Consciousness, magic, and scientific rationalism

Here's a really interesting piece by neuroscientist Michael Graziano, "Consciousness and the Unashamed Rationalist." Naturally I just ordered Graziano's book, Consciousness and the Social Brain.

His distinction between attention and awareness makes a lot of sense.

As Graziano says below, his theory posits that awareness "is the brain's own fuzzy description of attention. A brain attends to thing X; the brain constructs the description, 'I am aware of thing X.'"

Read the whole thing:

Theories of consciousness are always a difficult sell because the topic is fraught with religious and spiritual issues. Almost all people who think about the question, whether they approach it from a religious perspective or consider themselves to be scientists and atheists, start from a profoundly anti-rationalist assumption of magic.

In that assumption we have a non-physical internal experience, qualia, magic, awareness, sentience, whatever you call it. We have subjective feeling. How does it get there? Does the brain produce it? If so, how can a physical brain produce a non-physical feeling?

My approach is that if we are going to study the thing scientifically so as to make any progress, then let's use some scientific rationalism. How, and for what adaptive advantage, do brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves?

I have been involved in neuroscience for twenty-five years, studying how sensory information is processed and movement is controlled. Brains are information processing devices. When an information processing device introspects, that is to say, sorts and assesses internal data, and on that basis arrives at the conclusion that it has a magical, non-physically-explainable property, the most straightforward scientific question is not: "How did it produce magic?" but instead: "How, and for what use, does it construct that description of itself?"

I believe that question is not so difficult to answer. The outlines of an explanation may already be present. I've written about the "attention schema" theory in other places, including in my new book Consciousness and the Social Brain which lays out the case and describes the connections between the theory and other relevant theories and evidence.

Brains construct descriptions of things. Whether it's sensory information about the outside world or information about the movement of one's own limbs, brains construct fast, cartoonish descriptions of things external and internal. Those descriptions are never fully accurate. They often contain physical impossibilities.

In the attention schema theory, awareness is a description, one might say a model or a simulation, constructed by specialized systems in the brain. It is a cartoonish, somewhat inaccurate model of something real. The real item is attention. Attention is a data-handling trick. Incoming signals compete, some signals win the competition, and as a result the processing power of the brain is focused on those select, winning signals.

Attention is a way of focusing the computing resources. Awareness, in the theory, is the brain's own fuzzy description of attention. A brain attends to thing X; the brain constructs the description, "I am aware of thing X." By having some rough knowledge about its own attention, the brain can predict and partially control its own functioning.

One of the key lines of evidence is that awareness and attention are closely related and yet are not the same thing. They can be separated. Like all models constructed by the brain, this one can slip and become inaccurate in certain threshold circumstances. Awareness is not attention; it is the brain's schematic and somewhat error-prone model of attention.

My main purpose here, however, is not to detail the particular theory, which as I said has been described elsewhere. My main purpose is to give a pitch for rationalism. My previous article received comments pro and con, but the con comments were almost uniformly a pushback against rationalism. The topic of consciousness seems to be one of the last domains where science is not easily let in.

Even the scientists who study it begin with an assumption of magic, usually by some other name, and then throw up their hands about what has been euphemistically called "the hard problem." It is as though researchers of consciousness delight in having an unsolvable problem, perhaps because it makes them feel in some way apart from the physical world, or perhaps because they've built careers out of peddling the mystery.

Science and rationalism and reductionism can't answer every question or explain every phenomenon. But they often get pretty far if one gives them a chance. To approach consciousness scientifically, perhaps someday to help people with brain disorders, perhaps even to construct artificial intelligence that is humanlike, we can't start with the assumption of magic. Science can't make headway unless observations are stripped of their magical interpretations.

Objectively, human brains attribute the property of awareness to themselves. From that beginning one can ask scientific questions: what systems in the brain are responsible for this type of attribution? What happens when a stroke or other brain disease damages those systems? Do those systems confer a specific advantage? The answers are likely to violate common intuitions. Even the line of questioning appears to violate most people's intuitions about mind and consciousness.

But when it comes to understanding the functioning of the brain, intuition and introspection do no good at all. The brain's knowledge of itself is too sketchy, partial, and distorted. For my part, I will continue with the rationalist approach.

