Why consciousness is not reducible to nonconscious things

[apeiron]

True, from a social perspective the higher level descriptions are useful and needed. Physically, ignoring all social requirements, the lower level descriptions are most accurate. "rocks in general" do not physically exist, since any rock is always a specific physical object. The "in general" part is an abstraction that takes place in human minds.

Incorrect as all knowledge is modelling. And all modelling is reduction - the shedding of particulars to extract generals.

So we generalise the notion of local substance to produce models of things like atoms and quarks. And we also generalise the notion of form to - eventually - produce fundamental laws such as the first and second law of thermodynamics, the laws of motion, etc.

What do you think an atom is? A little hard ball. A wave function (as physically demonstrated in twin slit experiments)? A compound of more fundamental particles (which have even less concrete existence)?

A rock is always an intermediate scale object - not yet reduced towards its complementary aspects of substance and form. But you are completely missing the point if you believe science does not generalise such real life entities towards local initial condition descriptions and globally constraining laws.

 

[qraal]

(snipped)

Now the trick with consciousness and theories of mind is to do the same thing. To reduce the thing in itself, people who have what we label "consciousness" and "unconsciousness" as aspects of their being, towards both the local and global levels of explanation.

When discussing minds, the question becomes what are the atoms, what the geology, of this area of science?

Nicely put apeiron. What are the "rocks" of consciousness? And what are the "strata"? Metaphysical monists who want it to all be 'mass/energy' or all 'mind/ideas' seem bent on ignoring such subtleties though.

 

[apeiron]

With consciousness, the rock might be some particular instance of attentive awareness. That is the intermediate level of explanandum. So over about half a second, the brain forms an organised state of meaningful comprehension in response to some event in the world, like a rock falling on the foot.

This state of attentive understanding then has both its material and formal aspects - is local or substantial causes, and its global or form type causes.

So substances are involved. All kinds of neural, synaptic, membrane pore and molecular level changes were part of the rock-scale attentional shift.

But also global forms. So we can talk about memory, anticipation, focus, suppression as strata-level organisational processes or forms. The kind of general things also needed to account for "a moment of awareness".

Both the atoms - neurons and synapses - are "non-conscious" scale of explanation or modelling. And so are the global forms like anticipation, memory, or whatever else we find useful to employ in the modelling. Anticipation, as a properly generalised idea, no longer equates to what we mean by consciousness, though captures of course some essential aspect of being conscious.

A satisfactory theory of mind would then be about having both the right atoms and the right configurations. We need substances and forms which are actually - in some strict sense we can specify - complementary as levels of explanation.

So with a "theory of rocks", we would have to be able to show that there is a deep duality between the local and global views. Is the atomic level of description actually related in a formal sense to the geological strata level? In fact, it seems only a crude and clumsy duality is represented here. But good enough to see that this is what we already do with more mundane entities.

In the same way, getting it right for explaining minds will need not just a local view and a global view, but a strict framework under which we can measure how well these two view are mutual or complementary.

So is a neural component view formally dual to a psychological process view? Is one the right atoms that makes the other the right forms?

Having accepted the basic idea - that reductionism needs to be dualistic to give a full account of reality and its contents - we have to be able to make the transition from a handwaving kind of connection between existing levels of scientific discourse (the neural component models, the psychological process models) to one that is completely formal. Mathematical. Logically universal in that it applies to the description of rocks, minds and every other kind of actual thing.

 

[qraal]

With consciousness, the rock might be some particular instance of attentive awareness. That is the intermediate level of explanandum. So over about half a second, the brain forms an organised state of meaningful comprehension in response to some event in the world, like a rock falling on the foot.

This state of attentive understanding then has both its material and formal aspects - is local or substantial causes, and its global or form type causes.

So substances are involved. All kinds of neural, synaptic, membrane pore and molecular level changes were part of the rock-scale attentional shift.

But also global forms. So we can talk about memory, anticipation, focus, suppression as strata-level organisational processes or forms. The kind of general things also needed to account for "a moment of awareness".

