One in a series of talks from the 2019 Models of Consciousness conference. John Barnden
School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK
I assume that [phenomenal] consciousness is a property physical processes can have, and that it involves pre-reflective auto-sensitivity (PRAS), which is related to the much-discussed pre-reflective self-consciousness [3,4]. I then argue that PRAS requires conscious processes to be directly and causally sensitive to their own inner causation as such, and not merely to their own trajectories of physical states as ordinarily understood. That causal sensitivity is therefore metacausation. Metacausation here is where instances of causation are themselves, directly and in their own right, causes or effects. Metacausation (aka higher-order causation) is rarely discussed at all, and has apparently not previously been linked to consciousness. But the proposal is yet more radical as I merely use "causation" to mean microphysical dynamism. I assume (anti-Humeanly) that the universe's law-governed unfolding is a dynamism irreducible to sheer regular patterning over spacetime of familiar physical quantities (masses, charges, fields, curvatures, etc.). Furthermore, I strongly reify dynamism: spatiotemporally specific instances of it are a ``new'' realm of fundamental physical quantities, themselves dynamically interacting in their own right with other quantities (familiar or new). That dynamic interaction is a new level of dynamism, namely metadynamism, with its own laws explicitly mentioning dynamism instances. As causation is just dynamism, metacausation is metadynamism. The poster summarizes the arguments (revising earlier versions [1,2]) and sketches initial formalization steps for metadynamism. It also indicates how metadynamism might be co-opted to enrich other consciousness theories, notably IIT and Orch-OR.
References:
[1] Barnden, J.A. (2014). Running into consciousness. J. Consciousness Studies, 21 (5-6), pp.33-56.
[2] Barnden, J.A. (2018). Phenomenal consciousness, meta-causation and developments concerning casual powers and time passage. Poster presented at 22nd Conference for the Association for the Scientific
Study of Consciousness, 26-29 June 2018, Krakow.
[3] Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2015). Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition).
[4] Sebastian, M.A. (2012). Experiential awareness: Do you prefer ``it''
to ``me''? Philosophical Topics, 40(2), pp.155-177."
Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
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One in a series of talks from the 2019 Models of Consciousness conference. John Barnden
School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK
I assume that [phenomenal] consciousness is a property physical processes can have, and that it involves pre-reflective auto-sensitivity (PRAS), which is related to the much-discussed pre-reflective self-consciousness [3,4]. I then argue that PRAS requires conscious processes to be directly and causally sensitive to their own inner causation as such, and not merely to their own trajectories of physical states as ordinarily understood. That causal sensitivity is therefore metacausation. Metacausation here is where instances of causation are themselves, directly and in their own right, causes or effects. Metacausation (aka higher-order causation) is rarely discussed at all, and has apparently not previously been linked to consciousness. But the proposal is yet more radical as I merely use "causation" to mean microphysical dynamism. I assume (anti-Humeanly) that the universe's law-governed unfolding is a dynamism irreducible to sheer regular patterning over spacetime of familiar physical quantities (masses, charges, fields, curvatures, etc.). Furthermore, I strongly reify dynamism: spatiotemporally specific instances of it are a ``new'' realm of fundamental physical quantities, themselves dynamically interacting in their own right with other quantities (familiar or new). That dynamic interaction is a new level of dynamism, namely metadynamism, with its own laws explicitly mentioning dynamism instances. As causation is just dynamism, metacausation is metadynamism. The poster summarizes the arguments (revising earlier versions [1,2]) and sketches initial formalization steps for metadynamism. It also indicates how metadynamism might be co-opted to enrich other consciousness theories, notably IIT and Orch-OR.
References:
[1] Barnden, J.A. (2014). Running into consciousness. J. Consciousness Studies, 21 (5-6), pp.33-56.
[2] Barnden, J.A. (2018). Phenomenal consciousness, meta-causation and developments concerning casual powers and time passage. Poster presented at 22nd Conference for the Association for the Scientific
Study of Consciousness, 26-29 June 2018, Krakow.
[3] Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2015). Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition).
[4] Sebastian, M.A. (2012). Experiential awareness: Do you prefer ``it''
to ``me''? Philosophical Topics, 40(2), pp.155-177."
Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Gustav Bernroider - Neural sense relations and consciousness: a diagrammatic approach
Models of Consciousness
22 minutes
6 years ago
Gustav Bernroider - Neural sense relations and consciousness: a diagrammatic approach
One in a series of talks from the 2019 Models of Consciousness conference. Gustav Bernroider
University of Salzburg, Dept. of Biosciences, Austria
Are there knowable criteria for subjective entities such as conscious experience? I think there are, even physical ones. I advocate the view that the basic dualism between subject and object or mind and matter can be figured by an intuitively simple version of an inside out or inversion relation between two opposing physical domains. I propose a particular topology for subject-object relations and argue that we can find a physical realisation in the brain of living organism that provides a conformal transformation between both domains. The transformation combines two physical domains related by inversion or parity symmetry or simply by mirror reflections. This view puts topological aspects behind inversion and the associated hidden symmetries in physics into the foreground.
I introduce the model along three steps: i) evidence and motivation for the role of mirror symmetries from psychobiology based on previous studies (Senso- motory invariance in animal feelings [Bernroider G, Panksepp J. (2011), Neurosci & Biobehav. Rev., 35, 2009-2016.] and mirror-writing in (my grand-) children), ii) an intuitive diagrammatic demonstrating subject-object together with cause and effect relations mapped onto an inversive plane geometry and iii) a more formal outline and extension into the algebraic topology of non- orientable surfaces, the real and complex projective plane.
The concept suggested here offers several testable predictions for the relation of ionic brain function to inversion symmetries realised by the molecular architecture of excitable membranes. For example, this aspect seems to be evidenced by enantio-selective electronic transitions during ion conduction in the brain [Bernroider G. (2017) JIN 16, 105-113]. Going beyond these technical aspects, the present view on modelling subjectivity shifts the role of canonical coordinates together with their static dimensional geometry into the background. It favours ideas behind general covariance. A parity transformation, if purely defined at the level of Cartesian coordinates with changing signs, is discrete, the transient itself only inferential, non-physical, with no known conserved quantity associated with this transformation in the sense of Emmy Noether’s theorem. However, if the same transformation is laid out continuously on the geometry of non-orientable surfaces (e.g. on a Möbius band), the transients gain some physics and offer a conserved quantity. I will discuss this conserved quantity with respect to subjectivity and consciousness.
Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
Models of Consciousness
One in a series of talks from the 2019 Models of Consciousness conference. John Barnden
School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK
I assume that [phenomenal] consciousness is a property physical processes can have, and that it involves pre-reflective auto-sensitivity (PRAS), which is related to the much-discussed pre-reflective self-consciousness [3,4]. I then argue that PRAS requires conscious processes to be directly and causally sensitive to their own inner causation as such, and not merely to their own trajectories of physical states as ordinarily understood. That causal sensitivity is therefore metacausation. Metacausation here is where instances of causation are themselves, directly and in their own right, causes or effects. Metacausation (aka higher-order causation) is rarely discussed at all, and has apparently not previously been linked to consciousness. But the proposal is yet more radical as I merely use "causation" to mean microphysical dynamism. I assume (anti-Humeanly) that the universe's law-governed unfolding is a dynamism irreducible to sheer regular patterning over spacetime of familiar physical quantities (masses, charges, fields, curvatures, etc.). Furthermore, I strongly reify dynamism: spatiotemporally specific instances of it are a ``new'' realm of fundamental physical quantities, themselves dynamically interacting in their own right with other quantities (familiar or new). That dynamic interaction is a new level of dynamism, namely metadynamism, with its own laws explicitly mentioning dynamism instances. As causation is just dynamism, metacausation is metadynamism. The poster summarizes the arguments (revising earlier versions [1,2]) and sketches initial formalization steps for metadynamism. It also indicates how metadynamism might be co-opted to enrich other consciousness theories, notably IIT and Orch-OR.
References:
[1] Barnden, J.A. (2014). Running into consciousness. J. Consciousness Studies, 21 (5-6), pp.33-56.
[2] Barnden, J.A. (2018). Phenomenal consciousness, meta-causation and developments concerning casual powers and time passage. Poster presented at 22nd Conference for the Association for the Scientific
Study of Consciousness, 26-29 June 2018, Krakow.
[3] Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2015). Phenomenological approaches to self-consciousness. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition).
[4] Sebastian, M.A. (2012). Experiential awareness: Do you prefer ``it''
to ``me''? Philosophical Topics, 40(2), pp.155-177."
Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
