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Thursday, January 1, 2015

Science and Reality

Don't look to science for ultimate answers to questions that are not strictly in the realm of science.

Scientific naturalism rules out any supernatural realm, as does this essay. Panpsychism, though, may be gaining scientific ground. Panpsychism suggests that consciousness is an inherent property of all matter. Akin to panpsychism is the notion that consciousness is a fundamental quality of the universe. Perhaps this fundamental quality perfuses highly connected systems like the human brain, imbuing a dynamism. This fundamental quality concept explains how mind affects body so profoundly, as well as why we experience altruism toward strangers. While physical properties cannot explain consciousness, consciousness is needed to explain physical properties. Organisms and their environment are one thing. What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now.

One rigorous approach is described by Integrated Information Theory. This approach, while mathematically satisfying, does not tell us what it is like to see red. A new theory combines classical physics, especially some laws of thermodynamics, with modern recordings of neural activity, to paint a general framework of how changes in free energy — the amount of energy available inside a system — helps temporarily synchronize the activity in neural networks.

Then there is vibes, and patterns of vibes, which also point to panpsychism. And (of course) quantum coherence. Mind transcends the skull. There is some indication that the future affects the past, as demonstrated by the delayed choice quantum eraser. Given that such particles are not just in the lab, but in our brains, then our thoughts are likewise influenced by the future. And we all know that the past, in the form of memory and genetic programming affects the future. So it all moves in lockstep, even chaotically, exactly as it should.

See this insightful answer on Quora:
"Does human consciousness violate the known laws of physics?
Let's start looking at the properties and processes that go into developing the human consciousness.

We all start as a single cell that most would agree is not conscious. People have no memories of growth in the womb. Therefore, this seems to be an unconscious phase. Babies have no language, and poor vision and a small handful of natural responses. There seems to be little to no consciousness here either. Most people have no memories prior to about three years of age. I'd say there is minimal consciousness in this phase. After this initial period, consciousness seems to rapidly develop. However, we switch consciousness off when we go to sleep. Knocks to the head can switch consciousness off. Anaesthetics can switch consciousness off. Drugs can alter consciousness. Brain damage can severely alter a person's consciousness, personality, and identity. All of these phenomena seem to be very much physical. The development of consciousness requires reinforcement learning. The more experiences we have, the more our consciousness develops.
There is nothing above that strikes me as being unphysical. However, the nature of consciousness still is quite mysterious, which says more about how little we understand the brain and it's function."

Nevertheless, we are making progress, and I see no reason why we will not one day understand it as a physical phenomenon (oops double negative…).

The meaning of life is just to be alive, delightfully alive.The way the world is, is evoked by the structure of my organism. The word "gowith", or "goeswith" should replace causality. Because all existence is a relationship. You did not "come into this world" when you were born: you came out of it as the universe playing the role of insert-name-here. The difference between myself and the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea.

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Concerning what it is to be (an ever so aware) human, science tells us, quite clearly, that free will is illusory. Free will is incompatible with the laws of physics. Free will is, though, a useful tool of language that does not contradict the concept of weak emergence. Either determinism is correct and free will is an illusion, or quantum mechanics generated consciousness, which kicks up a whole new hornets nest of problems. Randomness is not free will. The universe, in fact, may be completely deterministic, but unmeasurable. The main problem with free will is that it requires a beginning uncaused cause. Moral responsibility does not depend on the illusion of free will. Nature + nurture (environment)reaction, so when we think we are acting (or not acting), we are really reacting, even with complicated tasks. There is no role of conscious self (there is only experience), which is to say it is not. There is no such thing as conscious thought. Consciousness is no more than a passive machine running one simple algorithm — to serve up what’s already been decided, and take credit for the decision: false feedback easily fools people into believing they said something different. Because the human mind experiences its own consciousness as sifting through urges, thoughts, feelings and physical actions, people understand their consciousness to be in control of these myriad impulses. But in reality, consciousness does the same simple task over and over, giving the impression that it is doing more than it actually is. The "free will" that people typically attribute to their conscious mind -- the idea that our consciousness, as a “decider,” guides us to a course of action -- does not exist. Instead, consciousness only relays information to control "voluntary" action, or goal-oriented movement involving the skeletal muscle system.

Perhaps the clearest statement on free will vs. physics is made by Sean Carroll: physics and psychology are both correct in their realms. See this video.

...while consciousness is created by brain systems, it has no causal relationship with or control over mental processes. The fact that personal awareness accompanies the contents of the personal narrative is causally compelling. But it is not necessarily relevant to understanding and explaining the psychological processes underpinning them.

“unconscious mechanisms create both conscious thought about action and the action, and also produce the sense of will we experience by perceiving the thought as the cause of the action”.

...the idea that the brain has automatic and controlled processes needs a rethink too

Dennett calls it (doership) an “evolved user-illusion,” a user-interface that smooths over the intricate underlying details. Nature uses the “need to know” principle. Most mental operations can operate just fine without comprehension, without consciousness, though we feel as if we are fully conscious agents. When we attempt to explain the exact reasons and motivations for all our actions, we are basically confabulating what we think has happened. Whether consciousness is understood in terms of global broadcasting/widespread accessibility or in terms of non-interpretive higher-order awareness, the conclusion is the same: there is no such thing as conscious thought.

