The physical basis of consciousness

Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 19:13:01 -0800
From: Joel Henkel <jhenkel@cambridge.village.com>
To: quantum-d list <quantum-d@teleport.com>
Subject: the physical basis of consciousness

A Question and Answer Session About The Physical Basis of 
Consciousness 
by Joel Henkel <jhenkel@village.com> 

An augmented version of this paper can be found at
http://hermes-op.com/inscirev/inscirev.html 
 
*How are we conscious?* 
By seeing a world "out there". 
 
*How do we see the world?* 
Through our senses, that provide streams of sense data. 
These are integrated (the binding  process) into the 
objects and events that make up the world. 
 
*How does this perception process work physically?* 
Each of the senses is "sensitive" to some physical 
property of our world. 
---1. Eyes detect light, organized into images that fall 
on the retina. 
---2. Ears detect sound, organized into a frequency 
spectrum that resonates in the  
cochlea. 
---3. The nose detects trace concentrations of aromatic 
chemical compounds in the air. 
---4. Taste detects chemical compounds in the mouth. 
---5. The skin uses touch to detect the presence of 
solids, liquids, and wind--all producing mechanical 
forces that push on the skin. 
---6. The inner ear's semi-circular canals detects the 
direction "up" using fluid motion due to gravity. 
 
*How are the  sense signals "managed"?* 
Through the use of cybernetic feedback loops. Each sense 
processes the incoming signals from the very beginning of 
their passage through the perception process. 
 
*How does the control feedback loop work?* 
A generic control circuit has two nodes, one at the input 
of processing, the other at the output. 
 
                       feedback 
               | -------<--------<-------| 
                 in-->--processor-->--out 
 
The direction of change in the output is "fed back" to 
the input, so processed signals can control or "manage" 
the loop's operation. Negative feedback stabilizes or  
"smoothes out" signals in the control process. Negative 
feedback, being "opposite direction" changes in the 
signal, oppose processor output change.  
 
*How are signals from the senses combined (bound 
together)?* 
Control loops are linked together in a hierarchical 
ladder of loops. Lower order loops deal with individual 
properties of their sense. As the signals are passed form 
lower levels to higher levels, they are "generalized". 
The domain or range of reference of the signal is 
enlarged. This generalization process allows senses to be 
"conflated" or combined in higher levels of the 
hierarchy. 
 
*Where does this hierarchy stop?* 
When all senses have been conflated, the output is 
projected as "the world", as perceived by the conscious 
mind. 
 
*Where did "mind" first get introduced in the ladder, as 
signals passed up the hierarchy to conscious perception?* 
In the first place, let's pin down some of these terms. 
 
o Consciousness: 
Instead of defining "consciousness" in the narrow sense 
of the highest stage of the hierarchy of perceptive 
feedback loops, let us redefine it as present at all 
levels in the hierarchy (to be elaborated on). In this 
way, we avoid introducing some "threshold" level in the 
hierarchy where consciousness "emerges" from some 
physical process. 
 
o Mind: 
Again, instead of defining "mind" in the narrow sense of 
property at "the top of the hill" of living organisms, 
let us redefine mind as present whenever a perception  
feedback loop is present. 
 
o Perception: 
We can now define "perception" in a general context, even 
more generally than in the context of human sense 
perception. Let up define "perception" as the process of 
any organism that is sensible to its surroundings. 
 
In the second place, we can now use the new definitions 
to create a picture or frame for the relationship between 
life and non-life, a very philosophical and abstract 
notion. 
 
Let us introduce the notion of "experiential loop". Any 
living organism can be thought of as experiencing its 
world, through its experiential loop. 
 
              <----------perception----------- 
              |                              | 
creature's model of the world            its world 
              |                              | 
              ----------behavior-------------> 
 
                   Experiential Loop 
 
The organism must be capable of generating and 
maintaining a model of its world in order to complete the 
experiential loop. 
 
In the third place, we can now talk about the place of 
"mind" in the world. Any living creature that can "model 
its world" internally, has "mind". So, mind gets 
introduced at the bottom of the hierarchy of perception. 
Even single-celled organisms experience and have "mind". 
 
*Is there a specific example for this model of mind at 
the single-celled level of life?* 
Paramecium can be described in detail in terms of 
physical processes that show a "mental" aspect, by using 
the frame of explanation of the experiential loop. This  
description is conjectural on my part; I have taken some 
liberty to fill in details. 
 
Richard Feynman explains physics using "elements of 
explanation". These elements are to be taken as starting 
points at the basic level of explanation, justified by 
their reasonableness, but not explained in terms of more 
basic notions. One doesn't question an element, but 
accepts it as useful in gaining insight about the world. 
In keeping with this notion, the experiential loop is an 
element of explanation.  
 
