the ontological necessity of something epiphenomenal? The burden on those of us who think subjective experience is something fundamental in nature is then to show that P-consciousness must do some kind of work in the world – it must be associated with action and causation.

But we know old-fashioned interactionist dualism won’t succeed, so what is this work that p-consciousness does? Where does the causal closure of the physical world fail? Gregg Rosenberg’s book, which will be the topic of a different thread, is thought-provoking on proposing a general link between experience and the fundamental underpinnings of all causality. But let me ask the question here: what specific work might experience do? Alternatively, where are the traces of the impact p-consciousness has on nature?

Let me put up 2 candidates. First, the interpretation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics may necessitate the existence of an experiential element in nature. P-consciousness is necessary to do the work of quantum measurements/interactions in the world. Second, the coordinated activity of components in complex organized systems (including but perhaps not limited to humans or living things) requires a binding element which in our human case is felt as p-consciousness.

 

[Rader]

Hi Steve,

FWIW, my belief is close to the last part of your suggestion. If the Theory of Natural Individuals holds, the "purpose" of any natural individual is to achieve a more definite effective state for itself by reducing the number of possible joint states of its bound individuals. In the context of the brain, the hypothesized cortical natural individual has an effective state whose purpose is to initiate or modulate motor programming. We can think of its effective state as constituted by a set of interfaces between the individuals it binds and the body's motor systems. I would suppose that the cortical individual's specific purpose (i.e., why it would be selected for by evolution) is to reduce its constituent's possible joint states in a way that reflects a more reliable integration of all the relevant information being fed to the cortex.

--Gregg

Hi Gregg,
Welcome to the PF forum.

Could we not look back down the chain of natural individuals, to the lowest level to see as you say, a series of effective states as constituted by a set of interfaces between the individuals it binds. Looking then from the bottom to the top of the chain there would appear to be four main operators’ existence, organization, survival and perfection.

 

[ghrosenb@hotmail.com]

Existence, organization and survival are clearly evident, though I'm not sure what you intend when you call them operators. I also don't know the sense you intend for "perfection" so I can't really comment, but, in general, I'm not likely to believe in something that would attract that label.

--Gregg

Hi Gregg,
Welcome to the PF forum.

Could we not look back down the chain of natural individuals, to the lowest level to see as you say, a series of effective states as constituted by a set of interfaces between the individuals it binds. Looking then from the bottom to the to of the chain there would appear to be four main operators’ existence, organization, survival and perfection.

 

[honestrosewater]

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you think of the idea that p-consciousness is a product of an exergonic reaction? It's just an idea, but perhaps you guys can see its implications faster and more clearly than I can.

 

[loseyourname]

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you think of the idea that p-consciousness is a product of an exergonic reaction? It's just an idea, but perhaps you guys can see its implications faster and more clearly than I can.

Do you mean that it's the product of any exergonic reaction? That is, that any exergonic reaction results in phenomenal experience? I find that a bit of an ad hoc hypothesis. Besides, if it were true, why do we only experience the reactions that take place in the brain and not the rest of the body?

 

[StatusX]

There are even parts of the brain that we don't experience, so I think a theory of consciousness is unattainable until we at least know what is different about the parts of the brain we experience from those we don't. Until we know this, looking for a theory of consciousness would be like Newton being told the final theory of physics will be based on strings of energy and trying to work it out for himself.

As for consciousness doing work, I don't think this is necessary. It seems to cause things, but I think everything we do could be attributed to the physical brain. This doesn't necessarily mean consciousness doesn't exist, it just doesn't have any functional role whatsoever. This is, in fact, why it will be so difficult, if even possible, to explain. So what causes us to talk about it? I don't know. I'll bet there is a physical explanation for why we believe we are conscious (ie, it is accounted for by the wiring of neurons in our brain), but that doesn't change the fact that green has some kind of pure existence. The lack of a functional role for green is best demonstrated by the fact that it is so difficult to explain in words. It can only be described at all by using words which provoke similar feelings as the one usually accompanied by green.

 

[honestrosewater]

Do you mean that it's the product of any exergonic reaction? That is, that any exergonic reaction results in phenomenal experience? I find that a bit of an ad hoc hypothesis. Besides, if it were true, why do we only experience the reactions that take place in the brain and not the rest of the body?

