Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons

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Some problems of the very intuitive evolutionary emergentist paradigm trying to explain consciousness from neurons, thanks to Andrés Gómez Emilsson and Chris Percy at Qualia Research Institute:

The “Slicing Problem” is a thought experiment that raises questions for substrate-neutral computational theories of consciousness, particularly, in functionalist approaches.

The thought experiment uses water-based logic gates to construct a computer in a way that permits cleanly slicing each gate and connection in half, creating two identical computers each instantiating the same computation. The slicing can be reversed and repeated via an on/off switch, without changing the amount of matter in the system.

The question is what do different computational theories of consciousness believe is happening to the number and nature of individual conscious units as this switch is toggled. Under a token interpretation, there are now two discrete conscious entities; under a type interpretation, there may remain only one.

Both interpretations lead to different implications depending on the adopted theoretical stance. Any route taken either allows mechanisms for “consciousness-multiplying exploits” or requires ambiguous boundaries between conscious entities, raising philosophical and ethical questions for theorists to consider.

Source:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365706040_The_Slicing_Problem_for_Computational_Theories_of_Consciousness

More info:

https://qri.org/

Only mammals and birds are sentient, according to Nick Humphrey

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Only mammals and birds are sentient, according to neuroscientist Nick Humphrey’s theory of consciousness, recently explained in “Sentience: The invention of consciousness”.

In 2023, Nick Humphrey published his book Sentience: The invention of consciousness (S:TIOC). In this book he proposed a theory of consciousness that implies, he says, that only mammals and birds have any kind of internal awareness.

His theory of consciousness has a lot in common with the picture of consciousness is described in recent books by two other authors, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and consciousness researcher Anil Seth. All three agree on the importance of feelings, or proprioception, as the evolutionary and experiential base of sentience. Damasio and Seth, if I recall correctly, each put a lot of emphasis on homeostasis as a driving evolutionary force. All three agree sentience evolved as an extension of our senses–touch, sight, hearing, and so on. But S:TIOC is a bolder book which not only describes what we know about the evolutionary base of consciousness but proposes a plausible theory coming as close as can be to describing what it is short of actually solving Chalmers’ Hard Problem.

Read more:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/AvubGwD2xkCD4tGtd/only-mammals-and-birds-are-sentient-according-to

 

Consciousness baffles me, but not the Hard Problem

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Simply put, the Hard Problem asks the following question: how can the machinery of the brain (the neurons and synapses) produce consciousness — the colours that we see, for example, or the sounds that we hear?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/david-chalmers-and-the-puzzle-of-consciousness/8679884

“Consciousness baffles me, but not the Hard Problem. The Hard Problem arises only if one makes a metaphysical assumption, namely that the intrinsic nature of the world’s quantum fields – the essence of the physical – is non-experiential.”
— David Pearce

https://www.facebook.com/tyler.s.anderson.54/posts/pfbid02VaMvEC4E6H7ip4k2diwnkvpLEDnkDdteesjnSvsJs9qZ1tfEGudjAUSfJfyMbjskl

Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’

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The question whether decapitation is a humane method of euthanasia in awake animals is being debated. To gather arguments in this debate, obsolete rats were decapitated while recording the EEG, both of awake rats and of anesthetized rats. Following decapitation a fast and global loss of power of the EEG was observed; the power in the 13–100 Hz frequency band, expressing cognitive activity, decreased according to an exponential decay function to half the initial value within 4 seconds. Whereas the pre-decapitation EEG of the anesthetized animals showed a burst suppression pattern quite different from the awake animals, the power in the postdecapitation EEG did not differ between the two groups. This might indicate that either the power of the EEG does not correlate well with consciousness or that consciousness is briefly regained in the anesthetized group after decapitation. Remarkably, after 50 seconds (awake group) or 80 seconds (anesthetized group) following decapitation, a high amplitude slow wave was observed. The EEG before this wave had more power than the signal after the wave. This wave might be due to a simultaneous massive loss of membrane potentials of the neurons. Still functioning ion channels, which keep the membrane potential intact before the wave, might explain the observed power difference. Two conclusions were drawn from this experiment. It is likely that consciousness vanishes within seconds after decapitation, implying that decapitation is a quick and not an inhumane method of euthanasia. It seems that the massive wave which can be recorded approximately one minute after decapitation reflects the ultimate border between life and death. This observation might have implications in the discussions on the appropriate time for organ donation.

