די א' ב' פון סייענס

Yidel, Pashut, and others have expressed a special interest in me taking about consciousness, so I tried to write an overview of the current state of knowledge on the topic. But I made it easier on myself by allowing myself to write in English. Please forgive me for that. I won’t do it again. I will try to use relatively simple English which most readers could follow (not that I’m capable of using a very sophisticated English). Also in the future I will try to keep to Boxcover’s request of no two consecutive English posts. I look forward to great upcoming discussions. I would especially appreciate to hear feedback from readers who never heard about this topic before.
As you now know, everything we observe in the universe amazingly can be summed up as protons neutrons and electrons being pulled/pushed by four forces (and, additionally, the concept of energy which Relativity teaches us is really the only thing in the universe). That explains everything we can observe without sophisticated equipment found in particle and quantum physics labs, except for one thing: How do the atoms/molecules in our brains bring about consciousness?
The hard and easy problems
The Australian philosopher, David Chalmers coined these terms. The “easy problem” is the task of scientists to figure out exactly what happens in the brain that is necessary and sufficient to cause every particular conscious feeling, what precise brain activity causes the conscious feeling of green, of sweet, of happiness, of particular thoughts etc. Neuroscientists are still in the earliest of stages of answering these questions. They do, however, have a rough idea of what parts of the brain are involved in different types of conscious content. (See below for more about theories of how this might turn out to work). Historically, the serious search for solving this problem started to be pushed about 20 years ago, by Sir Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure and mechanism of DNA) in papers he published with the neuroscientist Christoph Koch, and in his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis. Before that it was considered unscientific to talk about consciousness. The hard problem is a totally separate philosophical problem: How is it possible for consciousness to arise from atoms coming together (no matter what possible mechanism we can imagine being discovered when the easy problem is solved)?
There are related problems: Why does every conscious perception feel exactly the way it does? For example, why is the color green this specific experience and the smell of banana this specific experience? Again, no matter what physical rules we will ever find to explain what happens in the brain when we experience green and banana, how would they help us understand why the experience is exactly the way it is? What is the purpose of consciousness?
Is there really a hard problem?
The hard problem can seem to present a genuine paradox: Since the original atoms are not conscious, how can consciousness come out of them? But it is not really a paradox. Matter obviously has a property which allows consciousness to arise under certain conditions. It is indeed a strange property of matter according to our intuitions about what we imagine matter to be, but so what? We obviously just have to change our intuition. Modern physics has already shown us much crazier facts about matter that are not only strange, but even intuitively paradoxical (for example, waves are also particles, some of which are pairs that share a long-distance connection without sending each other messages). So you can either say this means there is no hard problem or you can say there still is a hard problem in the sense that it is a strange unintuitive fact.
Does all matter have consciousness?
Some go further to say that all matter has consciousness. Your hands also are conscious, but how would “you” know? “You” are you the consciousness of your brain. This is the only system which has the ability to express itself through muscle movement. No piece or system of matter can do so, so you would never know that they are conscious. The atoms and molecules in your brain can also each have their own consciousness which is not your consciousness. Perhaps this is true, but it is difficult to imagine a consciousness devoid of a sensory system. Our consciousness only knows about information coming from the sensory systems. The brain can’t see without receiving information from functioning eyes. So how would another consciousness be able to have any content? Our steam of consciousness when we are just thinking also consists of imagined sensory input (from all the senses, but mostly from the sense of hearing; we hear ourselves talking in our mind). When we do anything, we are conscious of it through sensory input, including feedback from our muscles to our brain (“proprioception”). Likewise, when we imagine doing things we are imagining all these sensory inputs. It is unclear to me whether any type of insight or thought can be devoid of a sensory form. The only non-sensory conscious content is emotion, which is never the focus of consciousness; it is a background. (However, consciousness is usually not raw perception; it usually has a cognitive component to it as well. When you listen to a voice speak, whether a physical or an imaginary one, you understand what it is saying). However, some trustworthy people (like Sam Harris), claim that with meditation you can reach a state of consciousness without any content. But as I said earlier, there is no need to say that all matter is conscious. All that must be is that all matter has some property which can develop into consciousness in certain conditions.
