Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki - User contributions [en]

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-17T14:00:02Z

Balwit: /* John Balwit */

I created this page to share and discuss our models for the emergence of consciousness from matter. Please share your models and add discussion so we can all see and think about it. We will use this page in the end to write up a summary and hopefully compare and contrast the models and discuss what properties of consciousness can be explained by what model.

Thanks,
Alireza

=Working Ideas=

== (1) Consciousness as Hyper Attractors of Brain (Alireza)==
In this schema states of our mind/consciousness as attractors of the dynamics that arise from our brain. We receive sensory information that act as perturbations pushing the trajectory out of a basin of attractor and into a new basin.

[[File:photo.png | 500px|center]]

== (2) Reference! Tegmark - The fourth state of matter =
This can be an interesting starting point... at least one perspective on the topic http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf Sarah

=Perspective Summaries=
 
==Consciousness Table==
I thought that it might be useful to attempt to organize our understandings of consciousness in a table—perhaps to make clear where and whether a consensus emerges on the nature of the phenomena that we are investigating.

I offer here an idiosyncratic table that I find useful to organize my thoughts on this topic. Feel free to add/reorganize categories and qualify entries in the notes below.
Or better yet...can we come up with a simpler table that captures the typical properties that consciousness is thought to have or not have.
 --john balwit

<table>

<tr><td> </td><td>Property</td> <td>Yes </td><td>No</td> <td>NA </td></tr>
<tr><td>1.</td> <td>Requires matter</td> <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>2.</td> <td>Exclusive property of biological systems</td> <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>3.</td> <td> Has parts <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>4.</td> <td>Admits of gradations or degree (continuous or discrete)
<td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>5.</td> <td>Likely to be artificial created in the AI lab <td> x</td> <td> x </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>6.</td> <td>Intrinsically paradoxical research area.
(involves strange loopy-ness Gödel, Turing) <td> ? ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>7.</td> <td>Requires interaction with external environment (perception?) <td> x x </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>8.</td> <td>Requires interaction with internal environment (reflection?) <td> </td> <td> x x </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>9.</td> <td>Necessarily Embodied (result of sensor interactions, hormonal environment etc.) <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>10.</td> <td>Necessarily Embedded (result of large scale system interactions) <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>11.</td> <td>Deterministic system with stochastic inputs. <td> x ? </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>12.</td> <td>Relies on quantum things that I do/do not understand <td> ? </td> <td> </td> <td>?</td></tr>
<tr><td>13.</td><td> Defined by its ineffability, will always recede from scientific apprehension. <td> ? ? </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>14.</td><td> Encodes history (requires memory, genes) <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
</table>

 Notes: 
 I've added some ticks.. 

==Sean Hayes==

[http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html The Hard Problem of Consciousness]
:This paper makes the important distinction between the 'easy' and 'hard' problems of consciousness in relative terms. I think it would be useful to use this framework to focus the precise problems we're investigating around consciousness. 
My definition for consciousness at it's simplest form is just having subjective experience. While some of the discussion this afternoon touched on integrative brain problems (which falls under 'easy' problems of consciousness in the above, as a way to describe issues of cognition), my question is whether this property of consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. While this is difficult to address objectively, I think it can be approached from our perspectives by comparing consciousness with other emergent phenomena. 

The big question that I've been trying to resolve myself along this line of thinking is related to the 'binding problem' ([http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/events/workshops/images/8/8d/Revonsuo_and_Newman_1999_-_Binding_and_Consciousness.pdf 1],[http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/events/workshops/images/3/37/Revonsuo_1999_-_Binding_and_the_Phenomenal_Unity_of_Consciousness.pdf 2]). I'm probably bastardizing the definition a bit, but essentially the issue is conscious experience is not a distributed phenomenon but rather that experience is inherently singular - to me this is entirely distinct from emergence, which is inherently a distributed feature of a complex system. Moreover, our conscious experience not only receives input from the complex, distributed network of our brain, but itself can cause changes in brain behavior and function. Is this actually an emergent phenomenon, or the concentration of information into a centralized control (our subjective experience)? Are there characteristics of subjective experience which do act the way we expect emergent phenomena to behave?

==Cole Mathis==
I think that consciousness is an Emergent property of the electro-chemical interactions occurring in my brain. The difficulty in understanding the dynamics and/or the origin of consciousness is (in my opinion) the hard problem in emergence: how can macroscopic features of the system have causal control of the microscopic degrees of freedom? One of the canonical examples of emergent phenomena is the emergence of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics. Here the behavior of a system with many degrees of freedom (an ideal gas) can be effectively represented using bulk (emergent) variables (temperature, pressure, volume, etc.) This example is great but it says nothing about the flow of information in the system or the casual direction. For example consider a box of an ideal gas, if I hold the volume constant and heat this box, the pressure will go up. An increase in pressure on the macro scale corresponds to an increase in the average speed of the particles on the microscopic scale, however we do not say that the increased pressure caused the increase in the average speed (although we might say that the increase of the average translational kinetic energy caused the increase in pressure). In this system the causal arrow points only from the micro-scale to the macro-scale. With consciousness we have exactly the opposite situation. If the state of my neurons are the microscopic state variables and my conscious thoughts are the macroscopic variables, then when I think about typing, the macroscopic variables configure the microscopic variables in just the right way to send signals down to fingers, my fingers didn’t start typing and then cause my brain to think about typing (I hope.) So here the causal direction is reversed. How did this reversal/ asymmetry arise and how can we generalize this notion?
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/12/1314922110.full.pdf Quantifying Casual Emergence shows macro can beat micro]

==Claire Lagesse==

Here are some ideas about my personal experiment of what consciousness could be...
There is no reference but just some thinking from what I learned. I don't deal with consciousness in my every day work but as a conscious human being I experiment it every day ! :)
I'm really sorry for my french-english !

What is consciousness ? Where does it starts ? Where does it ends ? Are we conscious of the sun on our skin, of the wind, of our breathe, of our position, of the temperature, of all the elements surrounding us ? Does the consciousness start with a 'me' ? A dissociation of the external world from our body ? Then, what are the limits of our body ? Is the hair just fallen a part of 'me' ? What about my legs ? They are a part of my body, but if one is cut of it won't be 'me' any more. So maybe we could define our 'me' as the living part of our body. So, for people with a Locked Inside Syndrome their 'me' can be the minimal part of their body alive : their brain. That's maybe why the analogy is often made between the brain and consciousness : it is considered as the minimal part of our body which has to be alive for a 'me' still existing. Even our heart can be replace by a machine.

If we define consciousness with a 'me' apart from the surrounding world, it could be problematic for some persons with mental disease. What about autism ? In some cases, persons with a major autistic trouble cannot make the difference between their own body and the world surrounding them. Can we say they are not conscious ? That sounds a little extreme.

Could we extend consciousness to each living organism ? Is a plant conscious ? Plants are moving all day long, but at a different time scale than ours. They are moving with the sun, with the wind... Does it means they are conscious of them or could we just see it as a action / reaction mechanism ? It goes the same way for some animals. Is the jellyfish conscious of its moves with waves ? Is the shell conscious ? Is the frog conscious ? Each animal is responding to its physiological needs : feed, security and reproduction. Feed goes with a body, security goes with a surrounding (potentially dangerous) and reproduction goes with finding and interacting with another animal of my own specie.

