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The Race for Consciousness
Scientists may be approaching the finish-line in the race to understand consciousness. John Taylor introduces the contending theories, including his own. There is a sense among scientists that the time is finally ripe for the problem of consciousness to be solved once and for all. The development of new experimental and theoretical tools for probing the brain has produced an atmosphere of unparalleled optimism that the job can now be done The race for consciousness is on! In this book, John Taylor describes the complete scene of entries, riders, gamblers, and racecourses. He presents his own entry into the race, which he has been working on for the past twenty-five years--the relational theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness is created through the relations between brain states, especially those involving memories of personal experiences. Because it is an ongoing and adaptive process, consciousness emerges from past brain activity. It is this highly subtle and delicate process of emergence that leads to the complexity of consciousness. Taylor does not just present another theory of consciousness, but makes comprehensible the nuts-and-bolts methodology behind the myriad attempts to win the race.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published June 8, 1999
About the author
John G. Taylor
45 books4 followersJohn Gerald Taylor was a British physicist and author.
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August 8, 2024
A SEARCH FOR CONSCIOUSNESS USING “NEW EXPERIMENTAL TOOLS”
John Gerald Taylor (1931-2012) was a British physicist and author who was emeritus professor and Director of the Centre for Neural Networks at King’s College London and guest scientist of the Research Centre at the Institute of Medicine in Jülich, Germany.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1999 book, “This book was written in the excitement of the gathering race to understand consciousness… the development of new experimental and theoretical tools for probing the brain has produced an atmosphere of unparalleled optimism that the job can now be done properly… The book describes the complete scene… as well as developing … an upgraded version of my older model, now termed ‘relational consciousness.’ …
“Owing to recent developments in tools able to probe the brain in action, it would seem that we are now able to set up experiments that will give us all the possible answers to guide us as far as the objective methods of science can take us… such knowledge will then allow us to attain a final solution to the problem of how consciousness arises from the activity of the brain… The main thesis I will present is that consciousness is created through the relations between brain states… this process is a continuing and adaptive one, so that consciousness emerges from past brain activity. It is this emergence of consciousness… that leads to its complexity. That is explored in the book.”
In the first chapter, he explains, “Noninvasive instruments … are allowing enormous strides to be made in appreciating the magnificence of the brain as the most subtle and powerful natural system ever looked at scientifically. These tools are exposing the mysteries of the brain and giving new direction to the search for how consciousness is supported… It is this experimental and theoretical underpinning that I claim is beginning to make a difference in the investigation of consciousness. It brings a broad theoretical framework inside which testable models of behavior can be constructed and refined by further experiment.” (Pg. 6, 8)
He continues, “One very difficult and basic problem exists… the crucial ingredient in the neural activity of the brain that sparks consciousness into life. It is this so-called hard problem… that is the final winning post we seek… optimism… does not seem to carry us past the problem of the ‘innerness’ of consciousness. How can science solve that?... by producing a neutrally based model that not only satisfies all scientific criteria by agreeing with all of the observable effects, but also… that indicate[s] that such a system constructed according to the model would have the sort of inner experience that we do ourselves, as shown by introspection. Such an aspect could never, however, be proved scientifically… science cannot enter into the inner life. However… such a model would be expected to have an inner life… This book is about the nature of consciousness and the race to be the first to understand it scientifically.” (Pg. 10)
He notes, “evidence gives no clear indication that such and such an animal is conscious but that slightly more primitive ones are not. At no point in evolution can we suspect that animal consciousness suddenly arose; we should expect that from the clearly complex nature of consciousness. It supports our thesis that consciousness emerged gradually as animals evolved. Moreover, it is totally created by activity of the brain. Various combinations of the components of consciousness were selected differently by our ancestors for the extra survival value they offered. But we cannot expect the full panoply of human consciousness to be present in animals lower than ourselves, and the attempt by some to do so is misguided. Animals appear to possess some parts of the complex of human consciousness, and studying them could well allow teasing out the more primitive parts.” (Pg. 25)
