THE INTEGRITY PAPERS Genre Group - Buchanan ceptualinstitute.com VALUES, SYSTEMS AND CONSCIOUSNESS [Part 2...]
Sloman (Sloman, 1990) points to the vagueness which surrounds the ordinary use of terms like consciousness. At the same time he suggests that it may be useful to examine the overall architecture and relationships of the func- tions of mind, to consider the various specific processes which regulate and control the many processes within the organism that guide behavior.
Of course we respond biologically to the impacts of the real world, to which we must adapt or perish. And consciousness is at work in evaluating the meanings of such impacts and devising and evaluating alternative responses. It is also likely that optimal adaptations are seldom mechanical i.e. the result of action by routine or part functions, but require the openness, flexibility of perception and tentative response, the review of alternatives, and the control of emotional disturbances which may be necessary for courageous and successful action. All of these functions imply the need for evaluations and, at the highest level, effective concepts of value. Devotion and love of family, loyalty and trust of others, ideas of truth and justice, all come to mind.
The World of Medicine:
To keep these dimensions in perspective it may be instructive for philosophers and psychologists who may limit their studies to the brain to understand something about the nature of cause as this is usually understood by physicians and psychiatrists in daily practice, whose needs for the most useful theoretical formulations are shaped by immediate circumstances.
From a psychobiological perspective it its a truism that mind affects and is affected by behavior as well as function and structure of the total organism. Conscious thoughts and feelings are only a part of this, and these may be shaped and/or distorted by a variety of psychological and physiological factors. Under the impact of various specific mental and physical stressors a general state of overload and stress may ensue with a variety of consequences. Mechanisms for managing stress are of relatively few main types, and while of variable effect in reducing levels of stress are often quite different in their other impacts. For example, physiological stress and disequilibrium may produce or aggravate digestive troubles such as peptic ulcers, or colitis; or circulatory problems such as high blood pressure; or skin disorders, and so on. Instead of such bodily disorders, the compensatory mechanisms may alter thought and feeling, with the development of neurotic anxieties, or deeper psychotic breaks which disturb perception of reality. The point is that the mind is supported by bodily well being and is an expression of the total functioning of the human being, and that an understanding of this is not possible without, in addition to a useful theory which helps tell us where to look, the essential data provided by constant reference to the actual facts of the situation.
We may also take from medicine an example of the complexity of the processes by which an organism is engaged in exchanges with its environment. We know in considerable detail some of the complex processes at work in the onset of infectious diseases, and the cumulative impact of hereditary immunity, predisposing environmental and behavioral factors, and precipitating causes that set the stage and allows a bacillus to gain entry, or a cell to turn cancerous, and establish itself and the disease process. It may be that the genesis of an idea in consciousness is no less complex, requiring as it must a host of learned, predisposing, initiating and specific inputs to prepare the way and receive the input which reacts with affect and memory to yield the idea. (To suppose that "memes" are transferred intact in their entirety is somewhat of an oversimplification.) One might suspect, by analogy, that to look for specific causal agencies in neural events in isolation is to needlessly restrict the field. What happens on the stage of consciousness also reflects the personalities and society which give it shape and meaning.
Epistemological Criteria:
Harman (Harman, 1994) has proposed nine characteristics of potential importance for an epistemology that may provide for an adequate account of consciousness. In summary these characteristics will:
(1) include subjective experience as primary data;
(2) be objective in the sense of being open and free from bias;
(3) insist upon open inquiry and validation;
(4) emphasize the unity of experience, recognizing and including subjective and cultural meanings;
(5) accept models and metaphors as these are useful in helping to order knowledge, even if not
always consistent with other useful models;
(6) accept notions of causality as partial only, relative rather than final and inviolable;
(7) be participatory to the extent required to explore subjective phenomena;
(8) recognize the role of the observer's characteristics and methods; and
(9) allow for the possibility of epistemological criteria which are currently foundational but
nevertheless provisional.These considerations are relevant to the question of how consciousness can study itself. The first point is an absolutely clear distinction between the data of immediate perception, on the one hand, and derived memories and ideas - a reduced selection from this array - on the other. The latter is an abstraction of elements as these are evaluated as relevant to needs and interests.
Such an approach to the functions of consciousness is, considered at this most basic level, entirely general, and applicable to the most primitive forms of life. This involves perception and its valuation by an autopoietic system which generates stabilizing responses, which are progressively elaborated in ways that provide for enhanced security of subordinate functions, and increased relative freedom.
A basic feature of this approach is that consciousness involves the coordination and higher management of purposive behavior. Thus a methodology adequate for its study requires some of the approaches and methods of cybernetics. Only these are suited to take into account goal-directed circular causal mechanisms of cause-effect (as well as the if-then logical relations of conceptual thought). Such an approach is required if the events of interest are to be modelled and understood in their crucial relationships.
