Overview
My main thesis is as follows: everything is one and is necessarily conscious of itself through “us”. Even if we seem like separate individuals, we…
Archivi categoria: coscienza
Tutto è uno e noi siamo tutto
In questa sezione del sito intendo argomentare la seguente tesi: tutto è uno ed è necessariamente cosciente di se stesso attraverso di “noi”. Anche se…
About Being you
Anil Seth’s book, Being you. A New Science of Consciousness, Faber & Faber, London 2021, proposes an intriguing theory of consciousness that seems quite convincing, although it explicitly refuses to confront the hard problem of consciousness, as David Chalmers calls it, and so evades the crucial question in my opinion.
What, then, are the main reasons for the volume’s interest?
The basic interpretation of the consciousness that Seth provides is convincing: it would be a system that, based on a predictive approach (“bayesian”), “hallucinates” a “functional” reality, not necessarily similar to the “true reality” (Seth himself in the epilogue recalls the Kantian distinction between phenomenon and noumenon and alludes to the possibility that even the three-dimensional fabric of space – unfortunately he does not speak of time, which is very close to my heart, – can be a “perceptive effect”).
Within certain limits it also convinces the “naturalistic” point of view adopted by Seth, who assigns more relevance to the “real problem” of consciousness, as he calls it, than to the “hard problem”. I intend this as follows: any interpretation of the functioning of consciousness must be consistent with empirical data: although consciousness, as a subjective experience, is not the brain, nothing prevents (indeed everything suggests) that there is a close correlation between consciousness and brain (or body), between “inside” and “outside”. So it is right to “naturalize” the problem of the consciousness not assuming only a “transcendental” perspective (This “naturalization” does not exclude such a trascendental perspective: phenomenological analysis, simply, cannot be incongruous with the empirical data: e.g. it cannot be that I perceive a cat if my brain sends the waves typical of deep sleep).
It must be said that, although Seth is a neuroscientist, his theory appears more speculative than “scientific”. Seth certainly takes inspiration from observations and experiments of his own and of others, but what gives meaning to the volume is an overall interpretation that is certainly authorized by empirical data, but is not the only possible.
In my point of view a problem, as mentioned, is that Seth, despite his speculative “drift”, claims to evade the “hard problem”.
He claims to distinguish what he calls real problem (the problem of explaining “scientifically” consciousness) from “easy problems”, as Chalmers calls them, which would concern the “functioning” of consciousness. Yet, in the end, Seth also explains consciousness functionally (with his Bayesian theory) taking for granted the phenomenology of consciousness. But this phenemology is exactly what distinguishes consciousness as first-person experience. This should have been a matter of explaining. But Seth doesn’t follow this way.
Seth ultimately fails to “justify” the very existence of consciousness. Why couldn’t its effective Bayesian functioning be implemented by an unconscious system, as are, according to Seth, some different forms of artificial intelligence?
The reductionist approach, in general, to nature is useful but not exclusive (as Seth presents it with epistemological fallacy in my point of view).
Let’s consider the reductionist approach to life in modern biology, which Seth considers paradigmatic. It merely shifts the “hard problem” (what life is and why it exists), doesn’t dissolve it into a cloud of metaphysical smoke, as Seth thinks.
The same applies to the problem of the existence of consciousness (Chalmers’ hard problem, in fact). If I am a self-regulating system whose goal is to survive, why do I need to be conscious? You can build systems that self-regulate themselves based on the inputs they receive without being alive and conscious.
The right distinction that Seth makes, in the last chapter before the epilogue, between consciousness and intelligence suggests (cf. the pages on which he guesses unlikely that a machine capable of “predictive processing” is aware) that this “predictive processing”, which according to him characterizes consciousness, can characterize also simply an intelligent system capable of self-regulation, but unconscious.
Seth also discusses the interesting paradox of teleportation: if a certain Eva entered, here on Earth, into a teleportation machine that would disintegrate her and then rebuild her elsewhere, e.g. on Mars, could you say that Eva is always Eva? Would her consciousness be the same? And if, due to a machine failure, the “terrestrial” Eva survives and a second Eva, identical to the first, is reproduced on Mars, which one would Eva be? (Seth also evokes somewhere the “split brain” and the interesting real case of the Siamese twins united by the brain).
