What Wind Tunnels Can Tell Us About Consciousness

[Jim Cross]

Keys points:

- Brains must be doing some form of non-classical computing.
- The form the computing takes is a physical representative model.
- Consciousness is the model of reality, not a product or side effect of the model.

Some may enjoy the turbulence (eddy) analogy and a sort of limited solipsism.


https://broadspeculations.com/2022/07/1 ... ciousness/

[Cleric K]

Keys points:

- Brains must be doing some form of non-classical computing.
- The form the computing takes is a physical representative model.
- Consciousness is the model of reality, not a product or side effect of the model.

Some may enjoy the turbulence (eddy) analogy and a sort of limited solipsism.


https://broadspeculations.com/2022/07/1 ... ciousness/

The biggest hurdle to understanding this concept is understanding that you, your body, your room, the tree outside your window, the clouds in the blue sky at a distance, all you remember about the past or imagine about the future, are parts of the model. You are not seeing a tree outside your window. You are seeing in your model a representation of a tree outside your window (which is also part of the model). The thumb that hurts if you accidently hit it with a hammer is not your real thumb. It is your model of the thumb. What is more, it is not just the tree or the thumb that is in the model, it is the “you” seeing the tree or feeling the thumb. Our self is embedded in the model, not separate from it.

In this sense, if the model is all we ever know, can we ever know if the model approaches the actual reality-in-itself? This has been explored by BK and Hoffman with the dashboard metaphor. We can think of it with a game metaphor too. If I play Quake, the map, the monsters, the objects are part of the model. Yet none of that exists in any way similar inside the electric pulses within the chips. Imagine trying to understand how the computer works by analyzing only the game environment. Could it be that we're making a similar mistake when we try to understand consciousness entirely by analyzing the model environment of which the perceived brain is part? The fact that we have learned to manipulate the model through the intellect still says nothing about reality. I can have mastered Quake very well, I may have found tons of tricks and even exploits within the game, such that I have clear feeling that I grasp the game mechanics but this still says nothing about any possible deeper aspect of the hardware and its laws (the laws within the game may be quite different from those).

So I wonder whether you declare a kind of agnosticism, where you recognize the dark unknown of reality on the 'opaque side' of your conscious model and you are simply interested in making the model as practically useful as possible but with the clear understanding that we can never know the true nature of whatever underlies the model? We can't even know if the model is somewhat similar to reality or it is several (or infinite) iterations removed from reality.

PS: I'm still interested in your thoughts about the questions here. I don't know if you missed that or you chose not to reply.

[Jim Cross]

Cleric,

I'm more or less agnostic and without opinion on the Kant thing. Obviously our models have to match reality-itself to some degree or we couldn't survive or operate in the world. Since the model comes from reality-itself, it would reflect it in certain ways. But the entire notion of reality-itself is part of our model and may be a distortion of reality.

Your question about waves as particles connected with springs made no sense to me. That's why I didn't respond. There is no assumption of non-locality or any quantum weirdness to explain anything. Actually in this article I barely even mention electromagnetic fields except in that are one way in which neurons could affect other neurons.

[Jim Cross]

Cleric,

One other note of clarification. Fields are continuous and the same everywhere. They don't need a place to focus or come together.

For example, a radio transmitter is sending out a music program. You might be twenty miles north of the transmitter and I might be twenty miles south but the music we are receiving on our radios is same in both places.

[Cleric K]

Cleric,

I'm more or less agnostic and without opinion on the Kant thing. Obviously our models have to match reality-itself to some degree or we couldn't survive or operate in the world. Since the model comes from reality-itself, it would reflect it in certain ways. But the entire notion of reality-itself is part of our model and may be a distortion of reality.

I see. So in that case what is your position on the nature of qualia? Would you consider something akin to pan-psychism, where the qualitative potential is intrinsic characteristic of reality and it is only a matter of it entering into complex enough dynamics such that this potential shapes itself into a (subjectively experienced) model of its own existence? Or you would rather subscribe to hard computationalism, where consciousness is only an illusion that any complex enough recursive mechanical process (whether biological or possibly devised by humans in a wind tunnel) can reach at some point?

