
Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think - mathgenius
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/consciousness-goes-deeper-than-you-think/
======
breckinloggins
This equivocation between consciousness and meta-consciousness is so
widespread that a plethora of books, which are seemingly dedicated to the
project of "explaining consciousness", instead spend their entire contents
explaining some hypothesis involving meta-consciousness and then proceed to
declare victory without ever touching consciousness itself. Jaynes' "The
Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" is perhaps
the most egregious offender.

This is especially troubling when you consider that meta-consciousness sells
easily to the general public as "the hard problem" (our thorough use of it
seemingly being a large part of what makes humans different, after all), while
it's likely that it's more of an engineering problem after you've figured out
base consciousness.

If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem.
Implementing recursive phenomenal access seems like an undergraduate research
project after that. Yet it's most often the very thing we spend all our time
focusing on. Frustrating. We need new words - or wider usage of existing ones.

~~~
sriku
> If there's anything it is like to be a worm, THAT'S the hard problem.

I don't believe we can get to the root of this "hard problem" by first trying
to agree on a definition of the word before we can say anything about it. We
will also need to admit the possibility that the question "are we conscious?"
may be as vacuous at the end as "is Pluto a planet?".

~~~
visarga
Being unable to agree on a definition for consciousness is a huge problem. I
think this happens because consciousness is being studied at a too abstract
(high) level. Instead, we should switch to the low level dual of this problem
- game theory and reinforcement learning. Fortunately, at this level
definitions are exact and concrete - agent, environment, goal, actions,
values. At this level we can understand and simulate what it means to be a
worm, or a bat - as agents playing games.

I think what the current philosophic theory of consciousness lacks is a focus
on the game itself. The agent is but a part of the environment, and the game
is much more than the agent. The whole environment-agent-game system is what
creates consciousness and also explains the purpose of consciousness (to
maximize goals for agents).

Analyzing consciousness outside its game is meaningless (such as p-zombies) -
the game is the fundamental meaning creator, defining the space of
consciousness. The Chinese room is not part of a game, it is not embodied in
the world, and has no goals to attain, that is why it is not conscious, it is
just a data processing system.

On the other part, a bacteria can be conscious on a chemical, electric and
foto level even if it can only process data with its gene regulatory network
(which is like a small chemical neural net). A bacteria has clear goals
(gaining nutrients, replication) thus its consciousness is useful for
something - all consciousness needs to have a clear goal otherwise it would
not exist in the first place - something rarely emphasized in consciousness
articles.

~~~
roceasta
_> switch to the low level dual of this problem [...] reinforcement learning._

But that is itself a theory about the problem of consciousness! So why not do
_both?_ There's no obvious short cut through the confusion, but discoveries in
one field may guide questions in the other. In general I think it helps to
have one's feet on the ground as well as one's head in the stars (for instance
Newton ground his own lenses).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>But that is itself a theory about the problem of consciousness!

No it's not! It's a computational theory of motivated action.

~~~
roceasta
What I mean is that the idea that reinforcement learning is a 'low level dual'
of the problem of consciousness is also a theory about the problem of
consciousness. It's part and parcel of philosophical topics that one can't get
out of the game...

------
xelxebar
This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like
little more than word games to me.

We could similarly write articles about all the qualities and properties of
phlogiston, and we'd have learned just as much.

What _thing_ are we actually trying to explain here? What is the extensive
meaning of the word "consciousness"? How can I emperically determine if some
object/animal/thing possesses consciousness?

At this point it mostly just seems like we define ourselves to have this
"conscious" property and then circularly use that as a distinguishing
characteristic of humans.

How is "consciousness" not just a modern word for "soul", minus the afterlife
stuff?

~~~
monktastic1
Have you heard it said that you can never know if another being is really
conscious, and yet you can know that you are? Presumably you disagree? This is
what, in essence, it _means_ to be a subjective fact rather than an objective
one, and why it's hard to pin it down as a "thing."