Both the atoms - neurons and synapses - are "non-conscious" scale of explanation or modelling. And so are the global forms like anticipation, memory, or whatever else we find useful to employ in the modelling. Anticipation, as a properly generalised idea, no longer equates to what we mean by consciousness, though captures of course some essential aspect of being conscious.

A satisfactory theory of mind would then be about having both the right atoms and the right configurations. We need substances and forms which are actually - in some strict sense we can specify - complementary as levels of explanation.

So with a "theory of rocks", we would have to be able to show that there is a deep duality between the local and global views. Is the atomic level of description actually related in a formal sense to the geological strata level? In fact, it seems only a crude and clumsy duality is represented here. But good enough to see that this is what we already do with more mundane entities.

In the same way, getting it right for explaining minds will need not just a local view and a global view, but a strict framework under which we can measure how well these two view are mutual or complementary.

So is a neural component view formally dual to a psychological process view? Is one the right atoms that makes the other the right forms?

Having accepted the basic idea - that reductionism needs to be dualistic to give a full account of reality and its contents - we have to be able to make the transition from a handwaving kind of connection between existing levels of scientific discourse (the neural component models, the psychological process models) to one that is completely formal. Mathematical. Logically universal in that it applies to the description of rocks, minds and every other kind of actual thing.

Hmmm... Would be quite an impressive mathematical "theory of forms+substances". Any suggestions on where to begin with such a thing?

Of course one curious aspect of all this that needs to be address by an "explanation of mind" is the very act of explanation or understanding, since it is an activity of mind. How do we avoid a potential pathology because of the "self-feedback"? Can any explanation which doesn't explain 'itself' really count as a complete theory of mind? Greg Egan's novel "Distress" posits an open-ended reality in which the "Theory of Everything" is kind of indeterminate until understood by a Mind or - as the protagonist discovers - ALL minds after the Theory becomes definite. Every conscious being after that point in time has an immediate intuitive grasp of the Theory as a 'precondition' of their being, thus closing the causal loop.

Does a theory of Mind need to explain 'explanation' then?

 

[apeiron]

Hmmm... Would be quite an impressive mathematical "theory of forms+substances". Any suggestions on where to begin with such a thing?

It is of course my project. And the approach I take arises out of hierarchy theory (Stanley Salthe's scalar hierarchy in particular). So there is some rudimentary math models already around. I also see Grossberg's anticipatory neural nets and dissipative structure theory as other angles on the same dilemma.

This is a "live" direction for biology and neuroscience.

Happy to respond to PMs for more detail.

Of course one curious aspect of all this that needs to be address by an "explanation of mind" is the very act of explanation or understanding, since it is an activity of mind. How do we avoid a potential pathology because of the "self-feedback"? Can any explanation which doesn't explain 'itself' really count as a complete theory of mind? Greg Egan's novel "Distress" posits an open-ended reality in which the "Theory of Everything" is kind of indeterminate until understood by a Mind or - as the protagonist discovers - ALL minds after the Theory becomes definite. Every conscious being after that point in time has an immediate intuitive grasp of the Theory as a 'precondition' of their being, thus closing the causal loop.

Does a theory of Mind need to explain 'explanation' then?

Yes it is essential that us observers be included in the final theory of everything!

So us knowing the world is somehow also the world knowing itself into coherent existence. Same "physical" (and mental) principles at work.

This is the thread of thought running through Peirce's semiotics, Maturana's autopoiesis, etc.

It is central to my own approach too.

So a mindless physics is one way to model reality. But ultimately it fails because minds got left out. So start again with fundamentals that include mind as well matter, form as well as substance, constraints as well as construction, etc.

 

[qraal]

It is of course my project. And the approach I take arises out of hierarchy theory (Stanley Salthe's scalar hierarchy in particular). So there is some rudimentary math models already around. I also see Grossberg's anticipatory neural nets and dissipative structure theory as other angles on the same dilemma.

This is a "live" direction for biology and neuroscience.

Yes it is essential that us observers be included in the final theory of everything!

So us knowing the world is somehow also the world knowing itself into coherent existence. Same "physical" (and mental) principles at work.

This is the thread of thought running through Peirce's semiotics, Maturana's autopoiesis, etc.