Your question about waves as particles connected with springs made no sense to me. That's why I didn't respond. There is no assumption of non-locality or any quantum weirdness to explain anything. Actually in this article I barely even mention electromagnetic fields except in that are one way in which neurons could affect other neurons.

...

One other note of clarification. Fields are continuous and the same everywhere. They don't need a place to focus or come together.

For example, a radio transmitter is sending out a music program. You might be twenty miles north of the transmitter and I might be twenty miles south but the music we are receiving on our radios is same in both places.

Let me see if I can clarify this. Let's alter space and time scales for better illustration. Let's imagine the brain as large as the Cosmos and our time scale such that it takes a lot of time for signals to propagate.

Now let's imagine that we receive simultaneous visual and auditory impressions. The visual stimuli begin at the retina, the auditory begin in the cochlea. Now remember these are Cosmic distances apart. As the stimuli are transformed into neural/wave activity they begins to propagate through the Cosmic brain. We can imagine this as light from supernovae. It will be a long time before the processes around the ear are affected by what happened at the eye and vice-versa. These signals propagate and move through the nerves towards the corresponding cortices, later they interact with each other and so on.

Now the nature of subjective experience poses an interesting question. From experiential point of view we have a simultaneity of phenomena. We perceive color and sound at the same time. When we focus on something in our visual field, our hearing is not muted and vice-versa - when we listen attentively to something we don't lose our visual tapestry. So what is the nature of the subjective experience? Can it be said that we experience simultaneously some huge region of the Cosmic brain, even though the 'light' from events in the various parts might not have yet reached each other? In other words, can we have subjective experience of color and sound as they propagate through their corresponding cortices even before the shockwaves of causality of the two stimuli have interacted (that is, the visual cortex can't know beforehand that a signal is approaching from the auditory cortex and vice-versa, until their light fronts reach each other)?

If it is not possible to have simultaneous experience of both stimuli before they have interacted, what would happen? Would we experience only the visual until we wait for the causal light front approaching from the auditory cortex to interfere and then become conscious also of the sound? Or vice-versa? But if this is the case why there should be such preference? It would mean that our subjective experience is localized in some part of the Cosmic brain (closer to the visual or auditory cortex).

Interestingly, requiring that separate signals causally affect each other before they can become part of the subjective experience, doesn't really solve the problem. One can say that only when the signals interfere and are integrated in the prefrontal cortex we can claim that we experience the color and sound. But this only shifts the problem because the prefrontal cortex is in itself a huge region of the Cosmic brain where signals still travel with the speed of causality. So we once again arrive at the need that our subjective experience must encompass some region of the Cosmic brain simultaneously even though the different parts can affect each other only at limited speed.

If one is to escape such paradoxes, he's forced to search for an infinitely small point within the Cosmic brain and say "all causal wave fronts which interfere in that point constitute the momentary subjective experience." Only in this way we escape the possibility of having subjective experience of regions of the brain that haven't yet had chance to interact with each other.

Another bizarre solution is to declare that consciousness is indeed a subjective experience that encompasses simultaneously the spacetime of the Cosmic brain. We are indeed experiencing color and sound arising in different parts which haven't yet had the chance to interact causally. Yet one can try to avoid any paradoxes by declaring that this simultaneous experience can not have any causal effect. In other words, we're like a mute observer, who grasps simultaneously events in different parts of the Cosmic brain yet can't make causal use of this knowledge. The observer can only passively experience how the events ripple towards each other, how they interact and produce thoughts in the prefrontal cortex. This seems to do the trick but it is still troubling that we know that we experience the simultaneity. This knowledge affects our future causal thoughts in the prefrontal cortex. If this experience was pure observing without point of contact with the ripples of causality, then it shouldn't be possible to think about it. It shouldn't be possible that our simultaneous experience of the Cosmic brain spacetime, should leak into the flow of causality and become an object of thinking.

I hope this makes my question a little clearer. It's not really a concrete question but more of a pointer towards various enigmas that should be dealt with by any theory trying to explain the subjective experience as arising from causal interactions of the stuff of reality. The main point is that we too easily become preoccupied with the technicalities of brain ripples which affect each other causally but completely blind ourselves for the fact that we secretly place our consciousness as a God-like observer who encompasses this domain of spacetime simultaneously, independently of the causal flow.

