Consciousness – where are we?

Interesting to see the review of progress and prospects for the science of consciousness produced by Matthias Michel and others, and particularly the survey that was conducted in parallel. The paper discusses funding and other practical issues, but we’re also given a broad view of the state of play, with the survey recording broadly optimistic views and interestingly picking out Global Workspace proposals as the most favoured theoretical approach. However, consciousness science was rated less rigorous than other fields (which I suppose is probably attributable to the interdisciplinary character of the topic and in particular the impossibility of avoiding ‘messy’ philosophical issues).

Michel suggests that the scientific study of consciousness only really got established a few decades ago, after the grip of behaviourism slackened. In practical terms you can indeed start in the mid twentieth century, but that actually overlooks the early structuralist psychologists a hundred years earlier. Wundt is usually credited as the first truly scientific psychologist, though there were others who adopted the same project around the same time. The investigation of consciousness (in the sense of awareness) was central to their work, and some of their results were of real value. Unfortunately, their introspective methods suffered a fatal loss of credibility, which is what precipitated the extreme reaction against consciousness represented by behaviourism, which eventually suffered an eclipse of its own, leaving the way clear for something like a fresh start, the point Michel takes as the real beginning. I think the longer history is worth remembering because it illustrates a pattern in which periods of energetic growth and optimism are followed by dreadful collapses, a pattern still recognisable in the field, perhaps most obviously in AI, but also in the outbreaks of enthusiasm followed by scepticism that have affected research based on fMRI scanning, for example.

In spite of the ‘winters’ affecting those areas, it is surely the advances in technology that have been responsible for the genuine progress recognised by respondents to the survey. Whatever our doubts about scanning, we undeniably know a lot more about neurology now than we did, even if that sometimes serves to reveal new mysteries, like the uncertain function of the newly-discovered ‘rosehip’ neurons. Similarly, though we don’t have conscious robots (and I think almost everyone now has a more mature sense of what a challenge that is), the project of Artificial General Intelligence has reshaped our understanding. I think, for example, that Daniel Dennett is right to argue that exploration of the wider Frame Problem in AI is not just a problem for computer scientists, but tells us about an important aspect of the human mind we had never really noticed before – its remarkable capacity for dealing with relevance and meaning, something that is to the fore in the fascinating recent development of the pragmatics of language, for example.

I was not really surprised to see the Global Workspace theory achieving top popularity in the survey (Bernard Baars perhaps missing out on a deserved hat-tip here); it’s a down-to-earth approach that makes a lot of sense and is relatively easily recruited as an ally of other theoretical insights. That said, it has been around for a while without much in the way of a breakthrough. It was not that much more surprising to see Integrated Information also doing well, though rated higher by non-professionals (Michel shrewdly suggests that they may be especially impressed by the relatively complex mathematics involved).

However, the survey only featured a very short list of contenders which respondents could vote for. The absence of illusionism and quantum theories is acknowledged; myself I would have included at least two schools of sceptical thought; computationalism/functionalism and other qualia sceptics – though it would be easy to lengthen the list. Most surprising, perhaps, is the absence of panpsychism. Whatever you think about it (and regulars will know I’m not a fan), it’s an idea whose popularity has notably grown in recent years and one whose further development is being actively pursued by capable adherents. I imagine the absence of these theories, and others such as mysterianism and the externalism doughtily championed by Riccardo Manzotti and others, is due to their being relatively hard to vindicate neurologically – though supporters might challenge that. Similarly, its robustly scientific neurological basis must account for the inclusion of ‘local recurrence’ – is that the same as recurrent processing?

It’s only fair to acknowledge the impossibility of coming up with a comprehensive taxonomy of views on consciousness which would satisfy everyone. It would be easy to give a list of twenty or more which merely generated a big argument. (Perhaps a good thing to do, then?)

69 thoughts on “Consciousness – where are we?

  1. Hello Peter,

    Thank you for this blogpost!

    Just two short comments:

    A few words about the 90s as the starting date of consciousness science: I completely agree with you! I believe that the view according to which the scientific study of consciousness began in the 90s is largely a myth. I actually have a paper in preparation about the history of the scientific study of consciousness during the second half of the 19th century! Some of the most important discoveries were made well before the 90s, e.g., Weiskrantz and the study of blindsight; the study of split-brain patients; or the study of agentivity by Libet. If we look at the actual history of the field, the study of consciousness never really died, even during behaviorism (e.g., there was some interesting work on consciousness in the field of epilteptology at that time). It is still true, however, that the consciousness science became more “organized” as a structured discipline, as we claim in the paper, in the 90s. For example, with the beginning of the Association for the Scientific Study of Conciousness, and with multiple dedicated journals.

    About adding additional theories of consciousness in the survey, I also agree. We didn’t include more theories for two reasons. The first is purely practical: it becomes messier when we add additional response options, and it takes people more time to fill the survey. The second is that we chose to focus on current scientific theories, thereby excluding, e.g. panpsychism, which is a philosophical theory of consciousness (even if it might be, somehow, implied by theories like IIT). That said, you’re right that maybe we should have included more “skeptical” options for the participants who did not think that the theories presented *and any other theory* were promising. We’ll think about it next time we do a survey!

    Matthias

  2. Thanks, Matthias!

    All your points are fair ones. If we were debating the history I might make a case for another major milestone around the middle of the twentieth century when computers first really became a thing.

    I understand why your choice of theories was influenced by a wish to stick with science, which is fair enough.

    I certainly hope you revisit the survey in due course (every year?) – it’s very interesting and seeing trends would be even more so!

  3. I think the narrative of consciousness is one that transcends its earliest mythologies and whatever happens to be the current scientific paradigm. Freud’s insights into the mechanics of the psyche are every bit as compelling as modern neuroscientific theories and applications. Yes, consciousness is in some sense a construct of its own literature.

