Conscious Organisms Research Articles

How Entropy Explains the Emergence of Consciousness: The Entropic Theory

Abstract Aim: Emergentism as an ontology of consciousness leaves unanswered the question as to its mechanism. I aim to solve the body–mind problem by explaining how conscious organisms emerged on an evolutionary basis at various times in accordance with an accepted scientific principle through a mechanism that cannot be understood, in principle. Proposal: The reason for this cloak of secrecy is found in a seeming contradiction in the behavior of information with respect to the first two laws of thermodynamics. Information, the microstate of particles within an isolated system’s macrostate, can, like first-law energy, be neither created nor destroyed, yet the information in the system, like second-law entropy, will inevitably increase. To explain information increasing without being created, Laplace’s demon is invoked, able to predict where each particle is destined. This doesn’t work for emerging events like consciousness, which are unpredictable. This can be understood in terms of the derivation of entropy, and the emergence of classical physics, from the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. I propose that the increased entropy in a time-irreversible, unpredictable (emergent) isolated system requires the simultaneous deletion of information concerning the steps, or calculations, involved. Conclusion: Thus, the steps leading to consciousness are immediately destroyed and must remain a mystery. Implications include that entropy, not panpsychism, is the universal principle generative of consciousness, that our being conscious proves that we are not predetermined, and that consciousness requires assuming an “entropy debt” that can only be repaid by living organisms, prohibiting the emergence of conscious machines.

Sponge-like, semi-interpenetrating self-sensory hydrogel for smart photothermal-responsive soft actuator with biomimetic self-diagnostic intelligence

Actuators based on hydrogels are good candidates for biomimetic soft robots due to their excellent mechanical properties and flexibility. Despite great efforts in hydrogel-based actuators, their actuation process still differs from the “recognition-judgment-execution” process that conscious intelligent beings go through owing to the lack of perceptive capacity. Herein, to imitate the intelligent actuation process of conscious organisms, a fast photo-thermal responsive and self-sensory soft actuator is proposed based on sponge-like hydrogel with semi-interpenetrating (semi-IPN) polymer network of thermosensitive poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) and electronically conductive polyaniline (PANI). The proposed actuator exhibits excellent photo-thermal responsiveness enabling remotely triggered actuation controlled by near infrared light (NIR), covering all azimuths with ultrafast response rate (within 2 s) and recover rate (within 1 s). Meanwhile, the conformational transition of PNIPAM networks during the course of actuation also lead to accompanying migration of the interpenetrated PANI chains and significant variation of local conductivity (>15%), endowing the actuator with self-sensing capacity to monitor its deformations. Eventually, a smart self-adaptive actuator is designed inspired by neuromuscular in intelligent organisms, which can actively perceive external environmental stimuli and consciously regulate its own shape transformation by monitoring and analyzing electrical signal. This sensory actuating hydrogel can provide insights into the development of artificial intelligent soft robotics with higher levels of autonomy and complexity.

REPLY TO “COULD SIGN-BASED SEMANTICS AND EMBODIED SEMANTICS BENEFIT ONE ANOTHER?”

Sign-based semantics and embodied semantics are argued to be mutually beneficial to one another. However, while the body does shape our cognitive activities to a great extent, this does not entail that cognition can be reduced to sensorimotor simulation, i.e that the mind can be reduced to the body. Language itself bears testimony to this, as the mind is construed in ordinary discourse as having the incredible capacity of being free to travel beyond the limits of present time and current spatial location. Nagel has argued famously that mind is a fundamental datum of nature that the materialist version of evolutionary biology is unable to account for, as consciousness has an essentially subjective character to it, a ‘what it is like for the conscious organism itself’ aspect, that cannot be reduced to the matter of which the organism is constituted. Two modern scientific developments refute the contention that the human mind can be explained as a purely material machine: quantum theory in physics and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics. Just because the mind works through the body does not entail that the mind can be reduced to the body.

Biological relativity revisited: the pre-eminent role of values.

Multilevel interpretations of development and evolution take to heart the contextual nature of both those processes, and so necessarily assume top-down causation occurs, right down to the physics level. In this article we revisit the Principle of Biological Relativity proposed by Noble in 2012, where all emergent levels of organisation are equally causally valid. While this is true in general for physical interactions between levels, we argue that in the case of conscious organisms making rational choices, there is indeed a preferred causal origin - namely the overall embracing influence of meaning and values. This is the opposite of what is suggested by a reductionist viewpoint, where it is the bottom-most physical level that is stated to be causally preferred (by some physicists), or the genetic level (by some evolutionary theorists). Charles Darwin was therefore correct to distinguish between Artificial (conscious) Selection, where values enter, and Natural Selection. The Modern Synthesis was wrong to exclude Darwin's distinction.