[Jim Cross]

I see. So in that case what is your position on the nature of qualia? Would you consider something akin to pan-psychism, where the qualitative potential is intrinsic characteristic of reality and it is only a matter of it entering into complex enough dynamics such that this potential shapes itself into a (subjectively experienced) model of its own existence? Or you would rather subscribe to hard computationalism, where consciousness is only an illusion that any complex enough recursive mechanical process (whether biological or possibly devised by humans in a wind tunnel) can reach at some point?

Qualia is just a term that has been used by some for how we describe aspects of the model. I have no opinion on panpsychism.

I thought I was pretty clear that the model is an implementation of non-classical computing.

Let's imagine the brain as large as the Cosmos and our time scale such that it takes a lot of time for signals to propagate.

Let's not. The analogy has nothing to do with my article.

Now the nature of subjective experience poses an interesting question. From experiential point of view we have a simultaneity of phenomena. We perceive color and sound at the same time, etc etc

There is no subjective experience or objective experience. Subject/object is gone. There is only the model with some parts appearing internal and some appearing external and ourselves appearing somewhere in the mix but it all the model.

[lorenzop]

I not sure I understand your article - Are you suggesting that 'nature' builds and evaluates models and searches for solutions, and that consciousness is such a model.
That would make you and I machine learning modules for some greater cause.
You would have to rewrite biological evolution and most if not all of the known laws of physics . . . or maybe I'm missing something.

[Jim Cross]

I not sure I understand your article - Are you suggesting that 'nature' builds and evaluates models and searches for solutions, and that consciousness is such a model.
That would make you and I machine learning modules for some greater cause.
You would have to rewrite biological evolution and most if not all of the known laws of physics . . . or maybe I'm missing something.

What needs rewriting?

Nowhere am I suggesting any "greater cause". This is just evolution selecting for bigger brains, sensory capabilities with greater range and acuity, AND a method of integrating all of it that involves the creation of a physical, representative model of reality that is identical to consciousness.

Google a little on evolution and deep learning. Evolution itself can be thought of as learning algorithm. Consciousness is an extension of that.

See Leslie Valiant and probably approximately correct learning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probably_ ... t_learning

[AshvinP]

I not sure I understand your article - Are you suggesting that 'nature' builds and evaluates models and searches for solutions, and that consciousness is such a model.
That would make you and I machine learning modules for some greater cause.
You would have to rewrite biological evolution and most if not all of the known laws of physics . . . or maybe I'm missing something.

Basically, everything is a model of a model of a model, until we get to our preferred model... then we have found the 'reality-itself'! How else could we justify writing articles about these things except to bottom out the models somewhere, like the perception of a brain, and take that as our reduction base even though our own logic says this must also be part of the model? Ceasing the writing of articles is apparently not a tenable option.

But the articles can continue if only we stop seeking to build more models from the models and look at the activity of 'modeling' itself. All philosophy, science, aesthetics, etc. brings us back from fragmented perceptions to overarching laws, archetypes, and principles. We only need to become more self-conscious of this fact. The fact that this is always what we are doing in our logical thinking, whether in philosophy, science, or aesthetics - seeking out the overarching Spirit of the 'matter'/perceptions. The content of our endless models has little import compared to self-consciousness of what we are doing to form those models, i.e. how we, with our own spiritual activity, participate in the 'making sense of' all world appearances. Then it only stands to reason that what we are doing with our own modeling is not of an entirely different nature than what is also being done to form the 'models' we know as the natural and cultural worlds, the worlds of living kingdoms and collective human pursuits. Granted, this is easier said than done, as the last thing modern people really want to do is to investigate their own modeling activity, which is intimately bound up with the dark recesses of their soul life.

Of course, if our interest only lies in having models for others to gawk at, rather than confronting the modeling activity itself, then all of the above will "make no sense", because we simply have no desire for it to make sense.

[Jim Cross]

Of course, if our interest only lies in having models for others to gawk at, rather than confronting the modeling activity itself, then all of the above will "make no sense", because we simply have no desire for it to make sense.

Of course, one of my points about calling this limited solipsism is that nobody can gawk at your model and, for the most part, you don't even realize you have a model. You think it is reality.