Could we consider those behaviors as conscious ? What are the limits of this hypothesis ? It is possible to program a robot to find food, make itself secure and make sure to reproduce the sooner it can. But it won't be conscious those behaviors are for its own survival and its specie one. But can we say that animals are conscious of it ?

Thinking about artificial intelligence, one could say that consciousness begin with feelings, and a computer is not able to feel anything. Happiness, sadness, love, hate, if we look closely they all have a chemical reaction as an origin. The mystery could be what produce this chemical reaction.

Ants or bees have great collective behavior. They form a fascinating system with some extremely complex emerging properties. But it is not sure that each ant, each bee, is conscious it is taking part in a complex system. It is more about a robust collective intelligence than about consciousness. However, in an anthill 20% of ants are not doing anything. What is this 'useless' time for ? Are the ants conscious of this free time ? Is this demonstrating something about a system we are judging as hyper efficient ?

A third idea could be the knowledge that our consciousness is limited in the time. As human beings, we are conscious that we will die some day. So we develop some cults and funeral rite. Could it be a 'proof' of consciousness ? This way of thinking may exclude a lot of animals of consciousness.

One could ask the difference between consciousness and intelligence. Can an artificial intelligence be conscious ? Is consciousness recognizable by feelings, non efficient time or the simple fact to name it ? Could we say that consciousness is the amount of things linked to our body that we are not able to scientifically explain ? Does the consciousness define the 'me' out of my body limits ? And so what about all the unconscious things I do every day ? Breathe, blink, dream... Is it about the will of doing something more than in the fact of doing it ? Are we defined by our body, our will or our acts ? Is the consciousness the fact to ask ourselves about consciousness ?

==John Balwit ==
One comic = 1000 words. [http://xkcd.com/1037/ UMWELT]

Definitions matter. Definitions create boundaries around elements of a system that we attempt to model and understand. Definitions also create a background of implicit assumptions that are necessarily less well examined. Definitions of consciousness are perhaps inherent circular, the definitions “import” themselves into their own definition. For example, let’s start to build a definition of consciousness It makes sense to reflect for a moment on the ever present phenomena of consciousness and begin with “I feel the warm sun on my cheek. … etc. “ Already we have made assumptions which may prove to be missteps. There is clearly some connection between consciousness and the personal pronouns that we use to label our identity—the locus of our perception. This may be one of the key things that we hope to understand as we attempt to understand consciousness. In this respect, It appears that even Descartes choose a starting point that was well down the road—got ahead of himself. “I think therefore I am” is no philosophical atom. * A second problem in the “reflective” exercise above is the implicit assumption that “pausing to reflect” give clearer access to the phenomena of consciousness. It might be the case (and I happen to believe that it is the case) that this particular kind of introspection obscures a more general apprehension of the phenomena that we are interested in understanding.

Disciplines matter too. Our understandings are necessarily informed by our experience. Our disciplines provide us with tools and models of various systems that build our intuitions in different ways. I study evolutionary biology, systems, models and have affinities for the philosophical position in cognitive science called Embodied Embedded Cognition (EEC). The ECC theoretical position is critical of the classical cognitivist approach which relies on a mechanistic “internal representation”.

My definition of consciousness is something like this:

Some (perhaps all) evolved systems perceive and respond to an environment. This is a property of matter, energy, and the properties of the systems as they are arranged in space. Slowly driven systems far from equilibrium (biological systems, perhaps others) have an opportunity to create “perceptual, modeling subsystems” that generate models of the world that may “run faster” than the physical system in which they are embedded and therefore serve adaptive, predictive functions. The chemical systems of plants have these property, language systems used by humans also have this property. My discipline suggests that the models that these subsystems generate are instances of consciousness.

Now consider the parts of these models? These models are not strictly localized within the modeling subsystem, rather they involve relationships between the environment and the modeling subsystem and can be thought to “hover” immaterially between the subsystem. Practitioners of various meditation practices frequently observe this “untethered” property of consciousness. In the philosophical literature there are colorful “brain in a vat” and “philosophical zombie” thought experiments which make a compelling case that consciousness is property of not just the matter in our modeling subsystems but of all matter that participates in those relationships. This “embedded” aspect of consciousness holds that the interplay between the world and the modeling system introduce important constraints that influence the content or character of consciousness-i.e. there is no general consciousness.

The “embodied” aspect of consciousness refers to the observation that modeling subsystems have an “internal milieu” which deeply “colors” the behavior or characteristics of consciousness

My discipline (and my temperament) value precision and rigor. There are established ways to bring rigor to various domains of study. However, it is not immediately clear to me how to make falsifiable claims; to generate testable hypotheses in the area of consciousness. I would like to be able to do this. Using AI and a generative science is an interesting but not, I would say, promising approach. As we create ever more sensitive, and responsive technology we will almost certainly encounter more cases that we are likely to consider as “marginal cases” of consciousness In the event that we do create the “paradigm case” of consciousness – an AI like to one in the movie “Her”-- it is still not clear that we will gain understanding into the nature of consciousness from this system. Our success will ironically be revealed in the inaccessibility of the states that the AI will claim to have.

Finally, a few words on mystery and the ineffable: Part of the motivation for research in the area of consciousness lies in the surprising observation that electro-chemical systems like ourselves give rise to the beautiful, vivid, textured, emotionally-tinged, riddled-with-longing, plagued-with-ambition, haunted-by-death and, oh yes, “is that sunshine on my cheek” kind of experiences that characterize one’s own experience.
There is a striking incongruity between the processes that we imagine are taking place at the “lowest levels”. My intuitive reaction to this is that we just don’t understand physics and chemical reactions very well. Our theories and our mathematics are cartoon sketches. We are justifiably impressed with ourselves for the progress made but the notion that “all is known” stands now, as always, as the principle barrier to greater understanding. For most of human history animism has been taken for granted. The Greeks, the Judeo-Christian tradition and the western scientific world view that these modes of thought gave rise to (and in which we happily participate) changed all that by creating zero order approximations that made certain things evident but obscured others. I am persuaded by some of Stuart Kaufmann’s work in this area and feel that as our understanding of the properties that are inherent in matter, energy and the long histories that are encoded in their arrangement in time and space –as our understanding of these things grow we will increasing come to feel “at home in the universe.”

*Cogito ergo sum seems to work for many folks, but, personally, I rarely think. I spend most of my time reacting and as much time as possible mountain biking. Furthermore, I also participate in many relationships with family, with my colleagues and with my larger community that make it unclear were my “locus of self” or “locus of control” resides. Maybe it is just “me”. I don’t think so.

==Matthew Ayres ==

Defining Consciousness

What is it to be conscious? The debate has been running for a long time and is fundamentally tied to our existence, search for order, search for self-understanding and the wider connection to the universe in which we find ourselves.

1. Questions to consider
• Are their differing types or forms of consciousness?
• Does consciousness evolve over time?
• Is consciousness actually definable?
• Can consciousness be deconstructed?
• Can consciousness be observed or measured?

I’m sure there are many more questions and by asking these questions, I’m developing a set of assumptions I’m making in order to offer some form of draft view of consciousness.

2. Assumptions
At this stage and by default, to define consciousness, one must believe it is definable and measurable. Ill start with this assumption. Secondly, I will assume there is a universal consciousness, that may be bespoke or have a series of elements in which it comes into being. The time dimension is rather hard so for this stage, ill remain neutral until the work is further developed.