  4. It is true that real progresses have been made. But they are mostly about neural mechanisms relevant for consciousness (functions of consciousness), not that much about the nature of consciousness. And I feel that the real question is more about the nature of consciousness than about the way it appears to us (like knowing the equations of gravity vs knowing that the moon turns around our globe). Phenomenal Consciousness (“What it is like to..”) is still the hard problem. But Self-Consciousness (representing oneself as an existing entity, like we represent others) is easier to address, and perhaps it could be an entry point as PC needs SC.

  5. You said: “It’s only fair to acknowledge the impossibility of coming up with a comprehensive taxonomy of views on consciousness which would satisfy everyone.” But that is exactly what we are building, and tracking, real time, with the consensus building system at Canonizer.com. (see:

    Traditional surveys are problematic for all the reasons mentioned here, and more. They are only for measuring disagreement. Canonizer’s focus is on consensus building, and tracking. Supper camps keep the focus on the important things, where most people agree, allowing lessor disagreements to be pushed out of the way, to supporting sub camps. The system is able to capture and track what everyone believes, concisely and quantitatively. The quality of new arguments and experimental results can be measured by how many people jump camps, which we have seen, and is being tracked.

    To data, there is a surprising amount of consensus emerging around the fairly simple “Representational Qualia Theory” (see: https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6) The only disagreements being, what are the nature of qualia? All the various theoretical possibilities predicting what qualia are, are described in the competing sub camps. Representational Qualia Theory is a basic meta approach describing how to falsify these competing sub camps by using experimental methods that are not “qualia blind”. Today all the abstract labels and descriptions of the stuff in the brain experimentalist are providing tell us nothing about which of those may be descriptions of something like a redness physical quality we experience directly. Like the word red, you need to know which physical quality to interpret them as labeling or describing. Experimentalists are ignoring this fact.

    for more info, contact me at brent.allsop at canonizer.com

  6. I would have thought that the ‘Attention-Schema Theory’ of Graziano would rate a mention. There are a couple of wild quantum theories from top thinkers that should rate a mention – Penrose’s ‘Orch OR’, and Aaronson’s ‘Freebit’ ideas.

    Of course, I have the outline of my own theory of consciousness, and my solution is nothing like any of the current crop of theories 😀

    I think consciousness is a new form of causality – or time. Call it ‘narrative time’. And it’s composed of two other fundamental types of time – physical time (direction of increase in complexity) and logical time (direction of increase in knowledge). So cognition weaves together physical and logical time to generate ‘narrative time’ (consciousness). And time is a ‘tree’ of counter-factual possibilities – think of interactive fiction such as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books or the recent experimental Netflix movie ‘Bandersnatch’. There’s a tree of narrative possibilities. Consciousness is both a symbolic language for reasoning about time , and a form of time itself! TPTA – Temporal Perception & Temporal Action.

  7. mjgeddes and everyone, there is room for all theories at Canonizer.com
    Penrose-Hameroff Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory is already there
    (see: https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Orch-OR/20 )
    I don’t know much about the other camps mentioned, but anyone can create a new camp, at any time, mjgeddes, it would be great to get your, would it be called: “Zarzuelaazen Reality Theory” canonized, and the others you mentioned. Maybe you could help with this, so we can find out if others support those camps, compared to competing camps? How could your camp be falsified or verified, experimentally?
    I’m guessing that all of these theories would support the general “Representational Qualia Theory” super camp (see: https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6) and certainly the “Approachable Via Science” super camp above that: (see https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Approachable-Via-Science/2)

  8. Consciousness may be an invitation, an attraction, a fundamental interaction in the biology of our cosmos…
    …and should be stated/contended with in published Table of Contents, Paper leads, Paper abstracts and of course comments…

    Science, Philosophy, Computations and Meditations towards consciousness…
    …these are our attitudes for understanding our place in a biological universe…

    Being here may not be a choice but seeing-observing oneself may be a choice…

  9. @ Steve: If I understand Arnold’s koan – assuming he’s not just having a go – I believe the point is that part of consciousness is our attempt to explain it?

    That self awareness is in part the inward looking, a seeming paradox of sorts?

  10. Thanks Brent, I’ll have a look.
    I’m calling my theory TPTA (Temporal Perception and Temporal Action). Consciousness = time and time perception

  11. Hi mjgeddes,
    Does “Temporal Perception and Temporal Action” shed any light on how to bridge Levine’s Explanatory gap, or eff ineffable qualia? (i.e. enable one to objectively prove (or disprove) an effing statement like: “My redness is like your grenness.”)

  12. There’s no such thing as an ‘explanatory gap’ or ‘ineffable qualia’ Brent. The reason people think there is is simply due to lack of understanding about the physical details that would let you see how qualia are part of physics. So rather philosophy, you’d need physical details to actually bridge the apparent gap fully.

    But TPTA does help. It says that qualia are not ‘things’ (like chairs), but dynamical *processes* (like hurricanes). Now when dynamical processes (‘time flows’) model themselves, you get consciousness. But when you consider the flow of time, you can realize that the models (representations) of dynamical processes are *themselves* dynamical processes!

    Consciousness is both a *language* for modeling time (a representation) *and* a form of time itself. And that fact is what closes the explanatory gap.

  13. Couldn’t it be, though, ‘conscious entities’ are obliged to Be in service without time…

    …that our global workplace is also part of an infinite workplace…

  14. Hi mjgeddes,
    I think I agree with your “There’s no such thing as an ‘explanatory gap’ or ‘ineffable qualia’” I always similarly claim there is no “hard problem”.

    But still let me ask the question a different way. Does TPTA enable us to objectively verify or falsify statements like “My redness is like your greenness.”?

  15. Any physicalist and representationist theory (of which TPTA is one) should be able to account for why the inverted spectrum isn’t possible.

    In the case of color perception (such as redness/greeness) we’re dealing with what Edelman termed ‘Primary Consciousness’ (i.e., consciousness in the present moment, without much consideration of past or future).

    TPTA talks about 3 general types of awareness related to time – past (reflection), present and future (planning). The 2nd type (present moment) is primary consciousness (including color perception).

