Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Piggy]

I think you're not only speculating, but you're speculating about something that doesn't actually explain anything. All that really must happen to explain the level of coordination you're talking about is collaboration; it need not be all at once. In particular, events merely need to be fed up a chain for higher level analysis--and a particular level of analysis should be analogous to the common experience every one of us has where we have a realm of conscious thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, which we can analyze and compare. Just a simple chain of recognizers is sufficient to account for this.

1. This is not specuation, it is verifiable. See the McGurk effect, synesthesia, and various visual illusions, for example.

2. The binding does not happen all at once. We know this from experimentation on the brain. In fact, studies into people with synesthesia can help us tease out where these processes occur.

3. While various types of binding occur in various parts of the brain which are not detectable in our experience, as far as we know, only conscious awareness coordinates the activity of disparate parts of the brain without any discernable neural activity directly merging them. How this happened was long a mystery until the deep brain studies.

Remember, what I'm talking about is not philosophical, but based on studies of conscious brains. It helps to keep that in mind.

 

[yy2bggggs]

In other words, you don't know how your hypothesis would distinguish between conscious and non-conscious processes in the brain.

No, it means I don't draw a distinction, other than conscious awareness. And that's just a level of integration.

Which, if you don't mind my pointing out, means you don't have a theory, model, or hypothesis of consciousness.

Correct. As it turns out, I don't have a full theory of mind either.

Not sure why that matters. Are you proposing that having a theory that's speculative, and doesn't work, is better than not having one?

 

[westprog]

It's up to you, Pixy, RD, wowb etal to demonstrate otherwise; i.e. that only the switching features are important. And y'all are no where near so doing, here or in any preceding consciousness thread. My mind boggles in that none of you seem capable of separating the physical actions from symbolic meaning.


No-one knows what details are relevant to consciousness or lack thereof.

The computational theory says, basically, that no physical characteristic of the brain is required for consciousness. If a matching computation can be performed on a system with an entirely different configuration, using entirely different physical principles, it will still produce identical results.

This is typically "proven" using theories of computation, even though such theories make no mention of consciousness. The identification of consciousness and computation is never demonstrated, merely taken as a given.

This astonishing claim is then to be justified by picking through the brain item by item and demanding proof that any particular feature of it is associated with consciousness. This is of course not possible, because we can't produce a brain without a blood supply, or brain waves, or sensory connections to the body, or control functions or grey matter or any number of possibly superfluous but practically essential elements.

Whatever the nature of consciousness, we know that it is associated with at the physical features of the brain. We cannot dismiss any of those features as unnecessary until we have demonstrated consciousness to exist in their absence.

 

[Piggy]

As for the subjective simultaneity within conscious awareness, we know it's illusory. Intentional binding is an illusion of timing where a person's subjective measure of the distance of events depends on whether or not said person perceives the causation of those events to be driven by an agency--this is the most prominent example. The phenomena of deja vu is believed to be caused by a glitch in the relative timing of memorization with recall when perceiving events, giving the illusion that events you are witnessing have happened before. Also, multiple independent timing studies in conscious experience seem to suggest that there are timing markers used in conscious experience to refer to a particular event, and the latencies can get up to about half a second.

The general data, in my opinion, points to a collaboration of bottom up and top down processes with multiple layers of perception; and when I say multiple layers, I mean we perceive objects, we perceive the percepts, we perceive our body, we perceive a model of reality built around this, and so on. You have an interesting theory involving the role of the electromagnetic waves to coordinate events to happen at the same time in order to produce consciousness, but it appears to me to be entirely speculative, and lacking a reason. I have no problems up to the fact that you speculate that most conscious processing can occur using the same circuits without conscious awareness. Once you break beyond this, however, and posit that there's an electromagnetic wave that's not a noise that pushes it above the barrier, and that this cannot happen with the Pixydroid, I have to just drop my jaw and go, "huh?"

Yes, we know that some of the simultaneity is illusory. That's accounted for by the biological theory.

Yes, it's true that "the general data... points to a collaboration of bottom up and top down processes with multiple layers of perception", but this is not a problem for the biological theory.

