Serge,
Thank you for your excellent ideas here and your efforts in framing or isolating David Chalmers very helpful questions/issues. Really, thank you to you, both and more.
The following post is for those thinkers who try to do something of their own in the field of consciousness studies. So, on March 2014 David Chalmers has given a talk for TED where he summarized his views on the problems and perspectives of consciousness studies. The very talk is here: http://www.ted.com/talks/
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In what follows I will suggest my solutions to the problems that were formulated in that talk. I would be much interested to hear the solutions of other thinkers too. I mean that instead of commenting on my ideas, a person is welcome to replace them with own ideas.
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[D.C.] says: "But this is still a science of correlations. It's not a science of explanations."
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In what follows I will suggest my solutions to the problems that were formulated in that talk. I would be much interested to hear the solutions of other thinkers too. I mean that instead of commenting on my ideas, a person is welcome to replace them with own ideas.
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[D.C.] says: "But this is still a science of correlations. It's not a science of explanations."
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[rf] His version(s) and those he references are like that because they are expressed and framed in terms of old paradigm (aka, slightly but still overly wrong) tenets. In the explanation I am advocating, to start out, I do the required psychotic and paradigmatic transition activity and I redefine reality, in my storyline, as nested structured~duality (NSD) [or nested fields within nested fields, nested structured differences,etc., or similar terms which many readers don't like]. What this first step buys us is the upfront ability to consider and re-conceptualize physical AND mental stuff as the same thing -- having one common denominator -- truly belonging within the same one category: nested structured~duality. Having made the first transition step, the explanation then unfolds as a story about structural coding. That is, the explanation of consciousness (sic) develops in terms of nested structural coding, and NOT as correlations or explanation of consciousness in terms of various types of consciousness(es). (universal, Atman, Christ, pan-, un-sub-conscious, etc.).
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[D.C.] says: "... the real mystery at the core of this subject: why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Why is there this inner subjective movie?"
[D.C.] says: "... the real mystery at the core of this subject: why is it that all that physical processing in a brain should be accompanied by consciousness at all? Why is there this inner subjective movie?"
[rf] Mystery? That is just the way things are. Wave-particle; the 63 properties of water; extended resonance of sp^3 hybridized bonding. We register experience "feeling like something" because structurally coding, say, in hydrogen-bonding packets, or carbon-based bonding units, involve attraction and repulsion. We don't get one (repeating structural coding) without the other (patterns of attraction, pull, spin, tactile torque and then protein folding on top of that, all geared to conserve energy, for instance, via structurally coded enzymes. The attractions and spins *feel* like something.
The misunderstanding Chalmers expresses arises from his assumption of the Cartesian "subjective/objective" model of consciousness. When noted as structurally coded NSD, so-called objective events or experiences turn out to be strongly repeating/repeatable (subjective) impressions.
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[D.C.] says: "But when it comes to consciousness, questions about behavior are among the easy problems. When it comes to the hard problem, that's the question of why is it that all this behavior is accompanied by subjective experience?"
[rf] Again, structural coding is accompanied by more structural coding. Structural coding, say, snake recognition, has and are energy conservation values and relationships. Within different contexts (nestings) the snake can be avoided or eaten as an energy source.
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[D.C.] says: "... for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn't work for systematic reasons."
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[D.C.] says: "... for a long time, I banged my head against the wall looking for a theory of consciousness in purely physical terms that would work. But I eventually came to the conclusion that that just didn't work for systematic reasons."
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[rf] Yes, it IS a paradigmatic challenge.
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[D.C.] says: "So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don't yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically."
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[D.C.] says: "So I think consciousness right now is a kind of anomaly, one that we need to integrate into our view of the world, but we don't yet see how. Faced with an anomaly like this, radical ideas may be needed, and I think that we may need one or two ideas that initially seem crazy before we can come to grips with consciousness scientifically."
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[rf] The actual difficulty is with our view of the world that we try to 'integrate consciousness within'.
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[D.C.] says: "The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental. Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics."
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[D.C.] says: "The first crazy idea is that consciousness is fundamental. Physicists sometimes take some aspects of the universe as fundamental building blocks: space and time and mass. They postulate fundamental laws governing them, like the laws of gravity or of quantum mechanics."
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[rf] First step is to redefine reality -- to adopt more appropriate and general paradigmatic tenets. In this particular paradigm transition, the way to do this is pretty straightforward. One can ~look inside space-time, particle-wave, quantum-mechanics, energy-matter, subject-object, etc., and reflect on what category these features share in common. After a period of ineffability, the underlying general principle and reality, in the model I am advocating, turn out to be nested structured~duality (NSD). It's close enough for an initial approximation.
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[D.C.] says: "If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, charge — then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature."
