UNiversal Correlates of Consciousness

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Stepping Stoned to Enlightenment
s

• Exploring the UNCC UNiversal Correlates of
  Consciousness
• Steve Deiss, sdeiss_at_ucsd.edu
• UCSD, Biology Department, Neurobiology Section
• Integrated Systems Neuroscience Lab
• (formerly consulting as Applied Neurodynamics)
• April 2008, Tucson Towards a Science of
  Consciousness

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
pigeonbeaks.com
Rocks The Missing Link in Your Family Tree?
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology

• Outline
• Science in denial and the rock hard problem
• Consciousness defined
• Understanding what it all means
• What sensations mean
• How sensations acquire meaning
• Memory and meaning
• A systems view Dos Equis Lite
• On getting over ones self
• Ego, aboutness, and HOT theories
• Eliminative Skepticism
• The law of pause and reflect
• Got to have sync

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
A 12 Step Program
When we truly understand the nature of our own
conscious awareness a different way of seeing
everything else will result.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
STEP 1 Science in Denial
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
www.indorphyn.com
Consciousness Studies - the Hard Way.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology

• NCC or UNCC
• Thalamocortical Loops (R. Llinas, 2002)
• Neuronal Groups (J. Edelman, 1987)
• Somatic Markers (A. Damasio, 1999)
• Synchronous Oscillations (W. Singer, 2003)
• Membrane Channels (H. Flohrs, 2000)
• Frontal-Sensory loops (C. Koch, 2004)
• Information Integration (G. Tononi, 2004)
• Pick a favorite mechanism and ask why that
  should make a physical process conscious?
• This is a simple restatement of the hard
  problem.

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
Physicalism assumes causal mechanisms Mechanistic
explanations appear to not need any sentience to
provide predictive power. Positing sensation or
awareness at any point is arbitrary as in .and
then a miracle happens Even if we find a good
mammalian NCC, by definition, it cannot
satisfactorily explain consciousness. It only
correlates closely.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
Start Here
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
Mechanism defined Components with properties
that consistently perform certain actions when
they causally interact (Craver Bechtel,
2006). But who isolates components and measures
these component properties and the dynamic
qualities of interaction? Without observers,
mechanisms are not detectable nor
measurable. The qualitative sensations of
consciousness are not a component property, hence
Neural Correlates of Consciousness NCC.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
Mechanism defined Components with properties
that consistently perform certain actions when
they causally interact (Craver Bechtel,
2006). But who isolates components and measures
these component properties and the dynamic
qualities of interaction? Without observers,
mechanisms are not detectable nor
measurable. The qualitative sensations of
consciousness are not a component property, hence
Neural Correlates of Consciousness NCC.
observable
identified
detectable
ever
other things being equal
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
Those who make causality one of the original
fundamental categories of thought ¾ of whom you
will find that I am not one ¾ have one very
awkward fact to explain away. It is that men's
conceptions of a cause are in different stages of
scientific culture entirely different and
inconsistent. The great principle of causation
which, we are told, it is absolutely impossible
not to believe, has been one proposition at one
period in history and an entirely disparate one
at another is still a third one for the modern
physicist. The only thing about it which has
stood... is the name of it. Charles Sanders
Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things, 1898
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve Deiss, UC San
Diego, Neurobiology
STEP 2 A Definition of Consciousness
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Consciousness Defined A process of sensing
qualitative contrasts, qualia, and interpreting
and storing their meaning for ongoing and future
action
( Deiss, 2006 ) In science the
theoretical interpretation is usually physical or
presumed emergent from fundamental physical
processes. The physical world we experience is
in reality a theoretical interpretation that
goes beyond the given sensory contrasts.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Consciousness Defined A process of sensing
qualitative contrasts, qualia, and interpreting
and storing their meaning for ongoing and future
action (Deiss, 2006) In science the
theoretical interpretation is usually physical or
presumed emergent from fundamental physical
processes. The physical world we experience is
in reality a theoretical interpretation that
goes beyond the given sensory contrasts.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology

• This definition captures the big three
• Being awake
• Sensing
• Aboutness

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology

• This definition captures the big three and five
  more
• Being awake 4. Contrastive
• Sensing 5. Interpretive
• Aboutness 6. Active
• 7. Meaningful
• 8. Remembered

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 3 Understanding What it all Means
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology

• Meaning (of meaning) Defined
• What something means to someone (symbol, sign,
  utterances) is all the expectations they derive
  in a particular context.
• Meanings include all the unsaid things that are
  inferred or primed.
• When meaning is understood, action options are
  unambiguous.
• Meaning is specific to individuals. People learn
  conventions of use.
• Languages are symbol use conventions that
  calibrate expectations.