This is not to say that the purposive aspects of consciousness, and of the subordinate unconscious processes, are always evident. Purposes are usually simply tacit or implied. Sometimes, when there are unresolved conflicts and gross disparities of thought, feeling and action, conscious purposes will have the goal of providing an integrating cover story for others, or perhaps to protect one's own self image. These complications should not be accepted at face value as providing contradictory evidence for the concepts of consciousness being offered here.
Only models able to handle recursive hierarchical relations and grasp the operations of mental functions as they analyze perception, select goals and guide behaviors can deal with the complexities involved in a serious study of what is involved in consciousness.
For oneself, consciousness may be taken as indubitable; questioning one's consciousness is evidence of consciousness. How is consciousness revealed in others? In daily experience, manifestations of consciousness are evidenced, and can be reliably inferred from, certain kinds of complex time-binding behavior which are inexplicable on any other hypothesis. Moreover the facts of language behavior, being of social and cultural origin, is itself evidence of other minds functioning at the highest levels.
The evidence for consciousness is to be found not just in abstract thought and scientifically concepts and theories, but even more importantly in behavior adaptive to the external world. Such adaptive responses will only be made possible with the aid of such subordinate functions as feelings, directed awareness, memory, and behavior, which follow the organism's overall existential evaluation of the total situation as perceived.
5. A Note on Cybernetics
We have already touched upon some of the features of feedback and cybernetic models which make them relevant to concepts designed to explain the characteristics and role of consciousness. While there are frequent allusions to feedback and reentrant loops,the lack of much systematic reference in current cognitive science literature to cybernetics suggest that it may be useful to emphasize several points.
Negative feedback involves information structured to counteract causal factors, and thus stabilize a dynamic system. The unique contribution of negative feedback to an actual system is its role in liberating a constancy effector or output from some of the influences of random perturbations. Through negative feedback the relative contributions of various elements are readjusted to maintain focus on a constant goal. In this way a system acquires increased degrees of freedom from random factors. As a hierarchy of systems applies criteria to functions and feedback at various levels, an organism acquires progressively greater degrees of freedom relative to unpredictable contingencies (de Latil, 1957).
Biological systems involve complex hierarchies of means and ends. When lower level conflicts arise and adjust- ments are required, only higher level values can provide criteria able to serve the interests of maintaining a structure which optimizes freedom.
A variety of homeostatic mechanisms and biological functions manage the feedback and information required for the stabilization of life, for securing supplies of vital needs. It is a role and function of consciousness to extend the scope of choice and options in so doing, partly by adjudicating conflicts that might otherwise paralyze integrated action, and partly through creative insights which may synthesize and generate novel alternatives.
Bateson (Bateson, 1972) has described perception in terms of the discrimination of differences (in the environment) that make a difference (to the organism). What we perceive as objects and reality involves the ongoing stability and/or perhaps continuity of such perceptions over time. To be "real" for us, external reality requires the stability and predictability of evaluative feedback loops linking the actor with the effects of his or her actions on the environment. These patterns of interconnection provide the foundation for perception and adaptive responses throughout the biological world. Such feedback is basic to human perception and responses, and to the higher thought processes which in man support and enhance these functions.
Cybernetic organization makes possible at higher levels a progressive liberation from the immediate effects of lower level contingencies. The elaboration of more abstract and inclusive goal structures and values make possible some relative freedom from immediate circumstances, a freedom which can be enhanced by successful planning and management of life's affairs over time (Beer, 1972).
>From the perspective of the nature of consciousness, the processes of evaluation, and the delay involved in this informative guiding loop, are factors in the perception of both values and time. Our ideas about both values and about time are also shaped by these processes.
As Ruhnau has noted, if time is separated from thinking and becomes objectified it leads to either idealism or materialism. But, she says, time exists in the Gestalt as the accomplice of being and thinking, in the Gestalt of "I" of consciousness, identifying this a the connecting link between mind and matter. Moreover, this is not simply a cognitive construct, but "is founded in the biological or, to be more precise, the ecological functioning of an organism in its environment". (Ruhnau,1995)
6. A Note on Language:
Words alone, simply because they are in common use, cannot just be presumed to apply to something real or significant. This point has been made by some authors (Sloman, 1990) about consciousness, discussion of which presents particular hazards, since there are many potential sources of error which may stem from language. It is a too common basic mistake to begin by reifying or hypostasizing notions of consciousness. Consciousness is not a mysterious Platonic essence we want to discover, but a word that is applied in a rather indiscriminate way by many people to a variety of ideas and assumed entities or processes. The task is to identify concepts which are clear, adequate to the experiences and observations in question, and useful in clarifying relevant perceptions and analysis of experience (cf.Merleau-Ponty,1972)
Language is a function not only of semantics (i.e. things denoted) and pragmatics (i.e. the purposes of the communication) but also has a syntactic dimension, which includes not only the structure and relationships of the terms involved but the cultural milieu. Language is a basic feature of man's second nature of culture and all the ideas and beliefs which that includes, including sciences and studies of the humanities. As von Foerster has pointed out (von Foerster,1992), it is the nature of language that it is consensual. This makes nonsense of the question as to whether minds can exist independently of the first person knower and speaker. Of course other minds exist or we would be unable to articulate the notions involved by the question.
