Amanda A Dream Come True Cartoon By Steve Strange.epub
Leonides Suttle
The latter question of how consciousness can acquire knowledge about the external world has a long history in philosophy. According to Ren Descartes and John Locke, a distinction needs to be introduced when thinking about material entities. In detail (Baggott 2009, p. 99):
[P]hysical objects possess primary qualities such as extension in space, shape, motion, density, number, and so on, all underpinned by the concept of material substance. [...] Secondary qualities such as color exist only in our minds and therefore cannot be said to be independently existing real qualities of physical objects.
[...] if we take away the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of our senses in general, then not only the nature and relations of objects in space and time, but even space and time themselves disappear; and that these, as phenomena, cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. [9]
Space and time are thus not drawn from experience but are presupposed in experience. They are never observed as such, but they constitute that context within which all events observed. They cannot be known to exist in nature independently of the mind, but the world cannot be known by the mind without them.
Space and time therefore cannot be said to be characteristic of the world in itself, for they are contributed in the act of human observation. They are grounded epistemologically in the nature of the mind, not ontologically in the nature of things.
So, could you be just a brain in a vat? If all your knowledge of the physical world around you is derived from your perceptions and your perceptions were being manipulated to give you the impression of reality, then how would you know otherwise?
It is all just one big coincidence and happened by pure chance. We know the fundamental laws of nature and consciousness is simply the result of how the brain works. There is no mystery and that is all there is to say. [Materialism, scientific realism]
A God created the universe. Perhaps 13.8 billion years ago or perhaps 6,000 years ago with fictitious properties making the universe appear older (or even 5 seconds ago, with false memories implanted in all human minds) . [Creationism in Abrahamic religion]
Reality is a vast and impermanent illusion (anicca) comprised of endless distractions and suffering. The quest of the mind is to cultivate a state of awareness, allowing the illusion to be seen for what it is. Then the enlightened mind can withdraw from the physical realm and enter a state of pure bliss. [Buddhism]
Only pure consciousness exists. In endless cycles, it manifests itself as separate physical embodiments, allowing for an experiential context, only to merge in unity again and start afresh. [Spirituality, panpsychism]
We live in the multiverse, the infinite set of all possible universes. As a consequence, we naturally find ourselves in that corner of it which allows for intelligent and sentient life. [String/M-theory, cosmology, many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics]
Our physical three-dimensional universe is an illusion. It is a hologram that is isomorphic to the quantum information encoded on the surface of its boundary. [Holographic principle, AdS/CFT duality]
We must now come to terms with the fact that there is no hard evidence for this common-sense reality to be gained from anywhere in the entire history of human thought. There is simply nothing we can point to, hang our hats on and say this is real.
How should the human mind proceed from here? Should we simply concede that information is the fundamental nature of physical reality and that our minds are forever unknowable enigmas? In other words, subjectivity allows the objective to be grasped while remaining ethereal itself. This chapter argues that the human mind can take a final step in understanding itself. It is a small step within the informational ontology, but a huge step conceptually. Only the brave mind can reach the destination, as it requires a radical reassessment of all things believed to be true. For one, radical open-mindedness is asked for (Sect. 12.4.4). Indeed (deGrasse Tyson 2007, p. 305):
Let me end with a plea for humility. The cosmos is a strange place, and we still know little about it. It was only two decades ago that scientists discovered that a mere 4 percent of the mass-energy of the universe is the sort of material out of which stars, planets, trees, you, and I are fashioned. One-quarter is cold dark matter, and the rest is something bizarre called dark energy.Footnote 1 Cosmologists have no idea what dark energy is or what laws it obeys. [...] Our knowledge is but a fire lighting up the vast darkness around us, flickering in the wind. So, let us be open to alternative, rational explanations in the quest for the source of consciousness.
