Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4

[Soupie]

One of the points I was making is that the experimental neuroscience seemed to be done first, and then a theory matched to the observations (a technique borrowed from psychology perhaps).

Another approach in science is to have a theory (e.g. there is a thing called a higgs boson) and then to use experiments to confirm the theory.
I am not so kean on the first of the two approaches... and so often, so very often, the theoretical models derived from observation are fraught with problems. (on this point, read the intro to Fodor's "The language of thought" 1975ish pdf). Analytic Philosophy has a similar problem, using rational argument, using logic to come to 'unassailable' theoretic conclusions... which are false because the inferences are made through a restricted tunnel-like scope, despite pretences to develop counter arguments.

I don't think these two approaches can be distinguished in practice.

That is, as we've been discussing, logic is grounded in experience.

So even if we "start" with a theory and conduct experiments to confirm it, the theory will have been based on prior experience/experiments.

I'm encountering this now in Thompson's excellent book "mind in life." He is outlining the thinking of Kant which anticipated much of what humans were to learn about nature; however, as sound as Kant logic was, there simply certain "facts" of nature which he was unaware, and thus couldn't incorporate into his logic/reasoning.

So, I'm not disagreeing per se with your point, Pharoah, just thinking out loud. Of course this relates to what Smcder has been saying about the metaphors and analogies we use to approach consciousness. I just don't think there is a way to avoid it. We reason and theorize with the "facts" that we believe we have regarding the nature of nature.

I found a paper written by a physist regarding what we do and don't know about the nature of reality and particularly the laws of nature. In summary, he says we don't much of anything. His approach was a complex systems and emergence approach (he was not discussing consciousness).

His point was that theory and logic only take us so far as its impossible to predict what will emerge from empirical systems and processes. We essentially don't "know" until it happens.

I recall this happening in the field of deep free diving. It was thought that humans couldn't physically/physiologically surpass a certain depth and survive based of course on current knowledge. However when divers surpassed the noted depth, they survived. It turned out that at certain depths the blood becomes like a plasm (or something) and was able to sustain the divers.

The point being, we can use sound logic and reason all we want, but what actually emerges from nature truly can't be know before hand based on logic/reason alone. New "facts" or phenomena do emerge.

 

[Soupie]

Do you think it is asking something other than "Why is there a subjective component to experience?" ... if so, what do you think it is asking ...

Haha. I'm not sure what it's asking hence the question about what the question is asking about.

if not, is your confusion related to the use of the word "experience"?

Not. My confusion is related to use of the word subjective.

Does the author perhaps mean "1st person perspective?"

A la: "Why is there a 1st person perspective component to experience?"

Is that what the author is asking?

 

[Soupie]

In any case, what of my answer?
I can not make it the more clear either.

I've already got it.
Then read it!

It's on academia.edu, you need to register but it's free.

Subjective difference and object of consciousness.

Phenomenal green and phenomenal pain. There is a "subjective difference" between these things.

One could say they were two different "objects of consciousness."

However, it is their very "subjective differences" that make them two different "objects of consciousness."

 

[Constance]

Subjective difference and object of consciousness.
Phenomenal green and phenomenal pain. There is a "subjective difference" between these things.
One could say they were two different "objects of consciousness."
However, it is their very "subjective differences" that make them two different "objects of consciousness."

I'm unable to follow your reasoning there, soupie, just as I've never been able to understand what you mean by saying "the mind is green" (apparently when a being equipped with color vision sees a hue of green). Can you make what you're claiming clearer?

 

[Constance]

Also, soupie, do you find panpsychism a more believable theory and panprotopsychism, which Chalmers defines as "the view that fundamental entities are proto-conscious, that is, that they have certain special properties that are precursors to consciousness and that can collectively constitute consciousness in larger systems"? I personally find the latter theory much more approachable. Why don't we read this essay by Chalmers:

http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf

and weigh the two theories based on our three or four different ideas about consciousness?

 

[Constance]

I hope to find this paper available whole online; if I do I will link it here. Here is the abstract:

A New Conceptual Framework for Physics
Emilios Bouratinos

Abstract:

"If 20th century physics have taught us one thing, it is that its findings point way beyond its conceptual framework. It doesn’t mean we need a new epistemology or a new paradigm. What we need is a pre-epistemology and a non-paradigm.