~~~
jonathanstrange
But that's the problem with the philosophy of mind. They have all these
subjective notions like consciousness, self-consciousness, analytic and
synthetic I, the accompanying such-and-such feeling (e.g. _I_ -feeling), self-
awareness, awareness, attention, qualia, qualitative experience vs. content of
qualitative experience vs. phenomenal experience vs. sense data vs. innr
experience, cognition, embodied cognition, stream of consciousness, and so
forth. Each of them comes with many fine-grained additional distinctions, but
they are all subjective and cannot be measured easily and every author
promotes his own vocabulary.

Then they wonder why they can't agree on a common theory, quibble endlessly
about the adequacy of their various subjective definitions, and most if not
all of their arguments are based on 'intuition-pumping'.

~~~
mannykannot
The topics you mention are mostly arguments against physicalism, rather than
being for something. There seems to be a lot more effort expended (on both
sides of the physicalism-dualism divide) in trying to disprove the other side,
rather than on explaining consciousness, though perhaps that's just what the
general-interest coverage focuses on.

~~~
monktastic1
If "consciousness" is taken to refer to this "thing" I can be certain I have
but cannot be certain you do, then it doesn't refer to any objective property
that can be proven or explained, right?

~~~
mannykannot
Looking for proof in these matters is probably a fool's errand (though many
seem to undertake it...) As for explanations, that doesn't seem to be out of
the question up to some assumptions, as is usually the case with explanations.
Anyone choosing to go down the rabbit-hole of solipsism is literally alone
with his thoughts.

~~~
monktastic1
I agree. All I mean to say is that the reason it's hard to come to a consensus
on what we mean by "consciousness" is that we're trying to _unambiguously_
capture this first-person thing in third-person terms. This is bound to fail
for effectively the same reason it's impossible to know (with certainty) that
anyone other than myself is conscious. I can at best capture evidence for the
_objective properties about you_ that make me _believe_ you're conscious.

------
wickawic
The issue presented at the beginning of the article is (as most philosophical
issues are) one of semantics. Philosophers as I understand it use
"consciousness" as the quality shared by things that are able to have
experiences. A rock gets wet by the rain, but humans "feel" wet when it rains.
A bat might not self-reflect but it feels /something/ when it uses echo-
location.

On the other hand, conciseness in our everyday use of the term is very tied to
the idea of attention and awareness, i.e. a "conscious action" or an
"unconscious motivation". This is a very Freudian concept, that there are
thoughts we think and others that lay behind. The philosophical consciousness
is much more holistic, but also very vague. You wouldn't think a tree has an
Ego, but it might have some sort of existential awareness.

It's cool to see the philosophy of consciousness intersect with neuroscience,
since outsiders like me tend to think of these fields as at-odds.

~~~
simonh
Listening to Marvin Minsky on Closer To Truth on Youtube was a revelation for
me. As in many philosophical debates, before you even start to begin to think
about and communicate about a subject you have to get your terminology clear
and accurate.

Conciseness is a suitcase term that contains within it a mass of different
mental processes. It's just not useful to talk about it much in general,
except that it's so general a term which frankly we just don't understand yet.
If we did, we'd at least have a general idea of how to design one and we
don't. Rather than try and make any more pronouncements about this, I'll just
refer to what he has to say on the subject as he does a much better job than I
ever could.

This is a good primer on this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r70jzcmMxU&list=PLFJr3pJl27...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r70jzcmMxU&list=PLFJr3pJl27pIGTG8LiAqVOPM7zudt-
Dlv&index=6)

Here's a great explanation of this in the form of an apparently simple example
scenario and the very many different faculties of the brain that in entails:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPeVMDYodN8&list=PLFJr3pJl27...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPeVMDYodN8&list=PLFJr3pJl27pIGTG8LiAqVOPM7zudt-
Dlv&index=10)

------
erikpukinskis
My best at guess is that the universe itself is conscious, and we'll
eventually let go of the idea of individual consciousnesses. An ant hive sees
a larger field more clearly than I do, maybe at a slower refresh rate but not
by much.

Are individual ants conscious? Somewhat. Are we conscious when we're receiving
reality through memes beyond our comprehension? Somewhat.

Are our rods and cones conscious? Our brain stem? The cells that make us
vomit? The bacterial colonies in our sinuses?

I just think the answer to all of these questions when all is said and done
will be yes. And we'll be sad how much life we killed because we didn't think
it was conscious enough.

And maybe if we're lucky when we die we get to watch our consciousness grow to
include all things. Maybe that's why we have circuits in our brain that seem
to respond that way to mushrooms.

Maybe there's a genetic advantage to harboring the illusion that you are a
separate consciousness, but it's just there to make you want to struggle to
hold up your tiny corner of a collective consciousness.

