The Conscious Mind

It still seems utterly mysterious that the causation of behavior should be accompanied by a subjective inner life. (Location 143)

discusses the relation between consciousness and functional organization, using thought experiments to argue that consciousness is an “organizational invariant”: that is, that every system with the right functional organization will have the same sort of conscious experience, no matter what it is made (Location 228)

Chapter 8 considers what a fundamental theory of consciousness might look like, and suggests that it may involve a close relation between consciousness and information. This is by far the most speculative chapter, but at this point some speculation is probably needed if we are to make progress. (Location 230)

Note: Makes Sense its all information

If some of the ideas in this book are useful to others in constructing a better theory, the attempt will have been worthwhile. (Location 241)

There is also an internal aspect; there is something it feels like to be a cognitive agent. This internal aspect is conscious experience. Conscious experiences range from vivid color sensations to experiences of the faintest background aromas; from hard-edged pains to the elusive experience of thoughts on the tip of one’s tongue; from mundane sounds and smells to the encompassing grandeur of musical experience; from the triviality of a nagging itch to the weight of a deep existential angst; from the specificity of the taste of peppermint to the generality of one’s experience of selfhood. All these have a distinct experienced quality. All are prominent parts of the inner life of the mind. (Location 302)

Note: Answer Could be that the diff layers are diff memespaces and our reality is judt the intersection

The structure of images usually corresponds to the structure of the world in a straightforward way, but sounds can seem quite independent. (Location 374)

Emotions. Emotions often have distinctive experiences associated with them. The sparkle of a happy mood, the weariness of a deep depression, the red-hot glow of a rush of anger, the melancholy of regret: all of these can affect conscious experience profoundly, although in a much less specific way than localized experiences such as sensations. These emotions pervade and color all of our conscious experiences while they last. (Location 423)

On the phenomenal concept, mind is characterized by the way it feels; on the psychological concept, mind is characterized by what it does. (Location 456)

nothing that we can understand to be in the mind, regarded in this way, that is not a thought or dependent on a thought. If it were not a thought nor dependent on a thought it would not belong to the mind qua thinking thing; and we cannot have any thought of which we are not aware at the very moment it is in us. (Location 478)

Most notably, Sigmund Freud and his contemporaries solidified the idea that many activities of the mind are unconscious, and that there can be such things as unconscious beliefs and desires. The very fact that this notion seemed coherent is evidence that a nonphenomenal analysis of thought was being used. It appears that Freud construed the notions causally. Desire, very roughly, (Location 487)

This view, logical behaviorism, is recognizably the precursor of much of what passes for orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy of psychology. In particular, it was the most explicit codification of the link between mental concepts and the causation of behavior. (Location 507)

Why the causal role is played and why the phenomenal quality is present are two entirely different questions. (Location 540)

The phenomenal component is much more prominent in “sensation” than in “perception,” as witnessed by the fact that the idea of unconscious perception seems to make more sense than that of unconscious sensation. (Location 594)

It is a fact about the human mind that whenever a phenomenal property is instantiated, a corresponding psychological property is instantiated. Conscious experience does not occur in a vacuum. It is always tied to cognitive processing, and it is likely that in some sense it arises from that processing. Whenever one has a sensation, for example, there is some information processing going on: a corresponding perception, if you like. (Location 674)

As we saw above, we now have a pretty good idea of how a physical system can have psychological properties: the psychological mind–body problem has been dissolved. What remains is the question of why and how these psychological properties are accompanied by phenomenal properties: why all the stimulation and reaction associated with pain is accompanied by the experience of pain, for instance. (Location 747)

The notion of supervenience formalizes the intuitive idea that one set of facts can fully determine another set of facts. (Location 893)

Phenomena such as hallucination and illusion illustrate the fact that it is internal structure rather than context that is directly responsible for experience. (Location 937)

In the reverse direction, any situation that is naturally possible will be logically possible. The class of natural possibilities is therefore a subset of the class of logical possiblities. (Location 993)

