Causal Consciousness – Science of Mind
by JoyOne of my particular interests of late has been the scientific study of consciousness. Consciousness studies have in the past decade and a half moved well beyond the reductionist ranks of cog-sci and neuroscience, thanks to a large influx of dedicated funding and the participation of some leading lights in a number of pertinent fields. Quantum physics plays a large role in the developing theoretical framework, participating along with optical physics, molecular and cellular biology, biophysics, medicine, field dynamics, nanotechnology, information theory (and subs, including cryptography), nonlinear sciences, and even computer science – in the role of quantum computational theory and engineering.
There are some very interesting developing theories out there, providing reason to think we just might have a workable understanding at some point [optical physicist Stan Klein predicts 200 years for a clear consensus definition]. I'd hope for sooner, but it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that the quest is engaged. It'll proceed in fits and starts, as all of science does.
In a paper published in the Feb. 2005 issue of the Royal Society's "Philosophical Transactions, Biology," physicist Henry Stapp presents with his colleagues Jeffrey Schwartz and Mario Beauregard a quantum mechanical framework to account for the evidence of causal efficacy of consciousness. I reproduce the entire abstract below, because it says a lot to those who wish to wade through tortured sentences. I've separated paragraphs because of tortured sentences…
Quantum Physics in Neuroscience and Psychology: a Neurophysical Model of Mind/Brain Interaction
ABSTRACT
Neurophsychological research on the neural basis of behavior generally posits that brain mechanisms will ultimately suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This assumption stems from the idea that the brain is made up entirely of material particles and fields, and that all causal mechanisms relevant to neuroscience can therefore be formulated solely in terms of properties of these elements. thus terms having intrinsic mentalistic and/or experiential content (e.g., "feeling," "knowing," and "effort") are not included as primary causal factors.
This theoretical restriction is motivated primarily by ideas about the natural world that have been known to be fundamentally incorrect for more than three quarters of a century. Contemporary basic physical theory differs profoundly from classical physics on the important matter of how the consciousness of human agents enters into the structure of empirical phenomena. The new principles contradicct the older idea that local mechanical processes alone can account for the structure of all observed empirical data. Contemporary physical theory brings directly and irreducibly into the overall causal structure certain psychologically described choices made by human agents about how they will act.
This key development in basic physical theory is applicable to neuroscience, and it provides neuroscientists and psychologists with an alternative conceptual framework for describing neural processes. Indeed, due to certain structural features of ion channels critical to synaptic function, contemporary physical theory must in principle be used when analyzing human brain dynamics. The new framework, unlike its classical-physics-based predecessor is erected directly upon, and is compatible with, the prevailing principles of physics, and is able to represent more adequately than classical concepts the neuroplastic mechanisms relevant to the growing number of empirical studies of the capacity of directed attention and mental effort to systematically alter brain function.
The Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR model is a pretty good translation to physical, biological process. What is being quantified in the biological half of the Orch-OR model are called the "Physical Correlates of Consciousness" [PCCs]. The next higher level of physical application is termed "Neural Correlates of Consciousness [NCCs], and the model describes mechanism and function there quite well, too.
A teleological theoretic for biological evolution will have to incorporate consciousness as a effectively causal agency in the process, and there are even some interesting speculations along those lines that may be deduced from the model – Did Consciousness Cause the Cambrian Evolutionary Explosion?
I have been of the opinion for a number of years that a biological theory of life/evolution that stands in contradiction to what is known about the fundamental nature of reality isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Neodarwinism's "random" qualifier on the organismic half of the equation can't be accurately applied to causation across the board [caveat - accidents do happen]. At least, not to the phenomenon of directed mutation/major genome changes pertinent to the process of evolution.
At least, not if consciousness plays a role in manifesting the 'real'.
I do not know why the reductionists and materialists I've encountered resist this likelihood with so much emotional investment, but I've sure seen some emotional resistance. Perhaps if I could understand why the idea of causal consciousness is so scary, I might better understand the strong resistance to teleology in evolutionary biology in general.
A conscious, goal-seeking impetus behind life's evolution – coming from the living, experiencing, dynamically volitional half of the organism/environment equation – doesn't seem scientifically unthinkable to me at all. It certainly doesn't establish the existence of supernatural deities, though like all good science, it doesn't automatically rule it out. So it seems quite non-threatening to me. It might also be extremely useful to humanity, just for what we may learn if we go looking.