*What are the properties of the element "experiential 
loop" for Paramecium?* 
o Paramecium's world 
        A water drop. 
        An electrolyte with biomolecules swimming in it. 
        An environment with a "medium function" called the 
"average electric dipole density", recognized by Herbert 
Froelich as the variable underlying biochemical reactions 
involving cells. 
        A population of many species of biochemical 
molecule, each with its own characteristic "electric 
dipole resonator" that "broadcasts" its signal of 
recognition 
 
o Paramecium's Structure 
        The exoskeletin 
        The microtubule structure 
        Cilia, external extensions of internal microtubules 
        Ordered water waves that are excited within 
microtubules, under active amplification by "dimer 
amplifiers" that line the microtubule 
 
o Paramecium's Model of its World 
        Goldstone modes, Bose condensations, embodied in 
the ordered water waves 
        Vacuum states selected according to the current 
instantaneous value of Froelich's electric dipole density 
        Solutions to quantum field equations, partially 
determined by mechanical (LaGrangian), partially 
determined by the field functional, Froelich's parameter. 
        The frequency (energy) of the ordered waves 
correpond to the "broadcast" frequency of the 
environmental biomolecules. This is why the ordered water 
waves are a "model of its world"; they track the presence 
of variables in its environment. 
 
o Paramecium's Experience 
The Paramecium perceives the presence of "food" by tuning 
its "dipole radiation receiver" to the characteristic 
frequency of the food biomolecule. At resonance, the  
ordered wave whose frequency corresponds with that of the 
target biomolecule is excited. This resonance reaction 
also stimulates protein molecules on the membrans  
of the structure to polymerize. This "mechanical" 
reaction to the perceived features in the environment 
acts as "behavior" that modies the Froelich density 
locally and may be associated with "cilia beating" that 
propells the Parmecium. Thus, the resonance reaction has 
all the properties needed to support an experiential 
loop. 
 
*How can this element, experiential loop, be used to 
"explain" the behavior of multi-celled organisms?* 
Microtubules are present in cells in general. Nerve 
dendrites are microtubules. Cells may "share" their 
experience by sharing ordered water wave frequencies, as 
a kind of common language. The resonance process may be 
generalized as the prototype for cellular interaction. 
The fact that Goldstone modes are Bose condensations is  
particularly interesting, since distributed coherence 
could be a mechanism for "exchanging" information among 
cells. 
 
*How does this information get interpreted by cells?* 
This is a very important question. Symbolic messages 
cannot possibly be used by cells. Symbolic messages 
require that categories corresponding to different 
messages be attached to arbitrary symbols. This kind of 
activity requires "abstraction". Only humans with natural 
language are capable of exchanging symbolic messages. The  
conventional wisdom that "bits" of selective information 
are "out there in the world" is completely misleading. 
 
*So what kind of information can be used by cells?* 
Recall that cells can exchange the information 
represented by the frequency of ordered water waves. This 
general commonality of frequency is a sharing of  
descriptive or structural information, which is 
complementary to selective information. The units of 
descriptive information (2) are the LOGON and the  
METRON. The logon measures the dimensionality or number 
of degree of freedom in a representation of some aspect 
of the world--the ordered water wave frequency is the 
logon of a cell's representation of its world. The metron 
measures the degree of confidence, resolution, or "signal 
to noise ratio" of the representation. The specifications 
of descriptive information has been all worked out by 
Donald MacKay (2). 
  
*So, is this kind of descriptive information out in the 
world?* 
No. Both types of information appear only in 
REPRESENTATIONS of the world, not the world itself. 
Information is generated only when an organism 
experiences its world. 
 
*What is the element of explanation associated with 
exchanging descriptive information?* 
The notion of "epoch coherence" is the element of 
explanation. The coherence is carried by dipole ordered 
waves as a distributed quantum coherence, a Bose  
condensation. The epoch is the local region of space-time 
over which the coherence is marked. 
 
*How is epoch coherence used in explanations?* 
In the hierarchy of human consciousness, a given stage or 
level has its own epoch coherent region. The higher the 
level in the hierarchy, the larger the epoch. For  
conscious thought the epoch spreads throughout the brain. 
 
*So, finally, how can the "elements" be used to picture 
consciousness?* 
Rephrasing the question, how do "things" and "events" get 
generated from the epoch coherences of ordered water 
waves of dipole vibrations? 
 
In the first place, subunits like the speech and language 
centers introduce a new dimension into the mix. Nervous 
activity described only in terms of descriptive  
information must be augmented by an overlay of selective 
information. Evocation of speech as a sequence of words 
adds the new higher level of abstraction. Now, prepared 
messages have two types of referent 1): code/symbolic 
representation, using selective information to associate 
meanings through denotation, where categorical classes 
are associated with other categorical classes, and 2): 
image representation, using descriptive information to 
associate meanings through connotation--similarity  
by image-shape. Here image shape is a generalization of 
the notion of dipole cherence, the universal commonality 
of descriptive information in the biology of living  
organisms. 
 
In the second place, things and events emerge as the 
result of binding, through conflating experiential loops 
to larger loops. At some level, selective information  
accompanies descriptive information, so that these things 
and events are products of coordinating code/symbolic 
with shape-image representations. Our world, projected  
as "out in the world" is probably a result of evolution, 
using the most efficient survival "display mode" for 
dealing with the environment and its threats. So our 
conscious world is an "output display" from the 
hierarchical structure of our nested experiential  
loops. 
 
In the third place, these things and events do not exist 
INDEPENDENTLY (objectively) out in the world. What does 
exist out there is a continuum of the world pattern that 
acts as SOURCE MATERIAL for the generation of 
representations of the world. 
 
 
REFERENCES 
 
1. Del Giudice, Doglia, Milani and Vitiello, Structures, 
Correlations and Electromagnetic Interactions in Living 
Matter: Theory and Applications, in H. Froelich, 
Biological Coherence and Response to External Stimuli, 
Springer Verlag, 1988 
 
2. MacKay, Information, Mechanism and Meaning, MIT Press 
1969