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The Interface Theory of Perception by Donald D. Hoffman

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A goal of perception is to estimate true properties of the world. A goal of categorization is to classify its structure. Aeons of evolution have shaped our senses to this end. These three assumptions motivate much work on human perception. I here argue, on evolutionary grounds, that all three are false. Instead, our perceptions constitute a species-specific user interface
that guides behavior in a niche. Just as the icons of a PC’s interface hide the complexity of the computer, so our perceptions usefully hide the complexity of the world, and guide adaptive behavior. This interface theory of perception offers a framework, motivated by evolution, to guide research in object categorization. This framework informs a new class of evolutionary
games, called interface games, in which pithy perceptions often drive true perceptions to extinction…

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Does every experience have some negative valence?

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Roger Thisdell holds that every experience has some negative valence and that there are no experiences with a positive hedonic level.

There is a point where you deconstruct perception to basic experiences by not feeding certain mental processes with your attention, they fade out. If I’m not paying attention to thought, the experience and comprehension of concepts and language fade out of experience. You can get to states of mind where there is no high-level conceptual thinking going on. It’s just vague pressures, releases, and contortions. You can have experiences of just vast airy space. For instance, the sense of the body schema, that you have a unified body, can vanish when you haven’t been paying attention to it for a long time and you’ve kept your eyes closed, so you are not updating the perception of the body with new visual stimuli. The body schema as a model falls out of the mind. But you still have awareness of gaseous somatic sensations and in all that there is a subtle contraction. Yeah, I’m saying that. It comes with a disturbance from an ultimate peace of that which is before/beyond concept and phenomenological representation.

…

Some would say: “Of course, there are pleasant experiences. There can be more intense pleasures. And you can go upwards on the hedonic scale. You can feel better and better. And below all that, you can feel neutral: neither pain nor pleasure; neither unpleasantness nor pleasantness. Below that, you can feel bad, feel minor disturbances, feel horrible, and so on.” So if we have different degrees of disturbances and suffering, then my question is whether there are experiences that are above undisturbedness; the absence of negative valence. I guess, based on your videos and writings, that you would say no; that there are no such experiences.

Yeah. I think “no”. I think there is a way in which suffering and pleasure don’t exist at the same level of abstraction. Pleasure is at a more abstract layer. The label “pleasure” comes from an assessment after the fact of an experience. Once there was a build-up of pressure and then a release, there is a judgment “I am glad for the release”, but it was just the contractive pressure that you wanted to go away. Now it’s gone so you make the comparative judgment after the fact: “That was a good thing that happened”. But had the pressure never built up, had the contraction never been binding and causing you suffering, then you can’t even begin to make that assessment that it was something good to do.

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Proto-Intelligence in Qualia: a Simple Case

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>>
Do qualia like love, fear, pain, and pleasure causally influence us? I think that the evolutionary argument that qualia must influence us is sufficiently clear and easy to understand that there should be very little room for disagreement on the matter. Evolution wouldn’t have built phenomenal world-simulations composed of qualia unless they increased our inclusive fitness in some way, because an increase in fitness is a logically necessary condition for evolution to select traits of any kind.

>> … Why does pain repel? Not for any mechanical reason, but instead because the raw feel of pain is intrinsically and irreducibly negative, and we (as receptive qualia systems) thus seek to avoid it.

>> …
Consider the phenomenon of intense love. It’s a trope that love changes the raw qualitative feel of the world, oneself, music, one’s beloved, and a broad range of other things. Love is very selective in the things that it preserves and in the things that it changes. It wouldn’t change the physical orientation of buildings, their color, or their form, because all of these things have survival utility, and the utility function of love doesn’t seek its own extinction. Instead, love acts selectively on the aesthetic qualities that interpenetrate gestalts, such as cities, one’s self-model, one’s beloved, and music

Read more:
https://autonoetic.blogspot.com/2022/12/proto-intelligence-in-qualia-simple-case.html

A Brain Implant that Automatically Detects and Kills Pain?

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It’s basically a tag-team of spy and sleeper agent. The “spy” listens to electrical chatter in a brain region that processes pain—along with dozens of other tasks—and decodes it in real time. Once it detects an electrical signal that suggests “pain found,” it sends the information to the “sleeper agent,” a computer chip implanted in the front part of the brain. The chip then automatically triggers a light beam to stimulate the region, activating neurons that can override pain signals.

Sources: https://singularityhub.com/2021/06/29/a-new-brain-implant-automatically-detects-and-kills-pain-in-real-time/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-021-00736-7

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/789517

 

 

Could CRISP eliminate the need for opioids?

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Pain can soon be genetically eradicated.

Chronic pain, which is classified as a pain that lasts for 3 months or more, affects between 19 to 50 percent of the world population. Despite its prevalence, it remains a difficult diagnosis to treat well. In a new study, researchers say there may soon be a new treatment on the market to treat this pain thanks to the famous gene-editing toolkit — CRISPR-Cas9. This technology could allow patients to side-step the need for opioids altogether.

Source

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/crispr-chronic-pain-opioid-study