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Understanding and Explanation Understanding
allows making predictions about the future or
what-if statements while an explanation seeks the
antecedents that predict events of interest
generally. Understanding (forward looking)
applies Explanations (backward looking). Explanat
ions can explain other explanations (recursive
process). These broad definitions apply to
language, culture, and science. Common Sense
is about customary predictions and their
application.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Maybe the reason it is hard to explain
consciousness is because it is the process
underlying all explanations - creating meaning.
( Like trying to prove the axiom of
non-contradiction. )
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Step 4
What Sensations Mean
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Perception requires assignment of meaning to
qualitative sensations.

• To learn and understand language one 1st learns
  to hear or see separable signs strung together
  and then learns to predict transitions between
  them.
• In an even more fundamental way, conscious
  perception of things and events requires sensing
  qualitative contrasts along dimensions we are
  sensitive to. Things and events are likewise
  composites that we construct with expectations.
• Before perceiving any thing we start from
  sensory contrasts here called qualitative
  sensations (qualia), the foundation of experience.

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Perception requires assignment of meaning to
qualitative sensations.

• To learn and understand language one 1st learns
  to hear or see separable signs strung together
  and then learns to predict transitions between
  them.
• In an even more fundamental way, conscious
  perception of things and events requires sensing
  qualitative contrasts along dimensions we are
  sensitive to. Things and events are likewise
  composites that we construct with expectations.
• Before perceiving any thing we start from
  sensory contrasts here called qualitative
  sensations (qualia), the foundation of experience.

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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Without qualitative contrast (here black vs
white) nothing is recognized. We fill in
missing details to interpret and perceive based
on the contrasts.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
The meaning of sensations is what we perceive
Without qualitative contrast (here black vs
white) nothing is recognized. We fill in
missing details to interpret and perceive based
on the contrasts.
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Sloan Digital Sky Survey
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(No Transcript)
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Qualia like the redness of red are not useful
alone. There must be contrast between redness
and other colors separated by a boundary. A
monochromatic universe would be invisible using
even the best optical telescopes.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 5 How Sensations Acquire Meaning
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Sensations (qualia) (the
qualitative contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Recognitions (filled-in by
memory) Sensations (qualia) (the qualitative
contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Associations (the
expected) Recognitions (filled-in by
memory) Sensations (qualia) (the qualitative
contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
36
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
37
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
S T O R A G E
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Mirage? Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
S T O R A G E
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
40
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Reality Mirage? Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
Epistemological Barrier
S T O R A G E
Intuitive Leap
The Road to Reality
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
distance 1 eye blink
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Mirage? Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
S T O R A G E
Intuitive Leap
Quantum Tunneling, Altered States
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
42
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
Intuitive Leap
Quantum Tunneling, Altered States
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
43
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
Intuitive Leap
Quantum Tunneling
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
44
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
Epistemological Barrier
Intuitive Leap
Quantum Tunneling
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
45
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality Interpretation (the
perceived) Associations (the expected) Recognition
s (filled-in by memory) Sensations
(qualia) (the qualitative contrastsgiven)
The irony is that the closer we look at reality,
the more unreal it looks.
Epistemological Barrier
Intuitive Leap
Quantum Tunneling
The Road to Reality
distance 1 eye blink
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
If an atom were the size of Qualcomm Stadium, the
nucleus would be the size of a pea. If all the
empty space in earth were removed, it would be
the size of a childs ball. So if that is
reality, what is all this stuff we see around
us?
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reality
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Qualia are notproperties of things things
areinterpretationsof qualia!


Burma Shave
The Road to Reality
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Following Hermann von Helmholtz, who described
visual perceptions as unconscious inferences from
sensory data and knowledge derived from the past,
perceptions are regarded as similar to predictive
hypotheses of science, but are psychologically
projected into external space and accepted as our
most immediate reality. There are increasing
discrepancies between perceptions and conceptions
with sciences advances, which makes it hard to
define illusion The large contribution of
knowledge from the past for vision raises the
issue how do we recognize the present, without
confusion from the past. This danger is generally
avoided as the present is signalled by real-time
sensory inputs - perhaps flagged by qualia of
consciousness.
(Gregory, Knowledge in Perception and Illusion,
1997Phil. Trans. R. Soc. London B. p1121)
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
So perceptions are hypotheses. Therefore, the
facts and data of scientific observations
are themselves hypotheses, however vivid or
cogent. The most tough minded experimentalist
is a theorist to the very core (a natural
philosopher in denial).
Seeing requires believing.