We must learn to think in terms of what we apprehend. We must stop apprehending in terms of what we think. The basic task is to become aware of how we objectify the world -- and why we lock into our objectifications once we do. Pre-epistemology will help us understand nature in more subtle ways.
A non-paradigm will help us avoid getting stuck on any conception of it. Quality cannot be appreciated by a person obsessed with quantity; non-local connections don’t reveal themselves to localising mindsets; dynamic processes are not accessible to a structure-mediated worldview.

Nothing of this means we should discard the tools of modern science. It
only means their use should become more discerning. Ultimately three things matter: (1) that we keep systems and minds open; (2) that in fragmenting and abstracting nature we never lose sight of its oneness; (3) that what we count doesn’t dictate for us what counts."

This paper is from a major interdisciplinary conference concerning 'endophysical' approaches to reality. I think I mentioned and linked it in Part 1 of our thread. The abstracts of the papers read and discussed at the conference are available in book form (very costly) at the link below, but I've located a number of these papers (not yet this one) available online. Reading the abstracts of all of them available at the second link will give you an idea of their significance for the questions and issues we've discussed concerning consciousness. The abstracts are provided at the second link below. Scroll through the first link for the titles and authors of the papers, their subdivisions, and the additional list of participants present but not reading papers. You'll also find the Preface to the volume farther down on this page:

An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

[note: click through that error message^^ and you should reach the page]


Go to this link for the general description of the goals of the conference and of endophysics in general and for a link to the abstracts following it.

ZiF:Workshop Endophysics, Time, Quantum and the Subjective

 

[Constance]

Emilios Bouratinos
A Pre-Epistemology of Consciousness

Max Velmans’ target article and response to commentaries in the
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 9, No. 11, 2002, can be seen as something of a mile-stone in the history of consciousness studies.1 In them he takes this elusive subject to the limits of rational discussion. Through exhaustive analysis and theorizing, he fills the gaps in our understanding of the multifaceted mind–brain issue. On the one hand, he establishes the mutual irreducibility of the two. On the other, he elucidates their causal interactions. As he explains on page 91, this is possible only because both mind and brain ‘are grounded in something deeper’ — a ‘self-revealing universe’. The ultimate nature of that universe is neither pure matter, nor pure spirit. It is a combination of the two.

The important thing about Velmans’ treatment of the mind–brain issue isn’t only that it forms the outline of a highly plausible theory of consciousness. It is that he argues for it from within his opponents’ territory. He not only remains well within the evidence secured by science. More significantly, he remains within the confines of the scientific mode of thinking.

Velmans’ work calls for an examination of the very conceptual basis of a science of consciousness, and he points in such a direction himself. At the end of his
response to commentators, having effectively summarized his arguments against mind–brain and brain–mind reducibility, he writes: ‘If the thing-itself [i.e. physicality] and mind-itself [i.e. non-physicality] are fundamentally
psychophysical, one avoids such problems [i.e. the first-person/third-person conundrum]’ (p. 94).

But if psychophysicality ‘avoids the problem’ on the pragmatic level, what avoids it on the conceptual level? We need to start from the subject/object duality, which informs the first-person/third-person debate.

The way out of this duality is pointed to by the term ‘consciousness’ itself,
which applies to both the first- and the third-person perspectives. As Velmans
has said in the past, you cannot become conscious of otherness before first
becoming conscious of your self. For me this means that the initial step toward
avoiding the first-person/third-person problem is honest and systematic self-
reflection. There can be no science of consciousness without a consciousness of
that science. As Aristotle puts it, ‘understanding is the understanding of under-
standing’ (Metaphysics, 11. 10741). . . . .

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Bouratinos.pdf

 

[Soupie]

I'm unable to follow your reasoning there, soupie, just as I've never been able to understand what you mean by saying "the mind is green" (apparently when a being equipped with color vision sees a hue of green). Can you make what you're claiming clearer?

Unfortunately, im not clear myself on what @smcder meant by the phrase "subjective difference," and he hasnt been able to explain it.

So my attempt to clarify above was based on my best guess at what he meant by "subjective difference."

To me, a subjective difference might be a way to describe the difference between the experience of, say, green and, say, red. That is, there is a subjective difference between green and red.

However, im not sure if thats what smcder means by "subjective difference."

Object of consciousness, as i understand it, refers to the "aboutness" of consciousness. That is, if we are experiencing green, we could say green was the object of consciousness. If we are experiencing red, then red is the object of consciosness.