~~~
thevardanian
No. the universe isn't conscious. The universe is matter. Consciousness is a
part of the universe. Therefore consciousness is simply material. Nothing
more, nothing less.

It's just that our egos are too big to accept that we are nothing more than
dirt.

~~~
colordrops
Have you ever considered that objective reality is seated in consciousness
rather than the other way around? Look into Plato's allegory of the cave. The
world around you is actually a simulation created in your brain by
synthesizing inputs from your sensory organs - you aren't experiencing it
directly. That model includes the conception that you have a brain and sensory
organs which simulate an objective reality. In other words, the possibility
that objective reality stems from the subjective world, i.e. the mind, is not
an absurd assertion.

~~~
eivarv
Just to nitpick: Wouldn't this by definition make it non-objective?

I would think the objective reality in your explanation would be what your
sensory organs are reacting to, not what you perceive.

~~~
colordrops
Yes I've thought of this but didn't want to complicate things. My current
stance is that reality is dualistic and both subjective and objective are
symbiotic and can't exist without the other.

~~~
eivarv
Why do you believe this to be the case?

~~~
colordrops
It seems to me that there is no evidence for either the subjective or the
objective realms being the "real" reality. There is a strong argument for
either, and they can both be explored with depth.

The concept of "reality", of a physical universe, of a "you", of order and
pattern, of an persistent objective reality outside of you, do not exist per
se, but as simulation and models in your mind that you accrued throughout your
life.

To be more specific, there is an underlying reality that is neither
"objective" nor "subjective", but from which both of these realities emerge
once a conscious being appears in it. We cannot directly know the true nature
of this underlying reality, as it cannot be directly experienced. What we call
objective reality is really the experience of the simulation in our mind
synthesized from sensory data, as well as our model of this simulation
(science), and not the underlying "true" reality.

~~~
eivarv
I'm not sure I follow.

From my understanding of the term, the "real" reality would be the same as the
objective realm per definition;

What do you mean when you say "objective" as in "... the subjective or the
objective realms"? Some sort of shared definition? If so, wouldn't this also
be subjective to a certain degree?

I might just be post-hoc rationalizing my own interpretations here, but
doesn't our subjective experiences of reality being based on our sensory
organs' interpretation of stimuli from what is presumably the objective
reality make fewer assumptions than a concept involving interconnected or
"symbiotic" realities?

------
justinpombrio
I'm completely lost. What does it mean to be conscious of something, but
unaware of it? I thought those were synonyms.

The article asks this question:

> Consider your breathing right now: the sensation of air flowing through your
> nostrils, the movements of your diaphragm, etcetera. Were you not
> experiencing these sensations a moment ago, before I directed your attention
> to them? Or were you just unaware that you were experiencing them all along?
> By directing your attention to these sensations, did I make them conscious
> or did I simply cause you to experience the extra quality of knowing that
> the sensations were conscious?