Comments

[cc]

In other words, perception is just one brain's "take" on what-is, and more useful for what it tells us about a particular brain than for what it tells us about what actually is.

We've known for some time that the brain does not record experience so much as interpret it, and that every interpertation must be tested, measured by that which can be shown to be factual before giving it much credence.

If the human brain could be as accurate and impersonal as the recording technology we now have, we wouldn't be "human" as we know it, i.e., biased. Then what? If everyone was as rational as a Vulcan, then personal identity would amount to no more than a set of circumstances which would always be subject to reason rather than to tradition, religion, ideology, whim, ambition, vanity, vengeance, voices, etc. Unthinkable!

But nowadays we get to have it both ways. We have the means to prove how biased our perception is, while at the same time allowing for all the emotional response that makes us human. By patiently entertaining nuttiness (be it our own or another's) and attempting to reason with it, we acknowledge our humanity and our need for sanity.

[Willie R.]

Evolutionary biologists have come to the inescapable conclusion, based upon hard, incontrovertible evidence, that bodies are specifically (and somehow, deliberately) designed to disintegrate. There is simply no other way to ensure the propagation of life - which is the tendency of a molecule to replicate itself. It's kinda like - if life could construct a permanent enclosure, there would be no point in replication. An immortal body would be abhorrent to genes (if they could actually think).
Which brings us to the subject of the brain, which could be said to actually do the thinking for the genes. As individuals, we hold forth in the face of the inevitability of what we subsume under the label of "Reality".
I myself am of the opinion that there is a distinction between awareness and consciousness. Consciousness is the functioning of the brain, but awareness is equivalent to "Reality". "Reality" is not in any way, shape, or form physical or even existent. Physical reality, even the entire universe, is of no consequence to "Reality", because existence can do nothing to modify it. There isn't anything to modify.
When the body disintegrates, there is no longer any consciousness. What knows this? Awareness, which is to say - Reality.

[Roger]

Willie R.

Nice comment.

You mentioned,

"Consciousness is the functioning of the brain, but awareness is equivalent to "Reality". "Reality" is not in any way, shape, or form physical or even existent. Physical reality, even the entire universe, is of no consequence to "Reality", because existence can do nothing to modify it. There isn't anything to modify."

---Is "Reality" the non-conceptual no-thing-ness? Could you write something additional to explain what you mean by Reality?

[Willie R.]

Roger - in my estimation, any attempt to describe "Reality" ends up sounding like metaphysical gobbledygook. That is because it actually IS metaphysical gobbledygook!

But I do not say that like it's a bad thing. Ordinarily, consciousness feels like it is simply resident inside the human skull. But when we attempt introspection, consciousness itself becomes objectified. What is it that notices the objectification? What is it that attempts to look at what's looking? There is nothing physical inside the brain that is objectifying consciousness.

The universe, bodies, consciousness - the who megilla is happening, but it is not happening TO anyone or anything. But it is Reality. To say so is metaphysical - but only because the conclusion that Reality is ultimately and only physical is equally metaphysical. There is no one for whom Reality could be physical or non-physical. Another Oops! I have drifted back into metaphysical gobbledygook.

Reality has no need of consciousness. Consciousness comes; consciousness goes. Reality does not.

[cc]

Reality has no need of consciousness. Consciousness comes; consciousness goes. Reality does not.

In the case of the moon, this may be true because the moon is doing fine without consciousness

But if by "reality" we mean all that has actual existence (including the moon), and seeing as how earthly life is conscious, the statement that "reality has no need of consciousness" is true only on the moon.

[Roger]

Thanks Willie R.

You mentioned,

""Reality" is not in any way, shape, or form physical or even existent."

---Still not sure what you mean by this statement. This is no big deal. However,
non-things(non-conceptualized things) would have non-conceptualized presence or existence, or non-conceptualized non-physical form.

I would use the term non-conceptualized Reality for such. This would be the no-thing-ness, Void, etc.

The conceptualized physical form or realm would be objectified Reality. This Reality would be the world,etc., we percieve(brain activity) and live in. This objectified Reality would have a need for consciousness. Still, consciousness comes and goes, with changes placed upon objectified Reality.