In my way of thinking, when we are experiencing green (it is the object of consciousness) which might then shift to an experience of red (which is the new object of consciousness) what has happened is simply that there has been a "subjective difference." That is, the morphology/shape of consciousness has simply shifted from green to red.

Ive always maintained that consciousness cannot be ontologically separated from so called "objects of consciousness."

The statement "the mind is green" is my attempt to capture this thought.

An analogy might be different musical notes eminating from vibrating vocal chords. As the vibrations of the chords differentiate, so too do the musical notes which eminate from them.

Likewise with consciousness: the differentiation of consciousness, its dynamic morphology, is what constitute the various "objects of consciousness."

That is, consciousness is not some static thing through which various objects of consciousness pass. Rather, the morphology of consciousness dynamically changes and in this way constitutes various "objects."

I seriously doubt that cleared anything up. Heh.

 

[Constance]

I'm afraid it didn't for me. Physical em frequencies and vibrations of light and air produce the phenomenal colors we see and the sounds we hear, which you at one point identify as 'objective' realities, objective properties of things we encounter. Yet you also describe colors and sounds as properties of subjective consciousness rather than as phenomena with which consciousness interacts. From what you say, phenomena change not only the color of consciousness and mind but also the shape of consciousness and mind. But I think consciousness has no color and no shape, nor does the mind. Instead consciousness responds to the colors and shapes and sounds of things originating outside of consciousness, the sensing of which calls us to actualized presence in the world. We experience the world in the way things in the world show up for us, become real for us as sensible and palpable and thinkable. This could not happen if we were not already conscious beings in the world rather than mechanical devices that register and measure frequencies and vibrations. We experience things and their effects in the world, always able to distinguish ourselves from that which we see, that which we feel, that which touches us.

You also make the interesting statement that "Ive always maintained that consciousness cannot be ontologically separated from so called "objects of consciousness." I'm not sure what you mean with that statement. Can you make your meaning clearer?

The Bouratinos paper I linked above might help us sort this out. Read the last few paragraphs of the extract I posted and then read the whole paper. I've also added a link to the Velmans paper to which Bouratinos was responding. I think Velmans and Bouratinos might enable us to establish a common vocabulary and a common understanding.

 

[Constance]

Emilios Bouratinos
A Pre-Epistemology of Consciousness

Max Velmans’ target article and response to commentaries in the
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 9, No. 11, 2002, can be seen as something of a mile-stone in the history of consciousness studies.1 In them he takes this elusive subject to the limits of rational discussion. Through exhaustive analysis and theorizing, he fills the gaps in our understanding of the multifaceted mind–brain issue. On the one hand, he establishes the mutual irreducibility of the two. On the other, he elucidates their causal interactions. As he explains on page 91, this is possible only because both mind and brain ‘are grounded in something deeper’ — a ‘self-revealing universe’. The ultimate nature of that universe is neither pure matter, nor pure spirit. It is a combination of the two.

The important thing about Velmans’ treatment of the mind–brain issue isn’t only that it forms the outline of a highly plausible theory of consciousness. It is that he argues for it from within his opponents’ territory. He not only remains well within the evidence secured by science. More significantly, he remains within the confines of the scientific mode of thinking.

Velmans’ work calls for an examination of the very conceptual basis of a science of consciousness, and he points in such a direction himself. At the end of his
response to commentators, having effectively summarized his arguments against mind–brain and brain–mind reducibility, he writes: ‘If the thing-itself [i.e. physicality] and mind-itself [i.e. non-physicality] are fundamentally
psychophysical, one avoids such problems [i.e. the first-person/third-person conundrum]’ (p. 94).

But if psychophysicality ‘avoids the problem’ on the pragmatic level, what avoids it on the conceptual level? We need to start from the subject/object duality, which informs the first-person/third-person debate.

The way out of this duality is pointed to by the term ‘consciousness’ itself,
which applies to both the first- and the third-person perspectives. As Velmans
has said in the past, you cannot become conscious of otherness before first
becoming conscious of your self. For me this means that the initial step toward
avoiding the first-person/third-person problem is honest and systematic self-
reflection. There can be no science of consciousness without a consciousness of
that science. As Aristotle puts it, ‘understanding is the understanding of under-
standing’ (Metaphysics, 11. 10741). . . . .