In fact, studies of perceptual switching (e.g., send one image to the right hemisphere, another to the left, observe as the conscious perception switches back and forth -- which we can do with monkeys using trained reporting processes involving rewards so that we don't encounter subject bias) is shedding light on just how this occurs, thereby making the biological model more precise.

But do keep in mind that "perception" is another one of those things that occurs in brain events which we are aware of, and those we are not aware of... so like attention, memory, and learning, it alone does not distinguish between what we experience and what we don't.

So far, the only candidate for that job is the signature pattern of brain waves... unless you have some other experiments to point to which explain the electromagnetic studies and our observation of conscious experience.

 

[Piggy]

You have to admit you're speculating. You cannot simply bolster this theory with necessity to breathe life into your speculation.

The post was designed to "explain consciousness to the layman", so it left a lot out. I'll be happy to drill down into the supporting research.

And although we still don't have an answer to the most difficult questions, at least we're making progress on the initial ones, which your hypothesis does not appear to be doing -- or it if is, you're keeping mum about it.

Models of exactly how and why the waves and neurons generate consciousness are, of course, speculative to various degrees. Given what we know, we can do no better.

But at least this theory has made falsifiable predictions which have been verified through rigorous study, and is able to continue doing that in the future.

 

[Piggy]

Induced electromagnetic interference does have effects, but this can easily be explained by the primary impulses and their regularity in timing. Magnetic fields affect charge particles, and those potassium and sodium ions are charged. If they're also timed, then you can interrupt their flows with a particular pulse.

So let's walk this down, here, can you expand that and explain why the differences appear in conscious and non-conscious minds in ways that are synchronous with the formation and dissipation of deep brain waves and with qualitative differences in conscious experience, and are consistent with the predictions of the biological model, but which support the symbolic hypothesis rather than the biological theory?

 

[Piggy]

Capgras syndrome is more telling here than speculation. In particular, those with Capgras syndrome actually see an entire person, but still do not perceive that person as being "our friend James". They even admit that the person looks exactly like our friend James... he's just got to be an imposter. Even the feeling that a person is who you recognize him to be is a specific percept that the Capgras syndrome sufferer simply does not integrate.

This is also not a problem for the biological model, which of course predicts that areas of the brain which are functioning abnormally will have an effect on the shape of the waves. This can include many bizarre effects as the remaining activity of the brain shapes the wave without the contribution -- or with a warped contribution -- from the damaged shape.

And by the way, have you noticed that in all this, you have not found any points that dispute the biological model, nor are you making any points that would point to the symbolic hypothesis instead?

 

[yy2bggggs]

1. This is not specuation, it is verifiable. See the McGurk effect, synesthesia, and various visual illusions, for example.

Those are not evidence for induction as a result of an electromagnetic field induced by change of current throughout the brain. I say you're speculating, unless you can show me peer reviewed scientific studies suggesting your effect even exists.

Let's toss in something else. The devices that induce an interference using an electromagnetic field do just that--they induce an interference. They shut down parts of the brain. They also use very strong electromagnetic fields to get an effect at all. This is the mechanism you're proposing is key to conscious coordination.

And now, you're even proposing that they don't occur at the same time. But the electromagnetic field, which isn't noise, is global and fairly simultaneous.

So you have two problems. How does your theory even work at all? And how does it cause the effect you propose that it does, especially given that binding doesn't happen all at once?

2. The binding does not happen all at once.

Okay.

3. While various types of binding occur in various parts of the brain which are not detectable in our experience, as far as we know, only conscious awareness coordinates the activity of disparate parts of the brain without any discernable neural activity directly merging them.

What does this mean? If the signals are directly merged, then information is lost (unless you combine it in wave form, in which case it's necessarily out of sync with a regular signal--and the regular signal can only effect harmonics). Furthermore, it seems like you're describing this backwards. Conscious awareness doesn't coordinate those activities, it is the collaboration of them. And it's just collaboration, not coordination, as you observed in 2.

How this happened was long a mystery until the deep brain studies.

Sure. But why do you bother with this speculative notion of electromagnetic induction, when just the stimulus itself is enough? Furthermore, you need more than just a clock signal to explain how this collaboration occurs.

Remember, what I'm talking about is not philosophical, but based on studies of conscious brains. It helps to keep that in mind.

