Theory of consciousness redux

Hi Morbert,

I think on reading your comments and questions I’ll respond chronologically.

Morbert wrote: »

If my reading is correct, the paper concerns the "easy" problem of consciousness.

I had hoped to show that in hypothesizing the specific neurological underpinnings of “the mechanics of mind”- as the easy problem- that the hard problem would finally be revealed in triumph. Evidently you missed the reveal. In fairness, though, the solution to the hard problem is was eased in, rather than presented in a ‘tah-dah’ fashion; to refresh- in the last paragraph of the ‘Denoument’ chapter, I say that the “transition to what we know as consciousness is based on the ... capacity to maintain the Dichotomy of Perception while awake.”, where this is possible because of the capacity for Inner Focus.
The hard problem, according to this hypothesis- of the ‘what it is like’ phenomena of first person experience- is down to the stimulation of the ‘neuro-narratives (based on SMMs), which are common to all animals. Thanks to Inner Focus though, unique to humans, there is the capacity for their direct access, giving us the direct experience of their contents, rather than simply as loci for behavioural response. Thus, the hard problem of consciousness becomes I suppose ‘easy’ i.e. just another part of the mechanics of mind, and hence dissipating its impact.

Morbert wrote: »

It is this waking Inner Focus (as opposed to, say, language capacity) that allows us to mentally model consciousness and possess a Theory of Mind.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “to mentally model consciousness”. There is no modelling going on; consciousness is the stimulation of the SMMs (as neuro-narratives), which gives us our explicit/direct experiences, where what we know (as in rationality and certainty) is the feeling of pattern completion (of the SMMs)- such that we can explicitly know things. Modelling is surplus to requirements, where Occam’s Razor reigns supreme. (similarly, so is Theory of Mind- see pg 18).

Morbert wrote: »

i) Is there evidence or argument that this capacity must have emerged via a "saltationist cognitive event" as opposed to a gradual formation? Some animals, for example, seem to exhibit rudimentary theories of mind (chimps can model the visual knowledge of other chimps).

Absolutely no evidence (yet), in terms of a neurological smoking gun. We are however, the only animals with language, which seems to be an all-or-nothing affair. Large-scale efforts to train animals in language skills have proved generally negative, or at best questionable in their results- not forgetting it is non-existent in the wild. The neurology which underlies the capacity to introspect is tied up with the capacity to communicate the introspectable, but there is zero evidence that there is a gradation in language acquisition across all the animal kingdom. Language, as a non-neurological litmus test for consciousness, seems to be part of a package, which seems to only be capable of arising suddenly.

The evidence, on my part, is hypothesized as lying in the genetics of the Dichotomy of Perception, as part of the wake/sleep cycle.

Morbert wrote: »

Couldn't our capacity have gradually improved, as we gradually moved from the edges of forests into the savanna, and capacity for social cooperation and coordination gradually became more important?

As above, except to add- that many theories of consciousness suffer from the “Just-so” paradigm; armchair speculative stories about how consciousness might have arisen from environmental pressure, without a theory of the neurological basis for it.
Another major difference between this and most theories of consciousness is its refusal to see consciousness as a (necessary) product of environmental pressure. Consciousness in this theory is almost accidental- a numbers game of sorts. The capacity for Inner Focus requires a very strong capacity for suppression of instinct if it is to be survived, and the genetic aberration that would allow the capacity itself would be vanishingly small- certainly not a capacity that selection pressure would account for.
Gradually improving cognitive capacity will not give rise to the capacity for language (which is the (current, blunt) litmus for consciousness).

Morbert wrote: »

ii) It is mentioned that dreaming is an example of Inner Focus while asleep. Is this really the case? It would seem to me that even when dreaming, an animal's brain is merely modelling external stimuli (chasing a rabbit for example) as opposed to internal cognitive processes.

I think you missed the point here.
Where SMMs are the intermediary betweem instincts and the environment, Inner Focus is the locus of SMM stimulation. In animals, this is what guides behaviour. From an evolutionary POV, there was never any need for Inner Focus- SMMs just dynamicallly guided behaviour. Evolution tinkers with genes, which the organism survives and (usually) makes it more adaptive, or it dies out. When an animal sleeps however, like humans, its environment (as an external source of SMM stimulation) is shut off, and the body is (to all intents and purposes) paralysed. The likes of Jouvet’s studies show then, not that focus of attention is solely external (my claim), but that it simply occurs while dreaming occurs; not as an anthropomorphization- but as a neurological event. (Again, this is not modelling, but behavioural response to stimuli; in terms of ENH, due to stimulation of (jumbled) SMMs).


Where there is no evidence for an internal/introspective mental life in animals, it is all too common to anthromorphisize it into existence. But this is to see cognitive activity, and assume intropsective capacity. It is to superimpose our capacity for internal narrative, based on our capacity for Inner Focus, and simply assume that animals have an introspective capacity, when all we have to go on is behaviour, minus the most salient behavioural capacity; language.

Morbert wrote: »

iii) How would the concept of Inner Focus overlap with the Mental Time Travel hypothesis? It is argued in the paper that, while animals possess Inner Focus when they sleep, they do not exercise it while awake. The MTT hypothesis suggests animals are capable of daydreaming while awake. Would this be an example of waking Inner Focus in animals?

A quick duckduckgo search:


Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 7, Issue 9, September 2003, Pages 391-396
Mental time travel in animals?
Abstract
Are humans alone in their ability to reminisce about the past and imagine the future? Recent evidence suggests that food-storing birds (scrub jays) have access to information about what they have stored where and when. This has raised the possibility of mental time travel (MTT) in animals and sparked similar research with other species. Here we caution that such data do not provide convincing evidence for MTT. Examination of characteristics of human MTT (e.g. non-verbal declaration, generativity, developmental prerequisites) points to other avenues as to how a case for animal MTT could be made. In light of the current lack of evidence, however, we maintain that MTT is a uniquely human characteristic.

