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

Integrating information in the brain’s EM field: the cemi field theory of consciousness

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A key aspect of consciousness is that it represents bound or integrated information, prompting an increasing conviction that the physical substrate of consciousness must be capable of encoding integrated information in the brain. However, as Ralph Landauer insisted, ‘information is physical’ so integrated information must be physically integrated. I argue here that nearly all examples of so-called ‘integrated information’, including neuronal information processing and conventional computing, are only temporally integrated in the sense that outputs are correlated with multiple inputs: the information integration is implemented in time, rather than space, and thereby cannot correspond to physically integrated information. I point out that only energy fields are capable of integrating information in space. I describe the conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field theory which has proposed that consciousness is physically integrated, and causally active, information encoded in the brain’s global electromagnetic (EM) field. I here extend the theory to argue that consciousness implements algorithms in space, rather than time, within the brain’s EM field. I describe how the cemi field theory accounts for most observed features of consciousness and describe recent experimental support for the theory. I also describe several untested predictions of the theory and discuss its implications for the design of artificial consciousness. The cemi field theory proposes a scientific dualism that is rooted in the difference between matter and energy, rather than matter and spirit.

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Can GPT3 or a later version of it experience suffering?

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And if so, should we be continuing to develop it?

I have to admit that I don’t know much about how the system works, but I’m genuinely curious: how do we know that it doesn’t feel anything? I’m just concerned because I’m seeing more and more articles about its creation and the many amazing things it’s been able to do so far but none that tell us about the ethical implications of its creation or that reassure me that the fact that it exists is entirely not a bad thing. It seems to me that the system is now able to do many complex things and it’s worrying me that it might also (eventually) be able to experience something akin to suffering.

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Se also: Is gpt-3 a step to sentience?

The hypothesis of the universe self-simulating itself in a strange loop

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A paper from the Quantum Gravity Research institute proposes there is an underlying panconsciousness.

The physical universe is a “strange loop” says the new paper titled “The Self-Simulation Hypothesis Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” from the team at the Quantum Gravity Research, a Los Angeles-based theoretical physics institute founded by the scientist and entrepreneur Klee Irwin. They take Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis, which maintains that all of reality is an extremely detailed computer program, and ask, rather than relying on advanced lifeforms to create the amazing technology necessary to compose everything within our world, isn’t it more efficient to propose that the universe itself is a “mental self-simulation”? They tie this idea to quantum mechanics, seeing the universe as one of many possible quantum gravity models.

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If we are sentient robots, without will, sentience is not useful. And if it’s useful, how can it be?

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When it is stated that sentience has a purpose, this idea is usually explained by indicating that sentience is useful because it motivates doing certain things and avoiding others. In addition, in this explanation, it is usually indicated that sentience motivates but does not force. That is, under this explanation, sentience is not simply the cause and behavior the consequence, but sentience motivates to strive to make the best possible decision, under the threat of pain and the reward of pleasure. According to this explanation, sentient beings would make better decisions and will be selected (“better”, from an evolutionary point of view).

But we can also consider that it is possible that we are sentient robots, but without will, that we simply do what we have been programmed for, even though we have the feeling that we make free decisions, so that sentience really does not play any role in the evolution in form of motivation.

So, is sentience useful or inevitable?

My best intuition is that sentience is probably inevitable when certain conditions are met. So, sentience would be inevitable. Not useful. But let’s assume for a moment that sentience is useful. If sentience were useful, then sentience must incorporate some element that goes beyond classical physics, to be really useful. For example, related to quantum physics or the multiverse.

Why?

Because if sentience had a positive effect (in the form of motivation) on survival, in some way that can be explained by classical chemistry and physics, for example, thinking faster, taking better decisions, or being able to escape running faster than a predator, this behavior, that would be evolutionarily selected, would have to compete with another behavior that would also be evolutionarily selected, which is to do exactly the same, following the laws of chemistry and classical physics, but without the sentience.

I will give an example to try to illustrate all this.

Suppose we have a DNA chain that “reproduces as much as possible” and that follows the laws of classical physics. This chain does not feel.

