The "illusion" of consciousness

[Jonti]

People have thought about the question of mind for thousands of years, and in many different cultures. Epicurus wrote about this almost two millenia ago.

 

[8ball]

Personally, I think there's something they're not telling us.

<dons tin foil hat and hides>

 

[Jonti]

There's something to be said for ignoring or explaining away stuff that cannot be explained. I mean, at least it allows one to get on with things, without enmeshing oneself in a web of tangled bafflement. On the other hand, that way lies a sort of neurosis, or worse, for the real is exactly what cannot be denied. So it's prolly best to keep track of the "too hard or weird to explain right now". The fact of experience is like that. The hope is that, now we have quite a detailed understanding of the workings of the world, it may become possible to throw some light on the problem of experience.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of "consciousness", an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and a mental state is conscious if there is something it is like to be in that state.

There's a problem with the claim that experience is exactly "discrimination, integration, reaction, and reporting" ...

Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.

source

 

[Jonti]

I asked phil to elaborate, but he didn't - could you? How do cultural and historical references alter our understanding on the fundamental nature of consciousness?

This whole subject is important becasue consciousness could prove to be a whole new dimension to the fabric of reality - if consciousness goes all the way down, it may lead to a view of the universe that adds to the "its all just energy" view to one of "its just energy and mind". This would have huge implications on answering the BIg question - where the fuck are we? WHat is all this stuff out the window? etc, as well as enormous implications for evolutionary theory.

...or not.

It is true that a materialist, but not reductive, account of conscousness would open up a new dimension in our account of reality. Maxwell's work on electicity and magnetism provides a parallel in that his theories were not reducible in terms of the prior science, but relied on new principles altogether.

The Newtonian view of the universe was "it's all space, time, and matter" -- we seem to be moving in the direction of thinking of things in terms of "it's all to do with energy, entropy and information".

What's particularly fascinating to me, in the context of the ideas being developed here, is that we have a clear and accurate notion of energy (more accurately matter/energy); that entropy can be taken as a probabilistic measure of uncertainty or ignorance related to information (source); and that in turn, information boasts quite a number of different attempts at definition, each of which has its own problems.

I think it's fair to say that our ideas of information have been developed in a pragmatic, engineering environment. This is not a criticism, for the same can be said of energy -- we've come along way since James Watts' marvelous engines.

But there is still (at least one) glaring inadequacy with most attempts to pin down exactly what we mean by information. They do not allow us to assert that the process of biological evolution is genuinely creative -- in the sense that it creates new information.

The idea that the genotype of the zebra was implicit in the state of the world a billion years ago does not commend itself to biologists. They are more comfortable, I think, with the idea that If we could run things again over that billion year period, the evolutionary results would be very different.

 

[Knotted]

It is true that a materialist, but not reductive, account of conscousness would open up a new dimension in our account of reality. Maxwell's work on electicity and magnetism provides a parallel in that his theories were not reducible in terms of the prior science, but relied on new principles altogether.

The Newtonian view of the universe was "it's all space, time, and matter" -- we seem to be moving in the direction of thinking of things in terms of "it's all to do with energy, entropy and information".

What's particularly fascinating to me, in the context of the ideas being developed here, is that we have a clear and accurate notion of energy (more accurately matter/energy); that entropy can be taken as a probabilistic measure of uncertainty or ignorance related to information (source); and that in turn, information boasts quite a number of different attempts at definition, each of which has its own problems.

I think it's fair to say that our ideas of information have been developed in a pragmatic, engineering environment. This is not a criticism, for the same can be said of energy -- we've come along way since James Watts' marvelous engines.

But there is still (at least one) glaring inadequacy with most attempts to pin down exactly what we mean by information. They do not allow us to assert that the process of biological evolution is genuinely creative -- in the sense that it creates new information.

The idea that the genotype of the zebra was implicit in the state of the world a billion years ago does not commend itself to biologists. They are more comfortable, I think, with the idea that If we could run things again over that billion year period, the evolutionary results would be very different.

I don't think Boltzman's theories and statistical mechanics are in the same league as Maxwell's work on electrical/magnetic fields. There is nothing in statistical mechanics/information theory etc. that is not reducible to Newtonian mechanics until, that is, we introduce quantum effects. There is, though, an implicit fact about how the universe is arranged - with low entropy at the start - but otherwise, I don't see any fundamentally new physics as such.