Consciousness is less magical than it seems, but it exists
The philosopher Dan Dennett and the artificial-intelligence scientist
Marvin Minsky
say that consciousness doesn’t exist and it is just an illusion. (This point of view is also echoed by, some, such as V Ramachandran, who say they
can “define” consciousness in physical terms). This makes no sense, because an illusion itself is a special case of consciousness (when the conscious perception doesn’t reflect the reality of the physical world). If you were aware of their point of view and were breaking your head to try to understand what they mean like I did for many years, stop wasting your time. The problem is not with you, it is with them (although they are brilliant men). (By the way, the same is regarding modern art). I reached this conclusion after I read the great thinker, Sam Harris, write that he discussed this issue with Dennett and it makes no sense to him. They do have a good point (elaborated upon by Dennett at length in his book Consciousness Explained and in lectures you can see on YouTube) that consciousness is less magical than it seems when you realize how the brain does so many tricks to make you think that you are constantly perceiving the entire world around you like a movie, but it is really piecing together bits of coarse information and giving you the illusion of a much richer stream of consciousness. However, as weak as their arguments can make the mystery of consciousness, it still exists and remains a mystery.
Can the hard problem ever be solved?
Will it ever be solved (become intuitive)? Francis Crick and Christophe Koch say that once the easy problem is solved there is hope that the hard problem can also be solved. They compare it to life. Once the molecular mechanisms of life were discovered suddenly the whole mystery of what life is went away. However, I think part of the reason earlier scientists had felt that life is a mystery is because of consciousness (in the higher forms of life). If not for consciousness, they might have always realized that it can all be just a complicated chemical process. Steven Pinker at the end of How the mind works (and others he cites there) argues that we will never understand consciousness. He argues that it is unlike any other problem that in the past we thought we would never solve but did, because it can just never make sense to us how any possible physical mechanisms can bring about the specific feelings we feel. He further adds that it is only to be expected that our brains should be limited to what it can fathom. In my mind, both Crick and Koch and Pinker are right in different aspects. Pinker is right that to understand as clearly as 1 +1 what consciousness is and why our experiences of seeing green and of smelling banana are exactly the way they are will never happen. I find Pinker’s view most compelling when I think about the mystery of the purpose of consciousness (see more below). Crick and Koch are right that once we have a clear understanding of how exactly consciousness arises (the easy problem) there is a good chance that we will find a set of fundamental rules that explain the details of our conscious experiences, and we’ll see the whole issue in a new light, making consciousness less unintuitive, perhaps to the point where we will just accept that the unfathomable part is just not meant for us to understand and we will stop thinking of consciousness as an unsolvable problem altogether.
Tononi’s integrated information theory
In 2004, the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi came up with the first solid theory to answer the easy problem (affecting the hard problem as well). He says that consciousness is integrated information (a solid mathematical concept). According to this theory, any system that has integrated information (which can only be generated over time) is conscious to the degree of the integrated information (which always has a precise mathematical value). However, relatively low levels of integrated information, such as the amount that occurs in most integrated systems besides brains or in our brain during non-dream sleep or unconscious processes, yield such weak “consciousness” that it is not what we normally mean by consciousness. (It would seem more straightforward to just say that consciousness begins at some high level of integrated information, but that takes away from the elegance of the theory). What makes every conscious experience different from every other is the way in which the integrated information is generated. The exact amount of integrated information in any integrated system with more than just a handful of components is so large that we will never be able to calculate it no matter how advanced computers will ever get, but it might be estimated. Many scientists, such as Christophe Koch, are very enthusiastic about this theory. With better computational power and with a map of the brain’s wiring and activity (which we still don’t have) it may be verified and there may be a lot more learned on consciousness.
As a maamin, believing that consciousness comes from the neshama, how does this affect this discussion?
