Excellent! In my series with Gregg Henriques entitled Untangling the WorldKnot of Consciousness. I developed with Gregg an extended argument for how relevance realization theory could be used to explain both the nature and function of consciousness in a way that subsumes both IIT and GWT. The fact that Brett has converged on this so brilliantly is wonderful!! John Vervaeke
I find the theory above very compelling, but it is actually meta-consciousness that you are accounting for and not phenomenal consciousness.
1) Jung and Neumann are using different definitions than we seem to be using these days. Jung’s notion of consciousness is what we call today meta-consciousness, the ability to know that we are experiencing and therefore be able to report about it. (This can be seen very obviously in Jung's theory of the complexes and in many other different places).
2) Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - The phi threshold is denoted by the reportability of the participants, thus passing the threshold provides excellent empirical evidence for meta-consciousness or access consciousness and not for phenomenal consciousness.
3) Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and the ignition event - The same argument goes for the GWT. After the ignition event, the experience hinted by the visual cortex simply becomes associated with the metacognitive loop.
4) Psychedelic research and specific claims made by Carhart-Harris - The most reliable and replicable finding in psychedelic research is the decrease in brain activity. The Rebus model and subsequent claims made by Cahart-Harris have been properly criticized for attempting to account for the phenomenology of psychedelics with minuscule changes in signal diversity, yet ignoring their own previous publications showing a clear reduction in all brain activity. There are many more instances where much greater signal diversity changes occur where there is no equivalent increase in inner conscious experience.
I would propose that a view of the brain as more of a reduction valve for consciousness would fit the data more and that the self-organizing criticality is indicative not of phenomenal consciousness but of access consciousness/metacognition.
To be honest I’m not at all sure of my position here. I have been really influenced by Vervaeke’s work and you would relieve me of much cognitive dissonance if you could prove me wrong.
Whether you think it's phenomenal consciousness or meta/self/access consciousness being studied depends on some a priori, untestable assumptions. To my mind, if I can't report on something it is not phenomenally conscious (this is a separate issue from whether I can accurately report on it). Everything I can't report on is going on beneath conscious awareness. Therefore studying reportability is studying phenomenal consciousness. But others have different assumptions.
Whether an effect is "miniscule" or not is highly subject to interpretation. The signal diversity is reliable and increased entropy does a nice job of explaining many of the effects of psychedelics.
If you think SOC is indicative of access consciousness fine, but that tells us nothing about why it's associated with the phenomenology of insight, psychedelics, and the flow state. None of these seem to have any particular connection to access consciousness.
I wonder if you'll find this to be relavent to your discussion of order and chaos: When I first learned about the "Three Body Problem," I experienced a thrill that I couldn't explain at first. It took me a while to get words around it, and I still feel I can only partially describe what's so exciting to me about it. It's just so wonderful that we live in a cosmos that is characterized by causal intelligibility without being predictable. Or to approach it the other way, it's unpredictable (always generating new things) without being utterly senseless (chaotic). It's the same way I felt when I first learned about prime numbers and the Sieve of Eratosthenes. I'm only recently finding out that there are other people who see the beauty in things like this, and that's a pretty thrilling discovery too.
I suspect that I had a very similar feeling when I had the realization that certain patterns (e.g., the order/chaos dynamic) play out at all levels of reality. Was both thrilling and a little bit overwhelming at the same time.
As water is energized molecules under go a phase change - a reasonably elementary type of phase change. No scientific model yet allows for the prediction of which molecules become sufficiently energized to under go the phase change. I struggle imagining their is either a conscious affect that selects the molecule or that it's phase change results in a conscious affect. Seems to me IIT and and phase changes in matter/energy are almost infinitely more difficult to model that boiling water?
I am in total agreement with "the universe is engaged in a self-organizing process of complexification through phase changes and that this process can be considered the process underlying creation itself." which if true point to a complexity that could well be beyond human capacity to conjugate. I take great relief in that thought for we would never be bored in thought!
Note that I said "far-from-equilibrium" phase changes, which does not include stuff like water freezing. I didn't go into detail about that because I didn't want the post to be too long.
Excellent! In my series with Gregg Henriques entitled Untangling the WorldKnot of Consciousness. I developed with Gregg an extended argument for how relevance realization theory could be used to explain both the nature and function of consciousness in a way that subsumes both IIT and GWT. The fact that Brett has converged on this so brilliantly is wonderful!! John Vervaeke
I find the theory above very compelling, but it is actually meta-consciousness that you are accounting for and not phenomenal consciousness.
