

Objects of consciousness - MichaelAO
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00577/full

======
ivan_ah
I gave this a chance (seeing there were equations), but after reading the
whole thing I still don't understand what they're talking about. It just
doesn't make any sense. What would be the one paragraph summary of this paper?

The math in particular seems inappropriate to present in a Psychology journal,
even a frontier one. I question the authors' motivation to cover such advanced
mathematical topics, from so many different areas of science. Was the intent
that the reader will understand, or just be impressed by the math?

The mention of Deepak Chopra in the Acknowledgment section lends further
support to my "perception" that this is not a legitimate paper, but an
intellectually-dishonest attempt at disguising improv-style nonsense behind
impressive-sounding physics jargon.

~~~
orasis
Let's start with this question: What makes an object an object? Find an object
in the room, say a chair. What imbues the chair with "chairness"? Why is it
considered separate from the floor?

If you investigate this you will find that all objects are mind created. There
is no essense or Platonic form of an object inherent to the object. The object
cannot be said to have inherent existence apart from the mind perceiving it.

This concept is called "Emptiness" in Buddhism and training the mind to
recognize the truth of emptiness frees the mind of all sorts of pathology
(except maybe sounding weird when trying to explain this to people)

~~~
kleer001
> Why is it considered separate from the floor?

Because it can be easily moved. That is the property all objects share. There
are a few exceptions, but they are illustrative. Consider a rusted on bolt.
Can it be moved? Not without a lot of effort. However a fresh new loose bolt
of the same kind demonstrates movable-objectness. What about a chair bolted to
the floor? It was once loose, it's an object. What about a chair welded to the
floor? Same thing. What about a chair that's constructed of the floor its
self, like a large lump or bend up from steel or molded? I would submit that
that's the floor acting like a chair, and not an object chair, but a chair
like part of the floor.

An even more technical definition would be along the lines of "Objects are the
static locus of continuity within a sharp boundary." And by static I mean to
include floppy objects like plants or leather. And by sharp boundary I mean in
relative space to the observer and their understanding of their environment.
From the ground a cloud looks like it has a relatively sharp boundary, sure,
it's complex, but the difference in the color and shading from the sky gives
it away. If you're IN the cloud it just looks like fog. Is fog an object?
Sure, it's in high contrast to the regular state of the air. Is air an object?
Sure, it's in high contrast to the ground, and from a certain perspective
interstellar space.

Does liver fit this definition? If it's separated from the organism, sure. If
it's still in a living body, it's an organ, not an object.

>all objects are mind created.

I would go even further and say that "All patterns are mind events."

Phurpa drop!

(A phurpa is a triple sided ritual dagger which in Buddhism symbolizes the
slaying or destruction of foe or obstructions.)

~~~
drdeca
If you apply the same force as you would to a cup handle it order to pick up
the cup, to a single atom of the surface of the cup, couldn't that remove the
atom?

"Can be removed using a specific level of force" is then not sufficient for
determining whether a collection of particles form an object.

Perhaps if one instead uses some amount of force applied on the collection of
particles which depends on the mass of the collection?

That seems like it could be tricky, because I don't think I would generally
consider fluids to be objects (in the sense we are speaking of), but I would
not be too surprised if some fluid could be removed from a glass with a given
level of force depending on the mass of a portion of the liquid, applied
evenly over the portion, while keeping the portion of the liquid contiguous.

Which would seem to indicate that and portion of the liquid is an object.

However, maybe that is actually a solution, by adding the additional
restriction that no part of an object is an object? (In a particular sense of
object). Or alternatively, the intersection of any two objects is empty?

So, the section of the liquid is not an object, because a smaller part would
then also be an object, and therefore, the individual molecules would be the
objects.

That seems plausible to me...

~~~
pdonis
_> If you apply the same force as you would to a cup handle it order to pick
up the cup, to a single atom of the surface of the cup, couldn't that remove
the atom?_

No, because the forces holding the atoms of the cup together are much stronger
than the forces holding the cup to the floor. That's the underlying physical
reason why it makes sense to consider the cup as an "object".

~~~
jacobolus
More to the point, if someone decides to reject that the chair is an object,
that’s entirely fine, it’s just a semantic dispute, not a dispute about the
underlying reality.

The individual atoms (or really, electrons and quarks) which make up the chair
and the floor and the air around it don’t behave differently based on what
object boundaries some person attaches in their mind.

Some of the atoms which the human considers to be “part of” the chair get left
behind on the floor, while the bottoms of the chair legs pick some atoms up
from the floor. Water molecules are constantly being traded between the chair
surface and the air. And so on.

The object boundary is in some sense arbitrary and porous. The way we define
it is based on our own practical use and experience, and the
aggregated/emergent properties which are relevant to us, since we don’t have
the means to simultaneously apprehend every individual particle in our
surroundings.

