THE INTEGRITY PAPERS Genre Group - Buchanan ceptualinstitute.com VALUES, SYSTEMS AND CONSCIOUSNESS [Part 3...]
Dr.Bruce Buchanan.
9. The Hypothesis (continued..)
So the qualitative evaluations - the qualia - which appear in W2 consciousness are not to be understood in terms of the selective abstractions of W3 concepts and theories. Rather, their function is precisely that of grasping in existential terms the relevance of perception and response to the needs of the organism, interpreted in terms of W1 events of past and present as these impact upon the life of the organism.
For example, a lion or a honey bee will survey its environment, and focus on items that have the right shape or color or movements to interest it. There may indeed be no requirement that such an organism be able to reflect on its own consciousness. In man, however, higher order thought and consciousness appear to provide an advantage in making possible evaluations not based upon habitual mechanisms and processes alone. It is the task of consciousness to bring into focus as many relevant factors as possible within the neural work space available, and to focus attention on particular items of perhaps competing importance.
It is evidently an evolutionary advantage that elements of perception and response can also be combined in new ways. This becomes possible through processes of selection and recombination, such as appear in foresight and anticipation as well as in the structure of language itself. These make possible novel intellectual constructions including aims and goals which may accommodate and priorize a variety of needs. These abilities allow man to develop higher levels of discrimination, selectivity and abstraction which provide the basis for symbolism, language and culture. In their origins these require consciousness, although they also can be largely reduced to habit. Of course, not all of this work need be conscious, but where important conflicts among lower level needs require resolution, consciousness may be required to supervene.
It is the role of consciousness as a multifaceted function to bring all relevant factors to bear upon the decisions that existence may require. These functions can be described in various ways, in varying terminologies suited to different levels of analysis. No one approach is valid and useful for all purpose, unless it is an eclecticism that suits methods to particular purposes. Thus we may speak of the limitations of short term memory, of availability of neuronal reserves, and/or of the psychic freedom to maximize options. There may be strategies brought into play to search for novel possibilities. Amidst the diversity of scores and hundreds of perceptual faculties and motor skills, mostly governed by instinct and habit, there are always problems and maladjustments rising into awareness. Depending upon the governing values, there may be the usual emotional and autonomic reactions, but there may also be possibilities for creative new syntheses or useful invention.
These characterizations are not mutually exclusive. Although they derive from differing vantage points they are observations of the same elephant. But they do define significant features, so there are other descriptions which may be misleading. Consciousness is primarily a first person experience, only secondarily observed by a third person (e.g. a scientific observer or interlocutor). Consciousness is not primarily a logical postulate, and it is not a fundamental feature or ascribed entity of the objective world in the same category as concepts of space-time, mass, or charge (cf.Chalmers,1995b).
Since the formal properties of creative ideas are by definition not known in advance, they appear more or less unexpectedly as emergent phenomena. As specific events they may be designed to provide hope and a basis for new plans of deliverance from the consequences of past errors. But these creative processes and their possible outcomes present a limit to what can be modelled in a formalized way about consciousness.
10. Implications of this Hypothesis:
It is not within the scope of this article to indicate more than briefly some of the possible implications of this hypothesis. Such tasks might better be taken up by those with more specialized competencies in philosophy and the neurosciences. But a few comments may be in order.
The present approach is seen as compatible, and perhaps as extending and reinforcing, other proposals which have been advanced (Kirk,1995; Harman, 1994; Ruhnau, 1995; Hut & Shepard, 1996).
With respect to theories depending upon quantum mechanics (Hameroff,1994) the present approach does not appear incompatible. However, there is a tradition of thought which holds that higher powers of consciousness involve capacities of increasingly finer discrimination. The complexity of neuronal structures and connections may seem adequate to support a very great range of discriminations, but if quantum effects are also to be considered, (as they probably must since they exist) the potentialities involved in quantum effects may also be involved. The details of such a relation to consciousness would, at this stage, be highly conjectural. But it is not likely that an identification of consciousness with quantum effects could be a sufficient explanation.
There are a number of other implications which may bear upon possible experimental approaches. Prominent among these is the need to reconsider questions of refining criteria for defining observations and data which may have a claim to scientific attention, and methods of consensual validation.
Psychophysical studies investigate the relation between experience and physical features of the world, including the physiology of the brain. Such psychophysical principles form a system of closed reference in relation to physical laws. Unless we imagine that our present scientific knowledge is complete (which seems unlikely), there must be elements of human experience which do not fit within the present schemata (Forman,1994). These are precisely the events which require the closest scrutiny, to validate their occurrence as reportable and recurrent phenomena. Such observations will provide the stimulus and leverage to help ensure that the closure of the current theoretical framework is not permanent but is the transitional phase of developing science.