The logical–natural distinction and the global–local distinction cut across each other. (Location 1025)

Note: 2x2 matrix

No explanation given wholly in physical terms can ever account for the emergence of conscious experience. This may seem to be a negative conclusion, but it leads to some strong positive consequences that I will bring out in later chapters. (Location 2133)

We can appeal to epistemology, arguing that the right sort of link between knowledge of physical facts and knowledge of consciousness is absent. (Location 2142)

the question is whether the notion of a zombie is conceptually coherent. The mere intelligibility of the notion is enough to establish the conclusion. (Location 2184)

Such a theory will be similar in kind to the theories that physics gives us of matter, of motion, or of space and time. Physical theories do not derive the existence of these features from anything more basic, but they still give substantial, detailed accounts of these features and of how they interrelate, with the result that we have satisfying explanations of many specific phenomena involving mass, space, and time. They do this by giving a simple, powerful set of laws involving the various features, from which all sorts of specific phenomena follow as a consequence. (Location 4592)

Physics does not content itself with being a mere mass of observations about the positions, velocities, and charges of various objects at various times; it systematizes these observations and shows how they are consequences of underlying laws, where the underlying laws are as simple and as powerful as possible. (Location 4616)

It may be, for example, that we will find overarching laws that subsume the phenomena of both physics and consciousness into a grander theory, (Location 4631)

Note: This is us gutoe

It might still be objected that all sorts of theories remain compatible with the first-person data: from solipsistic theories (in which only I am conscious) to panpsychist theories (in which everything is conscious); from biochemicalist theories (in which consciousness arises only from certain biochemical organizations) to computationalist theories (in which consciousness arises from anything with the right sort of computational organization); including along the way such bizarre theories as the theory that people are only conscious in odd-numbered years (right now, it is 1995). How can we rule out any of these theories, given that we cannot poke inside others’ minds to measure their conscious experience? All such theories are logically compatible with the data, but this is not enough to make them plausible. (Location 4649)

developing a theory of consciousness is to focus on the remarkable coherence between conscious experience and cognitive structure. The phenomenology and the psychology of the mind do not float free of each other; they are systematically related. The many lawful relations between consciousness and cognition can provide much of what we need to get a theory of consciousness off the ground. The best way to get a handle on this relationship is to focus on phenomenal judgments. These judgments are part of psychology, but they are closely bound up with phenomenology, and as such they provide a bridge between the domains. (Location 4701)

So alongside the general principle that where there is consciousness, there is awareness, and vice versa, we have a more specific principle: the structure of consciousness is mirrored by the structure of awareness, and the structure of awareness is mirrored by the structure of consciousness. I will call this the principle of structural coherence.4 This is a central and systematic relation between phenomenology and psychology, and ultimately can be cashed out into a relation between phenomenology and underlying physical processes. As we will see, it is useful in a number of ways. (Location 4841)

The answer must be that whenever conclusions about experience are drawn from empirical results, a bridging principle linking physical processes to experience is doing the work. A bridging principle will give a criterion for the presence of consciousness in a system, a criterion that applies at the physical level. Such a principle will act as an epistemic lever leading from knowledge about physical processes to knowledge about experience. (Location 5089)

The bridging principle that I have recommended is that of the coherence between consciousness and awareness: when a system is aware of some information, in the sense that the information is directly available for global control, then the information is conscious. I suspect that if one undertook a careful study of the bridging principles used by empirical researchers and by those who interpret empirical research, almost all such principles would be compatible with this one and indeed derivable from it. The most common bridging principle, of course, is the use of reportability as a criterion for experience: at least in a language-using system, it is generally held that information is conscious if it is reportable. (Location 5101)

Note: This feels inconsistent with Aaron White ‘s concept that consciousness can be anywhere But David Chalmers also earlier suggests i’ts possible Need a bridge to the “available for control or reportable” bit when there are no obvious levers for control or reporting eg speaking, is this too human centric