June 23rd, 2005 at 3:29 pm
To elucidate some details on the mechanics of the Orch-OR model specific to biological systems, please see Search for Quantum and Classical Modes of Information Processing in Microtubules: Implications for "The Living State" -
The entire paper is in HTML at this link, and I will provide links to some other recently formulated tests of Orch-OR biological predictions. This is a theoretic that is being actively investigated and refined, at least in the biological end. The mathematical end is a little more problematic, as it steps out beyond the currently-testible, and like all mathematically based physical theoretics at this point in time, is awaiting the development of technology that would allow tests that could demonstrate the nature of the operative extremal of collapse. Penrose hypothesizes that the extremal is a graviton. We are not likely to encounter gravitons in our accelerators any time soon.
On the biological end, things are heating up rapidly. Just last month ten researchers from various nations published an overview of tests that can be conducted to test the model, and some are currently engaging tests – Towards Experimental Tests of Quantum Effects in Cytoskeletal Proteins [and in Greek, if it's not Greek to you...
When I was working with Matti Pitkanen on an attempt to quantify an anomalous issue under his TGD model of consciousness, I was introduced to a whole "new math" that this subject probably deserves - much as gravity deserved calculus back when Leibniz and Newton were arguing the details. Needless to say, I wasn't very "up" on the technicalities, so tried to frame what I was being exposed to in terms my ancient QM training would allow.
It turned out to be slightly easier than grokking multiverses, but not by much. Matti's only got 8 dimensions to work with, which I think is probably better than 11, 22 or infinite [FWIW]. Penrose is still working in a 4-D manifold, which is a good place to start, though he does give some lip service per Nigel Cook in his latest tome to Matti's p-adic primes as a mathematical framework the world's just not ready for yet.
I had stubbornly insisted on equating Matti's multi-stage vector alignment for the extremal of consciousness as akin to the vector of a magnetic monopole. It was the only theoretically existent particle I knew of that would take more than one phase transition to align to 'reality', so my mind kept focusing on its hedgehog extremal vector. Recently Matti has indeed integrated magnetic field dynamics into his 20+-year project, and it's starting to almost make sense! Check his blog for incoming details.
JohnJoe McFadden had a pretty good EM field ubertheory for consciousness that would be deducible from both Penrose's dynamic and Matti's. Since neuronal biophysics does operate on electrical circuitry, and biophotons must of course generate an EM field that extends not only throughout the brain itself, but also extending exterior like an 'aura' around the biophysical body.
True, the world isn't ready for multi-sheeted 8-dimensional spacetimes, hierarchial 'selves' or even magnetic monopoles. Penrose, at the late end of a long and storied career, can risk censure because nobody would dare censure him. He's plowing the road, and some of Matti's students may just plant some seeds. For the subject of life and biological evolution, it's the PCCs and NCCs that count. And these are well on the way to quantification.
Please visit some of these provided links, as they are terribly interesting and I think will upset neodarwinism with a TKO in the final round. Life is not just absurd, it's also way too complex for simplistic formulae to pretend to address. In order for life to get from single-celled archaea and new-symbiant eukaryotes all the way to intelligent life (if we represent such) in a mere 550 million years, something seriously directed has been going on. This can be called "Intelligent Design," or it could be just the details of teleological design.
Because science proper isn't chartered to rule supernatural intervention in or out, shouldn't we just follow the evidence?
Comment by Joy — June 23, 2005 @ 3:29 pm
June 23rd, 2005 at 4:56 pm
Just an aside to let the groupies (as opposed to practicing scientists) know that in addition to the fact that no model of organic evolution that ignores physical theoretics can ever explain 'reality' as we perceive and experience it, I'd just like to add the scientific FACT that…
…if there are more than 3+1 dimensions in reality, we can't rule out the existence of intelligent life in any or all of them, or circumscribe the capabilities of such conscious existence according to the provisional [ignoring anomalies] 'rules' here in 3+1. Really.
Comment by Joy — June 23, 2005 @ 4:56 pm
June 24th, 2005 at 10:08 pm
Just a question for those more learned than I in the study of consciousness. It seems to me that conscious beings pose a problem for pure materialsim. Let me try to describe the quandry as I see it.
Say I build a robot, like Data in the Star Trek NG series. This robot is in essense an amazingly advanced turing machine at heart – ones and zeros processed through AND and OR gates, etc. Yet this robot is so sophisticated, that anyone not already knowing it was a robot would mistake it for a human being. It responds in all the ways a human would to ANY stimulus.