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf/Bouratinos.pdf

Here is the target article by Max Velmans in the Journal of Consciousness Studies issue (Vol. 9, No. 11, 2002) to which the above response by Emilios Bouratinos was one of the responses.


HOW COULD CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCES AFFECT BRAINS?

Max Velmans, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross,London SE14 6NW, England.

ABSTRACT

In everyday life we take it for granted that we have conscious control of some of our actions and that the part of us that exercises control is the conscious mind. Psychosomatic medicine also assumes that the conscious mind can affect body states, and this is supported by evidence that the use of imagery, hypnosis,
biofeedback and other ‘mental interventions’ can be therapeutic in a variety of
medical conditions. However, there is no accepted theory of mind/body interaction and this has had a detrimental effect on the acceptance of mental causation in science, philosophy and in many areas of clinical practice. Biomedical accounts typically translate the effects of mind into the effects of brain functioning, for example, explaining mind/body interactions in terms of the interconnections and reciprocal control of cortical, neuroendocrine, autonomic and immune systems. While such accounts are instructive, they are implicitly reductionist, and beg the question of how conscious experiences could have bodily effects. On the other hand, non-reductionist accounts have to cope with three problems: 1) The physical world appears causally closed, which would seem to leave no room for conscious intervention. 2) One is not conscious
of one’s own brain/body processing, so how could there be conscious control of such processing? 3) Conscious experiences appear to come too late to causally affect the processes to which they most obviously relate. This paper suggests a way of understanding mental causation that resolves these problems. It also
suggests that “conscious mental control” needs to be partly understood in
terms of the voluntary operations of the preconscious mind, and that this allows an account of biological determinism that is compatible with experienced free will.

How could conscious experiences affect brains? | Max Velmans - Academia.edu


A further quote from Bouratinos's response: "Our neurones generate states capable of becoming conscious experiences — but only because consciousness moulded them over millions of years to be able to do so. All organs in living organisms grow in response to need."

 

[Constance]

This short book by Velmans is probably a duplicate of the journal volume, including the target article and the responses to it. The following extract from an amazon review of the book quotes several paragraphs from Velmans and a paragraph from Jeffrey Gray's response:

". . . [Velmans] wonders, "So WHO'S in control? Who chooses, has thoughts, generates images and so on? We habitually think of ourselves as being our conscious selves. But ... the different facets of our experienced, conscious selves are generated by and represent aspects of our own preconscious minds. That is, we are BOTH the pre-conscious generating processes AND the conscious results. Viewed from a third-person perspective our own preconscious mental processes look like neurochemical and associated physical activities in our brains. Viewed introspectively... our preconscious mind seems like a personal but 'empty space' from which thoughts, images and feelings spontaneously arise. WE are as much one thing as the other---and this requires a shift in our second 'centre of gravity' to one where our consciously experienced self becomes just the visible 'tip' of our own embedding, preconscious mind." (Pg. 20)

Commentator Jeffrey Gray observes, "In essence, the Hard Problem [of consciousness] can be stripped down to just two questions: how does the brain create qualia; and how does the brin inspect them?... Velmans' proposed solution... is a version of the dual aspect theory. First-person and third-person accounts of what goes on in John's consciousness/John's brain are both correct. They deal with exactly the same information, but observed from different perspectives. Hey, presto, Houdini is out of the box!... it is time for the problem finally to come out of the philosophical closet. Conscious experience is part of the natural world. Therefore, the only satisfying explanation will be one that shows how consciousness is linked to the scientific account that applies to the rest of that world." (Pg. 49)

But in the Abstract of his concluding article, Velmans states, "My target article... presents evidence for causal interactions between consciousness and brain and some standard ways of accounting for this evidence... I also point out some of the problems of understanding such causal interactions that are not addressed by standard explanations. Most of the residual problems have to do with how to cross the 'explanatory gap' from consciousness to brain. I then list some of the reasons why the route across this gap suggested by physicalism won't work, in spite of its current popularity in consciousness studies. MY own suggested route is ... where consciousness and brain can be seen to be dual aspects of a unifying, psychophysical mind... there are no gaps that cannot be filled---just a different way of understanding consciousness, mind, brain and their causal interaction, with some interesting consequences for our understanding of free will." (Pg. 69)"

 

[Soupie]

I'm afraid it didn't for me. Physical em frequencies and vibrations of light and air produce the phenomenal colors we see and the sounds we hear, which you at one point identify as 'objective' realities, objective properties of things we encounter. Yet you also describe colors and sounds as properties of subjective consciousness rather than as phenomena with which consciousness interacts.