It has no effect. Breathing and all living functions also come from the neshama, so if we can discuss human biology that should include consciousness. It is a fact that particular brain activity causes every aspect of consciousness. This has been proven from patients who have lesions is particular parts of the brain and lose particular aspects of consciousness, and, from brain stimulations where neurosurgeons from Wilder Penfield in the 1950’s to Izhak Fried who today does it much more precisely with single neurons. They stuck electrodes into the brains of patients (who needed it anyway for surgical purposes) and sent electrical signals (like the brain does) to specific parts of the brain and in some cases caused specific memories and perceptions to be activated. Since the soul must then bring about consciousness by interacting with the brain just as science dictates, it doesn’t change anything about the discussion and can just be included in the term consciousness. And if you want to be very clear about it you can just add it on to the end of any sentence, for example, How does consciousness arise from atoms in the brain coming together in a particular way and interacting with the neshama? It also doesn’t gain us any insight into better understanding the hard problem because the neshama, like anything of רחניות is beyond our understanding. I should also point out that although it is probably correct to say that it has been generally accepted that the life including consciousness come from the neshama, exactly what is meant by neshama is not written in stone, and the entire concept is not one of the 13 ikrim.
Doesn’t the phenomenon of near death experiences (NDE) show that consciousness is separate from the brain?
As they say, almost doesn’t count. Near death is not death. No NDE that was claimed to have happened after brain death has ever been credible. They are just wishful thinking. Neither has there ever been a credible study showing that people can get information from NDE’s that they couldn’t have gotten naturally (or guessed). The reason for NDE’s is known to every neuroscientist who does brain imaging in animals near their death. (Imaging is often done in anesthetized animals with their skulls removed, that die during the imaging). Right before the brain cells die, they “fire” signals. This would explain why people would at such a point experience many different memories, white light, etc.
Do others see the same colors as us? What animals are conscious? When do babies become conscious?
There is nothing in our behavior that tells us that we are conscious. We can easily imagine a robot in the future that has all the senses we have, a computer like that of our brains, and output that makes it move just like we do and behave in every way like we do, but is just a machine and doesn’t have any feelings. It has a built in motivation to eat and avoid pain etc. just like us, in order to survive and reproduce, but it doesn’t have consciousness. (This doesn’t mean that such a robot is possible, but we can still imagine it): In fact, we have no way of knowing whether anyone else is conscious besides ourselves (and only at this moment in time, but that’s a different discussion). There are, however, two reasons we assume that everyone else is conscious, and, moreover, like ourselves, cannot function at all when they lose consciousness. 1) It is silly to think that you are for some reason different than everyone else in this amazing way. It would also have no biological explanation for you to be that different. 2) Most people say they are conscious, so we can trust them like we would regarding any other scientific issue which we ask many subjects about their experiences and we don’t assume that they’re all lying. Why should they? (If they were not conscious they wouldn’t know what consciousness means, so they wouldn’t say that are not, they would just not understand the question. Indeed some people don’t understand the question, so for them we can only use the first reason and assume that it is more likely that they just don’t get it rather then that their brains work entirely differently and that they can function without consciousness). For these two reasons we assume that unless a person is sleeping, or in a coma they are conscious.
People often say that we cannot know if what I see as red you see as green and vice versa. Indeed, there is no reason to stop there. We also can’t know if any of the colors I see are like any you see, or if my feeling of seeing is anything like yours, or hearing etc. or anything else regarding the contents of consciousness. The second reason cannot apply hear because there are no words to describe one’s content of consciousness. However, the first reason does apply to a large extent so we can be fairly certain that our experiences are similar. Likewise, for the first reason, we can be fairly certain that all animals similar to us are conscious, although we currently have no idea where to draw the line. Likewise, we currently have no idea when babies become conscious. (Many psychologists take for granted that only humans are conscious, but that is a silly view and is certainly not the view of every society that outlaws animal torture). We know from people falling asleep, given anesthesia and people in comas that there are different degrees of consciousness, so it is likely that the same is regarding different types of animals. The more primitive an animal’s brain, the less conscious they are.