Implicitly saying that "experience" and "consciousness" should be defined such
that I experienced and was conscious of those sensations even though I was not
aware of them. Thus, using the terminology of the article, I am currently
conscious of a _ton_ of things all at once:

The feeling of my feet on the floor, my butt in the seat, my tongue in my
mouth, the sound of my typing, and of the rattling behind me, and of the
rumbling of the train, the vibrations of the train, the propioceptive feeling
of the positions of my limbs, the slight but distinctive smell of mass
transit.

Is this right? Is "consciousness" in the sense of the article just a synonym
for "anything the brain processes"?

~~~
ars
> Is "consciousness" in the sense of the article just a synonym for "anything
> the brain processes"?

And is able to describe that thing, even if just to itself.

Have you ever experienced in a dream, being able to do some wondrous thing -
write music, feel a wall from a distance, whatever. In the dream you _feel_
that ability. But when you wake up, while you _remember_ dreaming about it,
you can not actually make yourself re-experience it. (For example: Describe
the song you wrote.)

That's what the author claims is the difference between conscious and not
conscious. (If I understood him correctly.)

If you have conscious thought, you can cause your mind to experience any
sensation you have already had. A non-conscious being can not do that, they
can only experience what they experience right this moment.

~~~
justinpombrio
In your dream example, I remember the music. But in the article's example, I
don't even remember my breath. Since I don't remember it, I cannot recall it.
So while that's a nice distinction, it doesn't seem to be what the article was
trying to get at.

------
marccantwell
It is hard to take the author seriously, or as an authority, when he rejects
materialism and states something like "Physical death is merely a de-clenching
of awareness", and he believes in the afterlife.

~~~
nsxwolf
Why does that make the author hard to take seriously? Because of your bias
toward materialism?

~~~
Marazan
Well, when it comes to consciousness the alternative is dualism and dualism is
the belief in magic.

Given how discredited dualism is it is amazing how far people will go to deny
hey are dualists whilst spouting all the arguements and beliefs of dualists.

~~~
goatlover
Dualism is the belief there is more than one fundamental substance in the
world (mind & matter). There's nothing magical about that, it's just an
ontological position. But it does have the problem of how mind & matter
interact.

~~~
Marazan
_But it does have the problem of how mind & matter interact._

Yes, that is where the magic is.

------
roceasta
This seems consistent with my experience that when I'm attending hard to a
task I have no idea what it is like.

 _> For instance, it is the occurrence of a sense perception that triggers the
metacognitive realization one is perceiving something. N, in turn, evokes X by
directing attention back to it: the realization one is perceiving something
naturally shifts one’s mental focus back to the original perception. So we end
up with a back-and-forth cycle of evocations whereby X triggers N, which in
turn evokes X, which again triggers N, and so forth._

This also seems plausible since we can't perceive a new thing accurately
without a prior expectation of what it's like. This could be solved by an
iterative cycle of increasing realisticness and accuracy.

------
ramblerman
This puts me in an uncomfortable spot w/regards to abortion. My go to argument
was always 'the lights aren't on yet'.

If I'm understanding correctly they might be, albeit dimly, and each day
getting brighter.

~~~
dark_silicon
I'd encourage anyone to examine their conscience, read about the viability of
babies born prematurely, and consider that even post-birth a baby is not self-
sufficient. We don't have good criteria for what makes something alive or
conscious, yet many draw an arbitrary line at birth.

I'm not looking to continue this discussion, but I'm glad you're thinking
about this.

~~~
imaginenore
"Self-sufficient" is not a good argument. Most people are not self-sufficient
when it comes to survival on their own. Just look at the history - as soon as
mass-produced food is cut off, famines kill hundreds of thousands, millions
sometimes.

I used to support abortion, but more and more I'm sliding towards being maybe
against it, because (some of) the anti-abortion side arguments are logical
too. No matter how you draw the line based on some argument, you can use the
same logic to kill adults. That includes viability, lack of pain, etc.

