Zone1 Science Can NOT Explain True Consciousness

[scruffy]

I can see you like to meander around the general topic of "consciousness", but you initially replied to my statement "consciousness comes from the brain". How so? Again I ask: Do you have any specific hypotheses about how consciousness arises from the brain's functioning?
THAT is the mystery that will some day earn researchers the Nobel prize.

Already given.

"Unfolding of physical time".

 

[scruffy]

Buddhism is a philosophy ("comes from personal experience and introspection"), not a science that validates any specific theories or hypotheses about consciousness.

Buddhism is a practice.

 

[scruffy]

Has anyone else watched that documentary on the impossible odds that life could even form in the first place.
It's fascinating.

It's also complete bullshit.

It was calculated that the time it would take for all the sequences necessary for a single dna strand to form would be LONGER than the time it would take a SNAIL to cross the entire known Universe (if there was an imaginary snail bridge spanning the Universe, and it magically lived that long)

Repeating: the underlying assumptions are unsound and scientifically invalid.

The implication being that the chance formation of life is basically mathematically impossible.

And yet you're looking at it, dumbass.

 

[scruffy]

Science has very little to say about consciousness

So far, that's true.

Check back with us 5 years from now.

ML beyond Curve Fitting: An Intro to Causal Inference and do-Calculus

Since writing this post back in 2018, I have extended this to a 4-part series on causal inference: * ➡️️ Part 1: Intro to causal inference and do-calculus [https://www.inference.vc/untitled] * Part 2: Illustrating Interventions with a Toy Example...

www.inference.vc

 

[scruffy]

What do you mean by "has very little to say"?
Scientific research explores how nature "works"; sometimes with predictive models, theories with evidence, or rational hypotheses based on prior research.
Is there any other method to explore "reality" objectively other than philosophies of science?

The first thing science needs to do, is define terms. Carefully and precisely.

"Consciousness" is different from "perception" which is different from "awareness".

The psychologist Julian Jaynes defines consciousness specifically as "self" consciousness, which I believe is both too vague and too specific.

One of the clues is the word "of", as in conscious "of". This usage implies the analog self. Science has determined that mirror neurons continue to respond even when attention is directed somewhere else. Therefore, they're probably not "essential for consciousness".

Seems to me, first we have to figure out what it is, before we can say how it works. Many scientists would agree that voluntary goal directed behavior implies consciousness. According to this view then, a rat learning a maze to seek a reward, is "conscious".

 

[scruffy]

According to this view then, a rat learning a maze to seek a reward, is "conscious".

Another pointed challenge without any response. Hm. Christians are generally good at science (usually the ones participating in it).

Do Christians still believe that animals don't have souls?

 

[scruffy]

The concept of "unfolding of time" is very closely related to the concept of "complex time" - which has been used quite extensively in the physics literature.

Complex time means: you're mapping into the PHASE of an oscillation. So, if you insist on a mechanistic explanation, start in Section 3.1

Generative Models of Cortical Oscillations: Neurobiological Implications of the Kuramoto Model

Understanding the fundamental mechanisms governing fluctuating oscillations in large-scale cortical circuits is a crucial prelude to a proper knowledge of their role in both adaptive and pathological cortical processes. Neuroscience research in this area has much to gain from understanding the...

www.frontiersin.org

What we're dealing with, fundamentally, is coupled oscillators. The size of "an" oscillator is very small, a few neurons. The Kuramoto model describes what happens when you get lots and lots of these oscillators connected together.

In a nutshell what happens is the PHASE relationships get mapped into their own "dimension", a dimension which does not exist in the source.

We know of three specific computational examples: space-time mapping in the hippocampus, delay line mapping in the cerebellum, and the alpha rhythm in the EEG of the cerebral cortex.

The alpha rhythm, when seen with EEG, is top down. It starts in the supragranular layers of cortex in the higher level systems, and eventually descends into the deep layers of the primary sensory systems, and subsequently into the thalamus of the brain (which is like a big egg sitting on top of the brain stem). The alpha wave itself propagates from the front of the brain to the back, ending at the occipital pole. Its purpose is to PHASE ENCODE related local information. Turns out, this phase encoding scheme supports the entirety of Pearl's do-calculus, and then some.

Bottom line: instead of the "feed forward with lateral inhibition" model prevalent only a few years ago, what we have is a bunch of coupled oscillators being "shaped" by the input signal. The interactions between the phase differentials constitute a synthetic dimension in relation to the input signal.

For "spatial perception", this method is used to construct a single egocentric 3-d body map from a variety of sensory inputs (like, the eyes, which don't see in back). For "consciousness", this method is used to map TIME instead of space. Consciousness is, in fact, an unfolding of TIME. This is "required" to process causality. It's not the whole story, but it's a big part of it.

You've heard probably that God is "timeless", eternal. Well, man's real time window is less than one second on either side of 'now" - but if the window were bigger, it could be eternal.

 

[ViewFromAbove]

The first thing science needs to do, is define terms. Carefully and precisely.

"Consciousness" is different from "perception" which is different from "awareness".

The psychologist Julian Jaynes defines consciousness specifically as "self" consciousness, which I believe is both too vague and too specific.

One of the clues is the word "of", as in conscious "of". This usage implies the analog self. Science has determined that mirror neurons continue to respond even when attention is directed somewhere else. Therefore, they're probably not "essential for consciousness".

Seems to me, first we have to figure out what it is, before we can say how it works. Many scientists would agree that voluntary goal directed behavior implies consciousness. According to this view then, a rat learning a maze to seek a reward, is "conscious".

Yes, defining "consciousness" is very helpful if we are going to study it objectively & communicate any research findings.
As I indicated previously, consciousness comes from the brain, to put it simply. Why do mammals & other animals have a BRAIN?
Unlike plants, animals MOVE around their ecology and need to be AWARE of danger and food sources to SURVIVE.

CONSCIOUSNESS is primarily about AWARENESS and MOTIVATION while moving around a physical & social environment. Since survival of the species is important in Nature, REPRODUCTION & nurturing offspring are vital motivations within the conscious/awareness context.

 

[ViewFromAbove]

Obviously, animals other than humans have CONSCIOUSNESS, such as dogs, cats, rats, squirrels, birds, pigs, cattle, chickens, etc.

 

[scruffy]

Obviously, animals other than humans have CONSCIOUSNESS, such as dogs, cats, rats, squirrels, birds, pigs, cattle, chickens, etc.

Right. To be aware, is equivalent to the change of basis, from allocentric to egocentric. So all these "events" (sensory input) become blips on a timeline, from the organism's point of view the sequence of events appears to flow "through" the egocentric zero which equates with "now", and the "unfolding" part happens because the egocentric now is the same as the allocentric now - even in the limit as dt => 0.

I'm pointing out a biophysical mechanism, but obviously consciousness has computational aspects too, and a lot of the magic happens in the hippocampus, the structure of which hasn't changed much since goldfish. This and the surrounding circuitry phase-encode both space and time, and provide the "context" for incoming sensory information. And, at the same time, convert from an allocentric to an egocentric reference frame.

Consciousness is dramatically affected when this area is out of whack. One example being Korsakoff's syndrome in alcoholics.

 

[BackAgain]

So if it doesn't come from God, then where does it come from?

Here is the definitive answer:

Random collisions of inert stuff resulting in tons more inert stuff which magically coalesces into more inert stuff until eventually out of all that inert stuff forms a form of primitive life and that leads to more life and eventually life generates some more stuff which coalesces into consciousness.