Ah, this -- and the quotation below -- are very helpful!

Constance, you say: "Physical em frequencies and vibrations of light and air produce the phenomenal colors we see and the sounds we hear..."

I disagree with this statement. I do not think physical em frequencies and the vibrations of air molecules produce phenomenal colors and sounds. I think these physical processes correlate with phenomenal colors and sounds, but they do not produce them. Hence, we experience colors and sounds in the absence of these physical processes such as in dream and hallucinatory states.

Yes, I do describe colors and sounds as "properties" of subjective consciousness. Colors and sounds would be analogous to the "shape" of consciousness at any given time. Again, consciousness does not interact with colors and sounds, rather, consciousness is colors and sounds. (The mind is green.)

From what you say, phenomena change not only the color of consciousness and mind but also the shape of consciousness and mind. But I think consciousness has no color and no shape, nor does the mind. Instead consciousness responds to the colors and shapes and sounds of things originating outside of consciousness, the sensing of which calls us to actualized presence in the world.

Again, this is excellent, and gets to the heart of our different approaches to consciousness.

I would argue the exact opposite; that rather than consciousness being colorless or soundless, consciousness is color and is sound. And I would say that the morphology/shape of consciousness is what gives rise to various qualia.

And I would say that it is not consciousness, per se, which responds to physical colors and sounds outside of consciousness (because on my view, such phenomenal things do not exist outside of consciousness as, indeed, they are consciousness), but rather, it is the physical organism that responds to physical processes outside (and inside) of it, and the resulting physical changes in the physical body are isomorphic to changes in the shape/morphology of consciousness (which results in changes to the shape of our phenomenal landscape).

Again, this must be so because the shape of our phenomenal landscape changes in the absence of physical process such as em and air waves, and yet we still experience light and sound. So while physical processes such as em and air waves are certainly correlated to our experience of light and sound in some cases, they do not produce it on my view.

 

[Soupie]

A further quote from Bouratinos's response: "Our neurones generate states capable of becoming conscious experiences — but only because consciousness moulded them over millions of years to be able to do so. All organs in living organisms grow in response to need."

Well that is certainly a fascinating statement. Wow.

It reminds me of the following (though I'm not suggesting this is the same phenomenon, but I'm not ruling it out, either).

Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together | Caltech

New work by Koch and neuroscientist Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar in biology, and his colleagues, however, suggests that the fields do much more—and that they may, in fact, represent an additional form of neural communication.

"In other words," says Anastassiou, the lead author of a paper about the work appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, "while active neurons give rise to extracellular fields, the same fields feed back to the neurons and alter their behavior," even though the neurons are not physically connected—a phenomenon known as ephaptic (or field) coupling. "So far, neural communication has been thought to occur almost entirely via traffic involving synapses, the junctions where one neuron connects to the next one. Our work suggests an additional means of neural communication through the extracellular space independent of synapses." ...

"Whether an externally imposed field will impact the brain also depends on which brain area is targeted," he says. "During epileptic seizures, the hypersynchronized activity of neurons can generate field as strong as 100 volts per meter, and such fields have been shown to strongly entrain neural firing and give rise to super-synchronized states." And that suggests that electric field activity—even from external fields—in certain brain areas, during specific brain states, may have strong cognitive and behavioral effects.

Ultimately, Anastassiou, Koch, and their colleagues would like to test whether ephaptic coupling affects human cognitive processing, and under which circumstances. "I firmly believe that understanding the origin and functionality of endogenous brain fields will lead to several revelations regarding information processing at the circuit level, which, in my opinion, is the level at which percepts and concepts arise," Anastassiou says. "This, in turn, will lead us to address how biophysics gives rise to cognition in a mechanistic manner—and that, I think, is the holy grail of neuroscience."​

In fact, there is another paper that shows how, in the fruit fly, two neurons can influence each other without being connected via synapses.

This is a pretty staggering development. Is this a pathway for "telepathy?" If neurons in the brain can (and apparently do) influence/shape one another via electric fields, what's to say that the electric fields produced in one brain (say, a mother) cannot influence the neurons in another brain (say, the brain of their child).