It also helps to keep in mind that you didn't explain anything.

Tell me how that pulse lets me see the dish with the fork in it and decide that I need to put it into the dishwasher.

 

[Piggy]

So would a reconstructed time line based collaboration of multiple layers of percepts. And to me this seems more likely.

Well, this is a feature of the biological model, of course, so if it plays out in its details, then we're good.

But the non-conscious brain is able to use subliminal input in so many ways -- and, we should note, it's able to use an image of an ape as an image of an ape, and not just a collection of shapes, angles, colors, and brightness, so there's a good bit of coordination on the non-conscious side which makes a "sausage" model (bits get cut off and other bits get merged as you go along) more difficult to propose.

In other words, if the non-conscious mind can treat the image as a gestalt, which implies a lot of the time line is complete by the time the processes responsible for experience get involved, and if that's the case, why do the blind spots only appear in conscious experience?

Some sort of "strobe effect" appears more likely to me.

 

[westprog]

Now, PixyMisa and rocketdodger are all into their information processing theory of consciousness--their particular form of the computational model which suggests that a machine can, and must, produce consciousness. My personal stance is simply that I see nothing wrong with this view, and it seems adequate, but I'm not pushing it.

I'm not claiming that it is necessarily false that a machine executing a computation is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness. I do think that it's unproven, and moreover, that much of the evidence adduced in favour of the theory is wrong, or wrongly used, or misleading. In particular, the claim that the Church-Turing thesis proves the computational claim is demonstrably erroneous. The assertion that there is consensus in the neurological profession is also not correct. I've provided references to support this viewpoint.

The yy2bggggs/Piggy argument seems to involve a dispute over the capacity of a machine to represent symbols. I, for one, am slightly confused as to what is being asserted by the various examples, and what is being refuted.

 

[Piggy]

Actually, this is easy to explain. Neural signals involve the transmission of a pulse via a wave of electropotential difference. The major influence in this particular mode of signaling is the sodium pump, involving a change in the distribution of sodium and potassium ions. Any time you have a change in charge, you're going to induce an electromagnetic field change. So if we just have regular neural signals, we're going to wind up with regular electromagnetic waves.

Well, of course.

No on thinks the waves are inexplicable, or that they arise without physical cause in the brain. (Everything the brain does must have physical / energetic causes.)

It's their relationship to conscious experience -- which we can observe changing state as the waves change state, and which doesn't exist when the waves aren't there or are not coherent -- which is of interest.

That's what I meant by "noise" -- i.e., something not relevant to what we're trying to study. If they are noise, then they must be noise from some other process that's closely correlated with consciousness.

And unlike the neural activity which supports the waves, only the waves have the opportunity (as far as I know) to synchronize the activity of disparate brain regions which do not exhibit the kind of neural connection which would allow them to do this neurally.

That's why it's so important.

And the very close connection with conscious states and the stages of coherence and strength of the waves (waking up, falling asleep, being knocked out) strongly suggests a direct role.

So it fits with experiment and observation, and we really have no other candidate in the works right now.

 

[yy2bggggs]

This is also not a problem for the biological model,

This is ridiculous. Nobody has a problem with the biological model.

 

[westprog]

YOU are the one who brought the number of posts in. I'm just pointing out how vacuous that argument is.

If nobody were replying and engaging with my posts, then the number of them would be irrelevant.

And the post you were responding to was not an "ad hom". I'll add you to the long list of people who have no idea what that term means.

It was an attempt to denigrate my arguments by characterising me as being unworthy of response.

 

[westprog]

Not sniping your interesting post because it doesn't deserve a longer answer but your post ignores the "Layman" part.

In layman's terms I would say conciousness is the label that we learn to apply to a set of behaviours we observe in ourselves and others. It really is no more mysterious than that.

In layman's terms I would say that it's what it feels like to experience something. It's what we observe about ourselves that isn't connected with behaviour.

 

[yy2bggggs]

And unlike the neural activity which supports the waves, only the waves have the opportunity (as far as I know) to synchronize the activity of disparate brain regions which do not exhibit the kind of neural connection which would allow them to do this neurally.

That's why it's so important.

Show me peer reviewed studies demonstrating that the effect exists.

And precisely what synchronization are you talking about?

And the very close connection with conscious states and the stages of coherence and strength of the waves (waking up, falling asleep, being knocked out) strongly suggests a direct role.

Not sure what you're saying, but I hope you mean that this results from the direct pulses.

 

[yy2bggggs]

ETA: Just as a point of clarification... are you talking about the electromagnetic field produced by these impulses inducing neural signaling?

 

[Piggy]

Those are not evidence for induction as a result of an electromagnetic field induced by change of current throughout the brain. I say you're speculating, unless you can show me peer reviewed scientific studies suggesting your effect even exists.

Let's toss in something else. The devices that induce an interference using an electromagnetic field do just that--they induce an interference. They shut down parts of the brain. They also use very strong electromagnetic fields to get an effect at all. This is the mechanism you're proposing is key to conscious coordination.

And now, you're even proposing that they don't occur at the same time. But the electromagnetic field, which isn't noise, is global and fairly simultaneous.

So you have two problems. How does your theory even work at all? And how does it cause the effect you propose that it does, especially given that binding doesn't happen all at once?

Taking the last question first, the structures which are influencing the waves have already done much of the binding. So this is not a problem.

Consciousness depends (in some way, apparently) not on just one wave, but on the coordination of 3 signature waves.

Each of these waves will be influenced in somewhat different ways by its own subsection of active brain regions, each of which will in turn be behaving in ways that result from a chain of neural processes that results in its particular "shape", which is to say that each shape influencing any particular wave will already exhibit the features of previous binding.

As for how this causes the specific effects -- e.g. the smell of cinnamon -- this simply isn't known, and in fact that's the Holy Grail of brain research, but the biological theory gives us a means of progressing toward an answer.

And I'm afraid I can't find a clear objection in your discussion of the waves.

The electromagnetic interference introduced experimentally is done precisely to interfere with the electromagnetic processes already going on in the brain.

When we do this while a subject is awake, the disturbance begins in the physically local region, then begins popping up all over the brain like popcorn.

If we do this while the subject is asleep, the local disturbance is all that happens.

The role of the deep brain waves explains why this occurs. Without the waves forming a feedback loop among various neural structures which themselves are not directly neurally connected, we lack a mechanism for it.

With the waves we get that feedback loop.

So the picture we get of the brain which comes from the mapping of neural connections, the effects of magnetic interference in conscious and non-conscious states, and the correspondence of signature wave activity with consciousness all point to the role of these signature waves as the medium of coordination of disparate brain regions during conscious awareness.

Now I gotta get to work. More later.

 

[westprog]

But at least this theory has made falsifiable predictions

That doesn't necessarily provide a good theory, but it's a prerequisite. To be a scientific theory, it has to be testable, at least conceivably, in an objective way.

 

[Piggy]

Show me peer reviewed studies demonstrating that the effect exists.

And precisely what synchronization are you talking about?

I haven't looked for that in a while, I'll see what I can dig up.

But yeah, this was one of the big puzzles in brain research -- how did conscious experience coordinate the activity of various brain regions which did not appear to be coordinating neurally in such a way that would lead to what we observe, and even if they had been communicating with each other neurally, how would the brain make a gestalt out of it?

The waves are our best bet for solving that problem.

Not sure what you're saying, but I hope you mean that this results from the direct pulses.

Experience occurs when the signature waves are coherent.

If you're knocked out by anesthesia, there's a sudden break point. When you fall asleep, it's a more gradual loss of coherence (which affects experience).

When you wake up, first the waves become coherent, and then the signals strengthen as you "come alive".

So the behavior of the signals not only corresponds to being conscious or unconscious, but also to the changes in experience as they strengthen and weaken, lose or gain coherence.

 

[AlBell]

No, we're not interested in consciousness (yet) when it comes to the particular discussion we're, well, trying to have about the marble machine.

So let me ask you... taking a God's-eye-view of the system which includes only the machine, having no preference for things which "make sense" to human beings (or any other beings) or which are "meaningful" or "useful" to any particular beings... what is the "given usage" of the marble machine?

(Hint: There ain't one.)

Slingshot ammo and firewood?

As to symbolic vs abstract ... ROFL.