If consciousness is always accompanied by awareness, and vice versa, in my own case and in the case of all humans, one is led to suspect that something systematic is going on. There is certainly a lawlike correlation in the familiar cases. We can therefore put forward the hypothesis that this coherence is a law of nature: in any system, consciousness (Location 5214)

Why should the world be set up so that awareness gives rise to consciousness only in beings with a particular biology, or such that internal homunculi are ruled out? The hypotheses seem baroque, with extraneous distractions built in. (Location 5258)

Once we accept that materialism is false, it becomes clear that the search for a physical X-factor is irrelevant; instead, we have to look for a “Y-factor,” something additional to the physical facts that will help explain consciousness. We find such a Y-factor in the postulation of irreducible psychophysical laws. Once we have imported these into our framework, the intuition that consciousness is a further fact is preserved, and the problem is removed. (Location 5269)

Note: I like this approach, it creates an orthogonal approach to the problem The X factor is actually Y factor because it’s orthogonal to the physical world

It is interesting to speculate on just what our principles of coherence imply for the existence of consciousness outside the human race, and in particular in much simpler organisms. (Location 5292)

Around here the matter gets tricky. It is tempting to extend the coherence further down the information-processing scale; but sooner or later, the notion of “awareness” gives out on us and can do no explanatory work, due to its indeterminacy. I will not speculate further on this matter for now, but I return to it later. (Location 5301)

natural suggestion is that consciousness arises in virtue of the functional organization of the brain. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrate of the brain is irrelevant to the production of consciousness. What counts is the brain’s abstract causal organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates. Functional organization is best understood as the abstract pattern of causal interaction between various parts of a system, and perhaps between these parts and external inputs and outputs. A functional organization is determined by specifying (1) a number of abstract components, (2) for each component, a number of different possible states, and (3) a system of dependency relations, specifying how the state of each component depends on previous states of all components and on inputs to the system, and how outputs from the system depend on previous component states. (Location 5308)

When two systems share their functional organization in this strict sense, I will say that they are functional isomorphs. I claim that conscious experience arises from fine-grained functional organization. More specifically, I will argue for a principle of organizational invariance, holding that given any system that has conscious experiences, then any system that has the same fine-grained functional organization will have qualitatively identical experiences. According to this principle, consciousness is an organizational invariant: a property that remains constant over all functional isomorphs of a given system. Whether the organization is realized in silicon chips, in the population of China, or in beer cans and ping-pong balls does not matter. As long as the functional organization is right, conscious experience will be determined. (Location 5337)

Note: Great, this is now consistent with my worldview

Just as one can believe that consciousness arises from a physical system but is not a physical state, one can believe that consciousness arises from functional organization but is not a functional state. The view that I advocate has this form—we might call it nonreductive functionalism. It might be seen as a way of combining functionalism and property dualism. (Location 5345)

The key question in this chapter is whether absent or inverted qualia are naturally (or empirically) possible. It is logically possible that a plate may fly upward when one lets go of it in a vacuum on a planetary surface, but it is nevertheless naturally impossible. The laws of nature forbid it. (Location 5371)

Note: Possibly related to the notion of consistency You can “imagine” a scenario that is physically / thermodynamically impossible the plate floating, but the internal consistency of the universe, the “natural” laws per Chalmers, are like the blockchain, creating a non fungible shared “reality”

If an isomorph is much faster or slower than the original system, we cannot simply substitute a circuit from one system into the other and expect everything to function normally. So the argument as I have given it does not rule out the possibility that a change in speed that leaves functional organization constant might be responsible for an inversion in qualia. A similar loophole is left open for physical isomorphs that differ merely in their history: perhaps if I was born in the Southern Hemisphere I will experience green, whereas a physical twin born in the North will experience red. (Location 5815)

Note: Fun concept - related to the fact that the time scale / signal processing velocity is absolutely related to the scoping of the “functional isomorph” and that if you’re on too different of a wavelength you can’t actually communicate with the other time scales And the notion of “History” is also related - the idea that you could theoretically have arrived at a moment in i time that is exactly this through various paths, and you can “discover” them