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[D.C.] says: "If you can't explain consciousness in terms of the existing fundamentals — space, time, mass, charge — then as a matter of logic, you need to expand the list. The natural thing to do is to postulate consciousness itself as something fundamental, a fundamental building block of nature."
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[rf] Huh? As a matter of logic, the challenge is to generalize, which means to build a smaller, yet more accurate list -- seeking or creating the more robust common denominator. Doing more with less. Understanding also increases when artifacts as describes/explained in other terms, not in terms of itself.
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[D.C.] says: "We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don't know what those laws are yet, but that's what we're after."
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[rf] "Reality is nested structured~duality."
[D.C.] says: "The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. Every system might have some degree of consciousness. This view is sometimes called panpsychism... The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. ... the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness."
[D.C.] says: "We want to find fundamental laws so simple we could write them on the front of a t-shirt. We don't know what those laws are yet, but that's what we're after."
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[rf] "Reality is nested structured~duality."
[D.C.] says: "The second crazy idea is that consciousness might be universal. Every system might have some degree of consciousness. This view is sometimes called panpsychism... The idea is not that photons are intelligent or thinking. ... the thought is maybe photons might have some element of raw, subjective feeling, some primitive precursor to consciousness."
[rf] That approach is just furtively adding yet another unnecessary epi-cycle to an already failed and confused model. Change paradigmatic tenets and the anxious need for such secondary and tertiary epi-cycles dissipates.
[D.C.] says: "A deeper motivation comes from the idea that perhaps the most simple and powerful way to find fundamental laws connecting consciousness to physical processing is to link consciousness to information. Wherever there's information processing, there's consciousness. "
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[rf] Wherever there is structural coding, there is structural coding and energy conservation.
[D.C.] says: "Complex information processing, like in a human, complex consciousness. Simple information processing, simple consciousness."
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[rf] . Seems to follow the rule of NSD... and ecological niches, etc. For all of the carbon-based and water-based organisms cited, or for the aerobic ones, the respiration reaction generates enegy and in the process of forming 10^20 water molecules per second, structurally codes and interactive internal representation of our surrounds. Add neurons and various xRNA nesting levels and we get more complicated systems. It's all nested structural coding linked through hydrogen bonding influencing protein-folding which IS expression.
[D.C.] says: "[Giulio Tononi] has a mathematical measure of information integration which he calls phi, measuring the amount of information integrated in a system. And he supposes that phi goes along with consciousness. So in a human brain, incredibly large amount of information integration, high degree of phi, a whole lot of consciousness. In a mouse, medium degree of information integration, still pretty significant, pretty serious amount of consciousness. But as you go down to worms, microbes, particles, the amount of phi falls off. The amount of information integration falls off, but it's still non-zero. On Tononi's theory, there's still going to be a non-zero degree of consciousness."
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[rf] Information integration is a euphemism for nested structural coding. [Or vise versa .-)] The thing in living systems, though, if a portion of our energy 'conservation' is mediated via structural adaptations as well as energy release. Genetic structural coding replicates advantageous structural -- enzymatic processes leading to non-linear energy conservation steps. . With larger organisms, symbiosis between, say, my gut bacteria and my various human cells resonating in a fairly small temperature range lead to other types of nested structural coding.
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[D.C.] says: "In effect, [Giulio Tononi]'s proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don't know if this theory is right, but it's actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness,..."
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[D.C.] says: "In effect, [Giulio Tononi]'s proposing a fundamental law of consciousness: high phi, high consciousness. Now, I don't know if this theory is right, but it's actually perhaps the leading theory right now in the science of consciousness,..."
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[rf] Why scrap over high (or low) consciousness, or chocolate flavored phlogiston? What does that explain? As in ecology, more diverse, more highly nested ecosystems are more robust. Maybe he's already done it, but it looks like Tononil still needs to move away from 'integration' and differentiate energy flow information from structural (enzymatic) and cross-species structural coding transactions. These are distinctly DIFFERENT types of information minimally prompting for multiple phi's, and when one considers both catalysis AND inhibition, plus mirroring and purposeful misrepresentation, the package is not just simple information integration.
[D.C.] says: "Okay, so this panpsychist vision, it is a radical one, and I don't know that it's correct. I'm actually more confident about the first crazy idea, that consciousness is fundamental, than about the second one, that it's universal."
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[rf] What is fundamental and universal is reality being nested structured~duality (NSD). The real, radical, crazy (by definition, psychotic) step is redefining reality -- changing scientific tenets and in so doing changing the dominant scientific paradigm.
...Again, .thank you, Serge Patlavskiy for the model and framework.
...Again, .thank you, Serge Patlavskiy for the model and framework.
Bet regards,
Ralph Frost
http://structuredduality.blogspot.com
With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation. Isaiah 12:3
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