CERN Large Hadron Collider Compact Muon Solenoid
Detector, processor farm, and event display
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
MORAL Its the EPISTEMOLOGY Stupid ! Many
experimentalists need a recalibration.
Scientific observation is a theory laden
process. One mans data is anothers theory.
(hence physical hierarchy) Our experienced daily
reality is something that we have an active
role in creating by interpretation. Inferences
produce sight as well as string theory. The
empiricist-theorist dichotomy is baseless because
both are on a continuum of interpretive
levels of abstraction.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
It is one thing to reify our sensations as if
there is a reality. This metaphysical belief
seems to have survival value. However we
generalize from the consistent observed behavior,
and then we infer laws that govern the real
world. This creates blind (governed) mechanisms
devoid of sentience and a hard problem. We
believe that systems with brains and eyes like us
can see. But we assume much simpler systems do
not also have sensations which they interpret
when they act or react. Even complex servos and
robots do not make the cut. Why?
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Yeh, like I really wanna know Dude!
SurferBot
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
We find inorganic nature and some organic very
predictable. Somehow this and our theistic
heritage made it easy for us to envision laws
emblazoned on transcendental stone tablets.
Causal thinking is another culprit. Causes
remove choices. The alternative is Regularism
the view that nature is regular but not
governed from without. (Swartz, 1985) Laws of
nature are just descriptive regularities in
phenomena. Laws of nature are not prescriptions
that must be followed due to causal necessity.
They are generalizations. As David Hume showed,
causality is at best just a theory.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
OOPS
Outrageous Problems may require Outrageous
Solutions.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 6 Memory and Meaning
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Memory formation (sometimes fleeting) always
accompanies conscious experience. Memory
provides a very big clue to the basis of
consciousness. When we sleep we usually remember
little or not for long. Under general
anesthesia (done right) we remember nothing. If
knocked out, we remember nothing (often
retrograde). When doing things automatically,
like driving, we often do not remember many
scenes along the way nor our actions. We
remember a high level interpretation of what we
did like I was driving home. or I parked my
car (somewhere).
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
An absent-minded driver has finally got back
behind the wheel of his missing car - seven
months after forgetting where he parked it.
Eric King, 57, left his black X-reg Ford Focus
in a residential road last February so he could
walk into the town centre while visiting Bury St
Edmunds, Suffolk. But when he tried to find his
3,000 pound car again, he could not remember the
name of the road where he had parked it or where
it was. Daily Mail, 15, September, 2006
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
What then is memory formation? The neuroscience
explanation is that it is a change in neural
network dynamics produced when (pre and post)
synaptic efficacies change. Spike Timing
Dependent Plasticity (STDP).

Bi Poo, 1998. (D. O.
Hebb, 1949)
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
What then is memory formation? The neuroscience
explanation is that it is a change in neural
network dynamics produced when (pre and post)
synaptic efficacies change. Spike Timing
Dependent Plasticity (STDP).

