Consciousness

© Jason Davies 2012.

Consciousness is an important aspect to study by neurologists and AI scientists alike because of its physiological and philosophical ramifications. A neurologist might want to know if a patient is conscious for medical reasons. For instance, an anesthesiologist would administer an anesthetic in proportion to the consciousness of the patient so as not to disable the organs entirely. A comatose patient, if can be called conscious, would cause moral dilemma among the medical practitioners and relatives. One can measure the temperature, pulse and blood pressure of a patient to determine if alive but nothing of that sort exists for consciousness (some times doctors project light on to the pupils which is not a definitive test). Robots that serve us could be attributed consciousness by virtue of the algorithms that enable the robots to function. For instance, if a robot while handling an infant could cause harm, it is suggestive of a bad design of the algorithms and parts used in the assembly of the robot by the manufacturer. A more topical example is the self-driving cars that are involved in road accidents or worse caused the accidents. Their manufacturers would defend themselves as not "consciously aware" of the defects.

So what is consciousness? Is it the substrate of all of the intelligence that has emerged in the form of mind or is it the emergent phenomenon from brain? Many hindus believe the world is made conscious in the dream of Lord Brahma. In general, religions ascribe consciousness as orthogonal to the physical plane of existence (dualism) that endow life forms the ability to carry on their respective roles under the divine will. Scientists believe consciousness is the product of evolution when the pre-frontal cortex of the brain has evolved over millions of years from the more primitive older brain composed of cerebrum, cerebellum, amygdala, etc. giving us the conscious experience.

An important aspect of consciousness is its moral dimension. For instance, we may not want to hurt an ant because we feel pain and expect an ant to feel the same. This is intrinsically a human-centric experience that can be applied to the vast life forms who potentially feel the pain, pleasure, fear, love, etc. just like us because we think they are conscious. Abattoir laws they are replete with not hurting an animal, such as a cow or a pig, while it is still being conscious. The kosher and halal methods, for instance, differ in this respect. North American Native Indians respected animals as equal in rights to humans. Of course they were hunted, but only for food, and the hunter first asked permission of the animal's spirit. The truth is that we really do not know which of these organisms is or is not conscious. We are biased to the extent the tradition, religion and law dictate. But we don't have a rational method or algorithm to determine if an organism has subjective experience that is analogous to our feelings.

We call someone as self-conscious to mean the intense awareness that comes with introspection and self-reflection. A dictionary meaning of self-conscious is: feeling undue awareness of oneself, one's appearance, or one's actions; having knowledge of one's own existence, especially the knowledge of oneself as a conscious being;(especially of an action or intention) deliberate and with full awareness, especially affectedly so. Most societies impose a social penalty for not being self-conscious which would be construed as awkward or mis-fit.

Learning is an important phenomenon we associate with consciousness. Learning to ride a bike, for example, starts out as a conscious task. Eventually it becomes subconscious so much so that it is the second nature and we are no longer aware that we are riding a bike. Much of the rote learning happens this way. When veda pandits who recite vedas were studied with MRI, numerous regions in their brains were found to be dramatically larger than those of controls, with over 10 percent more grey matter across both cerebral hemispheres, and substantial increases in cortical thickness. It was also revealed that the right hippocampus --that is responsible for spatial, visual and sound patterns--was more robust indicating their verbal memory was exemplary. It can be noted that we have right and left hippocampi that play a key role in short and long term memory. How is it all related to consciousness? It seems the veda pandits are reciting effortlessly indicating there is a subconscious linkage to it just as when riding a bike or driving a car once their operation has been learnt.

Despite the anecdotal evidence, it seems, consciousness has no causal impact on the world. Just by being conscious we can't affect anything in the real world. The world exists independent of our consciousness. What we perceive in the world while being conscious is only a snapshot of the world that won't impact the laws of motion or any other law governing the world. In other words, consciousness enables us to grasp the world as it exists, explains the events in the world and lets us immerse ourselves in the worldly behavior including socialization. Interestingly some researchers had defined a zombie as one exactly like human down to the last atom but without a subjective experience to qualify as a socializable entity. If a zombie is in the midst of us, how to detect it is a philosophical quandary.

Theories About Consciousness

Higher order theory is the foremost theory of consciousness that predicts higher-order or meta thoughts (HOT) and perceptions (HOP) about first-order thoughts and perceptions. That is, the meta construct either HOT or HOP operates (e.g. I am seeing a rose) over the first-order thought (e.g. The rose is red). There is no doubt that consciousness is about higher order thoughts when we study Krishna Consciousness and other similar spiritual discourse. But is that a thought or a perception is the question to consider. The HOP theorists posit an intra-sense for intra-mental monitoring. For someone like Mira Bhai the Krishna Consciousness is thought-free. For many religions a supreme being bestows the consciousness to mortals who are born without one. Actually we can consider it as part of the life of a fetus even before it is delivered into the world. We read about Abhimanya in Maha Bharatam to have learnt from Sage Narada who was explaining it to Subadra how to enter a padma vyuham (armed forces in a flower petal formation) while he was still in Subadra's womb. To counter, some pro-life people could say consciousness is bestowed on the fetus (nature) rather than acquired from the environment (nurture). But there is no neurological validity. A fully-formed fetus (> 27 weeks) can blink eyes and suck on its thumb without being aware that it is being studied by ultra-sound imaging. My wonderment at the HO theory is, what prevents one from predicting a hierarchy of states that transcend human existence and religious experience? For example, the Gita discourse by Lord Krishna raises above many levels of consciousness: I am like Arjuna; Krishna is my friend; Lord Krishna is an avatar of Lord Vishnu; Lord Vishnu is the ruler of Lord Brahma's creation; and so on.