~~~
orasis
"The object boundary is in some sense arbitrary and porous." Yes. All objects
are mind created, so indeed their boundaries are arbitrary.

------
based2
"How can consciousness be cast in a mathematical formalism without losing
something essential?

The mathematics does lose something essential, viz., consciousness itself.
Similarly, mathematical models of weather also lose something essential, viz.,
weather itself. A mathematical model of hurricanes won't create rain, and a
mathematical model of consciousness won't create consciousness. The math is
not the territory. But, properly constructed, mathematics reveals the
structure of the territory."

[http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/105/7/2745.full)
Bayesian learning of visual chunks by human observers

~~~
Lambdanaut
The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than
models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious.

The line is very blury between a model of consciousness and the point where it
can not only be described as conscious but truly has that ethereally, hard to
define quality that we "feel" as consciousness.

Would the first truly general AIs simply be working models of consciousness,
or would they also feel consciousness as we do? When does the viz creep into
our model?

~~~
geophile
> The eerie thing is that as far as we can tell, our brains are no more than
> models of consciousness, and yet they are conscious.

Wow. That is an extremely good description of the problem of consciousness. Is
this your own formulation? If not, where did you run into it?

~~~
Lambdanaut
I've been thinking about it a long time and hadn't heard it from anyone else.
I'm glad to get feedback :)

------
dgreensp
There are some real howlers in here, such as when the author is quick to point
out that the theory of natural selection in biological evolution assumes DNA
exists even when you aren't looking at it, but we can patch this hole in the
argument by saying we aren't talking about _that_ natural selection, but
natural selection in the abstract.

It's like using the fact that apples fall from trees as evidence for gravity,
but because we plan to use gravity to show that time doesn't exist, we refuse
to grant that an apple on the ground was ever previously on the tree, but no
matter, we still believe in the concept of "falling." In fact, the principles
of falling show us that down is better than up, independent of time.

What I appreciate about the article is it grapples with this deep question
(albeit framed oddly): When we model the fabric of reality by inventing
quantum mechanics, are we somehow just projecting the building blocks of how
we think? This is related to another mysterious question: Is math an invention
or a discovery? Were prime numbers and linear algebra there before we came
along, or do they emerge from the structure of our brains? There are primitive
tribes of humans who have not invented counting, so they are unable to
distinguish 10 berries from 11 berries and do not experience integers as part
of the natural world; they would probably consider properties of the integers
to be properties of the act of counting if they had a mental framework for
doing so. So back to the first question, how much of what we find when we peer
out into the universe and model it with particles and waves and math is in our
heads, and how much is really "out there"? If physics to date is unknowingly
identifying the fabric of reality with the fabric of thought, then we should
be able to take either reality or thought as primary and use it to explain the
other. The author chooses thought (consciousness) as primary.

However, the author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be
more provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the
building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when you
aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can replace the
term "conscious agent" with anything. The author fully acknowledges both of
these facts in his responses to objections 1 and 6.

~~~
goblin89
I admit that the DNA/natural selection point is somewhat over my head still.
However, with my limited understanding of the research, I’d somewhat disagree
with this:

> …author's claim that objects aren't really there turns out to be more
> provocative than substantial. The author takes conscious agents as the
> building blocks of reality, and the conscious agents are still there when
> you aren't looking. They are just a different representation. You can
> replace the term "conscious agent" with anything.

My understanding is as follows: conscious agents, as the foundation, exist
unperceived. What we see, however, is not a representation of said agents—not
a ‘map’. Rather, it’s a hugely simplified interface to the world of
interactions between said agents. As symbols of the interface, objects or even
space-time can’t be claimed to exist when we’re not looking.

It’s like an API spec that describes various entities and whatever
manipulations we can request on them. These Users and Posts don’t actually
exist as such, but for our practical purposes they’re always there, helpfully
constructed. As API consumer we can fetch a user whenever we need it, but
network can be down between our requests for all we know. (A precise map then
could probably be raw SQL shell, the complexity of which API hides. I know
this analogy is far from ideal, but it somewhat helped me understand some
aspects of the idea.)

~~~
dgreensp
I wasn't very clear when I said, "They are just a different representation."
What I meant was that modeling the universe as made out of conscious agents is
not that different from modeling the universe as made out of atoms or quantum
waves, as far as the reality or permanence of objects is concerned.

We all know that there isn't really a desk in front of me, just a pile of
atoms, and when I look at it, I'm not seeing the desk but observing photons
that bounced off of it. Our interactions with things are always mediated, and
the things are never what we think they are. It's also pretty standard for
philosophers to debate whether anything is real, or whether we can possibly
know that anything is real. Recasting the electrons in my desk as conscious
agents doesn't make my desk disappear when I go out to lunch in some new and
meaningful way.