Furthermore:

Understanding The Music Of Neural Communication Could Solve Brain Disorders - Forbes

The reason why the analogy is problematic is because neural communication is a chaotic mess. There is no orchestration, no clean melodies, no set tempo. Neurons send signals thousands of times per minute, many of which seem like noise to those of us recording their microscopic musical beats.

This very conundrum – how does the brain coordinate its own neural communication in such a chaotic, noisy, electrochemical environment? – is what drives the focus of my research in my lab at UC San Diego. Recently I wrote a paper with my colleague and UC Berkeley neuroscientist Robert Knight, trying to tackle this idea. Before I go into the details I want to preface this with a caveat: despite what cop procedurals and popular books would have you believe, we neuroscientists know very little about how the brain actually works and so the theories presented just represent the beginning of understanding how it works. As a result, these ideas are probably not 100% correct, but I’d like to think they’re less wrong than how we normally think of the brain.

Embedded within the brain’s electrochemical neural noise is something like a rhythm (and if you’re interested in more, I highly recommend the book Rhythms of the Brainby neuroscientist György Buzsáki). These neural rhythms take the form of oscillations (which you probably know as “brain waves”). While largely a mystery, we know that these oscillations play an important role in helping coordinate neurons in different brain regions by helping them synchronize their communication. Sort of like how the radio can sound like noise until you tune into a specific frequency, some of our neurons also seem to pay special attention to different brain rhythms. This theoretical view was is a boon to modern neuroscience, because it finally gave gives us something concrete to work with. It provided a model for how different parts of the brain can orchestrate their communications, absent a conductor. ...

That’s where our recently-published theory comes into play. Our argument is that while neural oscillations are important for neural communication, these oscillations can come to dominate the brain’s signal. In the extreme case this can lead to “hypersynchronization” of the brain’s neurons and, ultimately, seizures or other disorders. Accordingly, we argue that the brain needs a way to break apart this rhythm apart.

When the brain is operating normally, we think this happens with “noise”—neurons that fire out of synch—which helps disrupt the over-orchestrated synchrony. So if these “noise”-neurons stop working properly, you might get the pathologically strong oscillations like you see in Parkinson’s. So in this view, DBS, which is an injection of electrical current directly into the brain, may literally just be adding noise into the brain’s circuits to break apart the unwanted synchrony – like breakbeats in hip hop that originated from jazz stop-time.

...

Our view here is quite different from how neurological and psychiatric disorders are normally viewed. These disorders are often framed as “chemical imbalances.” What we’re proposing is that, instead, they are fundamentally neural communication disorders, one cause of which—but not necessarily the only cause—might be a neurochemical imbalance. The benefit of this viewpoint is that it shifts treatment away from a medication-dominant view and embraces a multifaceted treatment view. Such a view incorporates medicine to treat the neurochemical aspects, therapy to treat the circuit overcoupling aspects, and perhaps even targeted electrical stimulation treatments to counteract the electrical communication aspects.

The scale of the problems we’re facing in trying to understand the brain is daunting. Testable, falsifiable theories like ours are few and far between. If my theory is wrong, which it almost certainly is, I hope it at least becomes a “beautiful oops” that can point the way to a better understanding of the brain.​

 

[Constance]

A further quote from Bouratinos's response: "Our neurones generate states capable of becoming conscious experiences — but only because consciousness moulded them over millions of years to be able to do so. All organs in living organisms grow in response to need."

Well that is certainly a fascinating statement. Wow.

How do you interpret it? What do you think Bouratinos is saying, there and in the rest of his response to the Velmans article? I ask because I don't see how (on what basis) it reminds you of the paper you cite:

It reminds me of the following (though I'm not suggesting this is the same phenomenon, but I'm not ruling it out, either).

Neurobiologists Find that Weak Electrical Fields in the Brain Help Neurons Fire Together | Caltech

New work by Koch and neuroscientist Costas Anastassiou, a postdoctoral scholar in biology, and his colleagues, however, suggests that the fields do much more—and that they may, in fact, represent an additional form of neural communication.

"In other words," says Anastassiou, the lead author of a paper about the work appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, "while active neurons give rise to extracellular fields, the same fields feed back to the neurons and alter their behavior," even though the neurons are not physically connected—a phenomenon known as ephaptic (or field) coupling. "So far, neural communication has been thought to occur almost entirely via traffic involving synapses, the junctions where one neuron connects to the next one. Our work suggests an additional means of neural communication through the extracellular space independent of synapses." ...