By the way, when I say that the chain “reproduces as much as possible” I am not assigning agency, but summarizing in that phrase what is happening on a physical level. That chain that “reproduces as much as possible” is simply matter following the laws of physics. The phrase “reproduces as much as possible” is a summary way of describing what is happening.

We also have a second strand of DNA also formed by physical particles and obviously also that “reproduces as much as possible.” However, this DNA chain does feel: it feels pleasure every time it reproduces and frustration if it can not. Which motivates it to reproduce as much as possible.

This second strand of DNA is motivated to reproduce, but in what physical way would it be able to do it better than the chain that does not feel, and therefore is not “motivated”?

Whichever way we imagine that this second chain can do something better than the first chain, if it is following the laws of physics, it is something that chains like the first one could also perform. That is, evolution could always create chains that do not feel, like the first one, and that would have that characteristic of being more efficient, like the second one. Then both types of chain could exist: those that feel and those that do not feel. Motivation would not have any differential advantage.

If instead of DNA chains we think about complete individuals like us, the example works the same.

Obviously, if we consider that from a certain level of complexity or when certain functions appear, all the chains (or individuals) feel, then it would seem that sentience plays a role in evolution, but simply what would be happening is that sentience is a byproduct of something else. And it is that other thing (complexity, function) the thing that is being selected, not sentience. Sentience would not be useful: it would be inevitable.

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The importance of phenomenal binding, by David Pearce

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We normally assume a fundamental distinction between conscious and non-conscious systems. Instead, I explore the possibility that what makes animals special isn’t consciousness per se, but phenomenal binding. Unless spooky “strong” emergence is true, then a termite colony, or the enteric nervous system, or a classical digital computer, or the population of the United States is not a unified subject of experience.

So how is phenomenal binding possible in the CNS? Why aren’t we micro-experiential zombies too?

I explore a quantum-theoretic version of the intrinsic nature argument for non-materialist physicalism. In recent years, the intrinsic nature argument has undergone a revival. See Phil Goff’s “Galileo’s Error” (cf. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/27/galileos-error-by-philip-goff-review) for an accessible introduction. According to the intrinsic nature argument, experience discloses the intrinsic nature of the physical, the mysterious “fire” in the equations.

The biggest technical obstacle faced by the intrinsic nature argument is often reckoned the phenomenal binding / combination problem: https://www.quora.com/How-should-we-categorize-the-binding-problem-in-the-context-of-easy-and-hard-problem-of-consciousness

However, I argue that _if_ the intrinsic nature argument is sound, and _if_ unitary-only quantum mechanics is correct, then we already have a built-in solution to the binding problem: https://www.quora.com/Do-our-brains-work-at-the-quantum-level-Is-the-brain-itself-a-quantum-machine

Stepping back, a lot of researchers assume that we face a stark choice: scientific materialism versus mysticism/dualism.

Not so. I assume that monistic physicalism is true.

But I’ve no idea how to reconcile subjective experience with materialism:
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-philosophy-that-can-overcome-materialism

Text by David Pearce

How a nervous system operates without giving rise to an experience

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In our bodies, if our knee is lightly tapped, our leg moves automatically (with no intention on our part) and independently of the experience of the tap that we sense.  The information that originates in our knee, with the tap, splits up and moves through two separate pathways: one path goes to our brain through the spinal cord, where it is processed to produce the corresponding experience; the other path involves a different circuit, going through the spinal cord to the muscles that operate the leg, without ever reaching the brain. In the second path, the information takes a much shorter direct route to enable our body to react quickly to the stimulus (‘reflex arc’). There is a good reason why this dual mechanism exists. There are cases where some part of the body will be endangered by a slow reaction to an external threat. If we had to think about moving because of pain, rather than responding automatically, we might not act quickly enough to avoid harm.

What is relevant here is that the information transmitted through this ‘reflex arc’ is never experienced because it is never processed by a central nervous system. The non-centralized nervous systems of some animals operate just as reflex arcs do. Information is transmitted from the cells receiving certain stimuli to other cells which must be activated, without any involvement of subjective experience. In these cases, there is a merely mechanical transmission of information. Such reactions are not an indication of sentience.

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