However, once we solve the easy problem we will know just from looking at brain activity exactly what animals are conscious and when babies become conscious (it remains to be seen which side of the abortion debate will be happier with the results).
Can computers ever be conscious?
If the question is whether we can theoretically take molecules and put them together in a way that can make them conscious, the answer is certainly yes. That happens every time a baby’s brain forms. If the question is whether silicon (or whatever) is as good as the substances the brain is made of, we don’t really know, but it is probable that consciousness arises from the way the information processing is organized—as is true for Tononi’s integrated information theory—and not from the particular substances used.
How would we know if we made a conscious computer?
I can’t think of any way we can know such a thing, unless we make a computer with intelligence of human proportions who learns language similar to the way we do and who we can trust when he says, “yes, I know what you mean by conscious, and I am conscious.” However, as with animals and babies, once we solve the easy problem we will know based on its physical makeup.
What is the purpose of consciousness?
There many ways in which both brain and muscle (behavioral) activity are different when we’re conscious. Does this mean that consciousness can make matter move? No, it is not the consciousness itself that causes the physical activity; it is the physical state of the brain in which consciousness arises that does the physical work. Only matter and energy can affect each other. This is true unless physics has missed a fifth force in the universe: consciousness. In that crazy scenario, some part of the brain activity (movement of atoms and electrons in the brain) essential for conscious behavior cannot be accomplished by the electromagnetic forces of the atoms in the brain. When consciousness arises it moves electrons or something in some special way that accomplishes behaviors. As of now, we don’t have the tools to test this question. But the idea of conscious feelings moving matter seems like a crazy idea. If consciousness is not a fifth force, it serves no purpose. The universe would behave just the same without it. Even if consciousness is a fifth force were true, it still would seem that the physical force of consciousness could be separated from the consciousness, and we could imagine the same force arising from whatever dynamic configuration of atoms it arises from without the consciousness. So still, consciousness would serve no purpose. But why should we define purpose as the movement of matter? In fact, purpose doesn’t even mean anything scientifically when talking about properties of the universe. They just are. Still, as unscientific as it may be, there is something here that I can’t pinpoint that tells me that there is some great mystery here that Pinker is probably right about being beyond our capacity of solving. Nothing in the universe seems to me as awe inspiring and as humbling to someone in pursuit of understanding the universe as consciousness.
Why did we evolve to be conscious?
According to the classical scientific worldview, if it would have been simpler for us to evolve with all our abilities, motivations, and urges (in terms of their physical actions), that bring about the spreading of our genes, but without consciousness, we should have evolved that way. Since we didn’t evolve that way, there is either no possible brain state of which consciousness does not emerge that can accomplish our behavioral abilities, or else (chances are that) that type of brain is a less likely to evolve.
Conscious behavior and free will
Most of the activity in our brain is unconscious. When we suddenly think of a solution to a problem we are not conscious of all the work the brain did to get that solution. Likewise, a large part of our behavior is unconscious, and the senses send most of their information to unconscious parts of the brain. When we walk, our brain constantly calculates our angle (from the information it receives from the vestibular system) and makes us unconsciously maintain balance. Even a large part of our behavior that we think is conscious is really done unconsciously. When we run down a steep hill there is no time to consciously figure out where to put our feet. Still most people don’t realize that the feet (and the rest of the body that helps maintain balance) are unconsciously going to the right place. Likewise, whenever we walk, we hardly consciously think about how to move our feet. Or when we talk, there is no time to consciously figure out exactly how to form the sentences we want. We consciously only think of the basic idea that we want to say, and then the rest is done unconsciously. When children learn to walk and talk they have to learn it slowly and consciously, but once the brain is wired up it no longer involves the conscious parts of the brain. The same is true for all our behaviors. Yet just like other illusions we constantly have (for example, that we constantly see a clear view of everything that’s in front of us, when in reality only a very tiny part at the center of our view (and almost always the focus of our attention) is clear and sharp), we have an illusion that all our behavior is done consciously. The illusion happens immediately after we did the behavior; we feel like our “free will” did it. Even regarding the behavior we do do entirely consciously (if there is such a thing) it is only an illusion that we have free will. What does it mean that we could have done otherwise if we would have chosen to? You could never do what you don’t chose or not do what you chose, and how do you chose what you will chose? Every choice you
make you must either have a reason that compels you to make that choice (as is usually the case) or else it is just random. In either case, there is).