Modifying Dennett's assertions: We must keep in mind that we are conscious only of the objects of our thoughts, not of the processes by which we have those thoughts. We have a composite of unconscious and conscious mental powers, working in synchrony, each indispensable to the thought. There is “that which we think” and “that by which we think.” We are conscious only of the former, but the latter, which is unconscious, is just as essential to our thought. ...you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. Our everyday experience is a kind of symbolic representation of a deeper reality.

Consciousness is not direct awareness of our inner world of thoughts and judgments. Especially suspect phenomenal consciousness. Since science indicates that our brains don’t have phenomenal properties, the obvious inference is that our introspective representations of them are illusory. The subjective world of phenomenal consciousness is a fiction written by our brains in order to help us track the impact that the world makes on us.

The brain’s schema of itself portrays an imperfect, simplified, abstracted version of attention. This leads the brain to conclude that it has a nonphysical essence of awareness, and that's why people believe consciousness is nonphysical, according to Graziano—because it lacks a more detailed schema of its own machinations.

Rather than being conceived as a mysterious immaterial “ghost” in the neural machinery, it is probable that we have subjective experiences (consciousness) generated by brain systems associated with feelings of agency and control. Having such feelings alone does not prove that subjective awareness directs or controls our psychological processes and outputs.

Moral responsibility does not depend on the illusion of free will.

Donald Hoffman's theory of conscious agents does not have a problem with free will.

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There is no self. Self is not a thing, but a process. Believing otherwise has led to a multitude of dreadful consequences. Another view: there is no temporal self. Which is why pernicious concepts such as free will are beyond illusory: they have no meaning, except for convenience and self concept. Luck swallows everything. This illusion of self happens to no one. "All we've got is the idea that you, at a later time, are causally connected to you at an earlier time" ... "That isn't the same thing as you persisting through time." Past-present-future, the concept of time, is illusory because immutable separate self is illusory. To the degree that illusory self exists (not necessary for life), the role of such is clearly to appreciate, to play the role and enjoy the ride. That role is, of course, what one is doing now.
"This so-called 'me' is really just another reconstruction" ... "There was an earlier one 30 minutes ago, and there will be others in the future. But they're really not the same person; they're just stuff happening in the universe." We try to make everything cohere around a single point," ... "That's the self — the center of narrative gravity.

...the concept of a true self useful because it helps explain many of the judgments we make about ourselves and others. Yet, from a scientific perspective, there is actually no such thing as the true self. “The notion that there are especially authentic parts of the self, and that these parts can remain cloaked from view indefinitely, borders on the superstitious.

...views on the true self are highly subjective and skewed by our own judgments of what is good (psychopaths, for instance, see morality as less central to identity presumably because morals are less important to them). Our beliefs about the true self also seem “evidence-insensitive” – claims made about the true self “may completely contradict all available data”. The authors conclude: “These two features – radical subjectivity and unverifiability – prevent the true self from being a scientific concept.”

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that he “had no true self” and his self was in fact “an empty palace of mirrors”.

The constructed sense of self is a survival mechanism.

The self is not in the head, or in the brain. Rather than having a location, the self-pattern is distributed beyond the neural and cognitive domains insofar as it involves (or indeed is constituted by) bodily, affective, social-cultural, environmental, and normative processes, and these processes often loop back dynamically through our actions, interactions, and narratives.

Another theory posits (with math behind it) that space-time and objects are actually a user interface. Objects such a apples are actually data structures that aid in fitness to propagate. That neural structure tells you how to act to get fitness payoffs. Assuming objective reality to be fundamentally unconscious is due to a perceptive limitation. Percieving universal consciousness is to energetically costly to have been provided by evolution. We have come to consider a limitation of our "user interface" to be and insight into objective reality. Natural perception drives any true perceptions to complete extinction. There is no selection pressures to know that you are not seeing reality. Taking (ultimately erroneous) perceptions seriously, as we must, does not mean taking such perceptions literally.
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One may counter the claim of the beautiful non-existence of self with "gut feeling" or "I obviously am!" (am what: the center of narrative gravity?) The consciousness that is home to such separate mind plus body assertions is, in fact, a mere bag of tricks, one of which is a non-conceptual theory about itself, gained through experience. (You are not the authority on your own consciousness that you think you are.) Consciousness is a user-illusion, blindly honed by biological evolution, but layered with language and culture and deepened by the chemistry of emotion. Self is built up by picking and choosing memories, which can then govern what we see/percieve. Self is, possibly, an emergent calculable state of matter. This collection of cooperating (?) cells we call our body has evolved the pro-survival tactic of postulating a self which then plays host to impulses, memory, and a sense of separateness. There is also proof that information content, sometimes labelled as causes, increase in any collection of particles that is sufficiently large.

Psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, ketamine, and LSD, can increase neural "global signal" diversity, which some interpret as higher consciousness. Psilocybin reduces activity in the claustrum by up to 30 percent. This coincides with people's subjective feelings of ego dissolution and oneness with their environment while under the influence of the drug. The less active the claustrum, the stronger the psychedelic effect reported by participants, including mystical and emotional experiences, and a reduced sense of self. I suggest here that occasional use of such drugs may help one glimpse "the other shore", or just reality. But, as Alan Watts said "If you get the message, hang up the phone". Why settle for a glimpse of reality, when the real deal is so easily accessible?

Another possible effect of psychedelics is to experience interim ‘states’ where the ego & awareness no longer seem limited to one location. Where one feels its ego & awareness expand beyond any boundaries and encompass the whole world or cosmos. Where you feel aware of everything simultaneously and your ego becomes the whole world-ego or the universal ego. But there’s still ego, a sense of something, some ‘separate’, entity experiencing/enjoying its new massive ego-awareness. But it’s not a much-useful state for continuing to function every day in your body, so virtually no one remains there.

Experiences that include some sort of altered states of consciousness are not supernatural, but are what all are capable of perceiving, at least temporarily.

BTW, Today, most physicists dismiss the idea that consciousness collapses the wave function as described by the Copenhagen Interperetation.

It is unfortunate that influence by the future does not result in better decision making! Society then makes use of the (consensus) concept of free will in reacting to those bad decisions reactions.

7 comments:

  1. Otto, nice collection of hyperlinked essays. I may try to do the same this spring, with an emphasis is that is also introspective but more concerned with organic no-till gardening as a conduit to the zen-like states of awareness that you touch upon here (because in conservative Indiana, if it's a more tangible activity, I won't get weird stares, and maybe also get a small audience).

    Will share this one, thanks.

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  2. It's really well organized and could be expanded a lot, Otto. I need to learn about "mouse-over" pop-ups for online publishing, to include really brief snippets to included hyperlinks. I think you are doing a great job with blogspot but there are some real limitations with this software, not sure if it's worth learning html to deal with these things in blogspot.. but you have the great content for sure, most bloggers have very little this original, especially with all credit given by links like this :-)

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    1. Thanks, Dave, This writing style that could be described as "heavily hyperlinked terse prose" seems natural to me. I was also careful to link (mostly) to others who also appear to write from an illusion-free perspective.

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  3. From my perspective, the mind, ie 'consciousness' is not a 'thing', or something that actually exists in the usual way we think of things existing. It's an experience that we have when the brain works properly.

    As for 'free will', we do have some small measure of it, as in 'do I eat chicken or fish?', some marry, others do not, and so on.

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    1. You write that consciousness is "an experience that we have when the brain works properly." So far I am with you, but let's delve deeper: to whom does this experience befall? Or: Does experience require one who experiences? I feel that Occam's razor may apply here where the simplest (and therefore, most likely) interpretation dispenses of any assumption of independent, separate souls.

      Likewise for free will: When there is no self, free will loses meaning. The case, both religious (Buddhist) and philosophical, for this is in the first post, under the heading "Here is another method based on being nothing at all:" I won't be too upset if you don't go there, though. That enlightenment stuff isn't everyone's cup of tea!

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    2. "To whom does the experience befall?" "Do we have free will? "It seems to me you are asking the wrong questions. For you to invoke Occam's razor seems rather precipitous, as well.

      Also, what exactly do you mean by the "self"? Are you religious? I assume you must be, since you appear to have equated a particular concept of enlightenment with religious jargon, which if it's what I think it is, I don't consider particularly enlightened. There is perhaps more than one concept of what enlightenment is, and they may not all be based on religion. You mention Buddhism, but perhaps you mean to invoke Gurdjieff? Ideas and concepts derived by religions are based on ignorance and superstition, always have an agenda, and should be avoided.

      You should also be cautious of 'philosophies', as they tend to be reflections of the thinking of particular periods of history.

      My impression is that you would greatly benefit from a little exercise that eventually empties the mind of the immense baggage of harmful, confusing and unfounded beliefs that clutter the mind, especially for those who seek enlightenment and have done a great deal of reading.

      It requires a certain mindfulness. Whenever you find yourself thinking you know something about the self, or the Self, or God, or enlightenment - you get the picture - let go of those thoughts, ideas and beliefs. If you wish, you can say "I am not that", and let go of the ideas and beliefs. See them as fantasies that are floating away from you like the breath you exhale. Also, avoid taking in new ideas, or developing new opinions. To achieve enlightenment, one must first empty the mind of the myriad of cluttering, distracting thoughts and ideas that fill it and confuse it.

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    3. I merely borrow, David, from esoteric Buddhism the wonderfully concise term "anatta". No way am I Buddhist, though. I am atheist, according to the relevant Wikipedia entry.

      I appreciate your advice on unloading cognitive baggage. I won't say "I have none" (I try not to lie), but anatta, when taken seriously (as in: not just a mental exercise) does tend to neutralize such.

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