    The inverted spectrum is based on the fallacy that qualia are private. But what a representationist account really means is that in fact one should be able to *communicate* qualia . You are *not* your qualia! Rather, you should think of any qualia as a part ‘virtual reality’ you are viewing – they can be *communicated* from one mind to another, and thus compared. Thus by considering percepts as *messages* (things that can be communicated between minds), one can indeed objectivity compare them.

  16. Oh great. I love it when people claim “inverted spectrum isn’t possible”

    In the representational model, there are two important physical qualities:

    1. The physical properties that are the target of our observation that provide the initial cause of the perception process, such as a strawberry reflecting red light.

    2. The physical properties within the brain that are the final results of the perception process that is our conscious knowledge of a red strawberry. We experience this directly, as redness.

    In other words, perception is an interpretation process where we interpret #1 as #2. If you swap the red green signal, anywhere in the long causal chain of events that is perception, you have inverted qualia. This is portrayed in this image of two identical people, except for a red green signal inversion, somewhere in the perception process:

    In this image, the actual strawberry being perceived is represented in black. If you look at that strawberry, via the red green inverted representation of that strawberry on the right, that is what inverted qualia is. Your knowledge of that black strawberry has a greenness quality in that case.

  17. Hey Brent, hope y’all don’t mind my butting in here, but I’m also in the “inverted spectrum isn’t possible” camp. Tell me if this makes sense:

    Assume your inputs are, say, ten wires with lights on the end. The key is that all of the inputs are physically identical, but can be distinguished one from another. Any given input wire is either on or off. Suppose one of those inputs turns on when there is something red, like a strawberry, in a given box (because a camera is watching the box and some mechanism turns on the wire when it sees red). So there is no way to tell which of your wires is the “red” one until someone puts something red in the box. After that, you will know which is the “red” one. You can even label that one as “red”. Let’s assume there is likewise another wire for “green”.

    Now let’s suppose there is another black and white camera watching the box, and this is hooked to a computer that recognizes strawberries by shape, and that computer turns on the “strawberry” wire.

    Let’s say that when someone puts something in the box, you get to choose whether to eat it. You quickly learn that when the “strawberry” and “red” wires are on, you get a nice treat, but when the “strawberry” and “green” wires are on, you are … disappointed.

    Now the malefactor comes along and switches the computers, so the “strawberry” wire and the “green” wire go on at the same time for ripe strawberries, and “red” for not-ripe strawberries. After a while you figure out what happened, and then re-label the “red” and “green” wires.

    So in conclusion, if this situation describes how experiences work, I hope you see that it makes no sense to ask if my “red” is the same as your “green”. I have a “red” and a “green”, and so do you.

    *

  18. On further thought I would adjust my position on “inverted spectrum isn’t possible” to “inverted spectra are sometimes possible, but not necessarily possible”. So I can imagine a situation as in the thought experiment above except that every input wire is physically different. But I think for human consciousness, this would be analogous to every neuron producing its own unique neurotransmitter. I think we can agree this is unlikely.

    *

  19. Hi James,
    Thanks for jumping in!! This is all exciting stuff.
    I’m having troubles understanding much of what you are saying, since some of the words you use can be interpreted many ways. For example, the word red is ambiguous. I don’t know if you are talking about #1 the attributes of the strawberry, or the physical qualities of #2 your knowledge of that. I resolve this by using the word red, to refer to #1 (something that reflects red light) and the different word redness, to refer to the physical quality of our knowledge of such.

    So, given that, it makes no sense to say: ‘my “red” is the same as your “green”’, as we are all agreeing that red is anything out there that reflects red light. In the inverted spectrum case, one would say my knowledge of red, is more like your knowledge of green. Or more simply, my redness is more like your greenness.

    If you engineered a baby, to have redness greenness inverted knowledge from you, they would always call their greenness quality knowledge of strawberries “red”, and know a strawberry represented by knowledge with that color, is the strawberry they want to eat.

    So, given that, maybe you could try to say this again, in a non-ambiguous way, so I can better understand what you are trying to say?

    I agree with your second post. Which of course then begs the original question I was asking. How could you prove or falsify your claims of whether someone did or didn’t have inverted redness greenness knowledge, or whether it was possible or not necessarily possible…?

  20. Brent, in the thought experiment of a bunch of wires, any given wire can be on or not. They all look the same.

    If one wire goes on when something red is in the box, your ability to associate that wire with something in the box being red = “redness”. If that wire subsequently changes to being on when something green is in the box (because someone switched computers) you will be confused for a while, but then you will come to associate that wire with green things in the box, which will become your “greenness”, and your “redness” will shift to the other wire. In the end, you still have “redness” and “greenness”.

    So at any steady state, either before switching or long after, it would make no sense to say my redness is like your greenness. The wire I associate with red, so, my redness, would have no connection/similarity with the wire you associate with your green, so your greenness, except for the physical similarity that all of the wires share and the fact they may or may not be hooked up so as to mean something when they are on.

    Does that help?

    *

  21. Hi James,
    Yes, that helps, but this is indicating you have classic naively over simplified qualia blind model of reality.

    When you define redness this way, in this particular box system, it is just a synonym that is always identical to the word red. So, it provides no utility in trying to understand the difference between the target of perception, #1 and the knowledge of such, #2. It is your knowledge, #2 which will be consulted to determine if you want to eat it or not.

    If at first, this one wire goes on, when you put something in the box, this wire should be labeled the knowledge of red wire (i.e. redness). This should be considered your knowledge, and when you need to know if you want to eat the strawberry, you consult this wire to see if it is on.

    This knowledge could also be represented by a simple bit which would be 1, when the thing in the box is red, and 0 (don’t want to eat it) when the thing in the box is green. This is more practical, as you’ll need to make copies of the value on this wire from the box, multiple times, as you do more AI computation.

    The point being, this particular wire, the abstract representational that is one, and knowledge that has a redness quality, could all be considered as your knowledge in each particular system which can be used to make your decision.