I'm with the authors on this one. This mainly concerns food-caching. Basically, Occam’s Razor applied here means the caching behaviour cannot show an internal mental life, where stimulus-response suffices.

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Thanks Morbert- this chestnut has not yet been cracked, despite the best minds; so anything still unclear, keep the questions coming. That's why I put it out there.

Morbert wrote: »

After my first reading, I had assumed the "access" in "access to the contents of the mind" constitutively involved some internal representation/model of the contents of the mind. With a second reading (+ your comments here), I see that that is not the case. I would be interested in teasing out the details of accessing content vs behaviour induced by content, and how the former relates to the phenomenal character of experience.

You mentioned in your comments that your postulate transforms the hard problem of consciousness into an easy problem. What I'm unsure about is how the capacity for access to contents of the mind implies phenomenal character of experience. I.e. Why a system with waking Inner Focus is conscious, as opposed to an unconscious but a more sophisticated adaptive system.

Here's a little light reading, much better than hosting a New Year's Eve party.



The concept of ‘access’, which you have picked up on, needs some unpacking, as it is a knotty concept, tied up with the thorny issue of phenomenal experience., as you probably know. However, there is a legacy issue to contend with. The notion of ‘access’ is used by me as a crude visualisation tool, to allow an easier visualisation and use of the concept of the Dichotomy of Perception. It is similar to Ned Block’s notion of Access Consciousness (though I still disagree with it). But when your inquiry delves into the phenomenological issues, the standard use of ‘access’ belies the more complex ontology of consciousness, namely, the nature of perception, and how we have traditionally (mistakenly) taken it to be. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of representationalism, which has led us down a blind alley, and it’s been hard to get our minds into reverse to steer ourselves out. Embodied/enactive cognition is a non-representational approach, but has no interest (so far) in theorising about the mechanisms that brings cognition about (it seems to have an analytic philosophy grounding, so I don’t hold much hope).



At the end of ‘The Starting Point’ section I claim that phenomenology is ‘solipsistically adrift’ from the outside world, as it delineates the interior mental of direct experience from that of the external world, and the thrust of the paper was to trace the ‘mechanics of mind’ and how its mechanisms garner content, hence the dismissal of phenomenology in that specific regard. Phenomenology however, in terms of content as experienced, is crucial. The Problem of Other Minds, for example, cannot escape the solipsism related to individual subjective experience, which is where this links in with the easy and hard problem of consciousness, viz- there are objective physical (neurobiological) bases for subjective experiences, but the seeming ineffable nature of certain categories of experiences is what has us stumped, as they seem to defy an objectively demonstrable place in our world.



This is where the Dichotomy of Perception comes in, in relation to the physical bases of experience in animals. An animal has certain neurobiological experiences, which we can infer from the presence of taste buds, pain receptors etc, such that it can experience tastes and pain. However, with only external focus of attention (FOA), their experience remains a physiological event without subjective experience i.e. without the capacity for Inner Focus- which brings about direct experience of the contents of the SMMs which are being stimulated. So where an animal’s SMM content is stimulated, a behavioural pattern is stimulated, dynamically guiding both perception and behaviour, all the while giving rise to physiological experiences. But without Inner Focus, there is no subjective experience. No matter how intelligent an animal has evolved to become, even up to that of chimpanzees, they ‘merely’ display complex behavioural patterns, without the capacity for inner FOA i.e. they do not have the capacity for access to the contents of SMMs, otherwise known as consciousness.



In terms of the phenomenality of experience then, in relation to access, what’s crucial to add in here is something similar to the law of physics- that two objects cannot occupy the same space- and which belongs in the sphere of phenomenology; which I call the Principle of Concurrence (strictly speaking non- concurrence (and not the same as the Pauli exclusion principle)). In its simplest form, one cannot focus on two external objects at once i.e. when a sense organ relays sense data to the brain, the brain can only focus on one object at a time (and where the effects of FOA stimulation give rise to physiological experience, but not subjective experience). So, in animals, that is as far as it goes. For humans though, with the capacity for Inner Focus, we can switch from such tracking of external objects, to their internal ‘objects’ (mistakenly seen as their representations), which we generally call (in this specific instance of an object being externally perceived) the ‘contents of mind’, and which ENH postulates as the focal point of SMMs which are being stimulated. The Principle of Concurrence states that any such content can be the focus of attention (as SMM stimulation), but not at the same time as an external object, and also that no internal ‘object’ of attention can be the FOA of any other internal ‘object’.
So if one looks at a tomato, just as an animal might, there is the physiological experience of the redness (among others such as shape etc), where the SMMs associated with its colour might stimulate a certain behaviour (whereas in another context, it might stimulate a more urgent response, for example in relation to danger). This experience is different- in a straightforwardly neurobiological way- for both (within different) humans and (within different) animals, due to varying life histories and environments. With humans though, when the external object stimulates our SMMs associated with the tomato, we can (effectively) shut off the external source (without closing our eyes), by way of switching from a tracking mode of attention, based on SMM stimulation by the external stimulus, to a direct mode of SMM stimulation, courtesy of the capacity for Dichotomy of Perception, where I bluntly use the term 'access'. This means then that internal attention (as access) is SMM stimulation, directly, without (for the moment at least), external behaviour being guided.



This is where perception gets really complicated, so I’ll let this digest. I don't think I fully answered the very last part of the inquiry- the 'i.e.' part, which I think is slightly different from its leading statement, but it should be capable of being worked out from what i laid out. if not, I can follow on if necessary, no problem.