Well, the products form spontaneously from the reactants, right? So if p-consciousness is observed to be present in some cases and absent in others, then the presence of p-consciousness should be preceded by the presence of a set of reactants which are not present preceding the absence of p-consciousness, and, in systems where the absence of p-concsiousness follows its presence, there should occur some endergonic reaction which removes p-consciousness from the system, in which p-consciousness is a reactant. Right? (I'm not actually sure that's right.) Is that not helpful or useful in any way?

I am just trying to find some idea that gives me something physical to look for, is falsifiable in principle, and could explain why p-consciousness would arise in physical systems in this universe in the first place. This is the best idea I've come up with so far. Perhaps I need to add more conditions to my list.

 

[Steve Esser]

...why do we only experience the reactions that take place in the brain and not the rest of the body?

There are even parts of the brain that we don't experience...

The fact that many (most?) bodily and brain activities take place unconsciously is a challenge to finding an active role for p-consciousness. A possible answer to this challenge has the unfortunate side-effect of complicating matters a bit, but here it is. What we humans experience is a very high-level form of reflective self-consciousness. However, simpler systems (including the parts of our own biology which are evolutionary holdovers from earlier times), have a less robust but still existent feeling or experience which is a marker of this proposed binding element (which is a necessary ingredient for the coordinated functioning of the system in question).

 

[Steve Esser]

Alternatively, the p-consciousness "we" know about belongs to something like the cortical individual Gregg talked about; our other bodily systems cannot be accessed in the same way by this system/individual, but we still could infer they have a similar binding element.

 

[Rader]

Existence, organization and survival are clearly evident, though I'm not sure what you intend when you call them operators. I also don't know the sense you intend for "perfection" so I can't really comment, but, in general, I'm not likely to believe in something that would attract that label.

--Gregg

What I mean by operators is what you mean by effective and receptive properties. I will try and stick to your terminology. What I mean by perfection is intelligence, human intelligence.

 

[ghrosenb@hotmail.com]

What I mean by perfection is intelligence, human intelligence.

Not to sound too cynical, but you must know a whole different class of people than I do! ;-)

 

[Steve Esser]

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you think of the idea that p-consciousness is a product of an exergonic reaction? It's just an idea, but perhaps you guys can see its implications faster and more clearly than I can.

For an ignorance check, please note I had to look up exergonic.

 

[ghrosenb@hotmail.com]

Hi Steve,

Again FWIW: The Theory of Natural Individuals separates the notion of consciousness into two component notions, experiencing plus cognition. One can argue the legitimacy of this move, but that is what it does. It then proposes that there are kinds of experiencing that are kinds of protoconsciousness. These exist more widely in nature than consciousness does because they do not involve sophisticated (or perhaps any) cognition. So, on this picture, experiencings come in many varieties along a very diverse scale of richness, sophistication, and diversity. The differentiating factor between a conscious individual and other individuals is not the presence of experiencing.

With this in mind, the theory entails a combination of your points below and above. Our consciousness is (likely) a cortical individual though other parts of the brain have their own kinds of (simpler protoconscious) experiences. Privacy of experience exists, so the cortical individual is oblivious to the experiencings of other individuals in the brain.

By hypothesis, the cortical individual uniquely experiences the carriers active in a receptive field belonging to the whole person. What makes cortical experience special -- i.e., what makes it *consciousness* -- is that the individual it belongs to has responsibility for global (i.e., person-level) behavioural coordination, requiring abilities like focus of attention, maintenance of a self-concept, and other conceptualization, planning, and evaluation activities unique to the problem of global behavioural coordination.

On this view, the presence of carriers that do all this non-trivial stuff at the level of the whole person are what make consciousness different from protoconsciousness.

--Gregg

Alternatively, the p-consciousness "we" know about belongs to something like the cortical individual Gregg talked about; our other bodily systems cannot be accessed in the same way by this system/individual, but we still could infer they have a similar binding element.

 

[loseyourname]

Well, the products form spontaneously from the reactants, right? So if p-consciousness is observed to be present in some cases and absent in others, then the presence of p-consciousness should be preceded by the presence of a set of reactants which are not present preceding the absence of p-consciousness, and, in systems where the absence of p-concsiousness follows its presence, there should occur some endergonic reaction which removes p-consciousness from the system, in which p-consciousness is a reactant. Right? (I'm not actually sure that's right.) Is that not helpful or useful in any way?

That was one hell of a sentence, Rachel. I had to read that three times. I don't think the idea works, though, because the reactions that take place in interneurons are no different (thermodynamically speaking) from the reactions that take place in motor neurons, yet we do not experience these.