On the other hand, our technology is at the level where you can turn any cell
in your body into sperm:

[https://phys.org/news/2016-04-scientists-skin-cells-human-
sp...](https://phys.org/news/2016-04-scientists-skin-cells-human-sperm.html)

So if you're against abortion based on the "viability", every time you scratch
your nose, you commit genocide.

It's a hard question.

------
hathawsh
Expanding on the breathing example in the article, could we say there are at
least three distinct systems in the brain that control breathing? They are:

\- Conscious breathing: I follow a chosen breathing pattern with no immediate
awareness of the breathing process.

\- Meta-conscious breathing: I choose to be fully aware and in control of
multiple aspects of breathing. I control my diaphragm and lips directly, I
listen to and feel air passing, I consider how the position of my body affects
breathing, etc. I also may choose an appropriate breathing pattern: deeper for
hiking, more rhythmic for aerobic exercise, or slow for contemplation. After I
have chosen a new pattern, that new pattern soon becomes conscious rather than
meta-conscious; although the special breathing continues, I am no longer
immediately aware of my new behavior. A change in activity reverts my
conscious breathing behavior back to normal without any meta-conscious choice.

\- Unconscious breathing: What I do when I sleep. It's clearly different from
conscious breathing because I may snore, and many people even suffer from
sleep apnea, which means they momentarily stop breathing while sleeping.
Neither snoring nor sleep apnea are part of the experience of breathing
consciously, so unconscious breathing must be very different somehow.

Am I using the terms correctly?

Curiously, many activities like speaking, eating, and swimming interrupt
normal breathing yet do not necessarily invoke any meta-conscious decision
making. If I had to think about when to breathe every time I wanted to speak,
my meta-conscious mind would be overloaded with that task alone and I would
forget what I wanted to say.

~~~
dahauns
From my gut I'd say there are two - your "conscious breathing" is actually the
same as your unconscious breathing process: Both are done without awareness to
it and are primarily modulated via the vegetative system (O2 receptors in the
carotid, hering-breuer reflex and so on).

The difference being that while you're awake you can consciously affect and
correct your breathing (your "meta-conscious breathing"). When you're asleep,
your body has to rely on it's other unconscious mechanisms to do that.

------
dwaltrip
My interpretation of "meta-consciousness" as described by the article:

It is simply a brief period of intent, focused replay/study of the experience
that just occurred, while it is very fresh in the mind/short-term memory. One
is closely reviewing what happened, looking at the experience from different
angles, replaying it, etc. This could all happen in the span of a second or
less.

It is a matter of focus and proximity. It isn't a special layer of
consciousness. It may seem qualitatively different, as the mental model of the
experience is so deep & rich in the moments immediately during and after, if
one is focusing closely. But I don't see the argument for this becoming some
sort of "meta-consciousness".

In short, the concepts of "consciousness" and "being conscious of [something]"
are related, but they aren't the exact same thing.

~~~
aarpmcgee
What if you're merely interpreting meta-consciousness according to the mode in
which your mind currently operates?

~~~
dwaltrip
Come again?

------
hbarka
"Reflection and introspection are programming facilities in the Java
programming language that allow an object to discover information about itself
and other objects at runtime."

Sounds about similar.

------
ozy
I have a theory.

Any theory about consciousness that does not include learning is at best
incomplete, but more likely just wrong.

\---

Our brains create models of the world. They are constantly predicting, making
choices. And on surprise, looking back to see where it went wrong. On reward,
reinforcing the behavior leading up to it.

In a way, our brains are observers of our environment, our bodies, and itself.

------
SubiculumCode
I've been involved in meta cognition research, but I am confused by the
distinction being raised between consciousness and meta consciousness, as
'conciousness' seems to reduce to 'interact', as in particle A hits particle
B, and so reduced seems to have no meaning.

------
dontreact
I lost the thread in the first two paragraphs. Can anyone explain to me why
it's so obvious infants are conscious? THis seems to be taken as a given for
the rest of the article. Couldn't they be in a state similar to sleepwalking
which seems not conscious to me? Perhaps consciousness flashes on as you have
your first few "flashbulb memories".