Once we have a set of fundamental physical and psychophysical laws, we may in a certain sense understand the basic structure of the universe. This is a tall order, and we will not achieve it anytime soon. (Location 5934)

Note: Let’s do it We def can, feels like we’re on the right track

We can think of these states as the two “bits,” 0 and 1. The fact that these two states are different from each other exhausts their nature. That is, this information space is fully characterized by its difference structure. (Location 5958)

One can also have an information space whose structure is that of a two-dimensional continuum, or a multidimensional continuum, analogous to the structure of a region of n-dimensional space. A single point selected from a region of three-dimensional space will carry information, for example. In the most general case, the structure can be given by that of an arbitrary topological space, which in effect supplies a set with “proximity” or “neighborhood” relations. The details of this will not matter too much in what follows, however, where I will deal with intuitively familiar structures such as that of the continuum. (Location 5971)

In the most general case, an information space will have two sorts of structure: each complex state might have an internal structure, and each element in this state will belong to a subspace with a topological difference structure of its own. We might call the first of these the combinatorial structure of the space, and the second of these the relational structure of the subspaces. Much of the time, each subspace will have the same relational structure, so we can just speak of the relational structure of the space itself. The overall structure of the space is given by these combinatorial and relational structures together. (Location 5987)

Note: Networks and protocols The information layers vs the relational?

Shannon’s own account is often concerned with the amount of information in an information state, which measures how specific a state is within an information space. A state within a two-state information space carries one bit of information; a state within a four-state space carries two bits; a state within an n-element space carries log2n bits. When a space is a combination of subspaces, a state carries an amount of information equal to the sum of the amounts carried by its elements: so a ten-digit binary “message” carries ten bits of information. This treatment applies to discrete spaces; within continuous spaces, amount of information must be defined more subtly. Here, I will not be very concerned with amounts of information. Rather, I will be concerned with information states themselves, which we might think of as standing to amount of information as matter stands to mass. (Location 6002)

The natural way to make the connection between physical systems and information states is to see physically realized information in terms of a slogan due to Bateson (1972): information is a difference that makes a difference. (Location 6016)

There are natural patterns of similarity and difference between phenomenal states, and these patterns yield the difference structure of an information space. Thus we can see phenomenal states as realizing information states within those spaces. (Location 6074)

This treatment of information brings out a crucial link between the physical and the phenomenal: whenever we find an information space realized phenomenally, we find the same information space realized physically. And when an experience realizes an information state, the same information state is realized in the experience’s physical substrate. (Location 6089)

We might put this by suggesting as a basic principle that information (in the actual world) has two aspects, a physical and a phenomenal aspect. Wherever there is a phenomenal state, it realizes an information state, an information state that is also realized in the cognitive system of the brain. Conversely, for at least some physically realized information spaces, whenever an information state in that space is realized physically, it is also realized phenomenally.1 (Location 6116)

The structure of experience is just the structure of a phenomenally realized information space, and the structure of awareness is just the structure of a physically realized information space. (Location 6150)

Note: 100% - this is a nice way of expressing the duality of the different “layers” of experience It all comes back to the two - the visceral vs emotional, they physical vs the metaphysical

that what I have called the implicit structure of an experience corresponds to the relational structure of an information space, and what I have called the explicit structure of an experience corresponds to the combinatorial structure of the space. To see the second, note that the various details in the structure of awareness are by definition differences that make a difference in later processing, as they are directly available for global control, and so are the physical realization of an information space. Given that these two are in fact realizations of the same information space, the principle of structural coherence follows. (Location 6152)

Any other system that is functionally isomorphic at a fine enough grain will have the same pattern of differences that make a difference, and therefore will realize the same information space. (Location 6162)

Note: Basically the shared meme space - functional isomorph have the same experience of information states based on the speed/hertz, and the scope of info

Given this kind of direct access to information states, then, it is natural to expect the system to use the language of “experience” and “quality” to describe its own cognitive point of view on perception. (Location 6234)

In all this, it is information that plays the key role. It is because the system has access only to information states that the various judgments of brute “qualities” are formed. (Location 6243)

Note: Is this where beauty comes from?