While the definitive role and meaning of value is fundamentally the measure of some criterion which allows for corrective feedback, the word value is also used in many other ways. All religious traditions of course are built upon values (von Domarus,1959). Various needs, motives, emotions, expectations, ideals, hopes and dreams may generate and be treated as values. The need for clarity of definition and reference is evident, as are intractable problems of premature closure. But there may be some correlation between the difficulty and the potential payoff of such understanding, and indeed much interest and study is current in relation to such problems.
Another implication of this thesis is that the value orientations through which meaning is attached to perception are fundamental and primary, and that emotion depends upon the valuation of experience, rather than values originating in emotion. While many writers assume that values depend upon emotional responses, the issues involved are by no means decided (Mandler, 1993). It seem intuitively evident that emotions arise in relation to valued objects and goals, whether action readiness is mobilized in hope or blocked in frustration. So the question may be asked as to the role of value orientations in relation to emotional responses. Clearly the questions are complex, and require at the least the clarification of goal structures, levels and feedback in relation to basic and acquired needs of various kinds, and experiences of frustration in respect of these.
Such priority influences may be important to clarify, since value criteria may be subject to learning and accommodations while emotional responses are often more resistant to adaptive change.
Implications for morality are involved in relation to the imposition of an ideology, whether drawn from science or other realms of abstract belief, especially when provided as a wishful substitute for proper inquiry. Valuations based upon features naively ascribed by the observer may be false and mischievous. Moral judgments can only be based upon data that reflect the actual situation as closely as possible, without emotional or ideological prejudice. While this is basic to our legal system, and is the foundation of the practice of medical ethical committees in health care institutions, it is not always the dominant approach found in political and social life.
In political life the idea of values frequently is designed to accommodate under one rubric (e.g. family values) emotional attitudes which are not clearly descriptive of any particular behaviors or goals. Such a definition of value is counterproductive when it obscures the key point, which is to specify the criteria involved in error-detection and feedback. Many politicians recognize this need for accountability.
When goals are in conflict, appeal may be made to accommodations afforded by higher level values, and may require the development and/or refinement of more inclusive values, up to those explored in philosophic thought and found by some in metaphysical realization (cf.Watts,1972); Jaspers, 1963). If these considerations are not properly understood, such requirements and relationships cannot be adequately reflected in language. If these desiderata are ignored or not met, the consequences can only be confusion and repetitive mistakes along with much human suffering. A deep preoccupation (which may be confused with a return to religion) is likely to ensue, concerned with problems of going astray and seeking salvation.These concerns reflect real problems, and simple fulminations by scientists and others against irrationality misidentify and contribute to these problems.
The worlds of fact and of value are intimately related, and are really the same world. Facts are not simply given, but are constructed from the conditions of perception and according to the evaluative feedback which is shaping that perception.
A theory of consciousness will not only be about perceptions and thought which make a difference to the individual, but, as a theory, it will also makes a difference in the relations between and among individuals, i.e. in the understanding of society (Harman,1994). An improved theory will have consequences for observation of natural phenomena and reports of human consciousness, but also for ideas of choice and responsibility in matters of individual and social behavior. Thus implications and reactions in social, economic and political spheres may be possible and perhaps to be expected. Such conjectures point to research territory in which the role of language assumes special importance (Herman & Chomsky,1988).
11. Questions of Evidence:
As mentioned above, an open approach to evidence would assume that there may be elements of human experience which do not fit neatly within our present theories, and which we may not be well prepared to see and accept as real according to traditional standards of 'scientific realism'. We need ways and means by which to validate the occurrence of any and all reportable and recurrent phenomena, especially those for which no existing theories offer an explanation.
Various traditional meditative disciplines offer starting points (e.g.Varela Thompson & Rosch 1993: Forman, 1994). The conditions involved for the acceptability of data are not at present matters of much agreement. Naive introspective reports are suspect. The question arises as to whether self-observation by those who have learned more about themselves as instruments of perception and knowledge may be taken seriously for purposes of comparative study. Here the onus is upon those who would answer this question in the affirmative.
The criteria or values that inform perception need to be better understood. Galin (Galin, 1996) has described the vital role played by features of awareness that play about the fringe of attention. For the observer whose purposes and values are in conflict and unacknowledged, there may be a sense that unacceptable feelings just happen to one, and are not part of one's own intent or doing. This is an area for psychological inquiry of a kind required to clear the ground for acceptable first person reports.