used to repeat it ר' יעק'לע פשעווארסקער ,in some place says that there is no free will ר' צדוק הכהן no room for free will. (I heard that
For a short easy book that explains this well, read Sam Harris’s Free Will
Consciousness vs. memory and attention
Consciousness requires very short-term memory. Without remembering what was in your mind the moment before, you can’t form any conscious feeling. Instantaneous consciousness itself is a meaningless concept (in terms of a conscious experience). On a different note, when we want to know if people are conscious of something that they cannot report to us immediately, that requires longer-term memory. So, we really have no way of knowing for sure whether people who we consider unconscious (non-dreaming sleep, coma, anesthesia) are really unconscious or just lose their ability to form lasting memories, so they never remember anything from that period and think they were unconscious. However, when people or animals are fully awake and report the content of their consciousness (which in cases, such as bi-stable percepts, can give us a lot of information about consciousness) this is not an issue, and such studies will untimely be needed to solve the easy problem. Once the easy problem is solved in those cases, we might be able to extrapolate from that to the cases where people are seemingly unconscious, and verify whether they are indeed unconscious.
Attention is required for the formation of memories. You cannot remember anything you didn’t pay attention to (unless it happened immediately before and stayed in your “iconic memory”). This means that, until we solve the easy problem, we can never know whether people can be conscious of anything without attention. There is no way we can design an experiment where we ask someone to report whether he was conscious of something he didn’t pay attention to. We feel that we are vaguely conscious of everything going on around us even before it catches our attention, but this may be an illusion. When you hear your name or focus on a object you hadn’t focused on before, you may be not only bringing that perception into attention, but also into consciousness. (If this is the case, then iconic memory is an unconscious form of memory that you can consciously retrieve from). Many researchers say that this is indeed the case because since you cannot report anything from what you weren’t paying attention to, it must be defined as unconscious, just as they, and most researchers, define sleep and coma etc. as unconscious for that reason. However, as Victor Lamme pointed out, we should not jump to conclusions and define anything as unconscious just because the person cannot report. We should wait for the easy problem to be solved to define consciousness by brain activity.
Some exotic theories about consciousness
I will not try too hard to explain them in simple terms. I didn't mention theories from philosophers and psychologists who just miss the point of what is meant by consciousness or what it is
The physicist Roger Penrose (The Emperor’s New Mind ) believes that consciousness involves quantum physics. Christophe Koch strongly refutes that quantum effects should be able to interact with neural signals at the brain’s temperature. The physicists John Wheeler and Henry Stapp go even further than Penrose and say that consciousness effects quantum physics and causes the waveform to collapse. According to this, “no elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until is an observed phenomenon.” I don’t know if they have a satisfactory answer to the question that if so, how did the universe and the planet evolve the way they did before there were observers.
Richard M Pico and Alex Green
believe that the theory of relativity is required to understand consciousness.
The philosopher ex-scientist Kevin O’regan says that consciousness does not arise from the brain, but from our interaction with the outside world. This sounds appealing to our naïve-realist intuition as long as we ignore thoughts, dreams, and pathological states, and perhaps there are some glimmers of truth to be uncovered buried deep in his theories, but in general it is silly (He also defines consciousness in physical terms. See above.
Alfredo Pereira Jr. from São Paulo State University believes that consciousness happens through calcium waves in astrocytes, a type of cell in the brain which is ignored by most neuroscientists.
Herms Romijn from Amsterdam proposes that consciousness lies in electric and/or magnetic field patterns that specify some code that spells out the exact nature of the particular experience.
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