Science is understood as being concerned only with the tangible world, not the inner world of the subjective. Physicists inquire about the nature of objective reality without factoring in their own existence. This is also why philosophy is seen as essentially futile. A sentiment conveyed by a quote from the eminent theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson, found in Sect. 9.1.4:
In the dualistic, mechanical philosophy that dominated the rise of modern science, nature was not only seen as devoid of consciousness but also was objectified to the point that it was divorced from perceptual experience altogether. The material objects that made up the world were believed to have certain primary qualities, such as size, shape and velocity; but they were inherently devoid of all secondary properties, such as color, smell, and sound, which were relative to perception. Thus, conscious experience was effectively removed from nature and, therefore, from the objective domain of science.
After four centuries of advances in scientific knowledge, more than a century of psychological research, and roughly a half century of progress in the neurosciences, even most advocates of scientism acknowledge that science has yet to give any intelligible account of the nature of consciousness. Nevertheless, the extent of our ignorance concerning consciousness is often overlooked. This ignorance is like a retinal blind spot in the scientific vision of the world, of which modern society seems largely unaware. In most books and articles on cosmogony, evolution, embryology, and psychology, consciousness is hardly mentioned; and when it is addressed, it tends to be presented not in terms of experiential qualia but in terms of brain functions and computer systems.
He has been collaborating on a mathematical theory of consciousness, based on information, first introduced by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi. In the publication with the title An Information Integration Theory of Consciousness, Tononi first outlined the thesis (Tononi 2004):
Composition: Consciousness is compositional (structured): each experience consists of multiple aspects in various combinations. Within the same experience, one can see, for example, left and right, red and blue, a triangle and a square, a red triangle on the left, a blue square on the right, and so on.
Information: Consciousness is informative: each experience differs in its particular way from other possible experiences. Thus, an experience of pure darkness is what it is by differing, in its particular way, from an immense number of other possible experiences. A small subset of these possible experiences includes, for example, all the frames of all possible movies.
These axioms are then formalized into postulates relating to physical mechanisms, such as neurons or logic gates. The properties the configurations of mechanisms must satisfy, in order to generate experience, are analyzed. In a first step, the trivial postulates of the existence of mechanisms in some state and the composition of mechanisms into systems are stated. The postulates of information, integration, and exclusion apply both at the level of individual mechanisms and at the level of systems of mechanisms (Oizumi et al. 2014):
Integration: A mechanism can contribute to consciousness only if it specifies a cause-effect repertoire (information) that is irreducible to independent components. Integration/irreducibility \(\varphi \) is assessed by partitioning the mechanism and measuring what difference this makes to its cause-effect repertoire.
Exclusion: A mechanism can contribute to consciousness at most one cause-effect repertoire, the one having the maximum value of integration/irreducibility \(\varphi ^\text Max\). This is its maximally irreducible cause-effect repertoire (MICE, or quale sensu stricto (in the narrow sense of the word)). If the MICE exists, the mechanism constitutes a concept.
Integration: A set of elements can be conscious only if its mechanisms specify a conceptual structure that is irreducible to non-interdependent components (strong integration). Strong integration/irreducibility \(\varPhi \) is assessed by partitioning the set of elements into subsets with unidirectional cuts.
Step by step, the integrated information \(\varphi \), and the maximally irreducible cause-effect information \(\varphi ^\text Max\), can be derived for the mechanisms, yielding concepts. Moving to systems of concepts, the (conceptual) integrated information \(\varPhi \) is specified for constellations, i.e., conceptional structures. Finally, the maximal integrated information \(\varPhi ^\text Max\) can be found, yielding a complex. There exists an online tool for performing example calculations.Footnote 2
In 2016, a study tested a complexity metric in the context of IIT (Casarotto et al. 2016). A threshold was derived, above which consciousness emerges. Patients may be misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state due to their lack of expressing signs of consciousness, although they are experiencing the world. This can result from brain injury. Locked-in syndrome is the tragic condition in which a patient is completely paralyzed and unable to communicate while being fully conscious. Recall the devastating and inspiring story of Martin Pistorius recollected in Sect. 11.3.3. In the study, healthy subjects were measured as being conscious during:
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