It is central to my own approach too.

So a mindless physics is one way to model reality. But ultimately it fails because minds got left out. So start again with fundamentals that include mind as well matter, form as well as substance, constraints as well as construction, etc.

Makes sense.

BTW did you pick "apeiron" as a user name because your view is monistic with an apeiron modified to give the contents of the world? What, in your opinion, is the 'boundless', the Absolute?

 

[apeiron]

Makes sense.

BTW did you pick "apeiron" as a user name because your view is monistic with an apeiron modified to give the contents of the world? What, in your opinion, is the 'boundless', the Absolute?

It is Anaximander's apeiron of course. I was very surprised to study these issues for about 20 years and to eventually find the very first philosopher of record got it spot on at the beginning.

Of course, it is quite difficult to be certain about what Anaximander really thought, however scholars like Kahn have done some careful work.

I myself equate the apeiron to Peirce's later (equally fragmentary and sketchy) notion of vagueness. And in turn to infinite symmetry.

So apeiron = vagueness = symmetry.

And it is a (vague) kind of monism. But which then separates dichotomously into polar opposites. So becomes dual in some crisply developed sense. And then the two become the three as the complementary things mix. You end up with the triadic state that is a hierarchy, where two levels of being have the thirdness which is their interaction.

So vagueness => dichotomies => hiearchies as things develop.

With Anaximander, the apeiron => the hot and the cold => the mixing of the hot and the cold. Though he had to add other secondary dichotomisations, such as the damp and the dry, the heavy and the light, to create enough complexity to account for our universe.

The modern view of the apeiron as the unbounded and the unlimited would seem to have more in common with quantum foams, hilbert spaces and non-commutative geometry. Places where there is action in all directions and so no directions clearly exist.

Do you have your own view about this?

 

[octelcogopod]

When I read this thread I can't help but think that there is a lot of information we are missing, and that it's completely off the mark.
First off, why are we talking about whether the mind can interact with the brain, or if energy is equivalent to matter, when we have no idea what neither of these actually are?
The definition of the mind, the subjective, and how it arises in the objective physical is still a big mystery, so you are just throwing darts in darkness imo.

This mystery can not be solved with Mattara's logic, nor can it be solved currently with ANY philosophy.
Do we really know enough about matter and energy to even start this discussion? I think not.
I suspect the solution to what consciousness is lies deep within physics, where not only the brain itself matters, but the environment it senses as well.
Of course, that's not actually a discussion, because it is not based on physical evidence, but it is my opinion.

 

[magpies]

Well I don't know about you but I do know what energy and matter are. Its not hard to tell what energy is once someone explains the basics of what it is... same with matter or mass.

 

[BigFairy]

wow, well that is something then :)

 

[qraal]

It is Anaximander's apeiron of course. I was very surprised to study these issues for about 20 years and to eventually find the very first philosopher of record got it spot on at the beginning.

Of course, it is quite difficult to be certain about what Anaximander really thought, however scholars like Kahn have done some careful work.

I myself equate the apeiron to Peirce's later (equally fragmentary and sketchy) notion of vagueness. And in turn to infinite symmetry.

So apeiron = vagueness = symmetry.

And it is a (vague) kind of monism. But which then separates dichotomously into polar opposites. So becomes dual in some crisply developed sense. And then the two become the three as the complementary things mix. You end up with the triadic state that is a hierarchy, where two levels of being have the thirdness which is their interaction.

The modern view of the apeiron as the unbounded and the unlimited would seem to have more in common with quantum foams, hilbert spaces and non-commutative geometry. Places where there is action in all directions and so no directions clearly exist.

Do you have your own view about this?

The idea of the undifferentiated primordial stuff becomes definite via differentiation appears in so many ancient accounts of reality, so it's hardly new to Anaximander. He tried to give the first non-mythological account based on the properties of the primordial stuff itself. I can see the appeal, but I am unsure it's even conceivable to test.

My own view. Take Shankaran advaita, mix with Whiteheadian pan-experientialism and filter it through Neo-Platonism. Roughly that. When I'm not focussing on the physical world and being a physicalist for the sake of the argument. Each perspective provides valid observations on the short-comings of the others.