The second foremost theory of consciousness to consider is reflexive which posits self-awareness, e.g.. I am watching a rose while situated in a garden. The self-awareness could lead to introspection which together form the core of consciousness without the need for a meta state. This has some support in hindu religion where the fetus was supposed to be ruminating over the previous lives and repenting for sins. The rumination over past births would end along with the memory of it once the fetus is delivered into the world. The interface between the loss of memory of previous births and acquisition of new sensory information after delivery is the raise of consciousness.

The third theory of consciousness is representational that posits that experiences essentially have representational or intentional contents and their phenomenal characters are largely determined by their contents. According to the representationalist, conscious mental states have no mental properties other than their representational properties. Thus two conscious or experiential states that share all their representational properties will not differ in any mental respect. One can explain representational consciousness by drawing examples from religious texts that preach doctrines like self-sacrifice to uphold a religious belief is worthy or a military boot camp where the soldiers are told to lay their lives across for the good of the nation because it is noble. We can infer that both of these are similar in the sense that they lead up to the same mental state of fearlessness. There is no huge difference between phenomenal (higher order or meta) and experiential (first order) contents in these cases. However, here the intention is important. In the case of a religious boot camp, the intention is to uphold a religious text by blind-faith and in the case of a military boot camp the intention is to defend a nation made of conscious beings.

The fourth theory we can look at is narrative interpretive theory that combines the HO and representational theory by predicting content fixation as the basis for consciousness. Consider problem solving which involves, say, manipulation of symbols to arrive at a desired result by intense focus. While doing so, there could be any number of sensations such as the clock ticking, car sounding a horn and a baby crying in the background. Assume these can be grouped as "Cartesian Theater" which is a term for privileged functional or spatial location in the brain . Some are quick to say that the cartesian theater is the consciousness. The proponents of the interpretive theory discount cartesian theater for a "Cerebral Celebrity" which in this case is the problem solving or the degree to which a given content influences the future development of other contents throughout the brain. Another aspect of this theory is that it views self as an emergent phenomenon as opposed to an inner observer and denies the existence of qualia—individual instances of subjective, conscious experience such as pain, pleasure,etc. --- as demarcating between conscious and unconscious states.

Global workspace theory is a prominent cognitive theory that supposes that there is a central location where different processors compete for a limited capacity resource by broadcasting information for widespread access and use. There is a parallel to this in AI's rule-based systems where different rules have access to what is called "working memory". A working memory is where the rules antecedents are matched with the state variables and when they fire the consequents are entered into. For example: Rule#1 might say if the sky is blue then it is a nice day; Rule#2 might say if it is a nice day then go for a run. If these rules fire sequentially then the working memory would contain "sky is blue", "nice day" and "go for a run." So where is consciousness in this? The act of broadcasting information around the brain from this memory bank is what represents consciousness. It has been claimed by the scientists that consciousness at both access and phenomenal sense occurs when information enters the global work space involving sensory areas as well as the pre-frontal cortex. If you can imagine being submerged in a lake with bubbles of air leaving your nose and raising to the surface, then one can be sure that you are conscious. In the similar vein, when the global workspace or working memory has been actively accessed by processors and cohered with their processing results, consciousness will be asserted.

In Attended Intermediate Representation theory, consciousness is the abstraction of sensory perception, viz. color, size, shape, etc. to a higher level but not as high as to call it an object in the physical world such as a flower or a car as that implies a moral judgment. The intermediate representation is not something we can map to in the physical world but can only be measured as neurological activity –which is akin to oscillating electrical pulses racing through the neurons--in the sensory area. This theory lends itself to a clinical diagnosis of biological consciousness because of the measurements involved, but does not apply to non-biological entities such as robots.

In the information integration theory (IIT) consciousness is a purely information-theoretic property of system. Consider a panpsychic theory that attributes consciousness to all objects. For example, an internal-combustion engine has lower consciousness than the automobile it runs which has lower consciousness than the driver. In the IIT the consciousness attributed to a component or a part is integrated with the whole to arrive at a measure of consciousness. The theory assumes that (a) conscious states are differentiated—meaning we can be conscious of any number of things and (b) the information in the conscious states is highly integrated and (c) To be conscious, then, you need to be a single, integrated entity with a large repertoire of highly differentiated states. Using mathematical modeling and entropy, the theory calculates a measure of integration within the brain. One can think of it as synergy. The more the brain is integrated, the greater the synergy and higher the consciousness.

Finally there are quantum theories that turn consciousness into a mystery at physical-psychic interface using the models of fundamental physical particles. The wave function is commonly used in physics to predict the state, i.e. velocity and location, of a fundamental particle such as an electron. It has been known that the quantum system can move from a superposition of multiple possible states to a single definite state which is called the wave function collapse. In physics such collapse can happen in the presence of an observer, i.e. an instrument or a sensor with which the particle might or might not be interacting to reveal its state. It has been posited that a similar phenomenon might be occurring in the microtubules of the cells, including neurons, without an observer being present to give raise to consciousness. Some have even predicted the equivalent of Bose-Einstein Condensate, where the individual atoms cannot be identified, i.e. the whole subsumes the parts, but only inside the brain. Such theories while might make ample sense for biological consciousness, cannot apply for the machine or robotic consciousness that doesn't involve any quantum physics unless one views the quantum phenomena of tunneling of electrons in silicon substrates as something of significance.

Online References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/

https://www.livescience.com/47096-theories-seek-to-explain-consciousness.html

https://intelligenceway.com/sanskrit-brain-neuroscience-india-vedic/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-theory-of-consciousness/