 

[honestrosewater]

I don't think the idea works, though, because the reactions that take place in interneurons are no different (thermodynamically speaking) from the reactions that take place in motor neurons, yet we do not experience these.

Great, one down.

 

[honestrosewater]

Steve, You mean work as a force acting on an object to cause a displacement, right? And not just being useful in some way?

 

[Steve Esser]

Steve, You mean work as a force acting on an object to cause a displacement, right? And not just being useful in some way?

I’m not sure. The problem is that if consciousness did work in the normal sense at a macroscopic scale, researchers would have noticed it. This is why Cartesian interactionist dualism is a non-starter. If it does work (and I’m guided by an opinion that it does), it must either be at a subtly small scale of nature where classical analysis breaks down, or (influenced by Gregg’s work again) it must be a manifestation of another side to causality: a receptive or magnetic quality that binds and coordinates the interactions in complex dynamic systems.

 

[hypnagogue]

The problem is that if consciousness did work in the normal sense at a macroscopic scale, researchers would have noticed it.

I believe we should proceed under the assumption that the brain straightforwardly follows physical law as does any other physical system, but it should be noted that this is still something of an assumption. If p-consciousness did work on a macroscopic scale, it could be that researchers already have noticed its activity (e.g. with fMRI), but have merely assumed it to be the signature of 'normal' physical processes. As long as p-consciousness's supposed causal role did not behave in a manner blatantly inconsistent with standard physical principles, this scenario is at least plausible. I'm not aware of any studies that have rigorously checked the brain's behavior against known physical principles (understandably so, of course, as this would be such a taxing undertaking for such a speculative hypothesis).

 

[honestrosewater]

Do you suspect p-consciousness plays an inhibitory or excitatory role or both or neither or mixed or ...?

 

[RingoKid]

But let me ask the question here: what specific work might experience do? Alternatively, where are the traces of the impact p-consciousness has on nature?

subjective experience adds to the stream of your hereditary consciousness with the impact being it helps evolve the culture >> species. Following on, my children may again have a more evolved view on consciousness that perhaps i don't have yet.

We tend to view consciousness from the sum of our own experiences but i view mine from the sum of my ancestors experience. So I see a stream where you might see a puddle.

I also see consciousness as manifesting at the fundamental level of nature not at the atomic,molecular or cellular but at string level with it's extra dimensions.

Is there a work on the evolution of consciousness through the ages and the impact on natural selection ?

I would think survival of the fittest also applies to those whose awareness is more fit to survive.

 

[Steve Esser]

Do you suspect p-consciousness plays an inhibitory or excitatory role or both or neither or mixed or ...?

I'm thinking that the role is one of coordination. But the essence could be seen as inhibitory. Of all the things a system's component parts could be doing, they are inhibited from doing all except particpating in the system.

 

[Steve Esser]

subjective experience adds to the stream of your hereditary consciousness with the impact being it helps evolve the culture >> species. Following on, my children may again have a more evolved view on consciousness that perhaps i don't have yet.

We tend to view consciousness from the sum of our own experiences but i view mine from the sum of my ancestors experience. So I see a stream where you might see a puddle.

I also see consciousness as manifesting at the fundamental level of nature not at the atomic,molecular or cellular but at string level with it's extra dimensions.

Is there a work on the evolution of consciousness through the ages and the impact on natural selection ?

I would think survival of the fittest also applies to those whose awareness is more fit to survive.

I agree with your sentiments in the sense that I think cultural evolution is a real phenomenon that shapes an individual's consciousness.

 

[Philocrat]

I’ve been thinking that the core of the problem with the Ned Block/David Chalmers breakdown of the problem of consciousness (access vs. phenomenal; “easy” vs. “hard”) is the pushing of subjective experience to epiphenomenal status. Why would we expect people to start accepting the ontological necessity of something epiphenomenal? The burden on those of us who think subjective experience is something fundamental in nature is then to show that P-consciousness must do some kind of work in the world – it must be associated with action and causation.

But we know old-fashioned interactionist dualism won’t succeed, so what is this work that p-consciousness does? Where does the causal closure of the physical world fail? Gregg Rosenberg’s book, which will be the topic of a different thread, is thought-provoking on proposing a general link between experience and the fundamental underpinnings of all causality. But let me ask the question here: what specific work might experience do? Alternatively, where are the traces of the impact p-consciousness has on nature?

Let me put up 2 candidates. First, the interpretation of the measurement problem in quantum mechanics may necessitate the existence of an experiential element in nature. P-consciousness is necessary to do the work of quantum measurements/interactions in the world. Second, the coordinated activity of components in complex organized systems (including but perhaps not limited to humans or living things) requires a binding element which in our human case is felt as p-consciousness.