He outlines, “Consciousness arises solely from the process by which content is given to inputs based on past experience of a variety of forms. It has a relational structure in that only the most appropriate memories are activated and involved in further processing. It involves temporal duration so as to give time to allow the relational structure to fill out the input. This thereby gives the neural activity the full character of inner experience… The main conclusion I reached is that consciousness is a complex of a number of different components… We are making progress in reducing the complexity of consciousness to simpler components. But we still face difficult problems about consciousness.” (Pg. 38-39) But later, he adds, “If we follow the scientific path properly and look ever more closely at the brain, there is nothing to stop us from reaching an answer to the hard problem of consciousness, including the possible answer that consciousness indeed has no actual function, but is merely an epiphenomenon.” (Pg. 51)
He states, “two beautifully simple laws for the creation of consciousness. Law 1: to achieve reportable sensory experience at a fixed frequency, a critical amount of electrical energy must be supplied to a primary cortical region by a stimulating electrode. Law 2: To continue a reportable sensory experience once it has been achieved by a stimulating electrode, it is necessary to continue to supply a critical amount of electrical power to the primary cortex.” (Pg. 163) Later, he adds, “I developed two basic suggestions for the subtle but powerful creation of conscious awareness … Let me restate them in a more compact and digestible form: 1. The competition for consciousness: awareness arises from competition between activities on different buffer modules. 2. The emergence of consciousness: the moment of emergence of consciousness occurs when the activity on a buffer site reaches a critical level, so winning the global competition.” (Pg. 174)
He acknowledges, “I have noted several times that we do not know very much about where consciousness arises. I claimed in previous chapters that it arises in various of the sites of working memory… But is it true? What is the evidence? I must now try to describe how much (slim) evidence exists for this idea and discuss more generally the problems we meet in mounting a full and careful search for the sites of emergence of the various components of consciousness.” (Pg. 259)
He says, “Introspection and sense of self are part of the function of the anterior and self components of consciousness. These… develop as a mechanism to compare continuing responses to present inputs and situations with those that were taken in the past and laid down in autobiographic memory; it corresponds to the comparison ‘I responded like this in the past’ or ‘I did it differently then.’ The ‘I’ consists of the set of all autobiographic memories developed up to now. Such memories serve the important function of being a repository of response patterns and their outcomes (as successful or not). Updating this memory corresponds to keeping the self up to date.” (Pg. 331)
He suggests, “could conscious experience, in principle, be created in the resulting [computer] program? The answer is that, with sufficiently complex simulation of the brain, constructed to incorporate principles that are thought to create conscious experience and run IN REAL TIME, with bubbles of consciousness APPEARING AS WELL, it should be regarded as a putative candidate for possessing the experience of consciousness. If the brain is assumed to create consciousness, so is running its own simulation of the situation, provided it has a real-time feel about it. Why can we not attempt a close enough approximation to that simulation so as to have a conscious program?... given enough very simple neurons, they can compose a network that will implement the computation of any function… One has to accept a conscious experience of the computer system, albeit one that may be very different from our own.” (Pg. 333-334)
He summarizes, “The take-home message of all of this is that the parts of consciousness arise through competitive processes in a relational framework in such a manner as to suggest a tentative solution to the hard problem, the source of the emergence of qualia or the raw feels of phenomenal experience… We must accept that consciousness is complex, with one extreme form of it being passive and input driven and the other active and response driven… So far it is difficult to reconcile these two extremes of active versus passive. The active form of consciousness is frontally based, the passive posteriorly… We can bring the two together in terms of time. Consider the definition: Consciousness arises in using traces of the past in a semiautonomous manner to clarify what comes afterward in achieving the goals of the system.” (Pg. 333-345)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying neuroscience and consciousness.
John Gerald Taylor (1931-2012) was a British physicist and author who was emeritus professor and Director of the Centre for Neural Networks at King’s College London and guest scientist of the Research Centre at the Institute of Medicine in Jülich, Germany.
He wrote in the Preface to this 1999 book, “This book was written in the excitement of the gathering race to understand consciousness… the development of new experimental and theoretical tools for probing the brain has produced an atmosphere of unparalleled optimism that the job can now be done properly… The book describes the complete scene… as well as developing … an upgraded version of my older model, now termed ‘relational consciousness.’ …
“Owing to recent developments in tools able to probe the brain in action, it would seem that we are now able to set up experiments that will give us all the possible answers to guide us as far as the objective methods of science can take us… such knowledge will then allow us to attain a final solution to the problem of how consciousness arises from the activity of the brain… The main thesis I will present is that consciousness is created through the relations between brain states… this process is a continuing and adaptive one, so that consciousness emerges from past brain activity. It is this emergence of consciousness… that leads to its complexity. That is explored in the book.”