~~~
goblin89
Thanks for clarifying. Upon rereading I think I realize where you see
provoking claim. Authors start by reasoning that our perception is necessarily
wrong (maximizing for fitness is counter to maximizing for truth, etc.), and
object permanence gets thrown in the mix. However, their research also makes
more fundamental claims that kind of supersede this, such as (emphasis
theirs):

> _the entire framework_ of a space-time containing objects, the fundamental
> organization of our perceptual systems, that must be recognized as a mere
> species-specific mode of perception rather than an insight into objective
> reality.

It seems this research can address the Schrödinger’s desk problem in two ways,
which I can’t quite tie together:

1) By their conscious agent -> microphysical object theory, your desk doesn’t
disappear like that. That is, dynamics of conscious agent interaction _do_
routinely cause particle reconfigurations that reflect as certain patterns of
change in relevant microphysical objects’ space-time positions, but—as long as
we’re unable to describe the underlying world—“whoops! desk broke” is all we
see.

2) By their interface theory of perception, your desk, as icon on your reality
interface, pops up in your consciousness whenever it’s brought up for access.
In other circumstances it doesn’t exist, like this browser window when I
switch to another desktop (the data about my window and your desk is persisted
by relevant interface layers). It would be fun if we could tinker with
whatever mechanism implements these icons, given that the implementation is
within us, but—in apparent absence of such ability within scientific
framework—this remains more of a philosophical argument.

AFAICT, though, there’s at least one definite practical implication—we might
have a reasonable way to construct meaningful observers and thus advance
quantum theory interpretations.

------
Elrac
This starts off with a rephrasing of theo-philosopher Alvin Plantinga's claim
that evolution makes (e.g. human) perception optimal for survival, not
truthiness to reality. Many feel that Plantinga has failed to substantiate
this claim even though he wrote a fat book on the topic. He fails to make it
clear how a badly unreliable model of reality would have greater survival
value. Plantinga _needs_ it to be true though, to prop up his argument for the
existence of God, so he treats us to many pages of philosophical hand waving.

It gets worse in Act 2: The ol' Deepak Chopra trick of equivocating on
"observer" in quantum experiments. What Chopra and other people fail to tell
you is that the "observer" doesn't need to be human, or even sentient. A video
camera or some similar piece of recording equipment - even a photographic film
plate - will do fine. That piece of kit would faithfully "observe" the quantum
event - and apparently influence it - even if all of humanity had wiped itself
out hours earlier.

I'm sure there are sensible arguments to be made about consciousness, but
these two seriously doubtful premises do not make for a good start.

------
edne
I stopped reading at: "Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum
physics [...]"

[https://xkcd.com/1240/](https://xkcd.com/1240/)

~~~
brobdingnagian
Why would you stop reading there? That's when it gets interesting. It's OK to
think for yourself :)

------
orasis
For the more audio-visual oriented - here is a talk covering the same topic.
[http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI](http://youtu.be/dqDP34a-epI)

~~~
throwitup
Associated with IRVA (International Remote Viewing Association)

[http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html](http://www.irva.org/conferences/speakers/hoffman.html)

and Deepak Chopra

[http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-
hoffman/](http://www.choprafoundation.org/speakers/donald-hoffman/)

So why not go the whole hog, and listen to Rupert Sheldrake explain to you why
materialism is bunk?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR1SLQwHDog)

------
goblin89
Very interesting and thought-provoking read, about halfway into it.

I started disagreeing with authors at the point where they define conscious
experience: I can’t see why it’s contingent on subject’s ability to interact
with the outside world, and I don’t follow how subject’s messages to the world
can be proved as caused by conscious experience. I suppose I just haven’t yet
internalized their definitions (of ‘world’, ‘subject’, etc.), though.

------
memming
No.

~~~
vog
Do you care to elaborate on your disagreement?

~~~
enord
I'll chime in with this conceptual map of the article (as far as i read it
anyway):

Perception->Visual perception->Ontology of visual perception and
consciousness->Quantum physics->No.

edit: Actually, when i think about it, there's something analogous to
Goodwin's law in papers/articles about the mind and consciousness. Whenever
quantum physics becomes a topic the whole article just unravels into nonsense.
This is of course obvious to anyone who've studied the physical properties of
the mind (We don't even understand how whole braincells work together to form
mental phenomena and conscious thought, so anything on a sub-atomic level is
just out on a bike-ride (Norwegian idiom, sorry)).

~~~
TelmoMenezes
It is true that a lot of woo is produced by people who appeal to quantum
weirdness without having a basic understanding of modern physics. This article
seems to be no exception (I did not have the patience to read it all).

What you say, however, is dogmatic. You assume the emergentist theory of
consciousness: that consciousness somehow emerges from the complex physical
interactions in the brain. This theory is itself woo at the moment, because
there is not even a proposed mechanism by how this could happen. There is just
a magic step: complexity -> magic -> consciousness.

It makes all the sense to take into account the additional information about
reality that quantum mechanics provides when trying to understand
consciousness, which is so far a mysterious aspect of reality.

