so long story short, you're a panpsychist,
welcome to the club.
On Thu, Jun 04, 2015 at 06:58:35PM -0500, EdFromNH . wrote:
> THE COMPWARENESS THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
>
> HOW OUR BRAINS COMPUTE OUR SOULS:
>
>
>
> At last, an intuitive, explanatory, scientific
>
> theory of consciousness.
>
>
>
> By
>
> Edward Winslow Porter
>
> aka
>
> waveTuned Ed
>
>
>
>
>
> Abstract:
>
>
>
> The compwareness theory hypothesizes that all the qualities we sense in
> human conscious awareness are nothing but -- and indeed are -- qualities of
> awareness inherent in the computation of the brain, qualities of an
> awareness required by the laws of physics, themselves. The Compwareness
> theory’s teachings combine and expand on those from other major voices in
> the study of consciousness like Bernard Baars, Giulio Tononi, Christof
> Koch, Francis Crick, Gerald Edelman, Patricia Churchland, Max Tegmark,
> David Chalmers and many others. It also involves ideas from many leaders in
> AI and cognitive neuroscience. The theory’s main features include its
> belief that:
>
> (a) all of physics, and all computation, requires an awareness -- a
> proto-consciousness -- in the form of compwareness, that is, the awareness
> of the information a computation computes required for its outputs to vary
> as a function of that information;
>
> (b) human consciousness is nothing but an extremely special form of such
> compwareness;
>
> (c) many of the alleged special qualities of consciousness are qualities of
> compwareness of meaning, where “meaning” is defined as experiential
> associational grounding, that is, temporally-unified, rich, interconnected,
> grounded complexes of awareness of semantic, sensory, and emotional
> experiential patterns that are associated with concepts we are consciously
> aware of;
>
> (d) brain synchrony, including theta-gamma phase synchrony, plays a major
> role in unifying massively parallel compwareness of experiential patterns
> into complex, unified, relational, and temporally coded senses of awareness
> of such meaning;
>
> (e) consciousness comes in many different dynamically varying degrees and
> kinds, depending, in part, on the extent to which widespread compwareness
> is focused by synchrony on the meaning of one or more related concepts;
>
> (f) we have the most conscious awareness of that which our brain has the
> most unified compwareness of;
>
> (g) one can best explain the qualities, or "qualia," we experience in our
> consciousness by studying the qualities of what is aware of what, when, and
> how, in the dynamic, spreading, recurrent activation of extended pattern
> awareness complexes in the brain;
>
> (h) the 200 trillion synapses, 16 billion neurons, and 160 million cortical
> mini-columns in the cortex have more than enough resolution in
> sensory/emotional/semantic hierarchical pattern space to provide
> compwareness with all the representational richness and qualities we sense
> in our conscious awareness;
>
> (i) that, since qualities of conscious awareness are nothing but qualities
> of the computational architecture of brain compwareness, the study of
> consciousness can be guided by predicting and mapping the qualities of one
> such awareness from the qualities of the other; and
>
> (j) that brain science already suggests there are such large complex
> similarities between consciousness and brain compwareness as to create a
> substantial Occam’s razor argument that they are, in fact, the same thing.
>
>
>
> =====================================
>
>
>
> Many claim explaining consciousness is Philosophy’s hardest problem. I
> think I have taken a major step toward solving that problem. I have
> developed a theory of consciousness called the "Compwareness Theory." It's
> much more explanatory, rigorous, and intuitive than any other consciousness
> theory I know — although, of course, it builds substantially on the works
> of others.
>
>
>
> It says the awareness — the proto-consciousness — from which human
> consciousness is woven is not something unknown to physics, as most in the
> field suggest. Rather it’s something that stares us in the face every time
> we look at an equation of physics. It’s “computational awareness”.
> ("Compwareness" for short.) Compwareness is the awareness of the variables
> and constants of the equations of physics that compute all reality. Such
> awareness is necessary for reality to compute as a function of those values
> as demanded by both Newtonian and quantum physics. This compwareness fills
> the entire universe. It’s arguably a great spirit, of which our bodies and
> consciousnesses are but a small, interwoven part.
>
>
>
> But as special, complex, and interconnected as the computation of all
> reality is, the computation, and thus compwareness, in our brains has
> special qualities that make our conscious compwareness vastly different
> than the compwareness in most of the universe. The compwareness theory
> proposes that human consciousness is nothing but an extremely special form
> of compwareness computed largely, or entirely, by the brain.
>
>
>
> In my theory, the famous "hard problem of consciousness" is redefined. It
> no longer asks what in physics could possibly produce the awareness of
> consciousness -- since there has to be awareness, in the form of
> compwareness, of the massively complex and interconnected information
> computed in our brains. Instead the redefined "hard problem" asks a more
> narrowly focused and much less metaphysical question. It asks how the
> brain's compwareness of information computed by the brain could have all of
> the many miraculous qualities of awareness we sense in our own conscious
> experience. In other words, how can compwareness explain the qualities, or
> "qualia", of our conscious experience of, say, the color red; the smell of
> a rose; the hurt of a pain; or the linguistic, semantic, imaginary, and
> emotional experiential mix of being swept away when reading a great novel.