3. What may be elements of consciousness?
• Awareness – the understanding of self as an entity
• Intelligence - the ability to make highly complex decisions
• Self-determination - the ability to make choices that may or many not be self-interested
• Thought – the conceptual development of framing that helps interpret life
• Feelings – the rich experiences that inform, influence and integrate with rational thought
• Emergence – the ability to learn and create new thought based on both experience as well as non-learned unique thought.
Clearly this list is too short!

4. What is consciousness ‘not’?
In asking this question, I’m attempting to reduce the overall size of the problem by restricting its scope. While this is best used at a collective group level, I’ll offer some initial thoughts:

Rocks; passive / unaware
Computer software; follows predefined instructions
Plants; limited / [no?] self determinism

5. Definition V1.0
Based on the initial thoughts above, a draft definition has been attempted.

“Consciousness is an adaptive self-awareness that self-determines thoughts and actions in an evolving environment.”

It already seems clumsy, however is thrown on the cutting room floor for discussion.

==Beth Lusczek ==

I've had some interesting discussions with folks in this group about what could be termed altered states of consciousness. This might be as simple as looking at the world through "baby eyes", as being in a meditative state, or having flashes of ego death. These experiences could be described as feeling more connected to the world, feeling able to access more information, to integrate thought and emotion, and to see connections instead of walls and divisions. Sometimes this involves altered senses of space and time. These "altered states" are fleeting and can be difficult to recreate in memory. Are these states some inherent property of consciousness? Do they serve a purpose or are they merely part of the human experience? What functional structures are engaged in these states? Are there different signaling patterns? fMRI studies on Buddhist monks can address these last questions.

==Stefan Pfenninger==

I have just three thoughts.

First, I'm interested in whether consciousness is uniquely human or not. To what extent is it linked to a sense of self? There is lots of evidence that a whole range of animals have a sense of self. We also know that some primates use tools. But there seems to be evidence that some primates come eerily close to "being human", for example in that they have some sort of understanding of mortality (e.g. see the book, The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal [1]). Also worth reading, Michael Pollan has a recent piece in the New Yorker that explores whether plants could be considered intelligent or even conscious [2].

Second, although it may not help arriving at a fundamental explanation of consciousness, examining how meditation alters consciousness is interesting to me because it is something we can investigate ourselves without needing a lab (although of course you can also try to peak into meditators brains using modern brain imaging).

Finally, I probably consider myself a materialist, but I wonder whether it will ever be possible to explain consciousness as an emergent property of matter. Even assuming that this is possible in theory, my guess is that we are a very long way from understanding the physical universe well enough to actually do so. Hypotheses like this guy Penrose claiming that quantum vibrations inside neurons have something to do with consciousness [3] don't seem anywhere close to being testable at the moment, but I admit I have no idea what quantum vibrations in neurons mean in the first place (and would be very happy to let somebody explain this to me).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Bonobo-Atheist-Humanism-Primates/dp/0393347796/

[2] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_pollan?currentPage=all

[3] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002

== Fahad Khalid ==

"It is not worth asking how to define consciousness, how to explain it, how it evolved, what its function is, etc., because there's not one thing for which all the answers would be the same. Instead, we have many sub-capabilities, for which the answers are different: e.g., different kinds of perception, learning, knowledge, attention, control, self-monitoring, self-control, etc." --Aaron Sloman (1994)[http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/#whoiam] 

I'd like to look at this project through the lens of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, i.e., how would one imbue an artificial agent (software agent, robot, etc.) with consciousness? My primary source of information is Marvin Minsky's book "The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind." [http://www.amazon.com/The-Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Intelligence/dp/0743276647]. In reference to consciousness, the most important message in this book is that we should realize that consciousness is not just one thing (as is the message in Sloman's quote above). It is a "suitcase word" (as Minsky calls it) that is used to describe several different things. The breakup of consciousness into many parts is available here [http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E4/eb4.html].

The most important aspects of conscious experience to me are Emotions (especially Compassion, Empathy, etc), Self-Awareness, Reflection and Self-Reflection (possibly a few more). I find these phenomena particularly interesting because unlike learning and planning (which we know how to program), how to design the previously mentioned phenomena for artificial agents is not commonly known outside the field of AI. The idea is to think of each of these phenomena as emerging from interactions between micro-agents (e.g., Neurons, Glia, etc.) through various layers of hierarchy. The hierarchical system structure is a fairly common design for intelligent software agents (e.g., simulated ice hockey players) and robots. Such a hierarchical framework, I believe, simplifies design and simplifies our perspective on these complex phenomena.

Think about how a robot would know where it is, i.e., imagine a robot asking itself, "where am I?". This is the problem of "Mobile Robot Localization". We don't even think about having that problem. But for a robot, it is indeed quite a challenging problem. Nevertheless, we now have algorithms that make it possible for mobile robots to navigate rough terrains. But now imagine the robot asking, "who am I"? "why do I exist?" ... those are the questions, in my opinion, the answers to which require the phenomena we aggregate under the wide umbrella of consciousness. Oh, by the way, don't forget how important a role language and expression plays in our conscious experiences as humans.

To summarize, I'd like to look into the following question: "How does one program a software agent that wonders about its identity, and why it exists? ...". It would be interesting to see what small modules/tasks (analogous to Neurons/Glia) need to be integrated together to make that happen. Perhaps that will provide us with some insight into the emergence of consciousness?

== Renske Vroomans ==
Disclaimer: I have no background in philosophy or anything like it. My take on consciousness is probably imprecise at best, incoherent at worst. I decided to restrict myself to my biologically biased view, also without reading the other statements beforehand, so apologies for any redundancy. Here goes...

Consciousness is a multi-layered phenomenon, or maybe a sliding scale. The first level is awareness of the environment, being able to take inputs (also from internal stimuli, e.g. neurons reporting injury). At this point, I don't think the system even needs to be able to react to them; it is the awareness that counts. Simple computer programs are already able to do so. The second level is awareness of the fact that you are aware. This layer observes the reception of the stimuli and makes complex calculations as to the correct reaction, taking into account internal state variables and external ones. The next level is the ability of the “brain” to create stimuli/fire without external inputs from peripheral nerves. This self- maintaining system (which may need to be a chaotic attractor?) might be considered consciousness, or perhaps it is just a requirement for consciousness: The ability to maintain a flow of information without having to receive a push from outside of the machine/brain/software.

Some questions: When you put people in a room where they receive no external stimuli, they go crazy within the hour. What happens to consciousness at this point? Does this imply that the system requires continuous recalibration to maintain consciousness? And brains on drugs (the ones that make the waves go periodic), can they still generate consciousness?

I am not sure I even answered what consciousness is at this point.

== Sarah Laborde ==

I added a couple of tentative crosses to John's table - thanks john!

When I think of consciousness I think of several levels (and I see those levels reflected in other people's paragraphs, although I hope we can settle on one), the first one being subjective experience. To me consciousness in this sense is directly connected to physical sensations, or their memory. These sensations represent information, emerging not from the body or the brain in isolation but from the engagement and 'navigation' of the individual through its environment.. so some kind of individual (not distinguishing here between body and brain - sorry for my coarseness dear biologists and AI researchers, but I think there is some valus in considering them together) / environment nexus as the origin of information and therefore consciousness.. in that regard I join - I think! - Chalmers' argument on the connection information / consciousness. Thanks Sean for posting a link to the article).
A couple of extra thoughts: I think the notion of temporality is important too, and - drawing on a laundry conversation with Diego on the topic - how it relates to death. Could consciousness, if contingent to life, be related to the notion of the organism's future death being somehow embodied ("consciously" or not), and leading to for example the process of reproduction?