Also I don't see the point of introducing information creation in life. Firstly life (both individual life and life in general) is not a closed system, there is information coming in from the outside so information creation does not have much explanitory value. Secondly if there is a new physics that produces life/consciousness then why is this absent in non-living matter?

 

[Jonti]

One can conjecture that the creation of information is accompanied by consciousness (one bit=smallest spark). That says nothing about the material substrate being alive. So it happens, so nothing. It is only when those glimmerings (the created information?) are organised and integrated by AI-type processing that a sensorium, consciousness as we understand it, could arise.

The point of an organism making new information is to enable choice, and so an evolutionary advantage; a larger behaviour space than would otherwise be the case.

But it's not physics. It's a materialist, but not reductive, bridging principle for the explanatory gap. Sort of Natural Philosophy, really.

 

[Jazzz]

Even a Zen Master is rendered unconscious by a sufficiently robust right hook, or a good whiff of Xenon.

Not as they perceive it!

 

[Knotted]

One can conjecture that the creation of information is accompanied by consciousness (one bit=smallest spark). That says nothing about the material substrate being alive. So it happens, so nothing. It is only when those glimmerings (the created information?) are organised and integrated by AI-type processing that a sensorium, consciousness as we understand it, could arise.

The point of an organism making new information is to enable choice, and so an evolutionary advantage; a larger behaviour space than would otherwise be the case.

But it's not physics. It's a materialist, but not reductive, bridging principle for the explanatory gap. Sort of Natural Philosophy, really.

But if the new information is random, then the organism has no control over it. I don't see how this explains how it is possible for the organism to make choices.

The only thing I can think of along these lines which has an explanatory value is if the workings of the brain utilise physics that are not applicable anywhere else. In this way the information processing is controlled by the organism but inexplicable to anyone observing the organism who understands the laws of ordinary physics. Thus the organism has freedom of choice in the sense that the choice is not constrained by the laws of ordinary non-brain physics.

But surely this is simply outrageous?

 

[Jonti]

Yes, that sounds outrageous alright, for one thing it violates the universality principle, and if you're prepared to do that, then almost anything is sayable. Far better, if possible, to identify a natural principle of physics, which (although ubiquitous) is only able to flower and have real effects under rather special material circumstances. To make a clumsy analogy, some types of atom spontaneously decay; but to be able to notice that at all, let alone make a useful reactor and net producer of energy, demands considerable contrivance.

So we may conjecture that information is created all the time and all over the place in Nature. It is only when those tiniest sparks of sentience are integrated into a sensorium, that we have anything like a conscious body, or organism, as we understand it. That integration into a unified consciousness may well be hugely useful in evolutionary terms; people often claim that consciousness evolved. Well, if it did, that suggests it can make a difference, in that it confers a reproductive advantage.

An example of information creation in nature that Steve Jones used the other night is the evolution of human resistance to syphilis in previous ages, and to AIDs in our own. Our bodies today know far more about the syphilis virus than did those of our ancestors. The contemporary Londoner's immune system has more information about the bug, and is more likely to be able to ameliorate or resist its effects than in the early Middle Ages. This is real information, not random noise.

The world is unpredictable, as Richard Feynman has brilliantly explained in his little book on the character of physical law. To put it another way, the world does not contain sufficient information in the "now" (whatever that means) to determine the information in the world at all future instants; it's a corollary that information is being created all the time.

 

[118118]

Yeah but not all laws are universal. I forget exactly and look it up if anyone is intersted, but laws can be phenomenological laws, laws which are nor universal. nancy cartwright thinks that only these type of laws are real.

 

[Jonti]

Interesting, thanks ...

Understanding the world is not a task of recognising laws, but of grasping capacities. The point of view changes: It is not said that something leads necessarily to another thing, but we say that something allows other things or another behavior (see Cartwright 1998a: 27). Using a nomological machine we can reach a chosen goal. The object of science are not longer things and their given properties but "what a property empowers an object to do" (Cartwright 1998a, S. 25).
http://www.thur.de/philo/project/cartwright.htm

 

[118118]

i think the idea of laws as capacities is fairly common and not especially cartwrightian. in that i was talking to an academic on libcom about his view that laws exist because a capacity is a possibility, and neo-scholasticism states that every possibliity is necessarily a possibility.