>
>
>
> As mysterious as such qualities are, the compwareness theory provides at
> least partial explanations for a surprising number of them, and points the
> way for finding much more complete explanations in the future. Let me
> discuss just a few of such explanations to give you a feel for the
> incredible explanatory power of the theory.
>
>
>
> One important quality of consciousness is its subjectivity. The
> compwareness theory claims the subjective/objective distinction is one of
> interconnect bandwidth and point of view (P.O.V., what is aware of what,
> when, and how). The subjective awareness of consciousness is that of a
> compwareness having an internal computational bandwidth billions of times
> more complicated than any description a human mind could model. Its P.O.V.
> is of massively parallel awarenesses of experiential patterns organized
> into interactive, associational/generalizational/compositional pattern
> hierarchies. When measured at the synapse level the cortex has a bandwidth
> equal to 100 million HDTV screens. Measured by cortical minicolumns it has
> the resolution of 160 million pixels, where each pixel is a powerful neural
> net with 100 neurons and compwareness of one million synapses. The thing
> itself is many orders of magnitude more complex than any description we can
> ever extract from it, or understand if we ever could – and, thus, it has
> the qualities of being “subjective”.
>
>
>
> Another important quality of consciousness is its “aboutness”. Many brain
> scientists believe much of what we are consciously aware of corresponds to
> information our brains compute, and, thus, are compware of. This shared
> “aboutness” includes information defining many, if not all, of the
> qualities we sense – including qualities of color, shape, sound, smell,
> objects, actions, thoughts, imaginings, emotions, etc. Brain science would
> suggest that the computational richness of this correlation of aboutness is
> in the megabyte to terabyte per second range. This creates a huge, complex
> correlation between qualities of conscious awareness and compwareness –
> providing strong Occam’s Razor probabilistic support for the notion that
> consciousness and certain brain compwareness are, in fact, the same thing
> -- i.e., If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ( and has million
> or billions of other similar attributes per second), there is a good chance
> it *is* a duck.
>
>
>
> One of the most intellectually challenging qualities of consciousness it is
> sense of unity. It’s one thing to say the brain might have compwareness of
> everything we have conscious awareness of – it’s another to answer the
> question “How could the compwareness of the brain’s billions of separate
> neurons have the qualities of unity we sense in our consciousness?”
>
>
>
> Since the compwareness theory claims brain compwareness and consciousness
> are the same thing, it requires that the unities of consciousness are
> unities of compwareness. But what are unities? Nothing is totally
> unified. Virtually all unities are unified properties of separate things.
> A rock is made up of trillions of molecules and atoms. At the atomic scale
> these move in different directions at different speeds. But at time and
> distance scales humans can directly sense, these molecules and atoms move
> as a unit because of electrostatic forces. Even a black hole is a
> distributed unity, having an event horizon and gravitational field which
> move in unison with the black hole. (And some believe the massive
> plurality of the universe created by our big bang is the inside of a black
> hole in a parent universe that occurs in a substantially separated space
> time fabric). Science shows that brain compwareness has many unified
> properties that correspond to unities we perceive in consciousness, and
> there is reason to believe that as we learn more about the brain, the
> mapping between the unities of conscious and computational awareness will
> be become increasingly tight.
>
>
>
> For example, our brains is made of billions of neurons that each fire to
> indicate awareness of a pattern – that is, awareness of the unification of
> features that *are* that pattern. So brain compwareness is largely
> compwareness of the unities of patterns -- or at least compwareness of
> probabilistic belief in such unities. Furthermore, our brain’s neurons are
> interconnected in ways that can create compwareness of unities of pattern
> awareness much larger than that which can be represented by a given neuron
> or a given neural assembly representing a single pattern. This includes
> synchronized unities both up and down generalizational and compositional
> pattern hierarchies. These temporal hierarchical unities can be mapped up
> from sensory data, down from higher level patterns, or both. The brain can
> also create synchronized unified awareness of associational patterns which
> represent groups of hierarchical patterns that have a co-occurring or
> sequential patterns of temporal correlation.
>
>
>
> The brain’s neurons can store and recall patterns of experience, creating
> unities of pattern awareness across multiple different time scales. The
> brain contains billions of these patterns, many of which are reasonably
> stable across time. This creates the unity of a relatively continuous
> audience of patterns and memories -- an audience that is the “self”. This
> “theater of consciousness” is the homunculus that is aware of our
> sensations, thoughts and feelings. It is self-aware because this “self” is
> aware of the patterns within it which are activated, and because the
> recursive spreading activation within its
> associational-generalizational-compositional pattern space creates
> awareness of patterns of patterns of patterns.... The brain’s recurrent
> connections enable large complexes of neurons associated with a given
> concept to fire in synchrony, enabling large portions of the cortex’s
> audience of activatable patterns to have awareness of the temporal unity of
> the complex of pattern awareness associated with that given concept.