It is perhaps obvious that, by drawing the boundaries of inquiry and relevance too narrowly, even a rudimentary understanding becomes impossible. As Whitehead remarked (Whitehead, 1967), by insisting upon an impossible standard of perfection, the skeptic makes himself secure. We indeed confront a dark tangle, but it must be the case that, if the ideas and approaches we have been describing are of any significance for man in the world, they must point to differences in experience, and it should be possible to identify these in practical ways. It also may be the case that the sensitivities required may be grossly inhibited by hostile or ignorant questioning, so the conditions required for exact descriptions of experience may pose many practical difficulties.
It makes sense to avoid "nothing but" or reductionist explanations to complex phenomena, for these are subject to study at many different levels. It may be that that our subjective experiences require interconnections between brain-cells as a necessary condition, in the sense that without such connections the experiences could not occur. But an adequate explanation and theory of subjectivity must be include other sufficient conditions, including all the factors and agencies that influence the brain cells, both those within and outside of the body, and those which reflect ongoing relationships and interactions which link these parts within the larger whole. Perhaps we can't get there from where we now are, just as we cannot reach the moon by climbing trees. An interest in systems sciences may be appropriate to consider.
While our perceptions of reality may require a basic stability of the feedback loop which links observer and environment, the elaboration of this foundational schema provides immensely challenging tasks for future clarification. And it is not a new idea that the electrophysiological and metabolic events accompanying various conscious tasks might reflect factors attributable to time lags and valuation processes in various regions.
Subjective phenomena which embody immediate qualities of experience may be distinguished from recollection of those events. It may be an implication of a cybernetic theory of consciousness that immediate qualitative experiences are distinct from the valuation criteria in terms of which those experiences are recognized. In this sense, memories are not qualia but can function as comparative standards against which to interpret or classify the qualia which are properties of immediate perception. For example, while colour may be perceived as such, the precision possible for memory of colour, as compared to a more generalized impression of comparative standards of classifying colour, may point the way to the organization of evaluative processes involving qualia. Psychological and/or neurophysiological tests might confirm or contradict this kind of supposition.
If consciousness has an important role to play, and is not merely an epiphenomenon, its importance for survival is implied. The present theory identifies consciousness in terms of organizing adaptive functions in complex ways which may indeed be essential for the development and survival of life.
12. Conclusion:
Major problems facing research in cognitive sciences involve the adequacy of language and of models. Gerald Fischbach has asked (Fischbach,1992): "Is the mind an emergent property of the brain's electric and metabolic activity? An emergent property is one that cannot be accounted for solely by considering the component parts one at a time. ...once the component neural functions are more clearly defined...We will have a more appropriate vocabulary for describing the emergent mind."
In contrast, Howard Gardner (Gardner. 1987) has written: "But unless a taxonomy can be agreed upon, discussion...will seem ad hoc and unsatisfactory. ...Such clarity and consensus seem a long way off"
This paper has described consciousness as made up of an array of integrative functions which serves goals of coordinating effective behavior. The explanations of neurophysiology are part of a picture that must be supplemented not only by physical findings, but by the expanded framework of concepts needed to account for some findings and relationships at higher levels of organization over time in relation to the total environment.
The language of cybernetics describes not only neural nets and their reentrant pathways but also the conceptual objects which emerge from the ideas immanent in nervous activity, loops of stability and altered microstructures. The processes of valuation and feedback which are required to integrate such functions, and the more abstract value criteria which help provide for stability at higher levels of more abstract comprehension and organization, can be seen as basic to a resolution of
this intellectual and existential problem.This view of consciousness is relatively transparent in the sense that, once one knows what to look for and adjusts perception accordingly, the picture which it offers may snap readily into view. It is not an intuitively simple picture. But what otherwise can be only be a confused blur of obscure relationships becomes, when the perceptual input adjustments are set, an intelligible picture, the perception of which is evidence of its validity - as foreshadowed in the notion of the perennial philosophy (Jaspers,1963; Watts,1972).
By placing it in perspective, in relation to purposes and values, the (debatable) problem of consciousness is not so much solved as resolved. Consciousness reflects, in second order cybernetic perspective (von Foerster,1992) the key adaptive functions by means of which nervous systems are organized to secure and extend the ends and values of life, and by means of which, through culture and language, values may be created by mankind to shape and extend the worlds on which all life depends.
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Abstract - Noetic Journal Title page
Part 1 - Approach ; Consideration ; Methods ; Models
Part 2 - Medicine ; Epistemology ; Cybernetics ; Language ; Popper ; Consciousness ; the Hypothesis
Part 3 - the Hypothesis (con't) ; Implications ; Evidence ; Conclusion ; ReferencesIntegrity Links Buchanan Index Genre