Bi Poo, 1998. (D. O.
Hebb, 1949)
Deiss, Douglas, Whatley, 1994
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
The adult human brain has 1011 neurons and 1015
synaptic connections with 3x109 cm (200,000
miles) of wiring. When sensory signals are
received there is a cascade of neural action
potentials and activated synapses that are
correlated with our experience as neuroscience is
slowly mapping. Some of these correspond to the
redness of red, others to the contours at the
boundaries of what we sense. In any waking
moment there are many times more ongoing internal
network signals as there are signals coming in
from sensory channels. What sensation do they
correspond to? The internal signals provide a
context which, through priming and inhibition,
shape the fate of incoming signals.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
63
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
How could the brain ever distinguish ongoing
internal activity from externally driven
signals? If light hitting the retina produces
visual sensation upon being transformed into
spikes, what kind of sensations go with all these
ongoing internal signaling spikes? Spikes are
spikes. They only differ in where they come from
and where they go. Hypothesis Spikes that
produce large enough STDP changes will facilitate
the interpretation that comprises the gestalt
perceived and the abstract cognitions that go
with it. Experience changes us. Thereafter we
respond differently.
64
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
A change at a single synapse is enough to
significantly alter network dynamics in a system
operating on the border of chaos, and many think
it is (Freeman in Evian (Ed.) 2000). Single
synaptic changes are components of an experience.
If we place a brain slice in a dish we can
keep it alive for a while. What kinds of
experience are happening there? We can isolate
and probe individual neuron pairs, and change
synapses. What kinds of experience are happening
there? To presume no sensation accompanies
these neural activities is an unfounded
assumption that amplifies the hard problem for
explaining experience.
65
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 7 A Systems View - Dos Equis Lite
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Every system we can study in nature has state
memory. Every system in nature often makes
changes to that state. State change is like
learning because it affects behavior. Every
behavior any system produces is constrained by
its state just as our behavior is constrained by
our state of memory. System behavior and memory
update do not have to co-occur. State updates
can trail behavioral reactions (a la Libet,
2006). New Metaphor this process of systematic
state update and the system behavior produced in
response to evolving state or sensed change in
the environment is a universal, self-similar,
sentient process.
67
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Every system we can study in nature has state
memory. Every system in nature often makes
changes to that state. State change is like
learning because it affects behavior. Every
behavior any system produces is constrained by
its state just as our behavior is constrained by
our state of memory. System behavior and memory
update do not have to co-occur. State updates
can trail behavioral reactions (a la Libet,
2006). New Metaphor this process of systematic
state update and the system behavior produced in
response to evolving state or sensed change in
the environment is a universal, self-similar,
sentient process.
68
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
What does this mean? All systems are carrying
out a conscious process when they change their
memory state. Behavior is automatic based upon
the state history and the contrasts in the
environment that the system can react to. There
is only an apparent dualism here in describing
the systems in ways that keep their state and
behavior separate. This is a variety of
panpsychism (or pan-consciousness).
69
Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
A Systems View - Dos Equis
Lite From the third person perspective
Xb fb (recent state, recent input,
recent behavior) Xs fs (recent
state, recent input, recent behavior) From the
first person perspective What I do next Xb
depends on what I am already doing (inertia),
what state of my memory (knowledge, skills,
goals), and what I am sensing now (qualia). What
I experience in this situation is a new state Xs
recorded that reflects how I interpreted my state
and what I just did with that configuration of
sensory qualities.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
The UNCC Function (pronounced un-see-see)
ltXb,Xsgt the combined fc(recent state, input,
behavior) From the simplest physical systems to
the human brain on to anything conceivably more
complex, this captures the essence of conscious
evolution (ignoring a few details). Hence the
assertion of self similarity. Having longer
memory that can run simulations via imagery and
thinking allows for very sophisticated
consciousness compared to the simplest systems
that have little memory. At the low end of the
spectrum of UNCC, systems change and sense very
little (e.g., neutrinos)
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Brains and neutrinos are familiar systems from
physicalism used here as a convenience. It is
much more accurate to think of the UNCC equation
as representing how phenomena appear to evolve to
us from both 1st and 3rd person views. We can
assume an as if metaphysical posture. It is as
if everything is conscious. The explicit
assumption that all systems have a sentient 1st
person-like perspective (what it is like for
them) means that they have sensations to
interpret, and they reflect on state when
interpreting. More on interpretation will
follow. Elementary system sensations may be
crude, but assuming they have them is an
alternative to assuming natural causal laws.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
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Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 8 On Getting Over Ones Self
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Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
01.10.2007 (Discover Magazine) Consciousness in
a Cockroach Neuroscientists are teasing apart the
insect nervous system, looking for clues to