>
>
>
> Furthermore, the brain has mechanisms for tuning substantial portions of
> the brain’s audience of activatable patterns into the frequency of one or
> more of such synchronized conceptual complexes, so as to focus the
> receptivity of the much of the brains’ self, i.e., its audience of pattern
> compwareness, on them. This creates a massively parallel unified
> compwareness of such a concept, as represented by its associated complex of
> activation of many patterns across many levels of hierarchical and
> associational connection.
>
>
>
> The compwareness theory defines a concept’s “meaning” as a unified
> compwareness of such a concepts associated interconnected pattern
> activation complex. It defines meaning in terms of sensory and emotional
> experiential associations that provide “grounding.” It proposes that
> compwareness of such meaning is a major source of many of the seemingly
> mysterious qualities of consciousness. To understand the qualities of
> consciousness we need to understand the architectures of such meanings,
> that is, what patterns of patterns of patterns is there compwareness of,
> and in what temporal sequencing. This includes trying to better understand
> the qualities and complexities of the sensory, emotional, and semantic
> experiential pattern spaces defined by the brain's neural networks, and the
> qualities of the dynamic, interconnected, focused, multiplexed temporal
> patterns of compwareness that take place across those spaces. For example,
> the different qualities that distinguish hierarchical patterns related to
> vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste, kinesthetic, bodyspace, and emotions
> are different qualities of representation in the different pattern spaces
> specific to each such sensory modality. Vision grounds out in a 2D space
> of color distributions; hearing grounds out in a space largely defined by
> frequency over time, smell grounds out in a space defined by thousands of
> different types of chemical sensors, emotions ground out in a space defined
> by different neuromodulators, hormones, and body states and their effect on
> many processes in the brain itself -- and so on for each of the brains
> basic representional modalities. And much of the meanings of higher level
> patterns mapped into each of these sensory spaces includes groundings that
> span across multiple such spaces.
>
>
>
> For example, let us consider our consciousness of meaning within a visual
> scene. The brain is not only compware of a visual scene as a time-varying
> spatial distribution of color information from the eyes projected into a 2D
> visual field. It also has compwareness of multiple hierarchical pattern
> complexes that are mapped onto that visual field. This includes patterns of
> lines and shapes mapped into patterns of colors; patterns of objects mapped
> into patterns of shapes; patterns of motions and actions mapped into
> patterns of shapes and objects across time; patterns of relationships
> mapped between objects and/or actions; and patterns in both short- and
> long-term memory into which patterns mapped onto the visual field are
> themselves mapped. If the brain’s wavetuning mechanism tune a significant
> portions of the brain’s audience of neurons into the synchronous firing of
> one of the pattern complex activations mapped onto objects in the visual
> field – hundreds of millions or billions of neurons will be tuned into and
> have a temporally unified compwareness of that object’s complex of
> hierarchically and associationally connected patterns – and you will have
> rich conscious compwareness of that patterns meaning in its current
> context.
>
>
>
> The focus of such tuning can be rapidly changed. In fact, through
> theta-gamma phase synchronization we can be made conscious of the
> interconnected meaning of a rapidly repeating sequence of such concepts.
> For example, a 5 cycle per second theta brain wave can be phase
> synchronized with a 40 cycle per second gamma brain wave, so there will be
> 8 gamma wave cycles per theta wave cycle, much as there are 8 beats per
> measure in music with an 8/8 time signature. The prefrontal cortex and
> hippocampus can use such theta-gamma phase synchronization to, in effect,
> repeatedly activate the meaning of up to 8 different concepts together,
> each in one of the eight repeated time slots, so as to enable more
> explicitly grounded compwareness of concepts which involve relationships
> between multiple different sub-concepts.
>
>
>
>
> ================================
>
>
>
> This is far from a complete explanation of my current understanding of the
> compwareness theory. I currently have many more ideas about consciousness
> and other high level functions of the brain. But before I spend much more
> time working on this theory by myself I would like to have discussions on
> the web, by phone, or in person with others who think they have something
> to add to, subtract from, change, challenge, or negate in the theory. In
> particular, I look forward to discussions with people who have expertise in
> various areas of brain science, including knowledge of the brain’s
> connectome, synchronization, basil ganglia, cerebellum, thalamus,
> hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, mammillary bodies, brainstem, and the
> cognitive function of various neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. I am
> interested in talking with people with knowledge of artificial
> intelligence, as it applies to the brain. And I am interested in talking
> with people with knowledge of quantum mechanics, about what, if any, role
> quantum levels of description might play in helping the compwareness theory
> explain the qualities of human conscious experience.
>
>
>
> If you are interested in learning about or discussing any of these subjects
> please email me at [email protected].
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> AGI
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