In all these cases, in my opinion, we continue to escape the problem. It is not enough to say “both women are Eva”. You who have entered the machine, will you find yourself on Mars or on Earth? My answer is: on Earth . On Mars there is a clone (with your memory). It cannot be physical identity that determines the continuity of consciousness. If anything, the opposite. Everyone who enters a transporter machine dies instantly even if no one notices.
Likewise the representation of a “diffused” consciousness in the octopus, which Seth presents in the last chapter, does not seem justified to me. Seth can recognize that parts of the octopus move with great autonomy and intelligence (after all, our heart and our immune system do too). But a consciousness that is not “one” is unthinkable. Whatever it was, it would not be what we mean by consciousness.
Attention: I don’t’ claim that whoever is conscious (someone in particular or the universe itself) must conceive of himself or of herself necessarily as one and as a body. This may well be a hallucination. One can identify himself or herself with this or that, but who identifies himself or herself with this or that – suppose erroneously – cannot but have one consciousness if he or she has consciousness. It makes no sense to say that he or she can have two or more “consciousnesses” or a “diffused” consciousness, whatever this means. If two people had the same consciousness, exactly as two parts of an animal, they can simultaneously perceive themselves suppose both in Rome and in London: they must have only one consciousness with two or more perceptions (as I now see more colors). If they have this “consciousness” at different times, they still has only one consciousness that simply moves and becomes filled in time with different contents.
Seth roots consciousness in life rather than intelligence. Interesting and plausible. But how to prove it?
It’s just a conjecture.
Many living activities, even human and even very complex ones, take place unconsciously. Perhaps the function of consciousness is linked to the possibility of experiencing pleasure and pain to orient oneself in the world between opportunities and dangers? But even an unconscious mechanism emulated by a robot could do it…
About function of plesure and pain see my recent post.
We come, finally, to the epistemologically pivotal issue, in my opinion.
If everything is controlled hallucination, including external objects, even the limbic system or the cerebellum or the neurocortex are hallucinations, even the living body is a hallucination that seems to us to occupy a three-dimensional space, even space and time themselves: Seth assigns them a role just because he needs to believe that they exist as external objects in order to survive (as a neuroscientist rather than as a mystic?). It is the “mise en abime” that distinguishes every radical naturalism (taken to its extreme consequences) that ends up making it an idealism.
For the truth, on page 272 Seth seems to apply his theory of consciousness to itself: as consciousness works as predictive, not “objective”, so also a theory of consciousness works if it obeys a Bayesian epistemology. But it is like saying that his theory can safely be also false! In short, it does not fall into the paradox of the liar?
In this “idealistic” perspective I can agree with Seth that the self is a hallucination, not unlike other “objects”: maybe the One (God, Shiva etc.) identifies himself erroneously with me and with you (and with Seth and so on).
But Seth seems to think that “who” is wrong in these identifications is not the One, but my or your or his “living body”, This is because, in my opinion, he ends up committing the same mistake that he unmasked, assigning to a phantom living body a fundamental reality, while on the basis of its own criteria and results it must be considered a hallucination, a construct functional to life.
In general, however, this book is really very interesting and inspiring, everyone should read it.
But with a warning: as mentioned above, many of Seth’s theories (e.g. that consciousness is linked to life or is predictive), as many other intriguing theories that Seth cites (e.g. Friston’s Free Energy Theory), are not immediately derived from experiments but seem speculative interpretations of experiments (which is fine to me, I find it inevitable) and provoke further speculative hypotheses.
With a pun you could say that the theory of predictive consciousness is not itself… predictive (controllable by experiments that could falsify it). Too much Bayesianism, after all, can inebriate, as Popper argued!
Is consciousness born as evaluative (emotional) experience?