I apologize for my probably obvious lack of knowledge in biology, and I frankly don't properly understand the physicists' discussions of consciousness (be it Tegmark or Penrose.. Cole..help..? :) ). I am more grounded in cognitive anthropology and to some extent philosophy, although I don't claim any breadth of philosophical knowledge on the topic. My thoughts about consciousness come from a research interest in the production of knowledge: how and where it emerges in various contexts, and discussions of embodied and reflexive knowledge.

A couple of scholars/books that I find inspiring on the topic (themselves drawing on long traditions on which I will pass) are below:

Tim Ingold (Perception of the Environment, 2000), and his discussion for example of Von Uexkull's notion of the "Umwelt"

Francisco Varela (any of you biologists want to discuss his work?)

==Ana María Gómez López==

The two main perspectives I would like to add to our discussion of consciousness are:

'''1. Consciousness is life-contingent.''' 
As I mentioned in our last disccusion, I consider that an understanding of consciousness can only be approached through understanding life. By stating this, I am not limiting my understanding of life to a strictly bio-centric view, but also comprising AI and forms of non-cellular life. Under this broad understanding, I posit the question to the group: can consciousness be separate from life?

I respond strongly to Max Tegmark's paper on the physical origin of consciousness [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf] when I pair it with Jeremy England's article on the origin of life from matter [http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/]. Both pave the question of origin, but the latter opens the possibility of life in inanimate matter subjected to physics, in the same way that Tegmark applies physics to understand consciousness.

'''2. Consciousness does not require self-awareness.''' 
In human neuroscientific assessments, a person is classified as having a minimally conscious state when he/she goes back and forth between wakeful awareness and non-responsive behavior. In individuals who manage to remain minimally conscious and avoid a persistent vegetative state, is consciousness only limited to moments of recognizable "meaningful behavior"? Or does consciousness exist somehow beyond the periods when these individuals are not aware of themselves?
If we recognize self-awareness as a "gold-standard" measure to understand consciousness, we have to recognize that existing methodologies to measure self-awareness are rather limited. Self-recognition tests used in human and some animals may be considered as markers of self-awareness; however, I find it difficult to exclude the possibility of consciousness on organisms and entities that do not share this capacity. Indeed, while humans understand themselves as conscious beings, we often perform daily activities without ever stopping to think that we are doing these "consciously".

An additional concept which I find useful for this conversation is that of consciousness as integrated information [http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.long]. Although I do not fully follow all of Tononi's paper (particularly his discussion of qualia), I borrow the idea of consciousness as integrated information in order to span biological and artificial contexts alike, an idea also facilitated by other sections of this article.

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-17T13:57:44Z

Balwit: /* John Balwit */

I created this page to share and discuss our models for the emergence of consciousness from matter. Please share your models and add discussion so we can all see and think about it. We will use this page in the end to write up a summary and hopefully compare and contrast the models and discuss what properties of consciousness can be explained by what model.

Thanks,
Alireza

=Working Ideas=

== (1) Consciousness as Hyper Attractors of Brain (Alireza)==
In this schema states of our mind/consciousness as attractors of the dynamics that arise from our brain. We receive sensory information that act as perturbations pushing the trajectory out of a basin of attractor and into a new basin.

[[File:photo.png | 500px|center]]

== (2) Reference! Tegmark - The fourth state of matter =
This can be an interesting starting point... at least one perspective on the topic http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf Sarah

=Perspective Summaries=
 
==Consciousness Table==
I thought that it might be useful to attempt to organize our understandings of consciousness in a table—perhaps to make clear where and whether a consensus emerges on the nature of the phenomena that we are investigating.

I offer here an idiosyncratic table that I find useful to organize my thoughts on this topic. Feel free to add/reorganize categories and qualify entries in the notes below.
Or better yet...can we come up with a simpler table that captures the typical properties that consciousness is thought to have or not have.
 --john balwit

<table>

<tr><td> </td><td>Property</td> <td>Yes </td><td>No</td> <td>NA </td></tr>
<tr><td>1.</td> <td>Requires matter</td> <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>2.</td> <td>Exclusive property of biological systems</td> <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td> </td></tr>
<tr><td>3.</td> <td> Has parts <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>4.</td> <td>Admits of gradations or degree (continuous or discrete)
<td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>5.</td> <td>Likely to be artificial created in the AI lab <td> x</td> <td> x </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>6.</td> <td>Intrinsically paradoxical research area.
(involves strange loopy-ness Gödel, Turing) <td> ? ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>7.</td> <td>Requires interaction with external environment (perception?) <td> x x </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>8.</td> <td>Requires interaction with internal environment (reflection?) <td> </td> <td> x x </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>9.</td> <td>Necessarily Embodied (result of sensor interactions, hormonal environment etc.) <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>10.</td> <td>Necessarily Embedded (result of large scale system interactions) <td> x x</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>11.</td> <td>Deterministic system with stochastic inputs. <td> x ? </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>12.</td> <td>Relies on quantum things that I do/do not understand <td> ? </td> <td> </td> <td>?</td></tr>
<tr><td>13.</td><td> Defined by its ineffability, will always recede from scientific apprehension. <td> ? ? </td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
<tr><td>14.</td><td> Encodes history (requires memory, genes) <td> x ?</td> <td> </td> <td></td></tr>
</table>

 Notes: 
 I've added some ticks.. 

==Sean Hayes==

[http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html The Hard Problem of Consciousness]
:This paper makes the important distinction between the 'easy' and 'hard' problems of consciousness in relative terms. I think it would be useful to use this framework to focus the precise problems we're investigating around consciousness. 
My definition for consciousness at it's simplest form is just having subjective experience. While some of the discussion this afternoon touched on integrative brain problems (which falls under 'easy' problems of consciousness in the above, as a way to describe issues of cognition), my question is whether this property of consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. While this is difficult to address objectively, I think it can be approached from our perspectives by comparing consciousness with other emergent phenomena. 

The big question that I've been trying to resolve myself along this line of thinking is related to the 'binding problem' ([http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/events/workshops/images/8/8d/Revonsuo_and_Newman_1999_-_Binding_and_Consciousness.pdf 1],[http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/events/workshops/images/3/37/Revonsuo_1999_-_Binding_and_the_Phenomenal_Unity_of_Consciousness.pdf 2]). I'm probably bastardizing the definition a bit, but essentially the issue is conscious experience is not a distributed phenomenon but rather that experience is inherently singular - to me this is entirely distinct from emergence, which is inherently a distributed feature of a complex system. Moreover, our conscious experience not only receives input from the complex, distributed network of our brain, but itself can cause changes in brain behavior and function. Is this actually an emergent phenomenon, or the concentration of information into a centralized control (our subjective experience)? Are there characteristics of subjective experience which do act the way we expect emergent phenomena to behave?