 

[apeiron]

The idea of the undifferentiated primordial stuff becomes definite via differentiation appears in so many ancient accounts of reality, so it's hardly new to Anaximander. He tried to give the first non-mythological account based on the properties of the primordial stuff itself. I can see the appeal, but I am unsure it's even conceivable to test.
.

Agreed that Anaximander had Hesiod's Theogeny as a template for order out of chaos. And that Buddhist doctrine of dependent co-arising was very similar, and eastern ideas generally similar.

It is quite possible that the same ideas were obvious independently, or that ideas flowed from west to east or vice versa.

 

[apeiron]

Checking out Shankaran advaita reminds me of a key difference I would have to Anaximander and also Buddhist doctrines like pratîtya-samutpâda.

The usual idea is that the monadic indefinite gives rise to definite things, which can then dissolve back into that deep oneness. Things rise and then subside or decay again. The eternal cycle.

But my view is that once the one divides, it cannot go back. This is a second law approach. Once a symmetry is broken, it is divided in ways that it cannot repair. History could be reversed in a theoretical sense, but there would not actually be the "free energy" to do so.

My notes also remind me of the Kyoto School. A blending of east and west.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/

Then Rivero, a string theorist on these forums, has speculated on the original possible east-west link.

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104

 

[qraal]

Hi apeiron

I too am sceptical of claims of universal dissolution and self-renewal - like Steinhardt and Turok's various "Clashing Branes" attempts at "Phoenix universes" that endlessly expand and then blaze into life again. They seem to make time meaningless, which doesn't seem to accord with reality.

Shankara's advaita has meant different things to different interpreters. I take the oneness/non-duality to only be achieved at the very "highest" level of reality, with the merger of subject-object - a cosmic level unity -, but all lower levels experience differentiation. Multiplicity and flux aren't things to escape from in a "return to Godhead" kind of way. Moksha is more an attitude than an objective transformation of the subject, though it can be that too. I am too world-affirmative to take the path of renunciation that many of Shankara's admirers embraced.

Checking out Shankaran advaita reminds me of a key difference I would have to Anaximander and also Buddhist doctrines like pratîtya-samutpâda.

The usual idea is that the monadic indefinite gives rise to definite things, which can then dissolve back into that deep oneness. Things rise and then subside or decay again. The eternal cycle.

But my view is that once the one divides, it cannot go back. This is a second law approach. Once a symmetry is broken, it is divided in ways that it cannot repair. History could be reversed in a theoretical sense, but there would not actually be the "free energy" to do so.

My notes also remind me of the Kyoto School. A blending of east and west.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/

Then Rivero, a string theorist on these forums, has speculated on the original possible east-west link.

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104

Japanese theology I've only just recently opened a book on, but what little I have seen intrigues me. No doubt the philosophy will be similarly delightful in surprises of insight.

 

[apeiron]

Shankara's advaita has meant different things to different interpreters. I take the oneness/non-duality to only be achieved at the very "highest" level of reality, with the merger of subject-object - a cosmic level unity -, but all lower levels experience differentiation. Multiplicity and flux aren't things to escape from in a "return to Godhead" kind of way. Moksha is more an attitude than an objective transformation of the subject, though it can be that too. I am too world-affirmative to take the path of renunciation that many of Shankara's admirers embraced.

So many ways of dancing around this subject. I have to agree that this also expresses the same general thoughts probably.

The way I would phrase it is that what is possible is both stasis and flux, being and becoming, the passive and the active way. Always the dichotomies that together make for a complete mapping of what is possible.

So we want a world view that is both constantly changing yet also somehow eternally the same.

And one way of doing this is through the notion of equlibrium. The state where all is changing but change no longer looks like change.

So I would treat the apeiron, the vague monadic beginning, as an equilibrium (but a symmetry state that proved unstable - the old pencil balanced on its point analogy)

And then the final state of reality, its crisply broken development, would also be a return to equilibrium. But now a stable and final outcome because it has broken. The pencil has fallen.

So outcomes are also equilibriums. Monadic in that sense. But dualistic and triadic in their internal organisation. So overall there has been a change, an actual development.