"Whether an externally imposed field will impact the brain also depends on which brain area is targeted," he says. "During epileptic seizures, the hypersynchronized activity of neurons can generate field as strong as 100 volts per meter, and such fields have been shown to strongly entrain neural firing and give rise to super-synchronized states." And that suggests that electric field activity—even from external fields—in certain brain areas, during specific brain states, may have strong cognitive and behavioral effects.

Ultimately, Anastassiou, Koch, and their colleagues would like to test whether ephaptic coupling affects human cognitive processing, and under which circumstances. "I firmly believe that understanding the origin and functionality of endogenous brain fields will lead to several revelations regarding information processing at the circuit level, which, in my opinion, is the level at which percepts and concepts arise," Anastassiou says. "This, in turn, will lead us to address how biophysics gives rise to cognition in a mechanistic manner—and that, I think, is the holy grail of neuroscience."​

" . . . Ultimately, Anastassiou, Koch, and their colleagues would like to test whether ephaptic coupling affects human cognitive processing, and under which circumstances. "I firmly believe that understanding the origin and functionality of endogenous brain fields will lead to several revelations regarding information processing at the circuit level, which, in my opinion, is the level at which percepts and concepts arise," Anastassiou says. "This, in turn, will lead us to address how biophysics gives rise to cognition in a mechanistic manner—and that, I think, is the holy grail of neuroscience."

 

[Soupie]

In your opinion, is the work of Julian Jaynes at all relevant to consciousness studies? Is The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind something that one would, today, encounter in graduate studies of this field? Do you think it could provide a useful interpretive schema for the study of the paranormal and UFOs?

Consciousness Began When the Gods Stopped Speaking: Julian Jaynes’ Famous 1970s Theory

From the age of 6, Jaynes had been transfixed by the singularity of conscious experience. Gazing at a yellow forsythia flower, he’d wondered how he could be sure that others saw the same yellow as he did. As a young man, serving three years in a Pennsylvania prison for declining to support the war effort, he watched a worm in the grass of the prison yard one spring, wondering what separated the unthinking earth from the worm and the worm from himself. It was the kind of question that dogged him for the rest of his life, and the book he was working on would grip a generation beginning to ask themselves similar questions.​

 

[Pharoah]

a new wiki entry for "Developmental Systems Theory"

All versions of developmental systems theory espouse the view that:

• All biological processes (including both evolution and development) operate by continually assembling new structures.

• Each such structure transcends the structures from which it arose and has its own systematic characteristics, information, functions and laws.

• Conversely, each such structure is ultimately irreducible to any lower (or higher) level of structure, and can be described and explained only on its own terms.

• Furthermore, the major processes through which life as a whole operates, including evolution, heredity and the development of particular organisms, can only be accounted for by incorporating many more layers of structure and process than the conventional concepts of ‘gene’ and ‘environment’ normally allow for.

 

[Soupie]

How do you interpret it?

I'll have to read more, but based on the quoted statement, he seems to conceptualize consciousness as a thing/medium/structure that is ontologically distinct from conscious experiences. And that this thing/medium/structure somehow influences/causes neurons to generate conscious experiences. Odd.

 

[Soupie]

I think one of the biggest problems with the field of consciousness studies is that there is no agreed upon definition of consciousness. The word is simply associated with too many disparate concepts. And no, I don't think it's because "we have no idea what consciousness is."

Consciousness is associated with:

awareness
self-awareness
emotions
sensations
perceptions (though laymen apparently do not commonly consider perceptions and sensations as consciousness)
empathy
language
thoughts
desires
god
goals
souls
love
meaning
the sense of self
free will/intention
personality
interests
the universe/reality
a phenomenon that emerges from (physical) processes
a phenomenon that emerges from the behavior of neurons
an undifferentiated, non-physical substance
an intelligent substance
a field that permeates the universe

So when someone says "Our neurones generate states capable of becoming conscious experiences — but only because consciousness moulded them over millions of years to be able to do so," one is left wondering what conscious experiences are and how they are different from consciousness. What is consciousness if not conscious experiences?

Our neurons generate states capable of becoming the experience of green, but only because the experience of green has molded them to do so? No?