==Cole Mathis==
I think that consciousness is an Emergent property of the electro-chemical interactions occurring in my brain. The difficulty in understanding the dynamics and/or the origin of consciousness is (in my opinion) the hard problem in emergence: how can macroscopic features of the system have causal control of the microscopic degrees of freedom? One of the canonical examples of emergent phenomena is the emergence of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics. Here the behavior of a system with many degrees of freedom (an ideal gas) can be effectively represented using bulk (emergent) variables (temperature, pressure, volume, etc.) This example is great but it says nothing about the flow of information in the system or the casual direction. For example consider a box of an ideal gas, if I hold the volume constant and heat this box, the pressure will go up. An increase in pressure on the macro scale corresponds to an increase in the average speed of the particles on the microscopic scale, however we do not say that the increased pressure caused the increase in the average speed (although we might say that the increase of the average translational kinetic energy caused the increase in pressure). In this system the causal arrow points only from the micro-scale to the macro-scale. With consciousness we have exactly the opposite situation. If the state of my neurons are the microscopic state variables and my conscious thoughts are the macroscopic variables, then when I think about typing, the macroscopic variables configure the microscopic variables in just the right way to send signals down to fingers, my fingers didn’t start typing and then cause my brain to think about typing (I hope.) So here the causal direction is reversed. How did this reversal/ asymmetry arise and how can we generalize this notion?
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/11/12/1314922110.full.pdf Quantifying Casual Emergence shows macro can beat micro]

==Claire Lagesse==

Here are some ideas about my personal experiment of what consciousness could be...
There is no reference but just some thinking from what I learned. I don't deal with consciousness in my every day work but as a conscious human being I experiment it every day ! :)
I'm really sorry for my french-english !

What is consciousness ? Where does it starts ? Where does it ends ? Are we conscious of the sun on our skin, of the wind, of our breathe, of our position, of the temperature, of all the elements surrounding us ? Does the consciousness start with a 'me' ? A dissociation of the external world from our body ? Then, what are the limits of our body ? Is the hair just fallen a part of 'me' ? What about my legs ? They are a part of my body, but if one is cut of it won't be 'me' any more. So maybe we could define our 'me' as the living part of our body. So, for people with a Locked Inside Syndrome their 'me' can be the minimal part of their body alive : their brain. That's maybe why the analogy is often made between the brain and consciousness : it is considered as the minimal part of our body which has to be alive for a 'me' still existing. Even our heart can be replace by a machine.

If we define consciousness with a 'me' apart from the surrounding world, it could be problematic for some persons with mental disease. What about autism ? In some cases, persons with a major autistic trouble cannot make the difference between their own body and the world surrounding them. Can we say they are not conscious ? That sounds a little extreme.

Could we extend consciousness to each living organism ? Is a plant conscious ? Plants are moving all day long, but at a different time scale than ours. They are moving with the sun, with the wind... Does it means they are conscious of them or could we just see it as a action / reaction mechanism ? It goes the same way for some animals. Is the jellyfish conscious of its moves with waves ? Is the shell conscious ? Is the frog conscious ? Each animal is responding to its physiological needs : feed, security and reproduction. Feed goes with a body, security goes with a surrounding (potentially dangerous) and reproduction goes with finding and interacting with another animal of my own specie.

Could we consider those behaviors as conscious ? What are the limits of this hypothesis ? It is possible to program a robot to find food, make itself secure and make sure to reproduce the sooner it can. But it won't be conscious those behaviors are for its own survival and its specie one. But can we say that animals are conscious of it ?

Thinking about artificial intelligence, one could say that consciousness begin with feelings, and a computer is not able to feel anything. Happiness, sadness, love, hate, if we look closely they all have a chemical reaction as an origin. The mystery could be what produce this chemical reaction.

Ants or bees have great collective behavior. They form a fascinating system with some extremely complex emerging properties. But it is not sure that each ant, each bee, is conscious it is taking part in a complex system. It is more about a robust collective intelligence than about consciousness. However, in an anthill 20% of ants are not doing anything. What is this 'useless' time for ? Are the ants conscious of this free time ? Is this demonstrating something about a system we are judging as hyper efficient ?

A third idea could be the knowledge that our consciousness is limited in the time. As human beings, we are conscious that we will die some day. So we develop some cults and funeral rite. Could it be a 'proof' of consciousness ? This way of thinking may exclude a lot of animals of consciousness.

One could ask the difference between consciousness and intelligence. Can an artificial intelligence be conscious ? Is consciousness recognizable by feelings, non efficient time or the simple fact to name it ? Could we say that consciousness is the amount of things linked to our body that we are not able to scientifically explain ? Does the consciousness define the 'me' out of my body limits ? And so what about all the unconscious things I do every day ? Breathe, blink, dream... Is it about the will of doing something more than in the fact of doing it ? Are we defined by our body, our will or our acts ? Is the consciousness the fact to ask ourselves about consciousness ?

==John Balwit ==
One comic = 1000 words. http://xkcd.com/1037/

Definitions matter. Definitions create boundaries around elements of a system that we attempt to model and understand. Definitions also create a background of implicit assumptions that are necessarily less well examined. Definitions of consciousness are perhaps inherent circular, the definitions “import” themselves into their own definition. For example, let’s start to build a definition of consciousness It makes sense to reflect for a moment on the ever present phenomena of consciousness and begin with “I feel the warm sun on my cheek. … etc. “ Already we have made assumptions which may prove to be missteps. There is clearly some connection between consciousness and the personal pronouns that we use to label our identity—the locus of our perception. This may be one of the key things that we hope to understand as we attempt to understand consciousness. In this respect, It appears that even Descartes choose a starting point that was well down the road—got ahead of himself. “I think therefore I am” is no philosophical atom. * A second problem in the “reflective” exercise above is the implicit assumption that “pausing to reflect” give clearer access to the phenomena of consciousness. It might be the case (and I happen to believe that it is the case) that this particular kind of introspection obscures a more general apprehension of the phenomena that we are interested in understanding.

Disciplines matter too. Our understandings are necessarily informed by our experience. Our disciplines provide us with tools and models of various systems that build our intuitions in different ways. I study evolutionary biology, systems, models and have affinities for the philosophical position in cognitive science called Embodied Embedded Cognition (EEC). The ECC theoretical position is critical of the classical cognitivist approach which relies on a mechanistic “internal representation”.

My definition of consciousness is something like this:

Some (perhaps all) evolved systems perceive and respond to an environment. This is a property of matter, energy, and the properties of the systems as they are arranged in space. Slowly driven systems far from equilibrium (biological systems, perhaps others) have an opportunity to create “perceptual, modeling subsystems” that generate models of the world that may “run faster” than the physical system in which they are embedded and therefore serve adaptive, predictive functions. The chemical systems of plants have these property, language systems used by humans also have this property. My discipline suggests that the models that these subsystems generate are instances of consciousness.

Now consider the parts of these models? These models are not strictly localized within the modeling subsystem, rather they involve relationships between the environment and the modeling subsystem and can be thought to “hover” immaterially between the subsystem. Practitioners of various meditation practices frequently observe this “untethered” property of consciousness. In the philosophical literature there are colorful “brain in a vat” and “philosophical zombie” thought experiments which make a compelling case that consciousness is property of not just the matter in our modeling subsystems but of all matter that participates in those relationships. This “embedded” aspect of consciousness holds that the interplay between the world and the modeling system introduce important constraints that influence the content or character of consciousness-i.e. there is no general consciousness.