attention, consciousness, and the origin of the
brain. by Douglas Fox
"You can use these flickers," van Swinderen tells
me, "to extract what the fly is attending to. At
the moment," he says, "it's paying attention to
the X. Van Swinderen has inserted an electrode
into the fly's brain to monitor its neural
activity. The jagged brain waves percolating
through the electrode scroll across a computer
screen. Buried deep in the jumble of jagged peaks
are two tiny signals one wave rising and falling
12 times per second and another rising and
falling 15 times per second. Those two waves are
emanating from thousands of brain cells
responding to the two flickering objects. The
greater the number of cells firing in unison to a
given object, the higher the corresponding wave.
By noting which wave is higher, van Swinderen can
tell which target the fly is directing more
attention to.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
What is the difference between animal and
bacterium senses? Some would say SELF-awareness.
We know that we exist. No doubt we have a
private history of sensation including memories
of our own experiences and actions. We create an
integrated story that explains who we are, how we
behave, and helps us predict our own
behavior. Self is a story not required for the
basic conscious process. However this story
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy by a process
that is likely based upon slow-motion hypnotic
auto-suggestion and which is arguably adaptive.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Who among us remembers their first or second
birthday or anything from the infant
years? Experimental evidence now suggests that
infants have a conceptual system based upon
imagery well before they learn language
concepts. They are already learning categories
and how to think with them before they can talk.
(Mandler, 1992) The concept of self comes along
later after further exploration and socialization.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
.infants derive meaning from perceptual
activity . They redescribe perceptual
information into image-schematic format.
Image-schemas create conceptual structure from
the spatial structure of objects and their
movements, resulting in notions such as animacy,
inanimacy, agency, and containment. These
earliest meanings are nonpropositional,
analogical representations grounded in the
perceptual world of the infant. In contrast to
most perceptual processing, which is not analyzed
in this fashion, redescription into
image-schematic form simplifies perceptual
information and makes it potentially accessible
for purposes of concept formation and thought. In
addition to enabling preverbal thought,
image-schemas provide a foundation for language
acquisition by creating an interface between the
continuous processes of perception and the
discrete nature of language. Mandler, How to
Build a Baby II Conceptual Primitives, 1992.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Some would say we are unique to have reflective
awareness. Its not about a historical self.
Its just knowing we know. But knowing one is
awake may result simply from awareness of
contrast between vividness of sensations vs
recollections. To be reflectively aware, the
interpretation must cover some time period and it
involves taking ownership of memories. Its an
interpretation of sensations and thoughts both
recalled from the immediate past. Note that
thoughts are sensations. Reflective awareness is
a red herring, only illustrating the superiority
of our human powers of episodic recall.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 9 Ego, Intentionality, and HOT stuff
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
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sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Some 25 of your genes are the same as a banana.
Get over yourself.
Frankenana
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Some would say its all about the Ego, Free Will,
the I. But what is this Ego if it is always
late for decision deadlines? Libets experiments
illustrate that decisions are made before we
become aware of them (Libet, 2006). If we know
our self well, we can anticipate what we are
going to do. If it is what we like to do, we
call it our choice. If we do not have
conflicting desires or objectionable
restrictions, we accept our choices even after
they are made. The egocentric interpretation
comes after the fact by using memory and
predictive expectations. Having Ego is not
relevant to being conscious.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Some would say its all about intentionality,
that conscious perceptions are about something
(in the simplest statement). Narrowly
interpreted, that seems to capture part of the
definition used here. Conscious percepts are in
fact about qualia and what they mean by
implication. Some would say its all about
higher order thoughts which are thoughts about
lower order thoughts (circularity noted ). We
can break through that circularity by
acknowledging that thoughts, high and low, are
sensations localizable somewhere between and
behind the eyes. The definition of consciousness
proposed here subsumes both intentionality and
HOT theory, simplifying both.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Summary Having a personal historical self story,
or an illusory ego that decides and chooses, or a
sense of being awake and aware of what is
happening are all important factors that
characterize human and other animal
experience. But all three depend in turn on our
ability to sense and interpret based upon an up
and running memory. Having intentionality or
higher order thoughts are applications of
sensing, interpreting, and remembering recent
meanings. Consciousness is the basis for self
experience, reflective awareness, ego,
intentionality and HOTs. It can explain these,
but they do not explain (and often obscure) it.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
How Meditation Helps Experienced meditators
often speak of the bliss of being in the moment
and the suffering associated with not being
there. If the habit can be learned of reducing
runaway associative memories leading to thoughts,
conflicts, and emotions, then we can dwell on the
raw qualities of experience mindfully. This
state of mind is its own reward because it is
less busy, with fewer worries and obsessions, and