Reliance upon language involves hazards when this leads to an attempt to assimilate subjective phenomena to conceptual terms. Within language itself, interpretations can be more or less literal and/or metaphoric. Northrop Frye, a distinguished critic of language and culture as phenomena in their own right, has described many of these relationships and levels of complex meaning in some detail (Frye, 1991).
As many writers have pointed out (Korzybski,1958), Wittgenstein,1922,Merleau-Ponty, 1972) the immediate aspects of direct experience cannot be represented in language, even by talk about 'seemings' and 'what it's like'. Phenomena of direct experience are "unsayable", "unspeakable" or "beyond words". What 'something is like' is a metaphorical comparison, which is what all abstract language essentially involves, and that is all that it is. "What it's like to be a bat" (Nagel, 1974) is a question for the imagination. It may be an artful and poetic attempt to suggest or point to something, but what is articulated in language has been by that fact objectified.
Cybernetic concepts and relationships aid clear description of important functions and relationships which have very useful application to many aspects of the world that concern us. Evaluation involves measurement, but for the guidance of behavior it is an inherent condition that measurement be in the time and context of the agent and its goals.
7. Popper's 3 Worlds:
A useful framework within which these confusions can be sorted out is that of Popper's 3 worlds, each of which acts upon, and is acted upon by, the others (Popper,1976, Magee,1975).
World 1 is the external world of "things out there", unknowable in themselves, to which perceptions can only point; World 1 is that external world "whereof we cannot speak" since it is indeed "beyond words".
World 2 is the perceptual world of subjective phenomena, unique to each one of us, within which we experience awareness and consciousness.
World 3 is the consensually validated world of common culture, language and scientific theories, including the theories of physical reality i.e. physical phenomena and entities as these are described in language.
It is a common error of highly educated persons to imagine that the world of scientific theory and knowledge (W3) is identical to the external real world (W1). This cannot be so, however, since the world of science is a highly abstract selection from real events. In any case, the real W1 events are those with which adaptive consciousness has been evolved to deal. We must deal with the items and events of the territory, not those of the map.
The view which may be termed 'scientific realism' holds that scientific theories are the best guide we have to what really exists, at least in the light of present knowledge. And of course we need to avail ourselves of such knowledge as a immensely valuable resource. But people have survived in many times and places without it. To take the step of identifying the best current knowledge (W3) as identical to the actual causes of everything that happens in the world and in the brain (W1), or somehow superior and more real than practical reason and judgment appears unwarranted, and is a potential source of intractable problems.
Moreover, such an identification of the present state of knowledge with the real world is itself unscientific. It overstates the role of causal determinism (Popper,1976) and understates the adaptive flexibility involved in complex organization (Beer, 1994). The precision of predictive detail and control assumed by such beliefs cannot be justified by present science nor by standards of scientific inquiry. They involve beliefs about the methods and prospects of science which are based upon faith, since the evidence is lacking. In addition, in view of the essential indeterminism which is at the heart of scientific theorizing, no such evidence appears to be possible in principle. The contradiction is a consequence of supposing that W3 concepts can be equated with W1 actualities when they are categorically different.
8. Concepts of Consciousness:
The thesis that actual events of the external world underlie our perceptions stand in contrast to the view that perception is to be explained primarily in terms of scientific concepts of brain funct on.
Chalmers states (Chalmers, 1995b): "It is widely accepted that conscious experience has a physical basis. That is, the properties of experience (phenomenal properties, or qualia) systematically depend of physical properties according to some lawful relation".
Metzinger writes (Metzinger, 1955): "How can consciousness arise in a physical universe? As philosophers we want to know how it is possible that a phenomenon as complex as consciousness could arise in a physical universe".
It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze in any detail the positions of these distinguished thinkers. And the point of difference between the approach which they both appear to accept as basic and that presented here is not in matters of detail in any case, but in the fundamental premises. From the perspective offered here, it is simply a mistake to equate the physical universe as conceptualized by today's science with the actual reality which shapes our lives.