In the pre-print The Origins of Consciousness or the War of the Five Dimensions, Walter Veit develops an interesting theory of consciousness. Having adopted the evolutionary paradigm, he believes that a whole series of “additions” characteristic of human consciousness can be “peeled”. He posits that animals, in which consciousness would originally have appeared, are endowed with a consciousness reduced to the perception of their own emotions, in particular of pleasure and pain, which have an evident biological function (are useful for the conservation and reproduction of the organism that is endowed with it).
I find the idea that consciousness cannot be grasped either with an externalist approach or with an internalist approach strong and agreeable. Consciousness would not originally have to do with the “self” nor would it be reduced to a mere environmental effect (according to a crude stimulus-response model). For different reasons than Veit’s, these are conclusions that I have also come to.
I find Veit’s criticism of the autopoietic approach quite instructive. In Veit he is represented by Evan Thompson. According to the autopoietic “tradition” an organism is conceived as a totality without an outside, as I tend to imagine too, when I maintain that it is an envelope of the universe itself. If so, however, the peculiarity of the living organism is lost, that is, the ability to zero in itself the increase of entropy (character that, in my opinion, is connected with the emergence of consciousness). If there is no border between inside and outside, how can this peculiarity be highlighted? It would be necessary to imagine a sort of “entropic wave” that rises progressively after the big bang and then falls as life evolves on Earth, without introducing solutions of continuity…
I agree with Veit’s discarding a “diachronic” model of consciousness. I can imagine myself having Alzheimer’s and losing all or part of this kind of consciousness (exactly as a self-awareness).
But I do not agree with Veit’s discarding a synchronic model of consciousness, a model based (correctly, in my opinion) on the idea of the unity of consciousness. The usual example of the “diffuse” or “multiple” consciousness of the octopus does not convince me at all. First of all none of us is an octopus and we cannot know what we would experience if we were an octopus (this is a more general limitation of Veit’s approach). Secondly, assuming that an octopus tentacle does not know what goes through the brain of the octopus and vice versa (as the right part of my brain would not know what the left one thinks in the case of resection of my corpus callosum), this would simply mean that there would be as many synchronic occurrences of consciousness as there are tentacles or independent parts of the nervous system (or brain) of a person or an animal. A multiple consciousness is contradictory to the notion of consciousness as a subjective experience. Two people probably have “two” occurrences of consciousness (like the octopus tentacle and its brain in hypothesis), but neither of them is directly conscious of the other (each makes an inference from himself or herself to the other, in the sense that each assumes for a number of reasons that the other person is also conscious). If one of the two occurrences of consciousness were also directly aware of the other, it would be seen e. g. a view in which the roofs of London would be confused with those of New York (if the two people resided respectively in these two cities) and, again, it would be experienced only one consciousness (in only one time). I see no alternative.
As for overcoming the notion of sensory consciousness, I agree with Veit that we should not associate it exclusively with seeing. But from this I do not understand how the value of the phenomenological dimension can be diminished. Even if people, unlike philosophers, think that consciousness has to do with evaluative issues related to affectivity and admitted and not allowed that this dimension can evade the hard problem, the stubborn philosopher can alone continue to wonder how the phenomenal experience is possible, even if by linguistic convention he agrees to call “consciousness” something else, what precisely people would call so.
For the truth Veit seems aware of this “right” of the philosopher and, in fact, not relying exclusively on the thesis of the “experimental philosophers of the mind”, he concludes in the following way (it seems to me his fundamental thesis):
“Hedonic value of a stimulus or a bodily state seems to be an evaluation of its expected value to the organism” . There doesn’t appear to be an additional problem of why there is valence. This makes the evaluative side of experience a compelling target for an attempt to bridge the gap between matter and mind. To have a phenomenological experience is to have an evaluative experience. To naturalize the puzzling notion of ‘qualia’ is simply to explain how and why organisms have such an evaluation. Phenomenal states simply are explained within the context of an affect-based model of phenomenological experience.
Now, if Veit intends to argue that the evaluative experience (in fact the “affective one”) is at the root of the evolutionary phenomenological consciousness I have no objections of merit (but only of method: how does he prove this?). If by “root” we do not mean “cause”, but only the beginning in time of the experience of consciousness (like saying, in my model, that a zebra’s consciousness has more affective character than visual or intellectual) there is no problem.