The “embodied” aspect of consciousness refers to the observation that modeling subsystems have an “internal milieu” which deeply “colors” the behavior or characteristics of consciousness

My discipline (and my temperament) value precision and rigor. There are established ways to bring rigor to various domains of study. However, it is not immediately clear to me how to make falsifiable claims; to generate testable hypotheses in the area of consciousness. I would like to be able to do this. Using AI and a generative science is an interesting but not, I would say, promising approach. As we create ever more sensitive, and responsive technology we will almost certainly encounter more cases that we are likely to consider as “marginal cases” of consciousness In the event that we do create the “paradigm case” of consciousness – an AI like to one in the movie “Her”-- it is still not clear that we will gain understanding into the nature of consciousness from this system. Our success will ironically be revealed in the inaccessibility of the states that the AI will claim to have.

Finally, a few words on mystery and the ineffable: Part of the motivation for research in the area of consciousness lies in the surprising observation that electro-chemical systems like ourselves give rise to the beautiful, vivid, textured, emotionally-tinged, riddled-with-longing, plagued-with-ambition, haunted-by-death and, oh yes, “is that sunshine on my cheek” kind of experiences that characterize one’s own experience.
There is a striking incongruity between the processes that we imagine are taking place at the “lowest levels”. My intuitive reaction to this is that we just don’t understand physics and chemical reactions very well. Our theories and our mathematics are cartoon sketches. We are justifiably impressed with ourselves for the progress made but the notion that “all is known” stands now, as always, as the principle barrier to greater understanding. For most of human history animism has been taken for granted. The Greeks, the Judeo-Christian tradition and the western scientific world view that these modes of thought gave rise to (and in which we happily participate) changed all that by creating zero order approximations that made certain things evident but obscured others. I am persuaded by some of Stuart Kaufmann’s work in this area and feel that as our understanding of the properties that are inherent in matter, energy and the long histories that are encoded in their arrangement in time and space –as our understanding of these things grow we will increasing come to feel “at home in the universe.”

*Cogito ergo sum seems to work for many folks, but, personally, I rarely think. I spend most of my time reacting and as much time as possible mountain biking. Furthermore, I also participate in many relationships with family, with my colleagues and with my larger community that make it unclear were my “locus of self” or “locus of control” resides. Maybe it is just “me”. I don’t think so.

==Matthew Ayres ==

Defining Consciousness

What is it to be conscious? The debate has been running for a long time and is fundamentally tied to our existence, search for order, search for self-understanding and the wider connection to the universe in which we find ourselves.

1. Questions to consider
• Are their differing types or forms of consciousness?
• Does consciousness evolve over time?
• Is consciousness actually definable?
• Can consciousness be deconstructed?
• Can consciousness be observed or measured?

I’m sure there are many more questions and by asking these questions, I’m developing a set of assumptions I’m making in order to offer some form of draft view of consciousness.

2. Assumptions
At this stage and by default, to define consciousness, one must believe it is definable and measurable. Ill start with this assumption. Secondly, I will assume there is a universal consciousness, that may be bespoke or have a series of elements in which it comes into being. The time dimension is rather hard so for this stage, ill remain neutral until the work is further developed.

3. What may be elements of consciousness?
• Awareness – the understanding of self as an entity
• Intelligence - the ability to make highly complex decisions
• Self-determination - the ability to make choices that may or many not be self-interested
• Thought – the conceptual development of framing that helps interpret life
• Feelings – the rich experiences that inform, influence and integrate with rational thought
• Emergence – the ability to learn and create new thought based on both experience as well as non-learned unique thought.
Clearly this list is too short!

4. What is consciousness ‘not’?
In asking this question, I’m attempting to reduce the overall size of the problem by restricting its scope. While this is best used at a collective group level, I’ll offer some initial thoughts:

Rocks; passive / unaware
Computer software; follows predefined instructions
Plants; limited / [no?] self determinism

5. Definition V1.0
Based on the initial thoughts above, a draft definition has been attempted.

“Consciousness is an adaptive self-awareness that self-determines thoughts and actions in an evolving environment.”

It already seems clumsy, however is thrown on the cutting room floor for discussion.

==Beth Lusczek ==

I've had some interesting discussions with folks in this group about what could be termed altered states of consciousness. This might be as simple as looking at the world through "baby eyes", as being in a meditative state, or having flashes of ego death. These experiences could be described as feeling more connected to the world, feeling able to access more information, to integrate thought and emotion, and to see connections instead of walls and divisions. Sometimes this involves altered senses of space and time. These "altered states" are fleeting and can be difficult to recreate in memory. Are these states some inherent property of consciousness? Do they serve a purpose or are they merely part of the human experience? What functional structures are engaged in these states? Are there different signaling patterns? fMRI studies on Buddhist monks can address these last questions.

==Stefan Pfenninger==

I have just three thoughts.

First, I'm interested in whether consciousness is uniquely human or not. To what extent is it linked to a sense of self? There is lots of evidence that a whole range of animals have a sense of self. We also know that some primates use tools. But there seems to be evidence that some primates come eerily close to "being human", for example in that they have some sort of understanding of mortality (e.g. see the book, The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal [1]). Also worth reading, Michael Pollan has a recent piece in the New Yorker that explores whether plants could be considered intelligent or even conscious [2].

Second, although it may not help arriving at a fundamental explanation of consciousness, examining how meditation alters consciousness is interesting to me because it is something we can investigate ourselves without needing a lab (although of course you can also try to peak into meditators brains using modern brain imaging).

Finally, I probably consider myself a materialist, but I wonder whether it will ever be possible to explain consciousness as an emergent property of matter. Even assuming that this is possible in theory, my guess is that we are a very long way from understanding the physical universe well enough to actually do so. Hypotheses like this guy Penrose claiming that quantum vibrations inside neurons have something to do with consciousness [3] don't seem anywhere close to being testable at the moment, but I admit I have no idea what quantum vibrations in neurons mean in the first place (and would be very happy to let somebody explain this to me).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Bonobo-Atheist-Humanism-Primates/dp/0393347796/

[2] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_pollan?currentPage=all

[3] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002

== Fahad Khalid ==

"It is not worth asking how to define consciousness, how to explain it, how it evolved, what its function is, etc., because there's not one thing for which all the answers would be the same. Instead, we have many sub-capabilities, for which the answers are different: e.g., different kinds of perception, learning, knowledge, attention, control, self-monitoring, self-control, etc." --Aaron Sloman (1994)[http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/#whoiam] 

I'd like to look at this project through the lens of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, i.e., how would one imbue an artificial agent (software agent, robot, etc.) with consciousness? My primary source of information is Marvin Minsky's book "The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind." [http://www.amazon.com/The-Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Intelligence/dp/0743276647]. In reference to consciousness, the most important message in this book is that we should realize that consciousness is not just one thing (as is the message in Sloman's quote above). It is a "suitcase word" (as Minsky calls it) that is used to describe several different things. The breakup of consciousness into many parts is available here [http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/E4/eb4.html].

The most important aspects of conscious experience to me are Emotions (especially Compassion, Empathy, etc), Self-Awareness, Reflection and Self-Reflection (possibly a few more). I find these phenomena particularly interesting because unlike learning and planning (which we know how to program), how to design the previously mentioned phenomena for artificial agents is not commonly known outside the field of AI. The idea is to think of each of these phenomena as emerging from interactions between micro-agents (e.g., Neurons, Glia, etc.) through various layers of hierarchy. The hierarchical system structure is a fairly common design for intelligent software agents (e.g., simulated ice hockey players) and robots. Such a hierarchical framework, I believe, simplifies design and simplifies our perspective on these complex phenomena.