If we were applying this to religious ideas (which I'm not, but Hegel and others might) then a return to a vaguer state of oneness might seem wrong. It is instead the developed state of oneness which is the natural way to go.

Of course, in cosmological terms, this final outcome for our universe is in fact likely to be its heat death. A cold dark void that is just empty space populated by a last fizzle of event-horizon radiation - photons with a wavelength of the visible universe as Lineweaver suggests.

Not exactly godhead in most people's view. But I actually like this vision.

What was the meaning of existence? To create precisely nothing. To dissipate all flux and multiplicity into as little as logically possible. Of course, there will still be a void. Three dimensions of space and one of time. Plus any wee string dimensions or other features which prove irreducible, like protons. So absolute nothing will not be achieve.

But as we know, the interesting question is why a something rather than a nothing. And the answer in this view is that, well, the universe was doing its best to get there!

 

[qraal]

So many ways of dancing around this subject. I have to agree that this also expresses the same general thoughts probably.

The way I would phrase it is that what is possible is both stasis and flux, being and becoming, the passive and the active way. Always the dichotomies that together make for a complete mapping of what is possible.

snip

Of course, in cosmological terms, this final outcome for our universe is in fact likely to be its heat death. A cold dark void that is just empty space populated by a last fizzle of event-horizon radiation - photons with a wavelength of the visible universe as Lineweaver suggests.

Not exactly godhead in most people's view. But I actually like this vision.

What was the meaning of existence? To create precisely nothing. To dissipate all flux and multiplicity into as little as logically possible. Of course, there will still be a void. Three dimensions of space and one of time. Plus any wee string dimensions or other features which prove irreducible, like protons. So absolute nothing will not be achieve.

But as we know, the interesting question is why a something rather than a nothing. And the answer in this view is that, well, the universe was doing its best to get there!

I am less accepting of such a fate for the Universe.

There's a lot in what you have said, but let's try to get back to consciousness/nonconsciousness. For me consideration of the Differentiation of the One, the apeiron, means that consciousness and the contents of thought, sprang from the same source as the physical Universe. John Wheeler's concept of "It from Bit" and the recent work on quantum information by Anton Zeilinger et al provides some validation that I am on the right track with this thought, but its origins lie in my readings of Kabbalah, the Greeks and the philosophical Church Fathers like Clement of Alexandria.

Considering these and the Subject-Object complex that has attracted so much thought and discussion in Hindu and Buddhist thought - thus Shankaran advaita, which I learned of chiefly from Sharma's "A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy" - plus the question of the nature of Truth, especially mathematical truths, I have come to believe the Universe is evolving towards a state of Cosmic Mind. Akin to Tipler's "Omega Point" though I am unconvinced of his stance on physics. All truths will be known by the ultimate Observer, whatever He/She/It/They might be when that end-point is reached.

However that by no means that all truths are as yet set, like in a Parmenidean Eternity/Block universe. There's an open-endness to the Participatory Universe of Wheeler that I wholeheartedly agree with. But it may go deeper than he imagined - though I kind of doubt much escaped his physical intuitions - and that may allow surprises in the cosmic process, miracles if you will. Radical emergentism.

So the question of "consciousness from non-consciousness" may well miss the point, that consciousness may well underlay reality, but reality may in turn feedback into consciousness. Dual-structure producing triadic reality as you put it.

 

[apeiron]

Considering these and the Subject-Object complex that has attracted so much thought and discussion in Hindu and Buddhist thought - thus Shankaran advaita, which I learned of chiefly from Sharma's "A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy" - plus the question of the nature of Truth, especially mathematical truths, I have come to believe the Universe is evolving towards a state of Cosmic Mind. Akin to Tipler's "Omega Point" though I am unconvinced of his stance on physics. All truths will be known by the ultimate Observer, whatever He/She/It/They might be when that end-point is reached.

However that by no means that all truths are as yet set, like in a Parmenidean Eternity/Block universe. There's an open-endness to the Participatory Universe of Wheeler that I wholeheartedly agree with. But it may go deeper than he imagined - though I kind of doubt much escaped his physical intuitions - and that may allow surprises in the cosmic process, miracles if you will. Radical emergentism.