The distinction between theory and the world it tries to represent may be more vivid to medical scientists than to many physicists and other so-called 'hard' scientists. Physicists like philosophers tend to live professionally in a world of their own theoretical constructions. Physicians tend to live with uncertainties - the inherent unknowables involved in patients' disorders, the limitations of history taking and physical examination in the individual case at a particular point in time, the limitations of diagnostic criteria and of the available categories, and of the biological and pathological processes at work, the meanings of illness as these influence the patient's reactions and resist- ance, and so on. Physicians do not mistake their charts for the ocean, or they do so at peril. The chart is not the voyage; the map is not the territory.
Since physical sciences are provisional and conjectural, subject in principle to refutation, they cannot be an ultimate ground upon which explanations of the qualities of subjective phenomena can be based. The relationship is rather the reverse: concepts are derived from and dependent upon immediate experience as given by way of perception of an external world (and not given otherwise!)
Modern studies of brain physiology offer many significant insights into one or more aspects of what are ordinarily included among the problems of consciousness. Such studies are of very great interest in their own right as well as for the neural correlates of various mental processes and functions. One of these is the so-called binding problem. Provisional explanations have been found in neural correlates of consciousness such as zones of co-temporality which define elementary integration units. Within such zones activation from different functional units of the brain may be correlated, and relevant information brought within the span of attention and memory of the working present.
Yet the unanswered questions, which prevent such explanations from being complete, concerns the control and direction of such functions, and such details as the criteria of relevance in relation to the whole organism in the environment. Theories and explanations are W3 abstractions, functions which provide more or less useful guidance to scientists and professionals. But phenomena which appear in W2 arise from the grounds of W1 processes and events. To point out these limiting conditions is not to be defeatist or negatively critical. It is rather to recognize the limits of the framework within which we may define scope and opportunity for increased understanding. After all is said, it is the primary function of the brain and mind to keep W3 notions relevant to actual situations. Observation and experimental testing in relation to W1 is essential for this.
Possible questions of epiphenomena it attaches to conceptual constructs, rather than to the primary biological guidance and control systems of immediate and continuing significance for the maintenance of life.
9. The Present Hypothesis:
Let us consider a hypothetical and abstract cybernetic structure of relationships which are logically required for adaptive decision-making at any level, in even the most primitive living organism. These constitute a kind of "basic package" (cf Kirk,1995) in which all the components are essential to one another.
Bateson (Bateson, 1972) formulated the observation that any organism, from the most primitive up to and including mankind, perceives differences in the world that make a difference to the organism. We do not perceive things as they are, but rather construct a perspective depending upon our needs and experience, informed by memory and feelings. A similar formulation has been elaborated as the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela,1987).
We may consider how this view of perception appears and functions in human mental life and behavior, and in relation to the world and to others.
The individual registers processes and events which make a difference to expectations i.e. to the value criteria which interpret perception. What counts is an appropriate response to the perceptual input, and the learning required to increase that appropriateness.
Any possible description can only be set out in conceptual terms, utilizing appropriate metaphors and models to represent events and relationships. And a multilevel description will include neurophysiological data, though not as an explanation on the basis of an assumed (reductionist) metaphysics.
The suggestion advanced here is that an alternative description of consciousness, both as experienced and in its observed effects, may include an account of information and feedback based upon criteria which measure error in progress toward goals. This guidance by informative feedback is multilevel and complex, involving a hierarchy of goals and objectives designed to meet needs of many kinds, which may be organized in terms of dominant value orientations.
Such systems and constituent processes are necessarily complex, and include sensory and feeling tones (Whitehead,1967). Such qualia would enhance the reliability and utility of such an emergent capability. Primary sensations e.g. of tastes and colours, are determined by sensory end-organs, but the qualities of perceptions are the results of a vastly more complex evaluations based upon prior experiences of similar kinds and multiple criteria thereof. These more subtle evaluations involve not just sensation but visceral tone and expectations in relation to needs at all levels within the timeframe of short term memory, and because of their complexity are individually unique. The qualitative evaluations involved in perception are not primarily or mainly cognitive, and are not dependent upon conceptualizations. In principle, no scientific description of them can be exact enough to represent their uniqueness (Popper,1976).
Abstract - Noetic Journal Title page
Part 1 - Approach ; Consideration ; Methods ; Models
Part 2 - Medicine ; Epistemology ; Cybernetics ; Language ; Popper ; Consciousness ; the Hypothesis
Part 3 (next)- the Hypothesis (con't) ; Implications ; Evidence ; Conclusion ; ReferencesIntegrity Links Buchanan Index Genre