Think about how a robot would know where it is, i.e., imagine a robot asking itself, "where am I?". This is the problem of "Mobile Robot Localization". We don't even think about having that problem. But for a robot, it is indeed quite a challenging problem. Nevertheless, we now have algorithms that make it possible for mobile robots to navigate rough terrains. But now imagine the robot asking, "who am I"? "why do I exist?" ... those are the questions, in my opinion, the answers to which require the phenomena we aggregate under the wide umbrella of consciousness. Oh, by the way, don't forget how important a role language and expression plays in our conscious experiences as humans.

To summarize, I'd like to look into the following question: "How does one program a software agent that wonders about its identity, and why it exists? ...". It would be interesting to see what small modules/tasks (analogous to Neurons/Glia) need to be integrated together to make that happen. Perhaps that will provide us with some insight into the emergence of consciousness?

== Renske Vroomans ==
Disclaimer: I have no background in philosophy or anything like it. My take on consciousness is probably imprecise at best, incoherent at worst. I decided to restrict myself to my biologically biased view, also without reading the other statements beforehand, so apologies for any redundancy. Here goes...

Consciousness is a multi-layered phenomenon, or maybe a sliding scale. The first level is awareness of the environment, being able to take inputs (also from internal stimuli, e.g. neurons reporting injury). At this point, I don't think the system even needs to be able to react to them; it is the awareness that counts. Simple computer programs are already able to do so. The second level is awareness of the fact that you are aware. This layer observes the reception of the stimuli and makes complex calculations as to the correct reaction, taking into account internal state variables and external ones. The next level is the ability of the “brain” to create stimuli/fire without external inputs from peripheral nerves. This self- maintaining system (which may need to be a chaotic attractor?) might be considered consciousness, or perhaps it is just a requirement for consciousness: The ability to maintain a flow of information without having to receive a push from outside of the machine/brain/software.

Some questions: When you put people in a room where they receive no external stimuli, they go crazy within the hour. What happens to consciousness at this point? Does this imply that the system requires continuous recalibration to maintain consciousness? And brains on drugs (the ones that make the waves go periodic), can they still generate consciousness?

I am not sure I even answered what consciousness is at this point.

== Sarah Laborde ==

I added a couple of tentative crosses to John's table - thanks john!

When I think of consciousness I think of several levels (and I see those levels reflected in other people's paragraphs, although I hope we can settle on one), the first one being subjective experience. To me consciousness in this sense is directly connected to physical sensations, or their memory. These sensations represent information, emerging not from the body or the brain in isolation but from the engagement and 'navigation' of the individual through its environment.. so some kind of individual (not distinguishing here between body and brain - sorry for my coarseness dear biologists and AI researchers, but I think there is some valus in considering them together) / environment nexus as the origin of information and therefore consciousness.. in that regard I join - I think! - Chalmers' argument on the connection information / consciousness. Thanks Sean for posting a link to the article).
A couple of extra thoughts: I think the notion of temporality is important too, and - drawing on a laundry conversation with Diego on the topic - how it relates to death. Could consciousness, if contingent to life, be related to the notion of the organism's future death being somehow embodied ("consciously" or not), and leading to for example the process of reproduction?

I apologize for my probably obvious lack of knowledge in biology, and I frankly don't properly understand the physicists' discussions of consciousness (be it Tegmark or Penrose.. Cole..help..? :) ). I am more grounded in cognitive anthropology and to some extent philosophy, although I don't claim any breadth of philosophical knowledge on the topic. My thoughts about consciousness come from a research interest in the production of knowledge: how and where it emerges in various contexts, and discussions of embodied and reflexive knowledge.

A couple of scholars/books that I find inspiring on the topic (themselves drawing on long traditions on which I will pass) are below:

Tim Ingold (Perception of the Environment, 2000), and his discussion for example of Von Uexkull's notion of the "Umwelt"

Francisco Varela (any of you biologists want to discuss his work?)

==Ana María Gómez López==

The two main perspectives I would like to add to our discussion of consciousness are:

'''1. Consciousness is life-contingent.''' 
As I mentioned in our last disccusion, I consider that an understanding of consciousness can only be approached through understanding life. By stating this, I am not limiting my understanding of life to a strictly bio-centric view, but also comprising AI and forms of non-cellular life. Under this broad understanding, I posit the question to the group: can consciousness be separate from life?

I respond strongly to Max Tegmark's paper on the physical origin of consciousness [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v2.pdf] when I pair it with Jeremy England's article on the origin of life from matter [http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/]. Both pave the question of origin, but the latter opens the possibility of life in inanimate matter subjected to physics, in the same way that Tegmark applies physics to understand consciousness.

'''2. Consciousness does not require self-awareness.''' 
In human neuroscientific assessments, a person is classified as having a minimally conscious state when he/she goes back and forth between wakeful awareness and non-responsive behavior. In individuals who manage to remain minimally conscious and avoid a persistent vegetative state, is consciousness only limited to moments of recognizable "meaningful behavior"? Or does consciousness exist somehow beyond the periods when these individuals are not aware of themselves?
If we recognize self-awareness as a "gold-standard" measure to understand consciousness, we have to recognize that existing methodologies to measure self-awareness are rather limited. Self-recognition tests used in human and some animals may be considered as markers of self-awareness; however, I find it difficult to exclude the possibility of consciousness on organisms and entities that do not share this capacity. Indeed, while humans understand themselves as conscious beings, we often perform daily activities without ever stopping to think that we are doing these "consciously".

An additional concept which I find useful for this conversation is that of consciousness as integrated information [http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.long]. Although I do not fully follow all of Tononi's paper (particularly his discussion of qualia), I borrow the idea of consciousness as integrated information in order to span biological and artificial contexts alike, an idea also facilitated by other sections of this article.

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-16T23:49:53Z

Balwit: /* Consciousness Table */

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-16T23:48:32Z

Balwit: /* Consciousness Table */

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-16T23:47:22Z

Balwit: /* Consciousness Table */

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-16T23:45:40Z

Balwit: /* Perspective Summaries */

Emergence of Consciousness Page

2014-06-16T23:27:09Z

Balwit:

John Balwit

2014-06-15T23:05:39Z

Balwit:

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2014}}

[[Image:balwit.jpg|150px|{border}]] 

I am interested, in the evolution of modularity and hierarchy in various systems. I hoping to understanding and model the mechanisms that support what John Maynard Smith calls “transitions” in evolution. I have been considering game theory, Reconstructability Analysis, cellular automata, genetic algorithms, information theory and machine learning techniques as tools to support my investigations. Ultimately, I am hopeful of developing models and formalisms that might offer insight into the mechanisms responsible for novel structures and subsystems that emerge within natural or artificial systems.

I have a second set of research interests that have grown out of my exposure to the various techniques that are taught and used in the Systems Science department and complexity science, generally. These research interests tie into my decades long involvement with education and educational research. As a former high school physics and biology teacher I have a deep commitment to understanding the nature of effective science education. I have found great personal value in the use of modeling and simulation tools (specifically agent based modeling, genetic algorithms and other computational methods). In recent years, I have become increasingly interested in offering these tools to K-12 and undergraduate teachers and students. I currently work with the Santa Fe Institute learning lab offering professional development to K-12 science teachers. Our curriculum teaches science and computer science as students create agent based models of epidemics, chemical reactions and ecosystems.