So the question of "consciousness from non-consciousness" may well miss the point, that consciousness may well underlay reality, but reality may in turn feedback into consciousness. Dual-structure producing triadic reality as you put it.

I would have to disagree with the Omega Point approach. Although with Kurzweil's singularity and the recent rise of Evo-Devo, it is an idea very much in vogue.

My take is based on second law and entropy degrading, or dissipative system theory. Complexity in the form of life and mind arise as systems that merely accelerate entropification. And this kind of complexity must reach a peak at the middle scale of things. It does not exist at the end - where there is only an empty heat death.

So the second law gradient runs from simplicity to complication - the simplicity of big bang initial conditions and the messy disorder or complication of a heat death. Complexity in the form of stars, galaxies, planets and other stuff is localised order that arises along the way because globally it serves to acclerate the decline.


complexity
^
l
l
simplicity>------------>complication

(diagram won't format, but complexity is supposed to arise in the middle)

From this point of view, finding complexity at the end of things would be a "miracle" as once gradients are spent, complex stuff like mindfulness, however we defined it, would have no energy to drive it.

Any theory that wants to claim otherwise would have to either find some plausible source of energy (harnessing the cosmological constant?) or show that consciousness has nothing to do with energy-based realities. Which would then also be actual dualism rather than merely the differentiation~integration dichotomy that I have in mind as the basis of all things.

 

[imiyakawa]

If matter is considered void of consciousness, then C is not reducible to that.

Wow nice.
Then if C were reducible to microphysics/matter, wouldn't this suggest an emergent property and thus an escape from causality which we have no reason to believe has ever happened in this universe based on observations?

 

[qraal]

I would have to disagree with the Omega Point approach. Although with Kurzweil's singularity and the recent rise of Evo-Devo, it is an idea very much in vogue.

I admit it's speculative, but it's logical too.

My take is based on second law and entropy degrading, or dissipative system theory. Complexity in the form of life and mind arise as systems that merely accelerate entropification. And this kind of complexity must reach a peak at the middle scale of things. It does not exist at the end - where there is only an empty heat death.

In a Universe without a cosmological constant, entropy can go to infinity as can information. Depending on how you measure "information" that is.

 

[apeiron]

In a Universe without a cosmological constant, entropy can go to infinity as can information. Depending on how you measure "information" that is.

That is the point surely here? Max ent would be max disorder. So "information" would be as disordered as possible and thus as meaningless as possible.

Omega points and singularities depend on orderly information. So the second law just does not point in their direction. In the heat death, all order is maximally degraded by definition.

 

[qraal]

That is the point surely here? Max ent would be max disorder. So "information" would be as disordered as possible and thus as meaningless as possible.

Omega points and singularities depend on orderly information. So the second law just does not point in their direction. In the heat death, all order is maximally degraded by definition.

Not so. Entropy can go to infinity so long as there's a temperature gradient so useful heat-flow can still occur. In a Universe with a constant cosmological constant there is a finite ultimate temperature, and thus a heat death, but there's no guarantee that the cosmological constant will remain "constant".

 

[bjb34]

Isn't conciousness simple having the intellegence to be aware of ones own existence? Or is it more that conciousness is simply having an existence with or without a brain that is capable of conceptual thought.

 

[bjb34]

Or am I thinking in a box?

 

[apeiron]

Not so. Entropy can go to infinity so long as there's a temperature gradient so useful heat-flow can still occur. In a Universe with a constant cosmological constant there is a finite ultimate temperature, and thus a heat death, but there's no guarantee that the cosmological constant will remain "constant".

Not following. In the case of a cruising to a halt heat death scenario (no lambda) it is true that approach to maximum entropy would be asymptotic and so infinite in a sense. But it would get eventually so cold and spread-out that there would be no usable gradients to support even local islands of order, let alone the kind of global order of an omega point mind state. The finite temperature is absolute zero - nothing left but a quantum sizzle.

And a cosmological constant would simply accelerate that outcome.

What kind of gradients do you envisage at heat death that could be employed?