    Then you talk about inverting the red green signal in the perception process, when you say: “If that wire subsequently changes to being on when something green is in the box (because someone switched computers)”

    So, as I was saying, regardless of the model, to begin with, this particular wire, or the 1, or the “redness physical quality”, can be considered to represent knowledge #2, of the target #1 (what is in the box). When you invert red and green, then the attributes of the knowledge have been inverted. As you say: “you will be confused for a while, but then you will come to associate that wire with green things in the box”

    Or you could say: “you will come to associate that oneness with green things in the box”

    Or you could say: “you will come to associate that redness with green things in the box”

    All of which are inverted spectrum, which matches what we experience in reality.

    Can you see how your model is overly simplified? There is nothing in your model that has a redness physical quality. There is nothing in this naïve model that has any physical quality at all. This is proven, when you invert the perception of red and green. In reality, redness knowledge of the strawberry changes to greenness knowledge. But in your overly simplistic model, everything is just “red” and doesn’t change. This difference from the reality, where inverting perception changes nothing we experience falsifies your model, as not being sufficient for modeling what we experience in actual reality, when red green knowledge of the strawberry is inverted.

    Do you consider the belief that “inverted spectrum isn’t possible” to be falsified yet?

  22. Brent, not yet.

    You seem to propose that these two sentences are equivalent:
    “you will come to associate that oneness with green things in the box”, and
    “you will come to associate that redness with green things in the box”

    They are not equivalent. It is the association that determines the “redness” or “greenness”. If a wire being on is associated with red things, it is not associated with green things. It is the association of on-ness with red things that makes redness. Thus, the second sentence translates as “ you will come to associate the association of the wire being on to red things with green things …”. Instead, what happens is the wire being on stops being associated with red things, so stops being redness, and becomes associated with green things, thus becoming greenness.

    I admit my model is simplified, but I don’t think it is overly simplified. You say “[t]here is nothing in [my] model that has a redness physical quality.” At the risk of not understanding what you mean by a “redness physical quality”, I would say that there is no such thing. The exact same “physical quality” (i.e., the wire being “on”) can be associated with either red things or green things, or lots of other things. And fortunately, that’s all we need to explain what we observe.

    *

  23. Hi Brent and Dean. Less sexy than inversions, how about collapsing together of adjacent shades? There are a number of studies suggesting the language you speak alters early “pre-conscious” visual processing of colour using visual evoked potentials – see papers citing Thierry et al (2009).
    https://www.pnas.org/content/106/11/4567/
    Specifically, Russian and Greek speakers have “darkblue” (siniy, ble) and “lightblue” (goluboy, galazio) as basic colour terms, but like English speakers don’t partition green in that way. Differences in processing (EEG signal) occur at 100-200 msec post presentation (possibly predictive coding) – these language speakers consciously perceive differences in these shades that English speakers miss in attentional blink or oddball colour setups. Learning a second language changes perception over a few months. So is this a change in qualia caused by the language you speak?

  24. Hi David,
    Welcome, and thanks for jumping in with this very relevant information. All this kind of stuff, including various kinds of color blindness, tetrachromats, how colors appear different in different context… This is all examples of how clueless we are, when we think that very variable qualia are qualities of the surface of something that is constant.

    Just don’t get lost around subtly complex rat hole issues like this, which most everyone gets lost down, seeking the solution. You first need to keep it simple, figure out how to bridge the explanatory gap, by detecting the simplest possible different physical qualities, such as redness / greenness. Then, once you understand how to detect physical qualities with the simplest case, you can then go down these kinds of complex and ever more subtle differences, knowing the correct non-qualia blind way to think about the problem of what is consciousness qualitatively like in all of it’s qualitatively diverse complexities and subtleties.

  25. Hi David,
    OK, lets go into more detail, with more examples.

    Start with a camera TV system VR glasses. So you can see the strawberry, from the TV screen view of what a camera is seeing. You can wear these glasses to pick strawberries with. Now, turn on the red/green inversion, so your knowledge of the strawberry now has a greenness quality.

    So in this case, after time this is true: “You will come to associate that greenness with ripe strawberries you want to eat.” You will learn to call knowledge of things that have a greenness quality, red.

    Next, move this inversion process further down the causal chain of events that is perception. Engineer this right after the retina, in the optic nerve, before all the processing that is done to construct 3D knowledge, out of 2 2D eye pictures.

    Still: “You will come to associate that greenness with and call it red.”

    Now, do this to you, a few months after you are born, before your mom teaches you what is red and what is green.

    Now, you don’t have to “come to associate the new inversion”, you just know to call things with a greenness quality, red. You have never known anything different.

    What do you say to this new, inverted physical knowledge copy of you, which is claiming: “inverted spectrum isn’t possible” and “everyone has the same redness” ….? and there are no qualia, different from the surface of the strawberry.

  26. Hi David,
    Also, you said, oneness knowledge and greenness knowledge are not equivalent. Which is true. Computers have knowledge that is abstracted away from physical properties. Any set of physics, or wire, can represent a one, but you need an interpretation mechanism to get the one, from that wire, or that particular set of physics, to get the one from it.

    We, on the other hand, represent knowledge directly on the quality of physics. This is much more efficient, since you don’t need an interpretation mechanism to get the red, from the 1. The knowledge just is redness.

    If you know something, there must be something physical that is that knowledge. You can have knowledge that is abstracted away from, and thereby independent of, physical properties. Or you can represent diverse knowledge, directly on physical qualities. In both cases, they are different, but they are both knowledge of the fact that your eyes have detected red light, and this knowledge can be inverted, in all cases, if the light get’s inverted.

  27. Consciousness is defined as “ a state of awareness. ” Different states of consciousness correspond with different states of awareness as to what is going on in …

  28. Hey Brent, I’m going to assume replies 28 and 29 were directed at me.

    I’m not sure of the new setup you are suggesting. You have changed from the bundle of wires to directly seeing colored images from screens with or without glasses. This is okay, as obviously the bundle of wires is analogous to a bundle of neurons.

    Now we know that your retina has cone cells that respond mostly strongly to light at 575 nm, which we call red cone cells, and also cone cells that respond most strongly to light at 535 nm, which we call green cone cells.

    So could you re-describe your scenario explaining which cone cells are firing when?