In the first chapter, he explains, “Noninvasive instruments … are allowing enormous strides to be made in appreciating the magnificence of the brain as the most subtle and powerful natural system ever looked at scientifically. These tools are exposing the mysteries of the brain and giving new direction to the search for how consciousness is supported… It is this experimental and theoretical underpinning that I claim is beginning to make a difference in the investigation of consciousness. It brings a broad theoretical framework inside which testable models of behavior can be constructed and refined by further experiment.” (Pg. 6, 8)
He continues, “One very difficult and basic problem exists… the crucial ingredient in the neural activity of the brain that sparks consciousness into life. It is this so-called hard problem… that is the final winning post we seek… optimism… does not seem to carry us past the problem of the ‘innerness’ of consciousness. How can science solve that?... by producing a neutrally based model that not only satisfies all scientific criteria by agreeing with all of the observable effects, but also… that indicate[s] that such a system constructed according to the model would have the sort of inner experience that we do ourselves, as shown by introspection. Such an aspect could never, however, be proved scientifically… science cannot enter into the inner life. However… such a model would be expected to have an inner life… This book is about the nature of consciousness and the race to be the first to understand it scientifically.” (Pg. 10)
He notes, “evidence gives no clear indication that such and such an animal is conscious but that slightly more primitive ones are not. At no point in evolution can we suspect that animal consciousness suddenly arose; we should expect that from the clearly complex nature of consciousness. It supports our thesis that consciousness emerged gradually as animals evolved. Moreover, it is totally created by activity of the brain. Various combinations of the components of consciousness were selected differently by our ancestors for the extra survival value they offered. But we cannot expect the full panoply of human consciousness to be present in animals lower than ourselves, and the attempt by some to do so is misguided. Animals appear to possess some parts of the complex of human consciousness, and studying them could well allow teasing out the more primitive parts.” (Pg. 25)
He outlines, “Consciousness arises solely from the process by which content is given to inputs based on past experience of a variety of forms. It has a relational structure in that only the most appropriate memories are activated and involved in further processing. It involves temporal duration so as to give time to allow the relational structure to fill out the input. This thereby gives the neural activity the full character of inner experience… The main conclusion I reached is that consciousness is a complex of a number of different components… We are making progress in reducing the complexity of consciousness to simpler components. But we still face difficult problems about consciousness.” (Pg. 38-39) But later, he adds, “If we follow the scientific path properly and look ever more closely at the brain, there is nothing to stop us from reaching an answer to the hard problem of consciousness, including the possible answer that consciousness indeed has no actual function, but is merely an epiphenomenon.” (Pg. 51)
He states, “two beautifully simple laws for the creation of consciousness. Law 1: to achieve reportable sensory experience at a fixed frequency, a critical amount of electrical energy must be supplied to a primary cortical region by a stimulating electrode. Law 2: To continue a reportable sensory experience once it has been achieved by a stimulating electrode, it is necessary to continue to supply a critical amount of electrical power to the primary cortex.” (Pg. 163) Later, he adds, “I developed two basic suggestions for the subtle but powerful creation of conscious awareness … Let me restate them in a more compact and digestible form: 1. The competition for consciousness: awareness arises from competition between activities on different buffer modules. 2. The emergence of consciousness: the moment of emergence of consciousness occurs when the activity on a buffer site reaches a critical level, so winning the global competition.” (Pg. 174)
He acknowledges, “I have noted several times that we do not know very much about where consciousness arises. I claimed in previous chapters that it arises in various of the sites of working memory… But is it true? What is the evidence? I must now try to describe how much (slim) evidence exists for this idea and discuss more generally the problems we meet in mounting a full and careful search for the sites of emergence of the various components of consciousness.” (Pg. 259)
He says, “Introspection and sense of self are part of the function of the anterior and self components of consciousness. These… develop as a mechanism to compare continuing responses to present inputs and situations with those that were taken in the past and laid down in autobiographic memory; it corresponds to the comparison ‘I responded like this in the past’ or ‘I did it differently then.’ The ‘I’ consists of the set of all autobiographic memories developed up to now. Such memories serve the important function of being a repository of response patterns and their outcomes (as successful or not). Updating this memory corresponds to keeping the self up to date.” (Pg. 331)
He suggests, “could conscious experience, in principle, be created in the resulting [computer] program? The answer is that, with sufficiently complex simulation of the brain, constructed to incorporate principles that are thought to create conscious experience and run IN REAL TIME, with bubbles of consciousness APPEARING AS WELL, it should be regarded as a putative candidate for possessing the experience of consciousness. If the brain is assumed to create consciousness, so is running its own simulation of the situation, provided it has a real-time feel about it. Why can we not attempt a close enough approximation to that simulation so as to have a conscious program?... given enough very simple neurons, they can compose a network that will implement the computation of any function… One has to accept a conscious experience of the computer system, albeit one that may be very different from our own.” (Pg. 333-334)
He summarizes, “The take-home message of all of this is that the parts of consciousness arise through competitive processes in a relational framework in such a manner as to suggest a tentative solution to the hard problem, the source of the emergence of qualia or the raw feels of phenomenal experience… We must accept that consciousness is complex, with one extreme form of it being passive and input driven and the other active and response driven… So far it is difficult to reconcile these two extremes of active versus passive. The active form of consciousness is frontally based, the passive posteriorly… We can bring the two together in terms of time. Consider the definition: Consciousness arises in using traces of the past in a semiautonomous manner to clarify what comes afterward in achieving the goals of the system.” (Pg. 333-345)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying neuroscience and consciousness.
to-keep-reference
March 1, 2016Taylor puede servir de ejemplo de ciencia neuronal no "best-seller", un paciente trabajo más interesado en formulaciones precisas de nuevos conocimientos que en opiniones generales y provocativas.
Visión de Paralaje Pág.265
Visión de Paralaje Pág.265
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