In fact, as I have spelled out the notion, we find information everywhere we find causation. We find causation everywhere, so we find information everywhere. But surely we do not find experience everywhere? (Location 6267)

If there is experience associated with thermostats, there is probably experience everywhere: wherever there is a causal interaction, there is information, and wherever there is information, there is experience. (Location 6364)

panpsychism—the view that everything has a mind. (Location 6391)

Similarly, there might be experience associated with various “unconscious” information-processing subsystems in the brain—it is just that those experiences belong to a different subject. There are many different information-processing systems in the brain, and the one that corresponds to me—perhaps the system that makes some information available for a certain sort of global control and report—is just one of them. I would not expect myself to have direct access to the experiences of the other systems, any more than I would expect myself to have direct access to the experiences of other humans. (Location 6413)

It is likely that only a very restricted group of subjects of experience would have the psychological structure required to truly qualify as agents or as persons. (Location 6424)

One possibility is that amplification of information is crucial. Physically realized information is also realized in experience only if the information is amplified in certain ways, becoming available to make a large difference along certain causal pathways. (Location 6435)

The most straightforward, and the least adventurous, is to take the physical and phenomenal realizations of information to be wholly separate features, with no ontological link over and above a lawful connection and a sort of structural isomorphism. (Location 6455)

It is sometimes suggested within physics that information is fundamental to the physics of the universe, and even that physical properties and laws may be derivative from informational properties and laws. This “it from bit” view is put forward by Wheeler (1989, 1990) and Fredkin (1990), and is also investigated by papers in Zurek (1990) and Matzke (1992, 1994). If this is so, we may be able to give information a more serious role in our ontology. (Location 6464)

This interpretation is closely related to the “Russellian” ideas discussed in Chapter 4 (pp. 153–55), as we will see. (Location 6470)

This approach stems from the observation that in physical theories, fundamental physical states are effectively individuated as information states. When we look at a feature such as mass or charge, we find simply a brute space of differences that make a difference. Physics tells us nothing about what mass is, or what charge is: it simply tells us the range of different values that these features can take on, and it tells us their effects on other features. As far as physical theories are concerned, specific states of mass or charge might as well be pure information states: all that matters is their location within an information space. This is reflected in the fact that physics makes no commitment about the way these states are realized. Any realization of these information states will serve as well for the purposes of a physical theory, as long as it maintains the correct structure of causal or dynamic relations between states. After all, as long as the shape of these relations is the same, physics will look the same to our perceptual systems: we do not have access to any further properties of the realization in the external world, over and above the shape of the causal network. (Location 6471)

Sometimes it has even been suggested that the universe could be a giant computer. Fredkin (1990) has suggested that the universe could be a huge cellular automaton, realized at bottom in a vast structure of bits. (Location 6480)

This qualifies as part of the “metaphysics of physics”: speculation about the ontology underlying the causal structure of space-time itself. (Location 6485)

This would lead to a picture of the world as a world of pure information. To each fundamental feature of the world there corresponds an information space, and wherever physics takes those features to be instantiated, an information state from the relevant space is instantiated. As long as these information states have the right relations among them, then everything will be as it needs to be. On this picture of the world, there is nothing more to say. Information is all there is. This is how I understand the “it from bit” conception of the world. It is a strangely beautiful conception: a picture of the world as pure informational flux, without any further substance to it. (Some versions of the view may also allow space-time as a primitive framework within which the information spaces are embedded; other versions see space-time itself as constituted by the relations among information spaces.) The world is simply a world of primitive differences, and of causal and dynamic relations among those differences. On this view, to try to say anything further about the world is a mistake. (Location 6490)