Now, this seems to me preciesly what materialists believe human beings actually are. So there would be no real difference in kind between a robot and a person. Indeed they would have a strong case, since there is no empirical evidence to an outside observer showing any difference between the two. They look and act identical, so surely we should presume they are.
This would be all right and proper, except that we are not outside observers. We each are people with something different than the robot – namely "consciousness." Or that might be a bit of a strech to claim – perhaps it would be better to say that I at least am. For everyone else it the world I can't say, because I cannot get inside their souls and see that there is indeed a "self" experiencing the life that their biological machines live. Other people are indistinguishable from the robot to me.
So my question is, how can one really do a scientific study of consciousness, in that our only way of knowing about it is in our OWN case? There seems to be no way whatsoever of distinguishing a conscious organism from a highly sophisticated machine, yet in the one case I have the inside scoop on, there is all the distinction in the world. This seems to me to be beyond the scope of our ability to study scientifically.
Help me out, scientists! Where am I going wrong?
Comment by thegiffman — June 24, 2005 @ 10:08 pm
June 25th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Hello, giffman. You have identified one of the primary points of contention in the science and philosophy of mind, usually argued interminably between the die-hard materialists and those who believe that experiential states (such as qualia, freedom of will, etc.) are real.
The tricky part of research into mind is that the researcher cannot eliminate the subjective testimony of the subject related to what is going on in his/her head. A materialist would assert that self-consciousness and its attributes are emergent properties – basically illusion – and that self-referential "feels" and "thoughts" are to be ignored in favor of objectively observable physical processes.
This is the infamous "Zombie Debate." Philosopher David Chalmers has collected a lot of the best papers in the ongoing debate, and I think you may enjoy reading a few of them. The submission of Christof Koch and Francis Crick, On the Zombie Within is quite fun, as is The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies by Daniel Dennett.
Materialists tend to ascribe mind/consciousness to neural structures, dendrites and synapses and their biophysical/biochemical processes. Cognitive scientists have tended to rely on neatly circumscribed "brain regions" responsible for this sensation or that memory [etc.], working with their experience of what goes wrong with the machinery after injury or certain disease states. This has long ignored documented neuroplasticity, and cannot explain things so common as stroke or encephalitis victims using whole other regions of brain to re-learn what was lost.
In the past decade or so there has also been quite a bit of research in cog-sci into the phenomenon of synesthesia – the "blending" of sensation in some people so that they hear colors or see sounds, etc. One of the leading synesthesia researchers is Richard Cytowic, who has written several books [including "The Man Who Tasted Shapes, and a keynote article for Psyche Journal. Cytowic now postulates that virtually all humans are born synesthetic, and that segregation of brain regions for specific sensory processing is learned in the first couple of years of life.
Perhaps some of the material at these links will prove helpful to you in understanding the state of the quest. It is all very interesting to me, and I suspect it will be a crucial factor in any scientifically acceptable theoretic of teleological design.
Comment by Joy — June 25, 2005 @ 11:03 am
June 29th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Thought I'd add a tidbit of incoming research findings on the subject, from a Cornell press release dated June 27th about a new study that suggests Mental Processing is Continuous, Not Like a Computer.
This is contrary to the standard cog-sci "modular" or "binary" feed-forward information processing model. Of course, that model has also been challenged by studies of synesthesia, neural plasticity and generally holistic models. Eventually cognitive science is going to move well beyond the "More Neural Than Thou" philosophy, toward more realistic and intriguing models of cognition. It'll have no choice.
From the Cornell press release -
"For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols — like a digital computer," said Spivey. "More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties — like a biological organism."
"Like a biological organism?" Lordy! Next thing you know scientists are going to start suggesting that humans and other critters actually ARE 'biological organisms'!!!
Of course, I still have reservations about "emergent properties" in their present fuzzily-defined form, but this is progress. I do agree that mental processes are nonlinear and self-organized. I just don't agree that they 'emerge' like magic from a causally inadequate substrate. The "More Neural Than Thou" reductionists haven't reduced far enough to identify the actual causal substrate, so of course they want to view 'emergence' of mind as magic.
If, as Hameroff-Penrose suggests, the causal substrate is quantum-dynamic on the seriously sub-cellular level of NCCs, cognitive science will have to accept global properties that don't magically 'emerge', but are there all the way down – it's called "Coherence," the technical term for quantum entanglement (non-locality). This has implications for the whole of biology, not just higher organs like brains. Because the PCCs (same structures as in neurons but ubiquitous) go all the way down.
Turtles can be fun!
Comment by Joy — June 29, 2005 @ 1:39 pm