Integrated information theory does not make plant consciousness more convincing

It has been proposed by some plant scientists that plants are cognitive and conscious organisms, although this is a minority view. Here we present a brief summary of some of the arguments against this view, followed by a critique of an article in this same issue of Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications by Calvo, Baluska, and Trewavas (2020) that cites Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as providing additional support for plant consciousness. The authors base their argument on the assumptions that all cells are conscious and that consciousness is confined to life. However, IIT allows for consciousness in various nonliving systems, and thus does not restrict consciousness to living organisms. Therefore, IIT cannot be used to prove plant consciousness, for which there is neither empirical evidence nor support from other, neuron-based, theories of consciousness.

Emergent rules of computation in the Universe lead to life and consciousness: a computational framework for consciousness

We introduce a computational framework for consciousness. We hypothesize that emergent rules of computation in the Universe lead to life and consciousness. We live in a Universe that has a substrate capable of computing or information processing. We suggest that inprinciple, any Universe that is capable of supporting information processing and has energy can evolve life and consciousness. We hypothesize that the Universe encodes rules in the form of physical laws that allow for the emergence of both life and conscious organisms. A key insight is that there are different levels ofconsciousness starting from atoms to organisms to galaxies. We propose a metric of complexity that can quantify the amount of consciousness in a system by measuring both the amount of information and the capability to process that information. We hope that this framework will allow us to better understand consciousness and design machines that are conscious and empathetic. Consciousness and life may be a general phenomenon in our information rich Universe and their maybe other structures designed or otherwise that may be capable of it. Consciousness is an emergent property of an information rich Universe that is capable of processing that information in complex myriad ways.

Building blocks of consciousness: Revealing the shared, hidden depths of our biological heritage

Human consciousness has been a hard problem for thousands of years and, in the course of time, variously interpreted and often too narrowly defined. As a result, the possibility of animal consciousness, sentience or even the possibility that animals can experience pain, received no, or very little, attention. Driven by the trope that animals lack the basic neural attributes to even experience pain, humans have seriously endangered the natural existence of untold multitudes of sentient organisms. However, humans are not the only conscious organisms on the planet, as suggested by a variety of research results, attesting to the fact that even lower vertebrates possess sentience and feel pain. Multiple research findings have now stressed the need for a phylogenetic approach to consciousness, which, in the long run, will have extensive theological implications. Succinctly put, these findings indicate that we live in a world of minds, and that only some of them are human. Contribution: This article is part of a special collection that reflects fundamentally on the origin and evolution of the universe as well as what the future possibly might hold. It is based on historical thought and contemporary research. Different, conflicting sources are being interpreted, and the research approach is in line with the intersectional and interdisciplinary nature of this journal. We do not directly engage theology and religion, although the research and empirical data are underpinned by a moral imperative that cannot be avoided by theological and religious disciplines.

COVID-19 as a Conscious Organism: A Novel Understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 as a Natural Evolution of the SARS Virus

The RNA virus SARS-COV-2 that has led to the outbreak of the worst ever pandemic has one particular enhanced virulence factor, the spike protein in the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD). We discuss its evolution from earlier strains of respiratory infection causing viruses in terms of increased incubation period and symptomatic width. We propose that any disease can be considered as an evolving conscious organism having its own teleological evolutionary pathway, the pathogens, vectors and hosts being merely the vehicles of its transmission, and not its causes. In this perspective even if it is the result of some sinister design by genetic modification in laboratory, it still can be considered as its natural evolution only, in which the scientists themselves became its extended evolution and transmission vehicles, which made it defy the existing medical knowledge, methods, resources and efforts. In an expanded scheme the pathogens like SARS COV-2 are to be considered as predator species for their human hosts. We conclude that only with conscious awareness of expression of emotions keeping reasonable restrictions on oneself mankind can ever hope to address such pandemics.

Forget the Bat

The philosophical legacy of the idea that there must be something it is like to be a conscious organism, together with an inclination to regard organic life forms as having qualities fundamentally distinct from other physical systems, have adversely affected the development of the nascent discipline of machine consciousness. This paper highlights some of the factors involved, and as a corrective proposes a reframing of machine consciousness within a thoroughgoing engineering context. This is shown to offer some significant avenues for progress, while bringing with it some theoretical problems requiring further consideration such as the status of the possible consciousness of a wholly virtual system.

The Projective Consciousness Model and Phenomenal Selfhood.

