Tegmark, Physics and Consciousness

[RArvay]

This is a continuation of a previous thread.
Here, I am attempting to consolidate my previous posts and
to reply to previous reader comments.

Virtually every source I have located concerning the relationship of consciousness to physics is characterized by controversy among the experts, so it should not be astonishing that we disagree so strongly in this discussion during the previous thread.

Consciousness as observed from the outside, is fairly well understood on a mechanistic level in biological and medical terms, and less well understood in psychological terms. In physics, however, it is generally acknowledged that very little, if anything, is understood about the subject in terms of its basis and nature. Its relationship to, and role in, quantum physics is a blank slate awaiting chalk.

There are two main reasons for this lack of understanding. One of them, as Max Tegmark points out, is that physics seems to have worked well without attempting to incorporate the subject matter, and so there has been a disinterest, almost a taboo, on using the tools of physics to form a theory of consciousness. The other reason is that consciousness has a qualitative aspect, such as the perception of color, which is neither predicted, nor explained by, any of the objective methods upon which physics depends.

Tegmark, IMO, has recognized a need to push past these barriers and to formulate a theory, or at least a proto-theory, of consciousness, a basis for further theorization and research.

Since I am not a physicist, I can do little more than read that portion of the literature which laymen can understand (albeit in a limited sense), and to propose my own hypothesis.

Physics cannot, of course, explain something which it cannot define— but, as in the case of dark matter, we can perform observations and make reasonable guesses as to its nature.

My hypothesis, then, if it rises to that level, is that our inward experience of consciousness is direct evidence of a quintessential component of nature, a sort of fifth essence that stands apart from space, time, energy and mass (STEM). Were it otherwise, I think that long ago there would have been some significant progress incorporating consciousness into STEM.

Allow me a brief, but relevant, aside here. IMO, the term dark matter might be a conceptual misnomer. Instead of referring to it as “matter,” I think it is more accurately referred to as something like, “anomalous gravitational field,” since its gravitational effects are the only major measurable observations yet made. Consciousness might similarly suffer from a conceptual bias in physics. End of aside.

Since the components of STEM are intricately intertwined, they might be thought of as a single thing. Therefore, one might propose a “STEMC,” adding “C” for consciousness, but IMO, consciousness is so profoundly different from the other four that it is in a different category altogether, even more singular than the dimension of time is from the three spatial dimensions.

The reason for proposing this singular nature of consciousness is that it is through consciousness, and only through consciousness, that we perceive all the other components and phenomena of nature, including STEM, and indeed, the observation of observation itself— so to speak, the eye seeing the eye. Only through consciousness do we perceive the objective (wavelength of light) in terms of the abstract (color). For example, mathematics, which Tegmark describes (as I understand it) as the ultimate reality, is entirely abstract. Numbers do not exist in nature, but only in our conscious minds, and yet mathematics certainly describes physical events in nature very well.

This brings us to the major disagreement with my posts on consciousness that have been expressed in this forum. My hypothesis is that consciousness is a foundational basis of nature, not a peripheral phenomenon. Were it merely a peripheral phenomenon arising out of (let us say, complexity), then it would be entirely possible for the universe to exist without conscious beings to perceive it. Not all physicists agree that it could, except perhaps in a very amorphous sense (even purely abstract, mathematical).

If consciousness is indeed foundational, then IMO that fact goes a long way toward explaining, even toward predicting, some aspects of quantum physics, such as the collapse of probability waves. It might even form a basis for explaining the fine tuning problem. It might even predict fine tuning.

Another aside: It is said that consciousness emerges from complexity, but the rich irony here is that in nature, there are no objective meanings to complexity or simplicity— those are abstract concepts within the conscious mind. End of aside.

Finally, it is important to note that we should not be averse to a hypothesis simply because it might require a philosophical, religious, or personal-preference interpretation of the evidence. If the evidence requires us to conclude that elves are responsible for dark matter, then so be it. It is the evidence itself that demands our attention, not our biases. Today it might be elves, but there is always tomorrow, and new evidence might bring us once again to a purely physical, conventional explanation of nature. For example, Hubble expansion initially was rejected, by some, in part because it seemed, upon first glance, to put the earth at the center of the universe, a taboo of physical cosmology, utterly unacceptable despite what at the time seemed to be evidence for it. Any fears of a geocentric cosmos eventually proved baseless, but at the time, some people applied that interpretation, and allowed it to cloud their thinking.