Just recently I wrote a new page of my site, in which I recognize the functional value (for survival and reproduction) of “pleasure” and “pain” and other emotions. I consider these emotions as ways in which the body communicates/reminds the consciousness of its needs.
But how to center the consciousness in the affective experience helps to overcome the “gap between matter and mind” (to solve the hard problem) is obscure for me.
Why should what we and probably many other animals live as pleasure and pain be precisely “lived“? If a certain perception activates certain substances in the brain (let’s say endorphins) that push towards a certain behavior, why should all this be perceived as pleasure? The hard problem seems to me to remain intact.
From the epistemological point of view, as mentioned, I wonder how the literature widely cited by Veit can safely (or cheerfully) attribute “consciousness” to non-human organisms. I am deeply convinced that consciousness is spread beyond the “sapiens” (e.g. in anthropomorphic apes). But how to prove it? Is it a metaphysical option? I certainly see how animals behave, but how can I know what and if they “feel”?
E.g. Veit evokes at some point the fact that even very primitive animals, such as sponges, etc. are able to distinguish themselves from each other. But even our immune system detects possible “invading” organisms. That doesn’t make our immune system conscious!
Veit’s argument seems to me to be circular. He invites us not to make “human” consciousness the paradigm of reference. Then he goes to look for in “nature” the precursor of this consciousness in some structure. Obviously it must be something simpler. He imagine that this precursor is done in a certain way “simplifying” to the extreme the human consciousness and “projects” this imagination on nature. But at the end, in my opinion, it is anyway from the human consciousness that we must start (and also Veit must do), not because we are “special”, but only because the human consciousness is the only one we experience. And since consciousness is characterized precisely as a “subjective experience” it seems difficult to ignore it.
Further Veit rejects the “biopsychism”, as he calls it, that is, the idea that life and consciousness evolve at the same time, even if at all costs he want to adopt the Darwinist paradigm (which he takes for granted) also for consciousness. I seem to understand that Veit imagines a sort of “delay” between the evolution of life and the evolution of consciousness, while maintaining that both evolve gradually.
But by what “signs” can he recognize in the non-human living the appearance of the primordial consciousness? How can he tell them apart from unconscious reflexes?
It seems to me that Veit’s paper is an eloquent example of how often the empirical approach, which tend to “naturalize consciousness”, which is proposed as scientific, is inadequate.
We need to know philosophically what can be meant by consciousness, how it can be recognized that also other animals are equipped with it, how we can verify or falsify our assumptions in this field, on what grounds the Darwinist approach can be considered scientific and not merely speculative, and so on.
Otherwise we risk taking a seriously “scientific” attitude against the philosophical chatter while falling into the opposite error: we make speculation with the aggravating circumstance of a lack of awareness to make it.
La coscienza sorge come esperienza affettiva?
Nell’articolo The Origins of Consciousness or the War of the Five Dimensions Walter Veit (nella foto) sviluppa un’interessante teoria della coscienza. Adottato il paradigma evoluzionistico, egli ritiene che si possano “sbucciare” tutta una serie di “aggiunte” caratteristiche della coscienza umana e rinvenire negli animali, nei quali la coscienza si sarebbe originariamente affacciata, una coscienza ridotta alla percezione delle proprie emozioni, segnatamente di piacere e dolore, dall’evidente funzione biologica (utile alla conservazione e riproduzione dell’organismo che ne è dotato).
Trovo ficcante e condivisibile l’idea che la coscienza non possa essere colta né con un approccio esternalista né con un approccio internalista. La coscienza non avrebbe a che fare originariamente col “self“, inteso come individuale, riferito al determinato organismo, né si ridurrebbe a un mero effetto ambientale (secondo un modello rozzo stimolo-risposta). Per motivi diversi da quelli di Veit sono conclusioni a cui sono giunto anch’io.