We summarize our recently introduced Projective Consciousness Model (PCM) (Rudrauf et al., 2017) and relate it to outstanding conceptual issues in the theory of consciousness. The PCM combines a projective geometrical model of the perspectival phenomenological structure of the field of consciousness with a variational Free Energy minimization model of active inference, yielding an account of the cybernetic function of consciousness, viz., the modulation of the field’s cognitive and affective dynamics for the effective control of embodied agents. The geometrical and active inference components are linked via the concept of projective transformation, which is crucial to understanding how conscious organisms integrate perception, emotion, memory, reasoning, and perspectival imagination in order to control behavior, enhance resilience, and optimize preference satisfaction. The PCM makes substantive empirical predictions and fits well into a (neuro)computationalist framework. It also helps us to account for aspects of subjective character that are sometimes ignored or conflated: pre-reflective self-consciousness, the first-person point of view, the sense of minenness or ownership, and social self-consciousness. We argue that the PCM, though still in development, offers us the most complete theory to date of what Thomas Metzinger has called “phenomenal selfhood.”

What is consciousness for?

Abstract The answer to the title question is, in a word, volition. Our hypothesis is that the ultimate adaptive function of consciousness is to make volitional movement possible. All conscious processes exist to subserve that ultimate function. Thus, we believe that all conscious organisms possess at least some volitional capability. Consciousness makes volitional attention possible; volitional attention, in turn, makes volitional movement possible. There is, as far as we know, no valid theoretical argument or convincing empirical evidence that consciousness itself has any direct causal efficacy other than volition. Consciousness, via volitional action, increases the likelihood that an organism will direct its attention, and ultimately its movements, to whatever is most important for its survival and reproduction.

Context and Perspective: Implications for Assessment in Education

Background/Context This article is a piece of analytic and descriptive commentary based on the work of the Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment of Education. Purpose The purpose of this essay is to advocate for greater attention given to the correlates of human performance in educational measurement. The authors argue the importance of attribution, context, and perspective as factors influencing human performance. Research Design The essay is primarily analytic and historical with respect to the conceptualizations that should guide the contextualization of assessment in education. Conclusions (a) Greater respect for and sensitivity to the fact that adaptive behavior is a function of the integration of affective, cognitive, and situative processes operating in conscious organisms functioning in context. (b) Importance of systems of assessment that produce multiple forms of data that should be combined in different constellations for specific purposes. (c) Explicit recognition that decontextualized and situated probes are in fact distortions and the data from such probes cannot legitimately be used for definitive judgment. (d) Emerging electronic digital technologies may provide opportunities for effective assessments of contexts, as well as assessments of adaptive behaviors in context. (e) The documentation of personal attributions and personal perceptions are problematic, though such data are important and must be subjected to systematicity in programs of assessment in education. (f) Formative assessment, portfolio development, and relational analysis.

WORLD-RELATED INTEGRATED INFORMATION: ENACTIVIST AND PHENOMENAL PERSPECTIVES

Information integration is a measure, developed by Tononi and co-researchers, of the capacity for dynamic neural networks to be in informational states which are unique and indivisible. This is supposed to correspond to the intuitive "feel" of a mental state: highly discriminative and yet fundamentally integrated. Recent versions of the theory include a definition of qualia, which measures the geometric contribution of individual neural structures to the overall measure. In this paper, we examine these approaches from two philosophical perspectives, enactivism (externalism) and phenomenal states (internalism). We suggest that a promising enactivist response is to agree with Tononi that consciousness consists of integrated information, but to argue for a radical rethink about the nature of information itself. We argue that information is most naturally viewed as a three-place relation, involving a Bayesian-rational subject, the subject's evidence and the world (as brought under the subject's evolving understanding). To have (or gain) information is to behave in a Bayesian-rational way in response to evidence. Information only ever belongs to whole, rationally behaving agents; information is only "in the brain" from the point of view of a theorist seeking to explain behavior. Rational behavior (hence information) will depend on brain, body and world — embodiment matters. Then, from a phenomenal states perspective, we examine the way that internal states of a network can be not only unique and indivisible but also reflect this coherence as it might exist in an external world. Extending previously published material, we propose that two systems could both score well on traditional integration measures where one had meaningful world-representing states and the other did not. A model which involves iconic learning and depiction is discussed and tested in order to show how internal states can be about the world and how measures of integration influence this process. This retains some of the structure of Tononi's integration measurements but operates within sets of states of the world as filtered by receptors and repertoires of internal states achieved by depiction. This suggests a formalization of qualia which does not ignore world-reflecting content and relates to internal states that aid the conscious organism's ability to act appropriately in the world of which it is conscious. Thus, a common theme emerges: Tononi has good intuition about the necessary nature of consciousness, but his is not the only theory of experience able to do justice to these key intuitions. Tononi's theory has an apparent weakness, in that it treats conscious "information" as something intrinsically meaningless (i.e., without any necessary connection to the world), whereas both the approaches canvassed here naturally relate experienced information to the world.