 

[Knotted]

Yes, that sounds outrageous alright, for one thing it violates the universality principle, and if you're prepared to do that, then almost anything is sayable. Far better, if possible, to identify a natural principle of physics, which (although ubiquitous) is only able to flower and have real effects under rather special material circumstances. To make a clumsy analogy, some types of atom spontaneously decay; but to be able to notice that at all, let alone make a useful reactor and net producer of energy, demands considerable contrivance.

So we may conjecture that information is created all the time and all over the place in Nature. It is only when those tiniest sparks of sentience are integrated into a sensorium, that we have anything like a conscious body, or organism, as we understand it. That integration into a unified consciousness may well be hugely useful in evolutionary terms; people often claim that consciousness evolved. Well, if it did, that suggests it can make a difference, in that it confers a reproductive advantage.

An example of information creation in nature that Steve Jones used the other night is the evolution of human resistance to syphilis in previous ages, and to AIDs in our own. Our bodies today know far more about the syphilis virus than did those of our ancestors. The contemporary Londoner's immune system has more information about the bug, and is more likely to be able to ameliorate or resist its effects than in the early Middle Ages. This is real information, not random noise.

The world is unpredictable, as Richard Feynman has brilliantly explained in his little book on the character of physical law. To put it another way, the world does not contain sufficient information in the "now" (whatever that means) to determine the information in the world at all future instants; it's a corollary that information is being created all the time.

What you say is interesting, but I think that if you are talking about genetic information rather than information processing involved in 'consciousness' (whatever it maybe), then I think you are barking up the wrong tree. You must remember that a species is not a closed system and that the evolutionary process is gathering information that comes its environment, ultimately from the sun.

 

[snorbury]

imagine a world where you're not conscious, that's what it's like for me

 

[Jonti]

Knotted, you seem to be making an underlying assumption which is that information cannot be created. And then you use that belief to assert that biological evolution (variation with selection) is not a creative process, and cannot produce new information. Few, if any, professors of biology would agree with that view.

And not many physicists either, for we do know that there is insufficient information in the world at any given moment to predict all the information in it at all later times.

Even if we allow that the cosmological total of information remains unchanged (that would be a possible conjecture), what would that mean in practical terms? That the total number of bits of info in the universe can be represented by an integer constant, and that the information can expressed in a sequence of words? And that from that expression the future course of all history and evolution is essentially knowable?

Well, the number of words in English is finite (and can be taken as fixed, for the sake of argument); so presumably also its information content is finite and invariant.

But people are always finding new things to say all the same.

 

[Knotted]

Knotted, you seem to be making an underlying assumption which is that information cannot be created. And then you use that belief to assert that biological evolution (variation with selection) is not a creative process, and cannot produce new information. Few, if any, professors of biology would agree with that view.

I'm trying not to make any assumptions. I suppose you could say that any information processing is creating information and that any physical process processes information about the physical system. What I am sceptical about is information arriving from nowhere.

And not many physicists either, for we do know that there is insufficient information in the world at any given moment to predict all the information in it at all later times.

That might be true of quantum mechanics, at least as it stands today...

Even if we allow that the cosmological total of information remains unchanged (that would be a possible conjecture), what would that mean in practical terms? That the total number of bits of info in the universe can be represented by an integer constant, and that the information can expressed in a sequence of words? And that from that expression the future course of all history and evolution is essentially knowable?

That's difficult stuff, which I'm going to leave (at least for the minute).

Well, the number of words in English is finite (and can be taken as fixed, for the sake of argument); so presumably also its information content is finite and invariant.

But people are always finding new things to say all the same.

Strings of words contain more information than collections of words. Strings being ordered.

 

[Jonti]

What I am sceptical about is information arriving from nowhere.

I really don't see why you should be.

It happens all the time. It happens when a new way of looking at things is hit upon; when discoveries are made; and when novels are written. It happens in evolution. And it even happens in engineering, when random variation with selection is used to design components.

I think the signals engineering idea of information is getting in the way here. What I've quoted below was conventional, but I think it's wrong ... even Homer Simpson understands the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The cooling of one's tea is nothing to do with one's certainty or ignorance about anything.[

What's particularly fascinating to me, in the context of the ideas being developed here, is that we have a clear and accurate notion of energy (more accurately matter/energy); that entropy can be taken as a probabilistic measure of uncertainty or ignorance related to information; and that in turn, information boasts quite a number of different attempts at definition, each of which has its own problems.

