Stoppelmann wrote: ↑December 25th, 2022, 6:47 am
1. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. There is quite a discussion to follow regarding qualia online if one has a look, and if we think about the central role our brains have in processing the stimuli that our senses give it, there is a real danger of misconception. This is especially obvious when we look at the survival aspects of identifying danger, and the example of taking a piece of rope to be a snake, showing our minds to be biased towards dangers that often are no longer real in our lives, but inherited from ancestors. We have seen this in patients with dementia and even in some cases in which people seem to be lethargic, when cognitive disabilities are dominant.
This means that awareness is something that needs to be trained, primarily in distinguishing reality in our perceptions from misinterpretations, which requires a degree of equanimity to perform correctly. Rushed or stressed people regularly misinterpret qualia, and unquestioning reliance on our conscious experience breaks down at some point, which experts in mindfulness are trained to expect. There are numerous examples of people who through accident, illness, or intention, lose the ability to interpret their perceptions in the standard way humans do, and they report seeing a world that is vastly different, in which objects are difficult to distinguish from their surroundings, and inexplicable things occur, which they cannot put into language. This is sometimes the experience that leads to extreme mental disorders and an inability to cope in everyday life. It appears that the sorting the brain undertakes is geared towards survival and the clear distinction of objects.
So, the illusion of objects isn’t that the objects are not there, but they are not what they appear to be, and are instead vibrating forms or patterns that vibrate at a different frequency to other forms, which causes them to attract or repel depending on the vibration frequency. Your jelly and finger have varying frequencies and therefore the reaction occurs as you described. It is possible for people whose brains no longer distinguishes the objects in a normal way to see this vibration, although what they see then has often been said to beyond language.
I also believe that Qualia isn’t “whatever the objective reality contains” that we try to grasp as accurately as possible and sometimes fail to do so. Instead, it should be “whatever we grasp OF whatever the objective reality contains”.
And I think I have a basic idea as to how Qualia "could occur" which then would result in having these qualities that you and I have mentioned above.
Consider the color Red for example. Obviously "Redness" is something only we can perceive, and it is not a part of the physical world. One could say that Redness is how the optical neurons translate that "red" frequency part of light into their own language, much like how the "jelly" translates the "finger", where the frequency itself is something they can translate only using what materials and functions they are made out of. For them to translate the frequency would be for them to physically react to the lightwave.
Solely from the subjective perspective of an object, its external impulse(its actual, objective, physical form) can be subjectively
translated into "the things it causes within the object from the object's perspective".
The last two words "object's perspective" holds a lot of significance though. If the red lightwave causes a few action potentials here and there, and makes neurons fire some neurotransmitters etc, then since that is basically what the red lightwave causes within the neurons, are those physical actions literally equal to the color red?
No. It's not equal, because we're looking at all this from a third-person perspective and not from the object's perspective. We cannot explain from an
objective point of view (that is, through third-person observations), how objects
subjectively translate external impulses. Through observations we can only know how the object interacts with the external impulse, not what its interaction "means" to the object a.k.a Qualia. However, we can still see how the outputs of objects differ after interacting with various different external impulses. For the neurons' case, the output would be neurotransmitters. A group of neurons seem to release their neurotransmitters in many different ways and many different moments depending on what their external impulses cause within the cell structure, or how they “translate” the external impulses.
Once a neuron creates an output which is the translated version of its external impulse, the second neuron would receive it. And the second neuron would then react to the output, which would accordingly create another output from the second neuron.
To delve deeper:
A neuron’s output after receiving an external impulse is the “result” of the neuron translating the external impulse, but the output itself is NOT the translation. Rather, the translation itself is what CAUSES the output or makes the output POSSIBLE (seen from the neuron’s own subjective perspective and not from our objective observation of the neuron), which is equal to “whatever makes the neuron exist the way it does”—which is therefore equal to “whatever makes it react to external impulses the way it does”.
Each output / neurotransmitter has a predefined function. In overly simple terms, they either make the neuron more or less likely to fire.
When an output from the aforementioned neuron is transmitted to the second neuron and causes a reaction there according to its own function, and if the output’s function is to make the neuron more likely to fire, then the second neuron can also fire and give an output of its own.
Therefore, we can say that the second neuron has similarly translated the first neuron’s output into its own output. And as always, the “second output” is not the second neuron’s actual translation of the “first output”. The actual translation of the “first output” is equal to what MAKES the second neuron generate the “second output”—from its own subjective perspective.
And so it continues, like a chain.
Whatever makes the “nth” neuron generate the “nth output”—from the nth neuron’s subjective existence—is always “controlled” (but not created, since neurons cannot “create” other neurons) by the previous neuron’s output when it comes to generating the nth neuron’s output. And the way in which they are “controlled” and the causal reasons in which the outputs are “decided”—when seen from the subjective perspective of the group of neurons—could be defined as Qualia.
The so-called Qualia is then successfully conserved throughout the “chain” because all outputs are causally connected due to laws of physics.