~~~
hasenj
Consciousness does not have to mean being "mentally" (intellectually) aware of
what's going on. It's about experiencing stuff, and having a _sensation_

~~~
goialoq
Does a thermostat have a _sensation_ of temperature? Why or why not?

~~~
pixl97
A thermometer senses temperature, much like the human skin does. But we would
not consider it conscious because it is a reactionary device.

Of course at some point along our development of machine intelligence that may
change. At some point in the past all life was reactionary, then as it evolved
that changed. My take on it is the first consciousness in life occurred when
creatures started making predictions on when they would eat something or get
eaten and act before it occurred.

~~~
red75prime
It already happened then. [https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/25/deepmind-
create-ai-imagi...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/07/25/deepmind-create-ai-
imagination/)

AI makes predictions and acts on them.

------
creo
Lets challenge this. What if baby can be born alive without having
consciousness? It's not impossible since we can't detect consciousness. Maybe
it occurs in some babies born with brain development problems, maybe not.
Besides title says "Consciousness Goes Deeper Than We Think". Sounds clicky-
baity and it assumes that reader is dumb.

~~~
rullelito
There's nothing saying a fully functional human must have consciousness. It
could just be that some people are machines acting on biologically coded
rules, and that they don't have an inner experience of their self.

~~~
slfnflctd
It seems to me, though, that this would eventually come up in conversation.
Much of human discourse is centered around the concept of individuals' inner
experiences.

The thought that someone who seems on the outside very similar to me could be
completely missing the "inner experience of self" that I (think I) have
certainly _feels_ wrong-- it's deeply uncomfortable and rather frightening.
Furthermore, espousing such an idea opens the door to those who would attempt
to use it to discriminate (likely by applying existing bias with a flimsy
illusion of accuracy).

This one doesn't have much use to me beyond tangential thought experiments. It
can be cited to justify terrible things in the hands of bigots, and I suspect
it's fairly easily invalidated for all practical purposes.

------
Scarys
This article, like most discussions on "consciousness" I encounter reads like
little more than word games to me.

------
beepboopbeep
If consciousness is always present, but we don't show signs of it until ~5
months, maybe it's just that we need memories to understand the depths of our
own thoughts? Like going from a 2D plane of the now to a 3D plane of the now,
before, and after thus birthing more abstract thoughts such as cause and
effect?

------
musashizak
Consciousness can esists also without the object of perception because is over
the duality subject/object. In a room we have perception of the objects forma
the light. But in a room empty of objects we can see the light because the
light autoreveal her self. In an equal mode is the consciousness

------
amelius
I wonder what consciousness would be like if our brains had the size of our
solar system. Would we be conscious if our neurons took on the order of
minutes to communicate with each other?

~~~
gus_massa
[Nitpicking alert] The giant squid have the fastest axons to try to coordinate
their giant body. They use some tricks to make the transmission faster, so I'm
not sure if you can use this speed inside a brain successfully.

From
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_giant_axon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_giant_axon)
the speed is 25m/s, so in a minute you the signal could travel 1500m ~= 1mile.

------
robg
Like defining "athletic" or "smart" or even "stress" or "eating" \- all go
deeper than we think.

------
RoutinePlayer
I find that any discussion of consciousness that doesn't build upon the work
of so many other great thinkers (like Daniel Dennett, et al.) is usually a
waste of time.

~~~
cat199
and yet such 'great thinkers' are quick to 'not build upon the work' of
religious thinkers throughout the ages, despite the fact that at this level,
these topics lie solely in the realm of philosophy..

------
ghthor
Killer observations. I've been wondering if conscienceness is circular
activity in the brain, such that while we are conscience there is a constant
circle of activity, and upon sleep this circle stops. I suppose this article
is saying that this is metacognigtion, but still circle all the way down.