How can consciousness mold neurons? I can see how a process such as evolution can "mold" neurons? Is he equating consciousness with a process such as evolution?

I can see how a god-like being could teleologically mold neurons. Is he equating consciousness with a god-like, intentional being?

 

[Soupie]

I don't see how (on what basis) it reminds you of the paper you cite:

The paper I cite identifies a process whereby electric fields generated by the activity of neurons recursively affects the activity of the neurons which produced it.

Bouratino says neurons generate consciousness but only because consciousness recursively moulded them to do so.

When Does Consciousness Begin and End? — NOVA Next | PBS

... Despite these important advances, this research tells us very little about what consciousness actually is, or about how the brain generates it. Consciousness is at once familiar to us all, and deeply mysterious. We are all familiar with the content of our consciousness, and how those contents change as time passes, and we all lose consciousness every night when we go to sleep, only to regain it in the morning. Yet, neuroscientists and philosophers alike are still struggling to find an adequate definition of consciousness.

When brain scanning technologies first emerged in the 1990s, some researchers began using them to identify the neural correlates of consciousness—activity patterns in specific parts of the brain that are associated with certain aspects of awareness—but this did not explain the relationship between brain activity and experience or why we only become aware of some aspects of the brain’s workings but not others.

Neuroscientists are increasingly viewing the brain as a complex network of inter-connected modules, and so there is growing interest in mapping the long-range neural pathways linking them. They have also come to believe that the synchronized activity of large groups of brain cells—which produces brain waves—is important for information processing and that the synchronization or de-coupling of brain wave frequencies between inter-connected brain regions is likely important for the flow of information between them.

But many say that we still have no real understanding of consciousness. “I often hear that we haven’t made much progress and still don’t know what we’re talking about,” says Anil Seth, director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Studies at the University of Sussex, “but I think that’s simply wrong, because we’ve seen huge developments in understanding.”

One such development is integrated information theory (IIT), developed by neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which explains consciousness in terms of the amount of information that is shared amongst brain regions. IIT states that consciousness is graded, and equates the amount of information being integrated with the level of conscious experience, such that conscious awareness increases with the amount of integration taking place. It predicts that any sufficiently complex system that integrates information could have “bits of consciousness.”

Thus, most animals are conscious to a greater or lesser extent, and the internet, with its billions of interconnected computers worldwide, could conceivably be conscious in some sense. Yet a supercomputer simulation of the human brain, which is only partly integrated, could not.

“This is an interesting theory that allows us to make all sorts predictions,” Seth says. For example, it predicts that general anesthetics make us lose consciousness by reducing information integration in the brain to below a certain critical level and that integration is reduced or otherwise disrupted in consciousness disorders. Both of these predictions turn out to be accurate. ...
​

@Constance, the Thomson book, Mind in Life, and the Neurophenomenology and Psychotherapy paper I linked above have both been excellent, illuminating sources of information. Well-written and clarifying. However, in neither of them have a yet encountered the concept that "consciousness" is a thing that exists prior to/separate from living organisms.

I've identified in this discussion before the two major notions of "consciousness."

i. Consciousness is a process that arises from the process of life (organisms). i.e., each unique organism will possess a unique consciousness.

ii. Consciousness is a thing that exists prior to organisms, and into which organisms tap, like a well.

You seem to adhere to the second view, which is not a neurophenomenological view.

 

[Soupie]

Can you make your meaning clearer?

Here is the concept as expressed by William James:

Robbins, B. D., & Gordon, S. (2015). Humanistic neuropsychology: The implications of neurophenomenology for psychology. In K. J. Schneider & J. F. Pierson (Eds.), The handbook of humanistic psychology: Leading edges in theory, research, and practice (2nd ed., pp. 195-211). | Susan Gordon - Academia.edu

According to James, the identity found by the “I” in its “me” was only a loosely construed thing or an identity “on the whole”(p. 72) that was divided into mutations of the self based on alterations of memory. For James, experience had no inner duplicity between subject and object. Thought was itself the thinker.

James described consciousness as a stream:a field with a focus and a margin (James,1890b), a plurality of waking and sublimi-nal states (James, 1902), and pure experience embodied in feeling and sensation (James,1912). The underlying nature of consciousness or the self, he believed, is a unified field of pure experience with no content other than itself, where the processes of representation are fluctuations or qualified states of this underlying field (James, 1912).​