1) Jung and Neumann are using different definitions than we seem to be using these days. Jung’s notion of consciousness is what we call today meta-consciousness, the ability to know that we are experiencing and therefore be able to report about it. (This can be seen very obviously in Jung's theory of the complexes and in many other different places).
2) Integrated Information Theory (IIT) - The phi threshold is denoted by the reportability of the participants, thus passing the threshold provides excellent empirical evidence for meta-consciousness or access consciousness and not for phenomenal consciousness.
3) Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and the ignition event - The same argument goes for the GWT. After the ignition event, the experience hinted by the visual cortex simply becomes associated with the metacognitive loop.
4) Psychedelic research and specific claims made by Carhart-Harris - The most reliable and replicable finding in psychedelic research is the decrease in brain activity. The Rebus model and subsequent claims made by Cahart-Harris have been properly criticized for attempting to account for the phenomenology of psychedelics with minuscule changes in signal diversity, yet ignoring their own previous publications showing a clear reduction in all brain activity. There are many more instances where much greater signal diversity changes occur where there is no equivalent increase in inner conscious experience.
I would propose that a view of the brain as more of a reduction valve for consciousness would fit the data more and that the self-organizing criticality is indicative not of phenomenal consciousness but of access consciousness/metacognition.
To be honest I’m not at all sure of my position here. I have been really influenced by Vervaeke’s work and you would relieve me of much cognitive dissonance if you could prove me wrong.
Here’s a link to the article criticizing Carhart-Harris: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/misreporting-and-confirmation-bias-in-psychedelic-research/
Whether you think it's phenomenal consciousness or meta/self/access consciousness being studied depends on some a priori, untestable assumptions. To my mind, if I can't report on something it is not phenomenally conscious (this is a separate issue from whether I can accurately report on it). Everything I can't report on is going on beneath conscious awareness. Therefore studying reportability is studying phenomenal consciousness. But others have different assumptions.
Whether an effect is "miniscule" or not is highly subject to interpretation. The signal diversity is reliable and increased entropy does a nice job of explaining many of the effects of psychedelics.
If you think SOC is indicative of access consciousness fine, but that tells us nothing about why it's associated with the phenomenology of insight, psychedelics, and the flow state. None of these seem to have any particular connection to access consciousness.
Thanks for your interesting comments Omri.
I wonder if you'll find this to be relavent to your discussion of order and chaos: When I first learned about the "Three Body Problem," I experienced a thrill that I couldn't explain at first. It took me a while to get words around it, and I still feel I can only partially describe what's so exciting to me about it. It's just so wonderful that we live in a cosmos that is characterized by causal intelligibility without being predictable. Or to approach it the other way, it's unpredictable (always generating new things) without being utterly senseless (chaotic). It's the same way I felt when I first learned about prime numbers and the Sieve of Eratosthenes. I'm only recently finding out that there are other people who see the beauty in things like this, and that's a pretty thrilling discovery too.
I suspect that I had a very similar feeling when I had the realization that certain patterns (e.g., the order/chaos dynamic) play out at all levels of reality. Was both thrilling and a little bit overwhelming at the same time.
Good review of theories. But what is it like to be a Human?
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/our-reality
Perhaps people should take a look.
Apologies if I left that idea hanging.
As water is energized molecules under go a phase change - a reasonably elementary type of phase change. No scientific model yet allows for the prediction of which molecules become sufficiently energized to under go the phase change. I struggle imagining their is either a conscious affect that selects the molecule or that it's phase change results in a conscious affect. Seems to me IIT and and phase changes in matter/energy are almost infinitely more difficult to model that boiling water?
I am in total agreement with "the universe is engaged in a self-organizing process of complexification through phase changes and that this process can be considered the process underlying creation itself." which if true point to a complexity that could well be beyond human capacity to conjugate. I take great relief in that thought for we would never be bored in thought!
"I struggle imagining their is either a conscious affect that selects the molecule or that it's phase change results in a conscious affect."
I don't think any of that is conscious.
Neither do I.
Right, but it seemed like you were implying that I did think that :)
Note that I said "far-from-equilibrium" phase changes, which does not include stuff like water freezing. I didn't go into detail about that because I didn't want the post to be too long.
Fair. Do you have a link that goes into detail?
Bobby Azarian's book (linked near the end of the post) is a good non-technical overview.
Thanks