Ho trovato abbastanza istruttiva la critica all’approccio autopoietico, che pure in generale trovo convincente. In Veit è rappresentato da Evan Thompson. Effettivamente, se si fa dell’organismo una totalità senza esterno, come sostiene la “tradizione” dell’autopoiesi e tenderei a immaginare anch’io, quando sostengo che si tratta di un inviluppo dell’universo stesso, si perde la peculiarità dell’organismo vivente, cioè la capacità di azzerare in se stesso l’incremento dell’entropia (carattere che, pure secondo me, è connesso con l’emergere della coscienza). Se manca un confine tra dentro e fuori come si può mettere in evidenza questa peculiarità? Bisognerebbe immaginare una sorta di “onda entropica” che si innalza progressivamente dopo il big bang per poi calare via via che la vita evolve sulla Terra, senza tuttavia introdurre soluzioni di continuità…
Sono d’accordo nello scartare un modello di coscienza “diacronica”. Posso immaginare di avere l’Alzheimer e di perdere in tutto o in parte questa consapevolezza (come lo stesso “io” o “self“).
Non sono invece d’accordo nello scartare la coscienza sincronica, se ho ben capito quello che sostiene Veit. Il solito esempio della coscienza “diffusa” o “multipla” del polpo non mi convince affatto. In primo luogo nessuno d noi è un polpo e non possiamo sapere che cosa esperiremmo (questo è un limite più generale dell’approccio di Veit). In secondo luogo ammesso che un tentacolo del polpo non sappia cosa passa per il cervello del polpo e viceversa (come la parte destra del mio cervello non saprebbe che cosa pensa quella sinistra nel caso di resecazione del mio corpo calloso), questo significherebbe semplicemente che ci sarebbero tante coscienze sincroniche quanti sono i tentacoli o le parti indipendenti del sistema nervoso / cervello di una persona o di un animale. Un coscienza multipla è contraddittoria con la nozione di coscienza come esperienza soggettiva. Due persone hanno verosimilmente “due” coscienze (come il tentacolo del polpo e il suo cervello in ipotesi), ma nessuna delle due è cosciente direttamente dell’altra (ciascuno effettua un’inferenza da sé all’altro, nel senso che ciascuno suppone per una serie di ragioni che anche l’altra persona sia cosciente). Se una delle due coscienze fosse direttamente cosciente anche dell’altra, si vedrebbe un panorama in cui i tetti p.e. di Udine si confonderebbero con quelli p.e. di Milano (se le due persone risiedessero rispettivamente in queste due città) e, di nuovo, si registrerebbe UNA coscienza. Non vedo alternative.
Per quanto riguarda il superamento della nozione di coscienza percettiva o sensoriale, sono d’accordo con Veit che non si debba esagerare la metafora della “visione”. Ma da questo non capisco come si possa diminuire il valore della dimensione fenomenologica. Anche se il “folk”, a differenza dei filosofi, pensa che la coscienza abbia a che fare con questioni valutative legate all’affettività e ammesso e non concesso che questa dimensione possa dribblare lo hard problem, il “filosofo” testardo può solitariamente continuare a chiedersi come sia possibile l’esperienza fenomenica, anche se per convenzione linguistica accettasse di chiamare “coscienza” qualcos’altro, quello che appunto il “popolo” chiamerebbe così.
Ora Veit sembra consapevole di questo “diritto” del filosofo e, infatti, non appoggiandosi in modo esclusivo alla tesi dei “filosofi sperimentali della mente”, conclude nel modo seguente (mi sembra la sua tesi fondamentale):
“Hedonic value of a stimulus or a bodily state seems to be an evaluation of its expected value to the organism” . There doesn’t appear to be an additional problem of why there is valence. This makes the evaluative side of experience a compelling target for an attempt to bridge the gap between matter and mind. To have a phenomenological experience is to have an evaluative experience. To naturalize the puzzling notion of ‘qualia’ is simply to explain how and why organisms have such an evaluation. Phenomenal states simply are explained within the context of an affect-based model of phenomenological experience.
Ora, se Veit intende sostenere che l’esperienza valutativa (di fatto quella “affettiva”) sia alla radice evoluzionisticamente della coscienza fenomenologica non ho obiezioni di merito (ma solo di metodo: come fa a dimostrare una cosa del genere?). Se per “radice” non intendiamo “causa”, ma solo l’inizio nel tempo dell’esperienza della coscienza (come dire, nel mio modello, che quando l’Uno si incarna in una zebra la sua esperienza ha più carattere affettivo che visivo o intellettuale) non c’è problema.