The true measure of p-consciousness, or whatever enumerable labels we may invoke to call it, is how much:

1) It succeeds in helping its beholder to cross the street without being injured or killed by a moving car on the street.

2) It succeeds in helping its beholder to communicate with the rest of the world without being dangerously misunderstood and possibly mistaken for a witch or terrorist

3) It succeeds in helping the beholder discriminate between a cup of poison and clean water that its beholder multipurposely depends on to survive in the external world

And so on. I can just go on. The list is almost endless. Anyone that deludes him or herself that p-consciousness is exclusive and inaccessible to others in the external world, let him or her dream on! Continue to daydream and pride yourself of having possesed something exclusive and special. In the end, this is completely useless to the outsiders, the very those you potentially and actually depend on to feed the exclusive furnitures of your dream world. And what makes you think that if you do not act according to rules of the external world (that you so much dispise) that your exclusive world would get fed? Ofcourse, it would hunger itself to extinction! That's the rule of the external world!

Why must we continue to behave as if we are completely ruling out the need to investigate how the material body works physiologically up to the neuro-computational level? Why should we completely neglect the need to study and understand how the neurons are computationally hardwired? Or how computational information or computationally derived visual states are transmitted, via sequential and parallel neural pathways, from one point to the next in the body? Or how computationally derived visual states are mapped onto a fixed memory location or pooled memory centres cumulatively? And so on. Why must we continue to insist that the only way for the human race to survive is to first solve the so-called 'hard problem' of p-consciousness, if at all such a problem existed in the first place? Is this the correct methodological path to ply?

 

[selfAdjoint]

1) It succeeds in helping its beholder to cross the street without being injured or killed by a moving car on the street.

2) It succeeds in helping its beholder to communicate with the rest of the world without being dangerously misunderstood and possibly mistaken for a witch or terrorist

3) It succeeds in helping the beholder discriminate between a cup of poison and clean water that its beholder multipurposely depends on to survive in the external world

These assertions assume that the zombie concept is incoherent, since in order to be coherent, it must posit zombies who can distinguish green from red (perhaps they have dials with frequency numbers in their heads), they just don't "experience" green and red. And the same for the other powers you give to p-consciousness; a zombie by definition could register the differences, it just couldn't feel them.

With the incoherence of zombiedom goes the point of Chalmers' argument that consciousness is not physical.

 

[Philocrat]

These assertions assume that the zombie concept is incoherent, since in order to be coherent, it must posit zombies who can distinguish green from red (perhaps they have dials with frequency numbers in their heads), they just don't "experience" green and red. And the same for the other powers you give to p-consciousness; a zombie by definition could register the differences, it just couldn't feel them.

With the incoherence of zombiedom goes the point of Chalmers' argument that consciousness is not physical.

A Stone is a better example than zombie because it is not making any claim about receiving any information and using that information in an intelligent manner to move around a potentially dynamic and danger-infested space. Stones never worry about preserving their original forms (shapes, sizes, structures and functions) because they can be split into pieces and turned into anything at any given time. They don't make any claims about intelligent life, let alone survival in their original forms, because stones are always inanimately blending in with nature, regardless of which roads nature blindly takes. It is those things that make claims about getting information and using that information to move around and dudge anhilative disasters in spacetime, and constantly craving to retain and improve their sensible forms, and getting structurally and functionally better and better, that we are concerned here.

If Zombies are also making claims about intelligent life, let them coherently explain how they not only currently exist and preserve themselves without being annihilated but also how they structurally and functionally progress towards being completely structurally and and functionally perfected. We do not want such stupid explanation such as:

A proportion of a zombie is suspended in 'NOTHING' and the remainder is suspended in 'SOMETHING'

If you cannot see the a proportion of your own being, why not admit your natural visual limitations and start to think about how to do something about it and structurally and functionally improve your being, if you find any worth in it? Why invite everyone into a talking shop that is going nowhere? We either end this stalemate now, if there was one in the first place, and do something concrete to move things forward, or we stay on and regressively spiral into self-destruct. In any case, there is no way to know whether part of the living is proportionately suspended half-way in 'NOTHINGNESS' until we physically or structurally interfer with it which, as we all know, no one wants to do because of the long-standing fear that Frankenstein Monster may result from the process. If this is true and well-known, why do we deceive ourselves about the existing and irresolvable 'Hard problem'? God save our youngsters that we teach this garbage to!