This is just me re-describing the process of translation in different terms, where each different external impulses or inputs (that isn’t too vague for the neurons’ structure) can generate different outputs, because a neuron possesses a fixed inherent “function” (like a mathematical function but slightly different) within its cell structure that determines its output accordingly by “putting the external impulse / input through its said function”, which is a process governed by causality and logic, as this is all caused by the laws of physics. Thus the causal connection between each and all neuron’s subjective existence.
This “function” is merely our objective interpretation of the aforementioned property of the neuron that “makes the output possible = what causes the output”. Its “subjective interpretation” cannot be generated from our external observation because it is inherently objective, but with some mental gymnastics it can be assumed to be something like “Whatever makes that function exist from the perspective of the function itself”.
So in that sense, all neurons that contribute the most to our self-awareness share the same translating method, meaning that they share the same language or dialectics. Each neuron cell, or each of their outputs, can be considered a single building block of language or dialectic. And since I believe that neural outputs are generated by causality (causality as in “this generates that”, and “that generates this” etc….think inhibitory or exhibitory neurotransmitters, and their chemical types) due to reasons above, then it is possible to create dialectics using just neurons. The dialectics would then be in the subjective realm of the neurons, as the neurons are the only one that can “subjectively translate” those outputs from other neurons, which is a process required for the dialectics to be created.
And I believe that all this is the basis for thinking or feeling too, and not just any other stereotypical definitions for Qualia such as color or sound. These dialectics operate by logical causality, meaning the way they create dialectics is governed by logical causality. However “what” they create is not governed by logical causality of the external world, because this is purely inside a subjective realm.
Which is probably why we can’t explain colors purely in terms of mathematical equations. It would also be what makes the kind of red seen in apples slightly different from the kind of red seen in strawberries.
Think of “how they create” as logical functions, and think of “what they create” as drawing on a canvas. Drawing things on a canvas does require causality and logic, since the canvas, the brush, and the painter all abide by the laws of physics. However, the painter can still end up “drawing” a “scenario” that is impossible to describe with laws of physics.
Lastly, I personally believe that the subjective difference between different senses such as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, comes from the fact that each of the sensory neurons that belong to each of the senses react to different external impulses with different physical nature (thus different ways of affecting the neurons), for different reasons and ways, each creating a different causal chain of neural translations (though they are “different” causal chains that belong to each senses and body parts, they all still belong to the one big causal chain that creates the “self”, meaning they are subsets).
Stoppelmann wrote: ↑December 25th, 2022, 6:47 am
2. Awareness itself, or consciousness, or even existence, is a state of being. Humanity has for millennia had traditions that seek to refine that, and modern day MBSR, or MBCT, as methods to reduce stress and provide cognitive therapy, which helps in relapse prevention with patients with recurrent depression or chronic pain, are a continuance of that. I trained in MBSR in 2002 and was able to pass on my experience to staff and patients with these problems, as far as they still had unrestricted cognitive abilities, and so I have a small knowledge of its potential.
The discovery of the distraction that our awareness is continually exposed to, much of it coming from our own inner voice, making a simple exercise of concentrating on our breath, or on our surroundings difficult, makes it clear why we often feel rushed or stressed. But the discovery of an observer, or a listener, at the core of our awareness, enables us to train to allow the distractions, even the distractions of depression and pain, to pass by without engaging with them. That is why such traditions that utilise meditation say that the real you is that silent observer. It is then a meditative exercise to create what has become known as the flow effect, in order to overcome the depressive episode or pain attack, or just the confusion of thoughts racing through the brain.
I doubt that without intervention the sorting function of the brain can be overcome, therefore we are reduced to watching the perceptions pass without engaging with them. The quality of awareness then has a depth that it is quite impossible to imagine occurring within a computation or calculation of predefined code. Rather, AI may have algorithms that imitate spontaneous decisions, but the scope is preordained, and given a framework in which reactions are possible.
First I’m gonna re-build upon my ideas on how awareness can be possible, which can be seen from the thread that I linked.
You must first remember the idea of the “chain” of neurons that I’ve mentioned above. My theory is that since it seems evident that within the chain, each neuron successfully “perceives” another neuron already in their own “subjective” way, all we have to do is make this chain “perceive itself” in order for it to be considered self-aware, which is quite literally just subjective self-perception.
And then I realized, just as how our brain can be classified into numerous “chains”, it can also be classified into numerous “rings”, which are just the aforementioned chains except they are now making a full circle instead of being a straight line. So when these chain of neurons make a full circle and become a ring, then as long as one neuron perceives another, all the neurons within the ring will perceive all the neurons within the ring. And each single neuron will perceive all other neurons within the ring, because each of the outputs that each neuron creates are caused by the outputs from the previous ring, which is also caused by the previous-previous ring, until it comes full circle so that one output is caused by all other outputs and vice versa. Thus as a result, if each single neurons perceive all other neurons, and if all the neurons perceive all other neurons, then this “ring” of neurons will perceive “it” self as a singular entity because all of its components / ways of generating outputs are causally connected, therefore causally singular.