~~~
titzer
It's not hard to argue that materialism implies emergentism, since materialism
assumes nothing but physical properties and processes exist. No one really
believes that individual neurons are conscious, yet no one disagrees that
brains are conscious. Brains are made of neurons and thus have a property
their parts do not; ergo, emergent behavior.

So it's either emergentism or woo, by my reckoning. YMMV.

~~~
carapace
I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious. Every
micro-video I've ever seen leads me to credit that these tiny creatures are
"people" in the same way that any multi-cellular living being is a person.

I think consciousness is an intrinsic aspect of the Universe, which seems to
be fundamentally made of it and something we can call the _flux_ which is
everything else. The flux has pattern/form and is constantly changing
apparently in accord with rules, some of which we seem to grasp quite well.
Consciousness, on the other hand, has no properties and does not exist in
time, it is always now. In fact the only way we know about consciousness (and
give talk of it any heed whatsoever) is that we _are_ consciousness. We often
forget this due to the distraction of currently occupying a body (a self-
referential "whirlpool" of flux that includes an apparatus for interfacing
with consciousness in a way that is as yet entirely mysterious to science) but
that soon solves itself in the fullness of time. But let that pass.

More interesting from the point of view of this thread is the way that a human
mind arises from the mind of the body's cells, if you credit that they are
sentient themselves. It also points to the larger multi-human sentient
entities which we can and do comprise.

~~~
Elrac
> I believe that individual neurons (indeed all cells) are conscious.

OK, I'll bite: Just what makes you believe that? What evidence convinces you
this is true?

~~~
carapace
There is nothing I can point to that serves as evidence of consciousness. As I
said above, the only way we know that the word "consciousness" has a referent
in the real world is that we experience it. I have no evidence that microbes
and cells are conscious any more than I have evidence that I am, or you are.

I have, myself, had some experiences that seem to me to have something to do
with some of the statements I sometimes make about "consciousness".

But there is no way to share that experience with you, no symbols I can
transmit. There is no consciousness-o-meter (except for consciousness itself
maybe.)

~~~
Elrac
Fair enough! We share most of our view of what's what, and differ mainly in
interpretation.

For what it's worth, I consider consciousness to be a capability, like the
ability to digest cellulose or to echolocate; and I consider it to exist on a
continuum, with us humid beings being the most capable (that we know of) and
unicellular microbes arguably the least. And the degree of capability looks to
be strongly related to the complexity of a living being's brain (or what
passes for it - microbes cogitate, in a very dim but adequate-to-their-needs
way by discharging and detecting chemicals in their protoplasm). From all the
examples we're aware of, it appears that consciousness is a process, what
brains do, kinda like a flame is what a candle does.

We've only ever (reliably) observed the phenomena we associate with
consciousness in living brains. If we work hard enough at mimicking brains in
silicon, we may one day see consciousness in man-made machines. I, at least,
have a lot of trouble imagining that consciousness can arise independently of
structures painstakingly evolved in that direction or even more painstakingly
constructed. Humans pay a huge price for their capable brains - the difficulty
and risk of childbirth, the prodigous consumption of (I think) one-fifth of
the body's energy. If consciousness were something lying around elsewhere,
evolution would not have needed to take this costly route.

That's me, science and reason talking. Of course there's always a possibility
we're surprisingly wrong about this.

~~~
carapace
I just happened to be checking this right now and saw your reply.

I definitely agree with most of what you've said above, with the main
exception that I consider consciousness to be somehow intrinsic or primary to
the Universe, even more so than matter/energy and space/time, rather than
something that emerges over time.

I do agree that what I would call the capability to _express_ consciousness
seems to exist on a continuum, and I agree with your characterization of it,
but I believe that what we consider "inanimate" objects express consciousness
too. At the risk of sounding completely looney, I'll admit that I've had
encounters that make me think that whirlwinds ("dust devils") have or express
a kind of sentience!

Although I can't really explain it, experimenting with robotics and
augmentation has made me realize (or so I believe) that the interface between
our bodies and our experience of our bodies is fundamentally mysterious, that
there can be no possible way that any constellation of matter and energy could
cause or engender the subjective sense of self. Anyone who has blinked their
eyes knows that there is _some_ connection between them and the experience of
seeing, but how _you_ see is totally mysterious. A sentient machine would be
in the same perplexing situation.