Likewise, a theory of consciousness should be sought after, even if the theory stands outside of relativistic and quantum physics, even if it requires a revolution in our way of— well— “perceiving” reality.

[Ben6993]

I don't see this as physics at the moment, despite physics being "everything" . Maybe in the future. (Note that I do not classify myself as a physicist.)

I haven't browsed for biological/psychological work which surely must be ongoing in this area. I am vaguely aware of inducement of comas (unconscious states?) and presume that scientists are busy right now inserting probes into the brains of rats which are awake/or/asleep/or/dreaming/or/comatose and seeing what comes out of their brains via other probes, or for human guinea pigs relating what the probes indicate compared to what the subjects report. This must build up relevant information wrt consciousness. There is also, surely, other work in hand to read people's minds, via similar such probes, though this must be in its infancy else super rich governments would not bother to use torture.

To me it seems that consciousness arises from complexity. I agree that the difference between non-complexity and complexity can be ambiguous though. For example, the physics of the very small in string theory seems to hit a wall at the lowest scale and rebounds into looking exactly like the physics of the very big. In my preon model, one could have the entire universe as one single boson. And does so have this at the big bang or node. There is surely enough preon content in that single particle to develop a consciousness as it contains all the preons of the entire universe, which is a constant. But it is only in one state at the node, with zero entropy and perfect order. There does not seem to be enough scope for "doing things" with it in just one state for it to be conscious. However, in my preon model the universe at the big bang is a particle and in between nodes it is a field. Just like, say, an electron behaves. Our universe could therefore be part of a brain on a 'beyond-the-cosmological scale' which we have no way of determining.

Computer science and building robots seems to be the most direct route to understanding consciousness. I guess that we will make robots which claim to be conscious before we get to more fully understand what consciousness is. A kind of Turing test for a being to be conscious would be that we might agree to accept that a robot is conscious is it acts like it is conscious and tells us that it is conscious. C.f. if it waddles and quacks convincingly, it is a duck. There is a software/or/hardware issue here and again the difference between the two is ambiguous. Consciousness must require software, which boils down to the ability to make new and break old interconnections within the brain. But it also requires hardware as somewhere to hold the temporary thoughts. C.f. a 2D screen/monitor. Or maybe it is a dedicated area in the brain which just houses the relevant areas being interconnected.

I suspect that consciousness is simpler and more attainable by a robotic brain than is generally thought. The phenomenon is too often intertwined with the mystical soul which gets in the way of a simple rational explanation of consciousness. Similarly, quantum entanglement gets in the way of deterministic local realist solutions.

The blog here: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/bodys-tril ... keep-time/ suggests that the body's circadian clocks are distributed among every cell in the body, except for stem cells. This is again an ambiguity between having a single clock emerging from complexity for the body and having a clock function distributed to all of its parts. Passing this idea over to consciousness could indicate that many but not necessarily all cells (hair cells?) have an access to consciousness. Apparently not all cells may need to have clock regulation and, likewise, maybe not all cells or interconnections need to participate in consciousness. I once forgot an ex-colleague's name for a week and a half. Then I suddenly remembered. Whatever long-term interconnections that information was stored in, they were not accessible to my short-term consciousness for too long a time. There seems to be a computing analogy of short term RAM and longer term storage with data paged in and out when needed. A week and a half to "page in" the data in my case.

In my preon model, STEM are all emergent properties derived from even more fundamental properties. Energy is the least explainable feature of the STEM group in my model. I think that STEM are 'more' fundamental features than is consciousness. I wrote recently in a far away unmoderated thread about my preon/hexark model and met resistance from someone who said that my hexarks were inert and could (therefore) not 'do' anything and then s/he left in a premature exit. I am not sure if he wanted the hexarks/preons to be conscious with free will, but I do sympathise with a wish for the fundamental entities not to be inert. In my model the hexarks are multidimensional string-like chiral entities perpetually moving/screwing at speed c wrt every fundamental property. That seemed to me to gain the necessary 'oomph' not to be thought of as inert. Even the static higgs is in my model a counterbalance of opposing chiral properties, i.e. a balance of a plus for every minus chirality. Except for weak isospin however which is not static in the higgs. And ignoring mass/gravity.

Colour is a wonderful, almost incredible, emergent property of the mind, something for nothing so it seems, but I think that it should be put to one side in considering consciousness. Colour is too wonderful and dazzling and, like the hypothetical and mystical soul, is something that gets in the way. I do not think that you need colour vision to have consciousness, so suggest exploration of consciouness without the distraction of colour.