conflict free - like a vacation spot one can keep
in tow. (Hence M.B.S.R.s growing
popularity) Meditation halts inner conflicts
resulting from focus on associations that trigger
conflicting implications that need resolution.
It results in a feeling not a vision.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 10 Eliminative Skepticism
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Eliminative Skepticism is a phrase I use to
indicate that all we can know for sure is what we
directly sense, and that only if there is some
contrast in it to interpret (some
information). Interpreting this information is a
theory construction process. As long as we
remember that, we could make all sorts of
physical theories to live by, what I call as if
metaphysics. However, some type of Neutral
Monism does seem a better as if metaphysics
to live by, and more consistent with the idea of
sentience everywhere. (Hairball
Metaphysics?) Either way Eliminative Skepticism,
inspired by physicalism in neuroscience,
eliminates dogmatic materialistic metaphysics by
acknowledging our epistemological limitations.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 11 Law of Pause and Reflect
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
How does a system move from the present into one
of many future states? This is a prototype for
all decision making. The metaphor I am
lobbying for is one of reflection using current
state, along with ongoing behavior and sensed
environmental input as constraints on energy for
change. Underconstrained energy creates entropy.
Inertia and feedback constrains energy
expression. Consciousness accompanies changes in
state (a kind of universal adaptive leaning). As
noted before state update lags behavior.
Therefore a good way to sum up this metaphor is
the phrase the law of pause and reflect to
contrast with laws of cause and effect that
dominate physical theory and reality oriented
metaphysics.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Chicken and Egg Problem Which comes first - the
behavior or the interpretation we remember?
Libets experiments suggest behavior is 1st. It
gives us a consistent view of all natural
phenomena if we posit that system behaviors
always come first, and then the remembered
interpretation is stored as state update
second. This makes sense on the view that
behavioral decisions come from constraints
embodied in system state in the
past. Conscious interpretations that update
state need to integrate the past with what is
changing, the behavior. A hypothetical
implication is that this holds for all systems
since they all lie somewhere along a conscious
continuum.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
What good is consciousness? In neural network
algorithms there is what is known as the credit
assignment problem. If the network produces a
behavior that has a good or bad result, how does
the system know what synapses to change? If
consciousness is a remembered interpretation, and
the self construct has evolved to promote taking
ownership of behaviors, i.e., having an ego/will,
then we can assign credit so that behavior has a
basis for modification. The conscious
interpretations need to be current and looking
into the future by implication and association.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
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sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
STEP 12 Got to have Sync
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
If a system is constrained by state in how it can
choose from multiple futures, how could this be
done? If there are multiple possibilities and
there is no law prescribing what to choose, as we
often see in quantum phenomena, then the future
must be selected by a decision. A way to think
of decision making that does not commit to
physicalism nor mentalism is as
synchronization. This would be a collective
phenomenon that gets a systems components all
going in the same direction or on the same
wavelength using paired interaction
constraints. Each subcomponent is similarly
constrained recursively from within so as to
yield those pair-wise interactions.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
This may be the same sync often studied in
dynamical systems (Strogatz, 2003, Pikovsky,
2003) minus the physicalism. Sync seems to be a
pervasive and very natural process that gets
collective aggregates to act like
cooperatives. There are many examples described
with similar mathematics. How it happens can
shed much light on how systems decide. For
anything to happen in a coherent way in a complex
system its component subsystems must find
dimensions along which they can all travel (in
phase space) while meeting all their constraints
together. Without Sync systems would tend to
unravel and disintegrate.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Conclusions We live by metaphors (Lakoff
Johnson, 1980, 1999). I hope you have seen that
the prevailing common sense metaphor of senseless
physical mechanisms infiltrates most of science
from every direction and creates the hard problem
for consciousness studies. I hope you can now
see a different way of looking at things that
treats all systems as kin by viewing them as if
sensation interpreters that save meaning in
memory as state to reference for future
behavior. Brains or Branes, the same process
that constrains organized change in recursive
layers of complexity.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Thanks! I needed that.
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Machines or Sentient Beings A Panpsychist
Manifesto Interpreting and storing meaning of
sensed contrasts for future action Steve
Deiss, UCSD, Neurobiology
Reference Deiss, S., (2008 forthcoming) The
Universal Correlates of Consciousness, to appear
in Mind that Abides, D. Skrbina, (Ed.), John
Benjamins, New York. Acknowledgement Thanks! t
o David Skrbina for helpful feedback on
presenting these ideas, for helpful
discussions (Jerry Josties, Jim Christy, Jeff
Elman, Marty Sereno, Seana Coulsen,
Andrea Chiba, Natika Newton) and to K. L. Mercer
for her unwavering encouragement. However - The
views expressed here are my own, and not in any
way attributable to, condoned by, nor yet even
reviewed by anyone at U C San Diego, nor anyone
in the Neuromorphic Engineering Research Lab VLSI
design group that I support in the Neurobiology
Section.