 

[selfAdjoint]

I can easily imagine a robot, which you would never consider to be conscious, which could do the street crossing thing. Industrial robots are making discriminations of physical facts as hard as that in factories allover the world right now.

It seems to me that many partisans of non-physical consciousness worry about the argument that consciousness is an epiphenomenon. And they worry about it because in their judgement it is anon trivial argument. But your reduction would make it trivial. Anybody would be able to tell a zombie, or a lifelike robot, from a human being, whereas in most discussions I have read, you can't do that, at least not easily.

 

[Canute]

Some thoughts in no particular order, just to muddle things up even more.

Zombies are defined as not being conscious. Ergo human beings are not zombies or are not conscious.

If human beings were not conscious we wouldn't have to argue about the existence of zombies, but we do. So human beings are not zombies. What then is the difference between a hypothetical zombie and a human being? It cannot, by the definition of zombies, be anything to do with brain activity or behaviour.

It is impossible to demonstrate that entities with no consciousness would not give the same brain readings, sit on Internet forums discussing 'what it is like', the possibility of zombies, or would not write books about these things, not to the satisfaction of everyone anyway, or so it seems. So it is impossible to deduce from human behaviour, or brain measurements, that human beings are not zombies. Therefore science cannot demonstrate that human beings are not zombies.

Yet we know we are not. How do we know this? We don't, according to science. There is no means by which we can scientifically establish that human beings are not zombies. We can only know by way of folk-psychology. So if someone wants to claim, on the basis of the scientific evidence, that human beings are zombies there is nothing to stop them.

So one thing that needs explaining is why scientists think human beings are not zombies. Are we to rely on first-person reports? This would be daft, since zombies can by definition make the same reports.

Round and round we go. I feel the first item on the agenda for scientists researching into consciousness is to demonstrate that there is anything that needs explaining. Until this is done I can't see any point in going any further. As consciousness, in the scientific view, can never cause a reading on a meter or a dial, then I can't see how it's ever going to do this. In this respect Behaviourism, with its black box approach, had a lot going for it. At least it was a pragmatic approach that acknowledged the limits of science.

But perhaps there is hope. It may be that consciousness is causal. In this case it would be detectable by scientific means, in principle at least. This would also allow the possibility that it is caused by matter, at present not an option since matter cannot affect something that is immaterial without invoking the spectre of Descartes.

But then science has not yet established that matter is not immaterial, strange as it may seem, so even more complications can be expected. M-theory suggests that spacetime is some kind of illusion, so what price the materiality of matter? If matter is ultimately immaterial and consciousness is ultimately immaterial then we're in a whole new ball game.

Basically we're still trying to find the way out of Plato's cave, and as always we're looking in the wrong place. I think it was Sir James Jeans who said, echoing Plato, that "There is no phenomenal way out of the phenomenal world". Perhaps it's time we recognised this.

 

[selfAdjoint]

If human beings were not conscious we wouldn't have to argue about the existence of zombies, but we do. So human beings are not zombies. What then is the difference between a hypothetical zombie and a human being? It cannot, by the definition of zombies, be anything to do with brain activity or behaviour.

I am sure I am not a Zombie. That you are not is not something I can verify; your behavior, including your claim to be conscious, does not count (on the Chalmers view). But I make a leap of faith that you are conscious. About all people or "humankind" I don't think there is any evidence is there?

 

[Canute]

No scientific evidence no. Common sense suggests that if you say that you're conscious you are, since what or who else would say it except a conscious being. But you're right, and as I suggested above, there's no intrasubjective evidence that humans are conscious. Or rather, there's no non-subjective evidence that would force someone to believe that humans are conscious if they didn't want to believe it, any more than there is for spiders, who probably think we're not, having so few legs.

But I wouldn't that there's no evidence. Not all evidence is scientific or even intrasubjective.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Not all evidence is scientific or even intrasubjective

Not intrasubjective? Mind reading?

 

[loseyourname]

Not intrasubjective? Mind reading?

Even if you can read minds, you're not going to satisfy the people that make these kinds of objections (I'm not referring to Canute, as he obviously agrees that no humans are zombies). They'll say you're reading the thoughts formed by a brain, but you have not proved the existence of any subjective experiencer of those thoughts. Don't forget how they stress that thinking and consciousness are not the same thing, nor is either proof of the existence of the other.

 

[Canute]

Not intrasubjective? Mind reading?

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.