Complex Systems Summer School 2014-1-Minute Summaries

2014-06-15T03:40:43Z

Balwit:

{{Complex Systems Summer School 2014}}

==1-Minute Summaries==

* Michael: hiking, history, birds; ecology, population dynamics, stoachastic processes; interest in networks, time series data of birds etc
* Claudius: social science, econ, agent-based models of economy, levels of investigation, evolutionary game theory
* Blaz: nonlinear time series analysis, modeling electricity market; interest in networks, game theory
* Matt: cross-industry etc, diffusion/emergence of ideas, ML
* Hiroshi (hashika1@jhmi.edu): cardio-electric physician, predicting death, cells in heart as complex system; history, politics
* Renske: insect development of segmentation, model that explains observed behavior, interest in networks and lots of things; music, hiking, beauty
* Fahad: AI, parallel computing; similarities between design principles in biology and software; something with quantum computing? more scalable architectures
* Ali: resilience in networks, world resource trade networks e.g. energy; hiking, futbol
* Diana: marine bio, how simple orgs navigate complex environments, scaling of behavior; interest in networks; hiking, soccer
* Morgan: eng systems, env science - energy, env impacts of decisions; interest in biological systems or network theory
* Sarah L: water as physical and cultural factor/force, Cameroon flooding patterns, interactions with ecosystem and social dynamics
* Junjian: power systems, failure propagation in systems, how to mitigate; inter-dependent networks, predicting extreme events using time series or spatial data
* Bernardo: geography, econ; public policy in Brazil; interest in spatial analysis, tax collection etc, water, energy, sustainability; cycling
* Beth: physics, surgery; changes in metabolic networks in massive blood loss , scaling from sub-cell level processes and networks to physiological symptoms
* Vipin: interest in fractal-like structures in econ data, measuring fractal-ness; emergence of norms, how structure/dynamic of network affects this; playing soccer
* Emília: evolutionary biology; cultural evol of language using agent-based modeling; classical guitar
* Francesca: econ, social science; motivation of identity-based behavior social norms decision-making; public policy in developing countries; how beliefs are formed; manipulating norms
* Luis: physics (was astro, not anymore), networks and coop games, emegence of tolerance/intolerance, reputation; differences in cultures/societies; hiking
* Alberto: mathematics, game theory on networks; modeling of social and spatial networks; experimental econ; like futbol
* Nicholas: chem eng, econ; inter-bank networks, model trust; overlapping mutual funds; kinetic theory of gases for econ; hierarchies
* Degang/Samuel: physics; apply evol game theory to human activities; inferring influence in social networks; affect of memory capacity of players or other individual properties on overall dynamics; hiking
* Ana Maria: forensic anthropology, understanding cause of death; MFA in art; interest in scale as inter-disciplinary mode of analysis
* Diego: playing soccer, surfing; energy fluxes in coastal reef systems or human cultures; citations over time
* Flavia: biological networks; pollination, evolution; playing sports but not soccer
* James H: likes helping people, engineer; convexity of points in plane, plasma physics; agent-based modeling in macro-econ with apps in health care; how movement from local to centralized has hurt society; hiking
* Brais: role in information in different markets, evolution, evolutionary game theory; like sports
* Nhat: transmission dynamics in tropical regions; how pathogen emerges, theoretical epidemiology; long-term behaviors in time series data
* Claire: CS, mathematical models for growth of cities
* Catherine: chem, energy; distribution of energy in cities, policy, diffusion
* Sanja: ecology, inter-species interactions, parasites and how that affects ecosystem; interest in bipartite graphs and multi-layer networks
* Brian: computer science, algorithms, dynamic network models; detecting correlation and influence using temporal information; like all sports, ballroom dancing
* Ells: comp bio; video games; how social processes affect disease dynamics e.g. vaccines and autism scare
* Sarah M: ?; bio sensory systems; interest in something with networks
* Anna: math and CS; interest in how networks fail and how to make them more robust; cook, bake, calligraphy
* Sean H: ecological networks, predicting function from structure; how can constraints on function affect structure as network grows, stability; hiking, philosophy, interesting conversations
* Leto: ML, stat models for networks
* Andy: physics, fluid flow from inhalers, how drugs interact with human body and how different for different people
* Jenn: behavioral ecologist, how different levels of social structure interact, sex or status affecting sexual or other activities; ecology or evol bio; outdoor activities
* Alex: physics; geometric assymetries in branching networks; interest in fractal aspects of networks; rock-climbing
* Cecilia: ecology; coevolution in large ecol networks; interest in cascading effects and game theory
* Sean G: physics, micro bio; has large datasets; stochastic and deterministic models and phase transitions; outdoor activities
* Cole: emergence of life, transitions in chemical evolution, info processing; chem/bio simulations; data viz; hiking, backpacking, overnight?
* Alireza: signal processing to learn function; emergence of norms; predicting success of systems
* Heath: econ; poverty and inequality; inter-generational transition of wealth, agent-based; institutional emergence e.g. political - why some countries develop certain political structures; music
* James G: CS, national-scale agent-based modeling on order of 100 mil. agents; communication
* José: emergence and evolution, systems bio; how genotypes map into phenotypes, geometry of genotype networks; evol of complexity in biosphere; hiking
* Lin: statistical signal processing, information diffusion over networks, opinion dynamics in social networks using local interactions; interest in modeling and analyzing temporal and group dynamics, inter- and intra-relationships of groups; hiking
* Shai: econ, how society changes
* Jessica: info systems; failure in organizational networks; interest in learning about failure tolerance in non-social systems that can transfer to social systems
* Massimo: physics; condensation phenomena in networks; linguistic networks; interest in multi-layer networks, time-evolving graphs; has access to lots of data
* Ernest/Yu: econ, physics, math; collective animal behavior - birds, ants; apply concept of entropy to life; hiking, cooking
* George/Qiao: physics, stats; financial market, volatility, dynamics, entropy; access to stock market data
* Cornelia: physics, applied math, complexity econ - firm growth; hidden nodes/noise?; scale-free networks; interest in things other than econ, dynamics on networks, bio
* Rohan: evolution of early metabolic networks, how that shapes future of life; interest in networks, evol game theory, evol bio
* Stojan: stress tests on networks, can hopefully use to study bio networks; cycling, bouldering
* Pooya: electrical engineering; cascading blackouts in power networks; interest in infrastructure in networks, how they form and evolve; playing futbol
* Tom: applied math and complex systems; deconstructing bones, algorithms for ?; power grid and nonlinear dynamics, topological dynamics
* Glen: personalized genomics, correlations between ? and cancer; interest in self-identification and how that informs decisions e.g. semi-scientific beliefs; metabolic and infectious disease modeling
* Stefan: environmental science, adoption of renewable resources; social and political barriers for ?; interest in environmental management, ecology; mountains, running, hiking
* Leo: smooth dynamical systems, differential geometry, high-energy physics and quantum computation; hiking, back-packing, pen and paper discussions
* Matt: innovation, evolution, cellular automation, genetic algorythms, complex systems allpication, network analytics, self learning/machine learning, natural patterns taxonomy
* John B.: General evolution, evolvability, units of selection, evo of cooperation, genetic algorithms, CS education, philosophy of science, mtn biking, hiking, & lists like the above.