And that’s just one ring within the brain. Due to how many neurons there are in the brain, the brain can be classified as / divided into billions of rings. All we have to do is to simplify it into a one giant, complex ring, where each of its components are rings of their own instead of neurons. The same logic would apply anyway.
So now that we have the “canvas” a.k.a self-awareness ready, we can finally store “whatever we are aware of” a.k.a Qualia, within the canvas.
If I perceive a vase, then is that going to fire up a group of neurons in my brain which is collectively shaped like a vase? No. The features of the vase, such as its color or its shape, may be perceived just by my optical neurons, but those neurons will transmit information to the giant pool of all other neurons, a.k.a the giant “ring” where my self-awareness resides, so that the information circulates that ring and becomes a part of the entirety of the neurons’ causality, thus “part of” the “entirety of” what I am aware of.
When I poke the jelly with my finger, to the jelly, I am defined as my finger. And to the jelly, my finger is defined as whatever effect it had to the jelly from its own subjective perspective.
Similarly, when we look at a neuron from a third person perspective, its external impulse, such as light of a certain frequency, is defined as what it objectively causes within itself (something we can see through observation). And when the neuron looks at itself from its own perspective, it now has an actual subjective perspective of “what it objectively causes within itself”, which is Qualia.
But a neuron cannot perceive itself. However, we can simply substitute the “ring” in the place of a neuron, because the ring can perceive itself. And then we can also substitute “what the external impulse causes within the neuron” into “(same as before)...causes within the neurons” / affects its single unified causality.
In other words:
What makes them react a certain way and what all of that means to the entirety of the brain—as in, what it causes to the entirety of the brain and how the brain subjectively perceives that as.
So, that’s basically the end of my theory on self-awareness and consciousness. With that said, regarding your opinion that all this might be incapable of replicating within computational systems, I personally think that there still is a chance of us being able to do so, mainly because all we might have to do is to replicate only the key aspects of neurons that makes self-awareness and Qualia possible, excluding all other negligible aspects that are a waste of time to replicate.
Keep in mind that below ideas are all theoretical and unproven, as I am not an expert in this field either. I just hope that I can offer at least some food for thought so that we can keep the discussion going, and then you and the other viewers of this topic can decide whether the ideas seem plausible or not. If whatever idea is not plausible and there is enough logical evidence for it, then I will be convinced.
With that said, one of the options would be to create an artificial neuron that physically replicates only the aforementioned key features within the neurons that generate consciousness, instead of replicating literally every single feature within the neurons.
Which includes: The ability to translate inputs (which are the outputs from the same kind) and as a result, opening up for a different kind of input. Then the ability to translate that different kind of input and produce an output as a result of sheer causality within the system. The ability to have its own outputs become the aforementioned inputs for its neighboring artificial neurons.
Adding on, the ability to form a direct causal relationship with the external world—i.e. Being able to instantly react to impulses from the external world in a way that makes use of all the components throughout the entire system.
With that said, the “different kinds of inputs” could be something that really meddles with the system in a fundamental way, so that the system can translate those inputs in a more clear and accurate manner—making it translate as much information as possible. Should cause a diverse range of interactions. Thus a wider variety of reasons to cause interactions or reactions between the artificial neurons, as well as more ways of reactions between or inside the artificial neurons.
(And being able to have those "reasons" and "ways of reacting" under total control, so that the translations actually BELONG to the self-aware consciousness, as well as the chain/ring of self-awareness can actually form under a single entity.)
Since neurons translate external impulses into the language they run in, the artificial neuron could do the exact same and translate external impulses into binary (that is determined by a specific function / equation), if that is the language they would run in. And furthermore, there could be a component within that artificial neuron that takes in those specific translated binaries as an input, and outputs a certain amount of signal that is determined by a specific function / equation, which the neighboring artificial neuron could then react to that “new” external impulse and so on.
The “equation” here that mathematically decides the way the specific input leads to a specific binary reaction, and the way the specific binary leads into a specific output signal of the artificial neuron, would be the substitute for how “the way a neuron reacts” chemically determines how the neuron will open which ion gates, or what neurotransmitter the neuron would release and how much. Therefore this one equation should be universal throughout all the neurons, just as how the laws of chemistry are also universal throughout all the neurons. This would also make possible for the other neuron to use the previous neuron’s output to successfully perceive **how the previous neuron translated its own previous neuron’s output** (since they share the same equation when it comes to translating = perceiving one thing as something—which the outputs are a product of), therefore successfully creating a shared perspective throughout neurons.
(Math being the substitute for chemistry here.)
The more detailed the equation, the better, as it solidifies more and more ways of determining the output / ways of translating—which would lead to a more enriched and diverse artificial consciousness.
This artificial neuron could first take in the input (the output of the previous artificial neuron) → instantly react to it by opening up to a different kind of input (doesn’t have to be from outside unlike neurons and its external ions, this can all still happen on the inside) (“the way it opens up / whatever opens up” or “whether it will open up” will be decided by the very previous input) → reacting once more to that different kind of input → produce a signal that becomes its output, and becomes the input of the next artificial neuron.
We perceive gray and argue about whether it's black or white.
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