    8

  29. Hi James of Seattle,

    Yea, sorry, 28 and 29 should have been addressed to you.
    Right, the operation of the retina is irrelevant. With the camera glasses, you just switch the red and green signals, so all red light going to the eyes is changed to green light.

    The modification to the optic nerve, makes the identical change in a way that results in the identical red green knowledge change. In other words, regardless of what the retina is doing, you can’t tell, subjectively, if the inversion is taking place in the glasses, or if the inversion is taking place in the optic nerve.

    All you redness knowledge is replaced with greenness knowledge, and visa versa.

    Does that adequately answer you question?

  30. Brent, your last response seems correct and does answer my last question. You are correct in that where the switch happens is not relevant.

    So going back to reply #28, you said “You will come to associate that greenness with and call it red.”. This idea repeats your previous mistake. Using the model in question, it is incorrect to associate greenness with anything. Greenness is an association, namely, the association of a particular wire (or cone cell) with green. It makes no sense to associate that association with something else. You can associate that wire/cell with something else, creating a new association, but then you lose the old association. It’s gone. You do not associate greenness with red. You replace greenness with redness.

    *

  31. Hi James,

    Wait, you’re just yanking my chain, right? You must see the obvious mistake you are making?

    When you look at a negative image of a red strawberry, you experience a greenness strawberry, do you not? You seem to be saying, that since your target of perception is a red strawberry, that this physical greenness knowledge (due to the inversion) somehow becomes a very different set of physics, with a redness physical quality? How and when does your grenness experience switch back to being a redness experience?

  32. Hi James,
    Maybe you just don’t fully understand the meaning of a representational view of perception.
    Take a look at the image, at the top of this Representational Qualia Camp statement:
    https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6
    Notice that there is a diorama representation, inside your skull, which is your 3D knowledge, inside your brain, of the stuff, outside the skull. The only information we get about the outside world, is abstract information, represented by different physical properties coming to our senses. That is why it is all black and white.

    The only thing with physical qualities, which we can be directly aware of, is the elemental colored parts of this diorama, in our brain. The final result of the perception process, our knowledge of what our senses are detecting.

  33. Brent, you said
    You seem to be saying, that since your target of perception is a red strawberry, that this physical greenness knowledge (due to the inversion) somehow becomes a very different set of physics, with a redness physical quality?

    I’m not sure what the word “physical” adds in the phrase “physical greenness knowledge”. I say that if input X is associated with green, then this association is another word for knowledge, and in this case we call it greenness knowledge. I don’t see what the word “physical” adds, other than that after the association, the input X is physically connected to outputs appropriate to the interpretation of X as green. If things change such that input X is now connected to outputs appropriate to the interpretation of X as red, then X is now associated with red, and there is knowledge of redness, and the knowledge of greenness is gone.

    So what do you see in the above that is mistaken?

    *

  34. Ok James,

    glad I added that word physical, as that seems to have helped. Let me back up a bit.

    As it says, in that “Representational Qualia” camp statement above, which has almost unanimous expert consensus agreement, “If you know something, there must be something physical that IS that knowledge.” This implies that there are two important sets of physical qualities when it comes to perception:

    1. The physical properties that are the target of our observation. These properties initiate the perception process, such as a strawberry reflecting red light.

    2. The physical properties within the brain that are the final results of the perception process. These properties comprise our conscious knowledge of a red strawberry. We experience this directly, as redness.

    In your model, there is a wire, which if there is a red strawberry in the box, the wire will be on. Let’s assume it has +5 volts when on. And 0 volts, if the thing in the box is not red. These voltage values on that particular physical wire are the physics, that is the knowledge at that point. The reason it is “abstract” knowledge, is because it is a different set of physics than a red or redness physical quality. In order to know what the physical +5 volts on that particular wire means, you need an interpretation mechanism. The same is true, for the light landing on our retina. It is a different set of physics than the physics on the surface of the strawberry. In order to know what 650 NM light means, it needs an interpretation mechanism. So, our knowledge construction system in our brain interprets that abstracted 650nm light with physical conscious knowledge that has a redness quality we experience directly. Our brain builds 3D conscious knowledge out of elemental physical qualities like redness and greenness. There is no interpretation required of this redness knowledge, it is just something in our brain that has a physical redness quality.

    The reason we don’t know about the physical qualities that exist in the brain, again, is because everything we perceive, we perceive, abstractly. Everything we know and everything experimentalists tell us about the brain is confined to abstract labels for the stuff in the brain. Our words, descriptions, theories and concepts are all abstractions. To know what an abstract word like “red” means, we need to map it back to some set of real physical qualities.

    Does that help?

  35. Brent, you said

    In order to know what the physical +5 volts on that particular wire means, you need an interpretation mechanism. […]
    In order to know what 650 NM light means, it needs an interpretation mechanism.

    You’ve made a disanalogous move here. In the first sentence you say that +5 volts needs to be interpreted, and in the second you say 650 nm light needs to be interpreted. But the analogous thing that needs to be interpreted in the second sentence is a neurotransmitter. “Knowledge” comes from the fact that the wire is causally connected to what you want to happen when there is “red”. The +5 volt wire is thus associated with the things that happen for “red”. “Interpretation” is those things actually happening when the +5 volts happens.

    To say this another way, the +5 volt wire is an affordance for an interpretation. It can be interpreted in any number of ways. If the +5 volts is caused by something red, but the interpretation is for something green, that is a mistaken interpretation. The “knowledge” that caused a “do green things” response was faulty. If such a faulty interpretation happens, that would be a green qualia. But that “knowledge” can be changed, which means the interpretation would be changed, which means the qualia would be changed. The +5 volts does not change. What happens in response to the +5 volts changes. It’s the “what happens in response” that determines the qualia.

    Right?

    *

  36. Hi James,
    Not understanding what you mean by any of this, or what any of this has to do with the critical issue you are avoiding:

    “When you look at a negative image of a red strawberry, you experience a greenness strawberry, do you not?”

