Exploring Perspectives and Concepts
Mar 25, 2024 (k3no.medium.com)
Why read this ? Why Write this ?
Consciousness has always fascinated me, and I hope it is of some interest to you too. Having a good grasp of consciousness is also required if we are to grant AIs (yes, computer programs) with it or, at the very least, borrow from what we know to make them more useful and perhaps more human. But alas, we haven’t quite figured it out. If we had, I would be telling you how to make a sentient toaster, for instance, so the best next thing for now is to review some of the most popular theories on consciousness.
Definitions vs Theories: It's important to clarify that since what we
currently have are theories, we can't have a complete definition,
and each theory generates a different definition.
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You can find it here : The AI Garden , Thanks ! ?️
Non-Scientific, Religious, and Early Theories
We can simplify by grouping these together under the concept of Mind-Body dualism, which, in simple terms, is the idea that consciousness (thoughts, ideas, feelings, impulses, and whatever else you want to throw in here) is external from our bodies. As for specifics, there have been hundreds of theories, but none have presented scientific evidence of the immaterial side.
And why not? We experience a material world, and we also experience a
different one that seems immaterial. What is the weight, shape, or color of
a thought, for instance? While certainly removed from our immediate
reality, scientific and modern theories do attempt to answer these
questions, perhaps incompletely, but rooted in a material world.
They explain thoughts as the sum of the mass of ions generating
action potentials, comprising multiple neural networks,
and manifesting as gray/white matter if you consider
structure—invisible to the naked eye but visible through
indirect measurements like FMRI.
Science, Evidence-Based Models & The Ground Truth
The thing with consciousness is that empirical evidence is not easy or accesible to get, yet a basic and mostly incontroversial definition does exist based on observations and interviews:
Consciousness is the awareness of internal and external stimuli.
Even at this basic level there is some clarification needed, awareness for instance is just a slightly more informative term than consciousness as it is meant to signify the individual thing being experienced rather than the whole, the evidence here comes from self reporting and observation, for instance if I place an apple in front of a group and ask their conscious experience of external stimuli most if not all will respond they see an apple, when it comes to internal stimuli, there is also consensus on having the awareness of them ( feelings, thoughts, auditory, visual etc,etc), unfortunately this is also a bit shallow since each one of us seems to experience reality in a slightly different way.
Models
While the above definition gives us a good idea of the “what” of consciousness, it provides almost no insight into the “how.” This is where models of consciousness can help. I will list and briefly explain the three most popular ones, but as you will see, these are not complete and have considerable overlap.
Neurobiological Theories
Picking up after mind-body dualism theories, neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience attempt to answer the question: If consciousness is not external, where does it reside? The agreed upon answer is that it lies in the brain and nervous system. These fields explore the patterns, structures, and mechanisms that coincide with conscious experiences. Therefore, a definition would be:
Consciousness is associated with specific patterns of neural activity and
structures in the brain and nervous system.
NCC (Neural Correlates of Consciousness) in particular seeks to identify the minimal neural mechanisms that are together necessary and sufficient for experiencing any conscious percept (Crick and Koch, 1990). However, the task has proven to be beyond our current technical abilities, mainly due to limitations in measuring neural activity. Yet, “basic” relationships have been found. For instance, activity in certain brain regions like V1 and up correlates with the conscious experience of seeing objects, shapes, and colors. However, as we will see later, starting with a minimal conscious percept might be the wrong approach.
IIT ( Integrated Information Theory ) A conflicting theory, IIT (Gulio Tononi 2004) proposes that consciousness consists on the integration of information and that the more integrated this system is— meaning more neural networks and biological structures communicate and exchange information — the more conscious it becomes. thus a definition could be:
Consciousness is the result of highly integrated information in the brain.
The more integrated the information, the more conscious the system.
The model/theory (at least to me) gets bogged down in axioms (consciousness exists… just don’t ask why) and some questionable suppositions (mainly that the sum of information equals consciousness). It sidesteps “The hard problem of consciousness” (which we’ll talk about in a second). However, it does bring attention to the informational, integrational nature of consciousness, and perhaps more importantly, it suggests that consciousness might be a gradual affair.”
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The Hard Problem of Consciousness can be summarized as:
Why do we experience subjective things (see also Qualia)?
Why does it feel like something when we feel something? When you eat an
apple, the taste is something unique, personal, and private, even if
the thing you are experiencing is the same. Each experience is unique. Why?