Something simple, "things cool down", is being made complicated. The fact of my tea getting cold is almost infinitely probable; and water runs downhill. We have a clear intuition of entropy. It's information that's the difficult idea.

 

[Knotted]

I really don't see why you should be.

It happens all the time. It happens when a new way of looking at things is hit upon; when discoveries are made; and when novels are written. It happens in evolution. And it even happens in engineering, when random variation with selection is used to design components.

You have to be really careful about whether you are talking about closed systems or not. These engineering examples and evolution are consuming information rich material. They're not just creating. The same is true of individual creativitity.

Besides if you are saying that the functioning of the mind cannot be reduced to ordinary physics, then why are you giving these well understood non-conscious related examples as evidence of that their are 'creative' processes at work?

I think the signals engineering idea of information is getting in the way here. What I've quoted below was conventional, but I think it's wrong ... even Homer Simpson understands the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The cooling of one's tea is nothing to do with one's certainty or ignorance about anything.[ Something simple, "things cool down", is being made complicated. The fact of my tea getting cold is almost infinitely probable; and water runs downhill. We have a clear intuition of entropy. It's information that's the difficult idea.

We also have to be careful of what notion of information we use. The information in information theory does not assume that there is anyone who knows anything about the information. If by 'information' you mean 'information we know about' then its a very different question.

I don't know how heavy a brick might be. It would be new information from my point of view if I measured the weight of the brick, but the brick is not creating anything in the process.

 

[Jonti]

I think you are going to need to defend the position that the universe is entirely predictable arbitrarily far into the future, given a sufficiently detailed description of the present.

You seem to be making that into a bedrock assumption.

But the claim that the future is "closed" is a position that is supported by neither practical nor theoretical sciences, nor by people's daily experience. So it is at least a theoretical possibility that the universe is open. Yet you seemingly refuse to countenance that possibility.

I am genuinely puzzled as to why you cling to a kind of La Placian determinism, despite all the evidence that it's neither true nor useful.

ETA: "A Brief History of Information" part 1 and part 2 survey the various ways we use the term "information". Here's a snippet ...

... in addition to [information's] long-standing contradictory substance, Shannon's efforts added still more paradoxical attributes: information became something abstract yet measurable, significant but not meaningful, and, last but not least, present wherever communication occurs but ... nowhere to be found.

 

[Knotted]

I think you are going to need to defend the position that the universe is entirely predictable arbitrarily far into the future, given a sufficiently detailed description of the present.

You seem to be making that into a bedrock assumption.

I might believe that or something close to it, but I'm trying not to assume it. I'm not saying you are wrong but that your argument needs refining.

But the claim that the future is "closed" is a position that is supported by neither practical nor theoretical sciences, nor by people's daily experience. So it is at least a theoretical possibility that the universe is open. Yet you seemingly refuse to countenance that possibility.

I might have claimed this in the past but I am not claiming it here. I am emphasising that living organisms, or whole species etc. are not closed systems. If you look at these things in isolation from their environment then it will appear as if new information/new structures etc. appear as if it is random or spontaneously created. What I am saying is that in order to state your case clearly you need to take into account that you are dealing with open systems.

Putting the question of consciousness aside, I think its slightly worrying that you regard evolution as a creative process and ignore the fact that it is not a closed process. This is a trick used by intelligent design people. Not that I think this is your motivation, just that you are converging with them.

I am genuinely puzzled as to why you cling to a kind of La Placian determinism, despite all the evidence that it's neither true nor useful.

I might defend La Placian determinism, but I don't really see violations of La Placian dterminism explaining very much in terms of consciousness.

ETA: "A Brief History of Information" part 1 and part 2 survey the various ways we use the term "information". Here's a snippet ...

I'll have a look at these later. Cheers.

 

[Jonti]

I notice Ted Byfield hasn't yet managed to arrange the promised third part of his thoughts, Information is undoubtedly a difficult concept, as indeed is random -- I've a feeling you know how tricky it is to pin down the meaning of that word in a precise mathematical sense.

I understand the point you are making about taking a system in isolation, the problem of where to draw the boundaries. It's just that from my point of view computational models do not adequately account for sentience, nor do they account for the fact of choice, of freewill. And associating the creation of information with consciousness does both, which is nice.

I'm encouraged in that view by the observation that an act of freewill creates information (being which choice was made). And, for what it's worth, I'm pretty confident the fundies will not like a natural explanation of consciousness, even one that requires a conjecture based on a currently ill-defined concept.