    If you say yes, then you must agree that inverted qualia is possible. Or else, you need to answer when and how the physical redness experience switches back to being greenness experience.

  37. Brent,

    The point I am trying to make is that what determines a quale is not what the input looks like (+5 volts) or what it is hooked up to (camera, red cone cell) or what the actual input was (green strawberry). What determines the quale is how that input is interpreted (color of ripe (red) or unripe (green) strawberry).

    So, to “answer when and how the physical redness experience switches back to being greenness experience”, when the interpreting mechanism changes the response (the output) from “response appropriate to ripe strawberry” to “response appropriate to unripe strawberry”, the experience changes from redness to greenness.

    How’s that?

    *

  38. Hi James,
    These descriptions of hardware are so vague, they are hard to understand. No experimentalists could use any of this to verify anything you are claiming, it seems to me. What is a “reponse (the output)”…?

    It seems quite possible to interpret what you are saying, as the same thing I am saying. But then it could also be interpreted to be something completely different. How does the interpreting mechanism you describe decide to “change the response”? And what, in this system is redness. Are you saying redness isn’t something physical. Is redness something objectively detectable, what would make grenness, objectively observably different, when looking at the brain…?

    Either way, in this system inverted spectrum is certainly possible, as it is the interpreting mechanism, responsible for switching between a redness or grenness experience?

  39. Brent, I agree that if I look at a red/green inverted image of a red strawberry I would experience greenness.

    I hypothesize that if you follow the physically causal chain from white light shining on the strawberry up thru to the point of getting a +5 volt on a particular wire or neurotransmitter from a particular neuron, there is not yet any experience, and there is no way to tell with just that information what the experience will be. The next step in the causal chain will determine what the experience is. If that next step leads to valuable responses to green things, i.e. the Mechanism was organized to recognize that input as green, i.e. the mechanism so-organized constitutes the knowledge of green, and thus the experience will be greenness.

    So if some part of the causal chain from strawberry to neurotransmitter gets inverted, my response to the input will be mistaken. So if red/green gets inverted, red strawberries will taste bad and blood will look green. Presumably there are neural feedback systems that will change the mechanism that recognized red such that the responses become appropriate to green. Thus the knowledge enshrined in that mechanism will change from redness to greenness. Something similar has actually been done by making someone wear goggles that invert images up/down. See this.

    I believe the question we are trying to solve is whether there could be inverted qualia without any interventions, i.e., whether my quale for red could actually be more like your quale for green. Under my hypothesis, it makes no sense to say my redness is the same as your greenness, because my redness is simply me responding to an input as red which is necessarily different from your responding to an input as green.

    Any clearer?

    *

  40. Hi James,

    Yes, I’m aware of the experiments where people wear spatial (instead of color) inverting glasses. Lots (but not all) naive people fail to see the mistake in thinking this experiment verifies their thinking, when it falsifies it.

    We know that normally, our conscious knowledge, in the primary visual cortex, is inverted. Top to bottom and left to right. As you can see in pictures, and papers like this:

    https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/27683/why-dont-myopic-people-see-the-world-upside-down
    http://www.indiana.edu/~p1013447/outlines/asgn2qs-f04.pdf (page page 98)

    When people put on inverting glasses, the knowledge in the brain becomes inverted, so it is no longer upside down, laid out in the brain. People can observe these spatial facts of our conscious knowledge in the brain. People like Jack Gallant are observing exactly this. See this paper:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uWUm3LzWVlY0ao5D9BFg4EQXGSopVDGPi-lVtCoJzzM/edit

    Galant’s models, must be inverted, accordingly, so the image they are observing in the brain, is projected right side up, when someone is wearing these glasses.

    Once people become accustomed to this right side up knowledge in their brain, they can function normally, over time, it starts to seem like things are normally – not inverted. Even though the knowledge we can observe in the brain, is now “right: side up, in the brain.

    This is exactly the same kind of visual inversion you are claiming isn’t possible. It is just spatially inverted, rather than qualitatively inverted. And even if the brain, mechanically re inverted the image before the consciousness knowledge, laid out in the visual cortex, all this could be observed. You could observe when the conscious knowledge was inverted in the brain, and when it was not inverted in the brain, as the brain altered the inversion (whether qualitative or spatial inversion) over time.

    So, all this is proof that inverted vision, both spatial and qualitative is possible, and possible to be objectively observed, in the brain, as it all happens.

    You said: “The question we are trying to solve is whether there could be inverted qualia without any interventions”

    With this, I hear you saying you are conceding, to the irrefutable evidence, that points out it is possible to engineer “interventions” in the perception process, and that inverted spectrum is possible in this case, and that qualia are very different physical qualities to the properties of the things we see.

    You are just making the claim that DNA reproduction is perfect, at least for vision, and that this process never makes a mistake, and that every person uses the same redness to represent red, rather than something that could be just as likely to be used – greenness. Even more, you are saying that when the inversion is engineered, the brain is able to re invert the inverted conscious knowledge.

    What I’m getting at here, is that even if this is true, there must be a way to objectively prove and observe that your redness is like my redness and falsify any theory that predicted my redness is like your greenness. And even if things always correct themselves, you can observe this process, in the brain, again proving that inverted knowledge is possible.

    Finally, there are tetrachromats and color-blind people. This further falsifies the theory that inverted (or at least diversity of) qualia is not possible. Tetrachromats are special people that have 4 primary qualia colors to represent the same visual spectrum with. In other words, where we represent two similar wavelengths with the same quale, tetrachromats can resolve these different wavelengths, because they represent them with additional color qualia which we don’t have. If we are scientifically curious, we should want to know what this additional color is like.

    Similarly, red green colorblindness is someone representing both red and green light, with the same quale. In other words, there redness is like your redness, but then so is their greenness, like your redness. That is why they are red green color blind, as it is all represented with the same quale for them.

  41. Hi Brent:

    Re: “subtly complex rat hole issues [versus] simplest possible different physical qualities”.