The problem is "Hard" in contrast with the "Easy" problem of consciousness,
which consists of figuring out the mechanisms (like the NCC) that allow
us to experience things in the first place. "Easy" here is used
almost sarcastically as we haven't figured out much on this end.
Personally, I think the problem is somehow silly and easily solved
(but I might be naive). Time, entropy, and the universe all seem to
dislike identical phenomena or things, at least if you look close enough.
The apple you ate yesterday is completely different in detail from the
apple you will eat tomorrow. The moment is equally unique, and your
senses are completely different from mine. They also change with time.
Thus, it seems reasonable to expect unique experiences from unique events
and mechanics.
In any case, I suspect the matter won't be solved until/if we generate
conscious systems, but theories and models do need to answer this question.
Global Workspace Theory (GWT) A mechanistic theory GWT (Baars, Bernard J. 1988) suggests a space or neural architecture called the global workspace, along with multiple subconscious processes running in parallel. Some of these processes are brought to the forefront via attention into this space, making them conscious or integrating into consciousness within a short time span (a few seconds). The definition then could be:
Consciousness is the dynamic broadcasting and integration of information
within the brain's global workspace, facilitated by attention and memory,
enabling perception and decision-making.
The main critique this model receives is well, that it’s just a model; the neural correlates have yet to be pinned down, and attention and the global workspace as mechanisms for consciousness might be considered too simplistic. Additionally, the hard problem is not addressed. However, this theory provides enough substance to be tested and potentially implemented artificially, or at least serve as the basis for more complex theories.
The rest
There are plenty of other consciousness theories and definitions that are not quite as popular (yet?) or suffer from a lack of empirical evidence, or may be redundant, superficial, or have other flaws, but they are worth mentioning here:
Higher-Order Thought Theory (HOT): Consciousness arises from higher-order thoughts about our mental states; awareness is achieved by having thoughts about our own mental experiences.
Representationalism: Consciousness is the result of mental representations of the world; our conscious experiences are representations of external and internal stimuli.
Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR): Consciousness is a result of quantum processes within neuronal microtubules.
Predictive Processing: The brain is constantly generating predictions about the world and comparing them to sensory input. Consciousness arises when there is a mismatch between predictions and actual sensory information.
Panpsychism: Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe; all entities, from atoms to organisms, possess some level of consciousness.
Epilogue…My (Non) theory: One does come up with a few personal theories ( or favorites ) while researching consciousness, as they are not entirely mine they also serve as a sort of review of the previous ones.
- Consciousness at least in biology is the result of physical processes and structures within the nervous system within certain time frames.
- Consciousness is a gradual affair and like memory (also not an unitary concept) a subdivision based on what one is being aware of and within which time frame can help understand it, here’s my own model of the gradation of consciousness along with some other key processes, for one time dimension (life ) see here : The Development of Consciousness through life.
- Information, that is what the conscious being is aware of, consisting of internal and external stimuli and its incremental integration allows for richer types of consciousness.
- Memory in all its forms, attention, and a host of other cognitive and neural processes which can run in parallel are necessary but not individually sufficient for consciousness.
- A minimal NNC likewise depends on what your definition of a minimal conscious precept is.
- Self-awareness is distinct from certain types of consciousness. Qualia is subjective and particular due to the subjective and particular nature of the stimuli and a property of consciousness.
- Ultimately, any theory will need to be proven by experimentation. Artificial experimentation might prove easier and more fruitful (at least in the short term) than neuroscience.
Thus my definition would be :
A gradual process within biology, which arises from the incremental
integration of internal and external stimuli over time and generates
internal representations of said stimuli we call consciousness,
The system generates private and subjective internal experiences(Qualia).
It encompasses, facilitates and employs other cognitive systems like
awareness, memory, attention, and other neural correlates, yet transcends
any singular cognitive function.
It should also be said that my theory, ( like others ), needs to provide the neural correlates and systems (my own take: The Brain Blueprints Project) along with experimental data ( as an independent researcher, I take the “easier” artificial route, for example, Recreating Biological Short-Term Memory)…But this is a lifelong, slow and challenging process I am not sure I’ll finish in my lifetime ( but its fun !).
Your theory ?
Whenever I write something related to consciousness, I sometimes receive comments attacking the subject because it doesn’t fit X or Y theory on consciousness, or some axiom in said theory. Sometimes, the comment comes with a link to a paper or article that is unrelated. So, I usually ignore these comments for the sake of keeping things focused, but not here. If you have a favorite theory, intuition, or link to a paper, you are welcome to add it to the heap.
Written by Keno Leon
AI, Software Developer, Designer : www.k3no.comFollow