Proprio di recente ho scritto una nuova pagina del mio sito, in cui riconosco il valore funzionale (per sopravvivenza e riproduzione) di “piacere” e “dolore” e delle altre emozioni. Considero queste emozioni come modi attraverso cui il corpo comunica/ricorda alla coscienza i propri bisogni.
Ma come centrare la coscienza nell’esperienza affettiva aiuti a superare il “gap between matter and mind” mi risulta oscuro.
Perché ciò che noi e probabilmente molti altri animali viviamo come piacere e dolore debba essere appunto “vissuto”? Se una certa percezione attiva certe sostanze nel cervello (poniamo: endorfine) che spingono verso un certo comportamento perché il tutto deve essere percepito come piacere? Lo hard problem mi sembra rimanere intatto.
Dal punto di vista epistemologico, come accennato, mi chiedo come la letteratura ampiamente citata da Veit (a cui Veit attinge) possa tranquillamente (o allegramente) attribuire “coscienza” a organismi non umani. Sono profondamente convinto che la coscienza sia diffusa al di là dei “sapiens” (p.e. nelle scimmie antropomorfe). Ma come dimostrarlo? È un’opzione metafisica? Vedo certamente come gli animali si comportano, ma come posso sapere che cosa e se “sentono”?
Ad es. Veit evoca a un certo punto il fatto che anche animali molto primitivi, come spugne ecc., sono in grado di distinguere se stessi dall’altro da sé. Ma anche il nostro sistema immunitario individua eventuali organismi “invasori”. Non per questo il nostro sistema immunitario è cosciente!
L’operazione di Veit mi sembra circolare. Da un lato invita a non fare della coscienza “umana” il paradigma di riferimento. Poi va a cercare in “natura” il precursore di questa coscienza in qualche struttura. Ovviamente deve trattarsi di qualcosa di più semplice. “Immagina” che questa “cosa” sia fatta in un certo modo “semplificando” all’estremo la coscienza umana e “proietta” questa sua immaginazione sulla natura. Ma in ultima analisi è sempre dalla coscienza umana che bisogna partire, non perché noi siamo “speciali”, ma soltanto perché la coscienza umana è la sola di cui facciamo esperienza. E poiché la coscienza è caratterizzata proprio come “esperienza soggettiva” mi sembra difficile prescinderne.
Tuttavia Veit rifiuta il “biopsichismo”, come lo chiama, cioè l’idea che vita e coscienza evolvano di pari passo, pur volendo a tutti costi adottare il paradigma darwinistico (che dà per scontato) anche per la coscienza. Mi sembra di capire che Veit immagini una sorta di “delay” tra evoluzione della vita ed evoluzione della coscienza, pur sostenendo che entrambe evolvano per gradi.
Ma da quali “segni” egli pensa di riconoscere nel vivente non umano l’apparire dei primordi della coscienza? Come fa a distinguerli da riflessi inconsci?
Mi sembra che quello di Veit sia un esempio eloquente di come spesso l’approccio empirico (“naturalizzante”), che si propone come scientifico, sia del tutto inadeguato.
Mancando una chiarificazione filosofica a monte di quello che si possa intendere per coscienza, di come si possa riconoscere che un ente diverso da noi stessi ne sia dotato, finanche di come si possano verificare o falsificare le proprie assunzioni in tal senso, su quali basi si possa considerare scientifico e non meramente speculativo l’approccio darwinistico, si rischia di assumere un atteggiamento seriosamente “scientifico” versus il chiacchiericcio filosofico mentre si cade nell’errore contrario: si fa speculazione con l’aggravante di una mancanza consapevolezza di farla.
La coscienza come “svantaggio” evolutivo
Ammettiamo che la coscienza non possa essere utile all’organismo che ne appare dotato nella “lotta per la sopravvivenza”, come tu argomenti. Ma mi è stato…