A Theory on Consciousness - shared strand analogy

[C C]

I think the question of memory hinges on what level we’re talking about.

In my model, biological memory, storage, recall, cognition, identity ... clearly belongs to nervous systems.

That’s where structured, usable memory exists in the sense we normally mean it.

When I talk about a more fundamental layer having “memory,” I don’t mean stored thoughts, knowledge, or recall. I mean something closer to continuity of pattern.

In other words, experience doesn’t just appear and vanish in isolation, but may contribute to an ongoing structure over time, even if we don’t understand the form that structure takes.

So I’m not proposing a universal brain or a literal storage system. I’m suggesting that if awareness is fundamental, it might also have continuity, and continuity implies some form of persistence.

I’m using “memory” in that broader sense, not cognition, but the possibility that experience leaves traces in the overall structure of reality, rather than being entirely self-contained at the biological level.

Well, there's the mention of "universal awareness", that the brain -- apparently regarded as reducing valve -- narrows to the limitation of a distinct, personal identity ("experience with borders"). "Awareness" is a term that's usually loaded with at least some degree of cognition -- of knowledge or a minimal degree of processing. If that intellectual ability (identification and understanding) is always in connection with something biological or technological, then no problem.

Everything about consciousness is amenable to being satisfactorily explained by science (except for the manifestations of thought and vision, hearing, touch, etc). The "easy stuff" is much ado about nothing. Sapience, analyzing data and navigating in an environment have all been rudimentarily accomplished in robots and AI (and a "model of self" could be installed in the latter, if industry wanted to dangerously go in that direction).

With respect to the problem of the manifestations (isolated from the easy issues), Smolin both illuminated the way to avoid both the "magical conjuring" route and why science can't grapple with it in any deeper manner than correlation...

• Lee Smolin: The problem of consciousness is an aspect of the question of what the world really is. We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence; it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains. [Time Reborn ... page 270]

Panpsychism is vulnerable to misinterpretation (outsiders willfully do it all the time) because the Greek "psyche" root etymologically boils down to "mind" in totality (the intellectual attributes, not just the experiences). Terms like "pan-phenomenalism" or "pan-experientialism" arguably avoid that, where the manifestations (primitive versions of them) would precede or be more fundamental than cognition. Russellian monism could serve as a bridge between philosophy and physics, but that's all it would ever be, unless the latter literally introduced precursors for the complex phenomenal experiences of the brain to emerge from (highly unlikely to happen, apart from ignorable fringe papers).
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[Lumen]

I think the problems of dualism are what propelled thinkers like Russell and Wm James towards a neutral monism. In those approaches, some kind of awareness becomes a property of matter, rather than a thing. Per previous posts (like mine, #8, and #9-10, from CC) panpsychism generally avoids dualism. Consciousness becomes something matter does, but only in a very rudimentary form unless it is causally organized towards information processing.

Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is considered a scientific form of panpsychism. (Though it differs from traditional panpsychism by requiring specific causal interactions, which I can get into later if Lumen has any interest)

I think that’s a helpful distinction to raise.

I’m not intending to treat consciousness as a separate substance in a Cartesian sense, and I can see how describing it as an “underlying awareness” could sound that way if taken too literally.

What I’m trying to point toward is closer to a structural or process view than a thing-like entity. In other words, I’m not imagining a ghostly layer added onto matter, but wondering whether what we call awareness might be a more fundamental aspect of reality that becomes organised and shaped through biological systems, particularly nervous systems.

So I probably sit somewhere between those positions. I don’t see consciousness as something generated from nothing by brains, but I also don’t see it as a separate object.

I’m trying to describe it more as something that becomes localised and structured into individual experience through the brain.

That’s partly why panpsychist and neutral monist ideas feel adjacent to what I’m describing, even though I arrived at the model independently and without a technical background in the existing literature.

My interest is mainly in whether individuality could arise from the filtering and organisation of something more general, rather than awareness being created entirely from scratch.

I don’t have any detailed knowledge of IIT, but I’m open to hearing more about it, especially in terms of how it explains the formation of distinct individual perspectives.

EDIT:

This may be a rough analogy, but it helps me visualise what I’m trying to describe.

If you think of biology as one component (like blue) and a more basic form of awareness as another component (like yellow), then what we call a conscious person might be more like the result of those two interacting (green).

The outcome isn’t identical to either part on its own it’s something new that only appears when both are present.

I’m not suggesting these are literal substances being mixed.

I just mean that individual consciousness might arise from the interaction between a biological system and something more fundamental, rather than being entirely produced from scratch by the brain alone.

 

[TheVat]

With respect to the problem of the manifestations (isolated from the easy issues), Smolin both illuminated the way to avoid both the "magical conjuring" route and why science can't grapple with it in any deeper manner than correlation...

• Lee Smolin: The problem of consciousness is an aspect of the question of what the world really is. We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence; it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains. [Time Reborn ... page 270]

I recall being struck by the clarity of that passage when I read Smolin - a useful take on Nagel's "what it's like" or "qualia." Intrinsic aspects of nature seem to float beyond the space which can be addressed by the detectors or symbol systems of physics. And yes, panphenomenalism is an appealing term as it frames something more fundamental and less directed than cognition. Panpsychism does always tempt me, as a term, to imagine tree spirits issuing angry polemics about the lumber industry. Or hurling their apples at Kansas farm girls.