    I’m not sure if this is actually true, because we are now acutely aware of how much processing underlies even a simple “primary” sensation. We can do the psychometrics/psychophysics of a sensory space and estimate the number of “phenomenological” dimensions eg taste and smell are far smaller than the number of different olfactory receptor types, colour space of course is pretty well understood. In the case of smell, introducing you to a completely novel odour (as per Mary the colour scientist) is particularly underwhelming – “oh yeah, so that’s what X smells like”. I’d say much the same for Japanese speakers who learn to hear the “R”-“L” difference, or any other difficult hearing related task that requires reporting or conscious activity, or the light blue/dark blue example earlier. The main interesting thing about quality is its emotional/aesthetic correlates, where we can ask whether these are acquired during development, or innate properties of a specific nervous system (probably the former). So I agree a short term disruption, but a relatively quick adaptation, by humans at least.

    When you take a quale as the indecomposable elementary phenomenal experience or “the pragmatic signals (indexes) that materialize phenomenally in human activity as sensuous qualities”, then that allows entry of interesting stuff like face qualia (eg facial happiness is a unitary phenomenon, see the inverting experiments), culinary qualia (“mouth feel” etc), aesthetic qualia (like shibui).

    WRT James’s comments, Miyauchi et al [2004] did brain imaging studies on humans wearing inverting goggles:

    “…cortices also show an ipsilateral activity change. The results of behavioral experiments showed that visuomotor coordinative function and internal representation of peripersonal space rapidly adapted to the left­-right reversed vision within the first or second week. Accompanying these behavioral changes, we found that both primary (V1) and extrastriate (MT/MST) visual cortex in human adults responded to visual stimuli presented in the ipsilateral visual field. In addition, the ipsilateral activity started much sooner than the one and a half months, which had been expected from the monkey neurophysiological study. The results of the present study serve as physiological evidence of large-scale, cross-hemisphere, cerebral plasticity that exists even in adult human brain.”

    That is, the seamless return to phenomenal “normality” is underlaid by huge changes in brain function.

  42. Brent,

    First, early in this conversation I conceded that inverted qualia was possible. (See reply #21). We’ve discussed various ways that qualia could be inverted.

    But maybe the following is where we differ. What if I presented you with two people. Let’s say one of the people has undergone a red/green inversion via special glasses which they still wear and which they have worn for such a long time that they have adjusted. Let’s say the only data you get to see are all of the connections of all of the neurons for each person, and you have perfect knowledge of how all the neurons generate the thoughts and behavior of each person, with the following exception. You can follow the causal links of all of their neurons, except you are cut off at the optic nerve so you know nothing of what is going on in the eyeballs. You know which neurons will cause the statement “I see red”, because you can follow the appropriate connections from the optic nerve all the way through to anything involving redness. (You would find these connections by going backwards.)

    I hypothesize that, with only this data, there is no way you can tell which of the two people was inverted. Both people will have connections going from the optic nerve to concepts of red things.

    If, instead of being inverted, one of the people was red/green colorblind, you would be able to tell which one it was. You would see that there is no separation in the path from the optic nerve to red concepts versus green concepts.

    If you agree with this hypothesis, then we need to have a talk about the philosophical significance of qualia inversion.

    *

  43. Hi David Duffy,

    Having troubles keeping up with much of what you are saying. I’m not really saying that redness and greenness are simple, just that when it comes to understanding how to bridge the explanatory gap, this is simpler than many of the other qualia you mention.

    That Miyauchi et all [2004] paper looks very interesting. Do you have a link to that paper?

  44. Hi James,
    Given your terminology, we seem to be thinking about very different things when we use the term redness.

    When you say: “red concepts”, I would say redness isn’t a concept, it is just a physical quality that can represent information.

    When you say: “anything involving redness”, all this is what I think of as knowledge that is bound to redness, but different than the redness quality, itself. This would include things like a memory of how a strawberry of that color will taste, the red valentine your lover gave you, your awareness of you perceiving redness.

    When you say: “which neurons will cause the statement ‘I see red’”, the way I think of a physical redness quality, it is hard to imagine it having anything to do with particular neurons. How could a particular set of neurons have a physical redness quality we can experience?

    When you say: “there is no way you can tell which of the two people was inverted” to me redness and greenness are two distinct physical qualities. The brain could use either of these to represent knowledge of red things, just as a computer can use lots of things to represent 1 with. I see no reason why your particular redness would be the right one, that every other human must use, over greenness. I would understand something more like: “You could not tell if two people had the same physical quality for which they used to represent knowledge of red things with.” I would understand that. Is that saying the same thing?

  45. Brent, it would help a lot if you could answer the question. Given your understanding, and all the physical knowledge of the two brains that you need, but not including the eyeballs, could you theoretically tell which one was inverted?

    *

  46. Hi Jim,

    OK, sorry, yes.
    Eventually we will know what has a redness quality, and also what has a greenness quality. When you observe these, you will know if the person is experiencing redness or greenness. For example, one theory would be that the neurotransmitter glutamate, firing in the right set of synapse, has a redness quality, and glycine a greenness quality. You see glutamate, you know it is redness, and not grenness.

  47. Brent, thanks. This is where we differ. I’m saying/hypothesizing that there is not necessarily such physical difference between what causes the distinct qualia. I’m saying the only significant difference is which inputs are hooked to which outputs, and how they are hooked up makes no difference.

    And now we know how to test it.

    *
    [looking up how to make inversion glasses]

  48. Hi James,

    If there are no detectable “physical difference between what causes” different qualia, that means qualia are epiphenomenal, and not approachable via science. That would make effing of the ineffable, as predicted will be possible in “Representational Qualia Theory” as eternally not possible.

    When you say: “And now we know how to test it”, I’m not sure how you could falsify your not approachable via science, theory, the way you can if different qualia are different physical qualities, we can be directly aware of and objectively detect.

  49. Brent, really? You test it by doing the experiment we just mentioned. You force some child to grow up wearing the inverting glasses, then look at their brain and compare it to a normal. If you can’t see any difference, I’m (probably) right. If you then look at the eyeball and see that the “redness” connections are actually going back to the green cones, you’ll say “oh this is the one wearing the inverting glasses”.