The ubiquity of consciousness.

Our definitions of consciousness and intelligence are largely anthropocentric, potentially skewing research. In fact, consciousness in its many forms could well be ubiquitous, even down to the simplest of organisms.

From Experimental Interaction to the Brain as the Epistemic Object of Neurobiology

This article argues that understanding everyday practices in neurobiological labs requires us to take into account a variety of different action positions: self-conscious social actors, technical artifacts, conscious organisms, and organisms being merely alive. In order to understand the interactions among such diverse entities, highly differentiated conceptual tools are required. Drawing on the theory of the German philosopher and sociologist Helmuth Plessner, the paper analyzes experimenters as self-conscious social persons who recognize monkeys as conscious organisms. Integrating Plessner’s ideas into the stock of concepts used in science and technology studies provides richer descriptions of laboratory life. In particular, this theory allows an understanding of a crucial feature of neurobiological brain research: the construction of the brain as the epistemic object of brain research. As such, the brain must be isolated from the acting and interacting organism in a complicated process.

Cognitive Computation: An Introduction

Cognitive Computation: An Introduction

Designing Conscious Systems

This paper reviews computational work that is currently developing under the heading of ‘Machine Consciousness’ and sets out to provide a guide for those who wish to contribute to this field. First, questions of philosophical concern as to the appropriateness of this activity are raised and discussed. Then some classical designs and computational attitudes are described before arguing that fine-grain neural approaches are needed to provide truly phenomenal representations that stand in relation to the behaviour of a computational organism as subjective mental states stand in relation to the existence of a conscious organism. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the validity and benefits of designing conscious systems.

Singular simplicity

Take the idea of exponential technological growth, work it through to its logical conclusion, and there you have the singularity. Its bold incredibility pushes aside incredulity, as it challenges us to confront all the things we thought could never come true - the creation of super intelligent, conscious organisms, nanorobots that can swim in our bloodstreams and fix what ails us, and direct communication from mind to mind. And the piece de resistance: a posthuman existence of disembodied uploaded minds, living on indefinitely without fear, sickness, or want in a virtual paradise ingeniously designed to delight, thrill, and stimulate. This vision argues that machines will become conscious and then perfect themselves, as described elsewhere in this issue. Yet for all its show of tough- minded audacity, the argument is shot through with sloppy reasoning, wishful thinking, and irresponsibility. Infatuated with statistics and seduced by the power of extrapolation, singularitarians abduct the moral imagination into a speculative no-man's-land. To be sure, they are hardly the first to spread fanciful technological prophecies, but among enthusiasts and doomsayers alike their proposition enjoys an inexplicable popularity. Perhaps the real question is how they have gotten away with it.

What is the mind-body problem?

The mind-body problem exists because we naturally want to include the mental life of conscious organisms in a comprehensive scientific understanding of the world. On the one hand it seems obvious that everything that happens in the mind depends on, or is, something that happens in the brain. On the other hand the defining features of mental states and events, features like their intentionality, their subjectivity and their conscious experiential quality, seem not to be comprehensible simply in terms of the physical operation of the organism. This is not just because we have not yet accumulated enough empirical information: the problem is theoretical. We cannot at present imagine an explanation of colour perception, for example, which would do for that phenomenon what chemistry has done for combustion--an explanation which would tell us in physical terms, and without residue, what the experience of colour perception is. Philosophical analyses of the distinguishing features of the mental that are designed to get us over this hurdle generally involve implausible forms of reductionism, behaviouristic in inspiration. The question is whether there is another way of bringing mental phenomena into a unified conception of objective reality, without relying on a narrow standard of objectivity which excludes everything that makes them interesting.

The Even Harder Problem of Consciousness

The problem of subjective experience remains a major topic of debate amongst researchers in both the philosophy of mind and the foundations of artificial intelligence. David Chalmers has referred to this as The Hard Problem of Consciousness, since subjective experience appears to resist most attempts at a functional description. Theories involving 60Hz oscillations in the cerebral cortex, Bose condensates, and quantum collapse in microtubules have all been proffered as offering potential solutions to The Hard Problem, while some other researchers seem eager to retain an essentially dualistic world-view. This paper proposes an even more fundamental problem, potentially disturbing to both sides of the materialist / dualist divide: given that conscious organisms exist in the world, how can it be that one of those organisms happens to be you?