    And if I am right, the qualia is equivalent to the meaning of the signal (+5 volts, neurotransmitter) in the brain. Because that meaning is necessary for the function of the signal it is not epiphenominal.

    *

  50. Oh, James, yea, that helps. Now I think I get it with that.

    So, you’re saying that qualia arise from the context, especially as it is “necessary for the function of the signal” right?

    So, a materialist predicts qualia are simply a quality of some material. This is falsifiable since without the right material, no redness quality:
    https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-are-Material-Qualities/7

    A functionalist predicts a redness quality “arises” from the right function. This is falsifiable since without the right function (regardless of the physical substrate), no redness:
    https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Qualia-Emerge-from-Function/18

    So, your theory is a “contextual” theory? This is falsifiable since it predicts you won’t get anything different from a redness quality, without the right context from which it can arise?

    That’s a new theory I’ve never heard of. We should create a camp for that at Canonizer.com?

  51. Let’s tell those experimentalists to redo their inverting glasses experiments, in a non qualia blind way, so we can find out who’s theory is the one.

  52. Brent, excellent.

    Actually, I think my theory is functionalist. I agree with everything in the camp statement except this:

    We believe that the mind or consciousness is identical with brain states. As it states at philosophyofmind.info: “for every mental state there is a brain-state with which it is identical.”

    I would change all uses of “state” to “process”. Or else explain that by “state” I/we mean a dynamic state in which a process is recurring repeatedly. But that’s the only difference I see.

    *

  53. OH wow, that helps even more!

    And I think your proposed change, from “state” to “process” would be an improvement to the camp statement that I bet all current supporters of the camp would not object to. When you submit a wiki change to canonizer, it goes into review mode for one week. All direct supporters are notified of the impending change. If no current supporters object during that week, it will go live.

    If you register at Canonizer.com, you can post to forums and propose camp statement changes.
    Each camp has a forum, here is the forum for the “Qualia Emerge from Function” camp:

    https://canonizer.com/forum/88-Theories-of-Mind-and-Consciousness/18/threads

    Your proposal would be the first thread in that forum.

    Dang, that would extend the consensus lead of the functionalist to 13 supporters. Almost twice the 7 of us materialists, in second place.

  54. I think it would also help to add some of your contextual ideas. Those ideas give me much more insight into what and how a functionalist camp might work.

  55. Brent,
    I’ve quickly reviewed your Canonizer page. It looks like my model would be a new camp under “Approachable via science”. My theory is grounded in “Strict Monism” where consciousness would be a feature of the “thing-in-itself”, as a feature of Reality, consciousness is the continuous, linear manifold (hardware) that the discrete systems of appearances (software) run on.

  56. Hi Lee,
    Cool. Sounds very interesting. Looking forward to learning more, and seeing your model get canonized. It looks like you are at least partially familiar with the meaning of the tree camp structure, since you indicated you support the “approachable via science” camp and want your camp to be a sub camp to that. In addition to sub camps supporting everything in all parent camps, sibling camps agree with nothing. The goals is to not have any information duplicated, so if two sibling camps agree on anything, they should create a super camp containing what they agree on, and only be sibling camps on what they disagree with, under that camp.

    If you create your camp underneath the “Approachable Via Science”, this will make you a sibling / competing camp to the near unanimous expert consensus “Representational Qualia Theory” ( https://canonizer.com/topic/88-Representational-Qualia/6 ), indicating you agree with nothing in that camp. I’m hoping you agree with at least some of what is in that camp?

  57. Brent,
    It makes it difficult to agree with anyone when every researcher continually places the cart in front of the horse. Current research is focused on the “experience” of consciousness as a thing, not on consciousness as a “thing-in-itself”. Without a grounding meta-physics which establishes a grounding definition, the topic of consciousness will forever be mired down in a quagmire of dispute, just like any other religious debate.

    My book, “The Immortal Principle: A Reference Point” establishes a grounding metaphysics on consciousness, a metaphysics which quickly and exponentially grows into a theory of everything. I still have not determined whether to publish or not, so I doubt whether I will be posting on your canonizer website.

    Thanks,

  58. Dang, that would be unfortunate if you didn’t canonizer your ideas. Creating a camp would be a good advertisement for your book, published or not. The best camps are short, concise descriptions with references to more information, like your book.

    I’m still struggling with understanding what you mean. What is the difference between a “thing” and a “thing-in-itself”? Does your model account for the qualitative nature of consciousness? i.e. what are qualia in your model?

  59. Brent,
    Whitehead believed that the ancients Greeks contributed to the annuls of history all there is to discover on the topic of philosophy, and that all of the philosophical work compiled since the Greeks is nothing more that a footnote to what Plato and Aristotle have already developed. Unfortunately, I am in full agreement with Whitehead’s assessment. Real philosophy, new philosophy, original philosophy is an art form.

    As an original artist, my meta-physical model are not footnotes, they are revolutionary and new. They challenge all of our prevailing paradigms and deal directly and succinctly with underlying form, beginning with the ontological primitive of the “thing-in-itself” (refer to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’). Therefore, I do not anticipate, nor do I expect others to be able to comprehend my work. Furthermore, my models make the bold prediction that homo sapiens will not comprehend my models because human beings rely upon the discrete, binary system of rationality. The discrete, binary system of rationality itself is the meta-problem of consciousness. So, unless or until one is willing to address the discrete, binary system of rationality nothing will change, because nothing can change. It is what it is…

    Thanks

  60. I’m a leftover hippie from 1972. However, conciousnes has been up for grabs since Abraham said I AM.And long before that. These recent books and theories trying to scientifically explain consciousness are boring. I don’t know why scientist cannot sit down with all kinds of spiritualist and discuss the mind. Not the brain, the mind. AI will never be able to receive information through a filter that will create feelings and emotions which are derived from our how we perceive the world. What we gather into our concious, subconscious and unconcious is unexplainable because it creates our perceptions and imagination. That is what makes everyone different. Our amazing imagination. Talk about AI developing an Immeasurable imagination.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *