What is consciousness? Philosopher, Dan Dennett explains.

Tom Stoppard and Nicholas Hytner on 'The Hard Problem'

El yo y el cerebro, con Francisco Mora

 


A partir del minuto 60. La discusión de los dos sistemas que se coordinan, el de la percepción sensorial y el de la memoria almacenada interna, que se coordina con él, pueden relacionarse con la oposición, que veíamos en G. H. Mead, entre el I activo en el mundo, y el me que es un objeto para el yo, una imagen social ante la que reaccionar.

Por otra parte, los experimentos de privación sensorial consciente, que llevan a la fabulación, son los que sin duda experimentaban los chamanes en las profundidades de las cavernas, experimentando con la ensoñación y la fabulación a resultas de algún desarrollo cognitivo novedoso que les empujó a este desarrollo de la consciencia. De ahí la similaridad por todo el mundo entre las imágenes visionarias pintadas en las rocas y que se encuentran entre las primeras obras de arte—de arte y de experiencia visionaria.

The Day We Learned to Think

 

—oOo—

Playing the Cartesian Theater

 From Daniel Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach and Back, p. 185:

The problem with introspection is that it acquiesces in the illusion that there is an inner eye that sees and an inner ear that hears—and an inner mind that just thinks—these intimately familiar items, the objects of consciousness that parade across the stage in the Cartesian Theater (Dennett 1991). There is no Cartesian Theater; there just seems to be a Cartesian Theater. There fo indeed seem to be these items, audible and visible and thinkable, and—setting magic aside—it couldn't seem so unless there really were physical tokens in the brain playing these roles, but how, physically, anything in the brain manages to play any of these roles is a topic for future scientific investigation, not introspection.

Springs and Motives under Various Disguises

The Book of the World, Life as Theatre, and the character's illusion of free will in Moby Dick—a philosophical novel with a whale of a stage, from Pythagoras to the War of Afghanistan. 

Notice that according to Melville our illusion of free will holds while we are in the midst of the action, of the play as it were—but when we turn it into a narrative, or retrospect, the cogs and wheels of Fate, or Circumstance, become apparent. In hindsight. 

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the pure exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way—he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as as sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"GRAND CONTESTED ELECTION FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Hawthorne and Melville

Springs and Motives under Various Disguises - at Ibercampus

 

—oOo—

Más atención a la consciencia

Retropost, 2013:

 

Aquí hay un interesante artículo de Michael Graziano sobre el "efecto de consciencia" por así llamarlo:

How the light gets out
Consciousness is the ‘hard problem’, the mystery that confounds science and philosophy. Has a new theory cracked it?

 

Ese efecto generado, la experiencia consciente como una especie de historia que el cerebro se cuenta a sí mismo, lo liga Graziano a un análisis cognitivo del fenómeno de la atención, y de la dinámica de la representación cerebral, en retroalimentación dinámica con la percepción.

Un párrafo traduzco:

La atención requiere control. En los estudios de robótica modernos existe lo que se llama teoría del control, y nos muestra que, si una máquina tal como un cerebro ha de controlar algo, es útil disponer de un modelo interno de ese algo. Piensen en un general militar con sus modelos de ejércitos distribuidos en un mapa: le proporcionan una representación sencilla pero útil—no siempre perfectamente exacta, pero lo suficientemente aproximada como para ayudarle a formular una estrategia. De igual modo, para controlar su propio estado de atención, el cerebro necesita una simulación o modelo de ese estado  que sea constantemente actualizado. Al igual que los ejércitos de juguete del general, el modelo será esquemático y escaso en detalles. El cerebro se atribuirá a sí mismo una propiedad, y esa propiedad será un sustituto simplificado de la atención. No será preciso y exacto, pero sí transmitirá información útil. ¿Cuál es exactamente esa propiedad? Cuando está prestando atención a un objeto X, sabemos que el cerebro normalmente se atribuye a sí mismo una experiencia de X—la propiedad de ser consciente de eso, o estar conscientemente atento a eso. ¿Por qué? Porque esa atribución le ayuda a seguir la pista del foco siempre cambiante de la atención. Llamo a esto la "teoría del esquema de atención." Tiene como núcleo una idea muy sencilla: que la consciencia es un modelo esquemático del estado de atención de uno.

Attention requires control. In the modern study of robotics there is something called control theory, and it teaches us that, if a machine such as a brain is to control something, it helps to have an internal model of that thing. Think of a military general with his model armies arrayed on a map: they provide a simple but useful representation — not always perfectly accurate, but close enough to help formulate strategy. Likewise, to control its own state of attention, the brain needs a constantly updated simulation or model of that state. Like the general’s toy armies, the model will be schematic and short on detail. The brain will attribute a property to itself and that property will be a simplified proxy for attention. It won’t be precisely accurate, but it will convey useful information. What exactly is that property? When it is paying attention to thing X, we know that the brain usually attributes an experience of X to itself — the property of being conscious, or aware, of something. Why? Because that attribution helps to keep track of the ever-changing focus of attention. I call this the ‘attention schema theory’. It has a very simple idea at its heart: that consciousness is a schematic model of one’s state of attention.

En suma, mucho se parece esto a la teoría que yo vengo llamando de la consciencia entendida como reflexividad activa o "retroproyección" de representaciones para generar la realidad, en una circulación entre impresiones perceptuales y representaciones simbólicas que las procesan dentro del cerebro, y se retroalimentan a los centros de percepción. Expuse unas especulaciones neurológicas al respecto en mi artículo sobre la "Interacción internalizada: el desarrollo especular del lenguaje y del orden simbólico". Y por supuesto, tratando de esquemas, es una teoría que apunta muy bien a integrarse con los análisis sobre la construcción social de la realidad en la escuela de Berger y Luckmann, Mead, Goffman, el interaccionismo simbólico en general. (Ver por ejemplo La realidad como expectativa autocumplida, para una teoría goffmaniana de la consciencia individual que es también consciencia socialmente generada).  Y tiene asimismo interesantes conexiones esta cuestión y este planteamiento sobre la atención consciente con otras reflexiones sobre la naturaleza virtual del mundo simbólico en que nos movemos, esa Matrix que algunos confunden con "la realidad" sin más, como si ésta se pudiese patear. George Berkeley ya estaba en esta película, claro, hace trescientos años.

Atención a la atención

Más atención a la consciencia - en Ibercampus

 

 

—oOo— 

El registro completo de las operaciones mentales

 

Retropost, 2013:

Mendilow (Time and the Novel, p. 114) cita esta especulación de Stendhal:

Supposons qu'un sténographe pût se rendre invisible et se tenir tout un jour à côté de M. Petiet, qu'il écrivît tout ce qu'il dirait, qu'il notât tous ses gestes, il est évident qu'un excellent acteur muni de ce procès-verbal pourrait nous reproduire M. Petiet tel qu'il a été ce jour-là . . . Il y aurait un autre procès-verbal de la même journée bien plus intéressant, ce serait celui que nous donnerait un deu qui aurait tenu un compte parafaitement exact de toutes les opérations de sa tête et de sonâme. C'est-à-dire de ses pensées et de ses désirs dans l'ordre avec lequel ils se sont mutuellement subis ou causés.

(Stendhal, Pensées, Filosofia Nova, 
written 1804, ed. Le Divan, 1931, 
vol. 2, pp. 179-180).

Para Mendilow, esta noción supone una anticipación interesante de los desarrollos de la novela moderna, la corriente de conciencia y el monólogo interior, los cuales describe así:

There are two other ways of preserving the directness of dialogue without sacrificing the advantages attendant on the omniscience of the author. These are the mental soliloquy in its developed form—the interior monologue, and the stream of consciousness. At the verbal level of consciousness they are almost as old as the novel itself, but a new turn was given to them by Meredith in Rhoda Fleming and was developed to its furthest limits by Henry James. The attempt to suggest the workings of the lower strata of the mind was first made in England by Dorothy Richardson, and she was closely followed by Joyce. These two were not satisfied with depicting the ratiocionation of the mind for which a fair degree of verbal equivalence can be found. Rather they aimed at evoking the sub-verbal levels of consciousnesss by breaking up the fixed categories of linguistic forms and so creating the effect of unbroken continuity. Since them, Virginia Woolf, Faulkner and a host of others have taken up these solipsistic techniques. They constitute, as it were, the picture-frame play transferred to a mental plane; we see a mind open to view and watch its inner processes at work. Eugene O'Neill has in fact tried to apply this technique to the drama, where it provides a modern variant of the soliloquy and aside of earlier drama. The basic convention of the omniscient author is not eliminated, but on the contrary is exploited to an evern greater degree. The principle of selection likewise still operates, though it aims at being far less arbitrary. Similarly, the translation of mental processes into verbal forms still obtains, though the language is so unusual.
     One explanation of the vividness that this technique is capable of achieving lies in the effect of presentness produced by the fact that such wirting is in the present tense; it gains thereby in immediacy what it loses for most readers by its use of private and esoteric forms of expression, associations and symbols which hinder easy identification with the protagonist. (Time and the Novel 112-13).

Sobre Joyce como observador de la mente, puede verse este ensayo de John Horgan, "A Bloomsday Appreciation of Ulysses by James Joyce, Greatest Mind Scientist Ever."

"Joyce was not a theorist of mind but he was an exceptional observer of it, far more so than any scientist. He helped us become more aware of our awareness."
 
Mendilow, al contrario que Stendhal, no cree en la posibilidad de un registro completo de los procesos mentales o emocionales. Escribiendo en 1952, después de Hartmann y después de Freud, ya sabe que la consciencia es sólo la punta del iceberg de los procesos inconscientes de la mente. Los novelistas imitan con su transcripción verbal no el conjunto de los procesos mentales, sino sólo de los procesos de atención consciente—la atención es enormemente potenciada por el lenguaje—y en menor medida los elementos preconscientes o subliminales,

Aquí hay una charla de Daniel Dennett sobre la consciencia, en la que propone lo que llama su "teoría de la consciencia como fama":

 


 

 (Vaya, cambio el vídeo desaparecido por otro posterior en el que menciona su teoría)...

Quizá se podría llamar más adecuadamente la teoría de la consciencia como retrospección reflexiva. La cuestión es que la consciencia reflexiva de algo, así podríamos traducir awareness en el sentido más fuerte, cuando no es mera percepción consciente, sino atención a esa reflexión consciente—esa consciencia reflexiva, dice Dennett, es algo que se crea mediante una retroalimentación o lazo retroactivo. El tiempo consciente es de esta manera totalmente diferente del tiempo de la percepción subliminal, y lleva siempre un ligero desfase.

El fenómeno consciente por tanto se crea en una especie de tiempo gobernado por el círculo hermenéutico, y se genera como fenómeno antes de llegar a ser consciente; sólo por esa retroalimentación y permanencia, lo que Dennett llama la "fama" de la consciencia, llega a ocupar un lugar prominente en la atención, o más bien a generar esa atención consciente como tal. Una analogía que usa Dennett es la de la especiación. Hay también una relación algo paradójica entre especiación y retrospección—es un tema del que yo he escrito alguna cosa, por ejemplo en este artículo sobre el evolucionismo de Darwin y de Gustavo Bueno—con razonamientos algo parecidos a los de Dennett. En fin, que el momento de especiación se genera retroactivamente, como toda una serie de fenómenos históricos e interpretativos que siguen esta curiosa temporalidad gobernada por la retrospección. Ver más sobre esta retroactividad aquí ("En el retrovisor").

Otra de las cosas interesantes que dice Dennett es que no hay una frontera clara entre lo consciente y lo preconsciente o inconsciente. La consciencia es un fenómeno emergente, que vivimos "en primera persona", de modo particular en la experiencia subjetiva de las diversas modalidades de atención. Pero al descomponerla, lo que encontramos no es, precisamente, consciencia, sino sólo las señales que, organizadas del modo esencialmente narrativo y retrospectivo que describe Dennett, dan lugar a la experiencia consciente.

Por eso es por lo que los novelistas no pueden representar la consciencia como tal, sino sólo una especie de simulación o ficcionalización de la misma. Ya comenzando por el hecho mismo de que en la narrativa psicológica, la percepción se verbaliza—en el cine puede darse una aproximación más cercana, con una mezcla de imágenes visuales perceptuales y memorísticas, y pensamiento verbalizado o parcialmente verbalizado. Aunque es un experimento más bien infrecuente, a no ser en pasajes breves de sueños o de inmersión momentánea en la mente de un personaje.

Sea como sea, tanto el cine como la ficción son, como dice Horgan del Ulises de Joyce, un ejercicio de atención reflexiva sobre la consciencia, que la convierte en una especie de hiperconciencia. Al igual que el lenguaje estructura el pensamiento y potencia la atención, la representación experimental de los procesos de consciencia es de por sí una experiencia única para la consciencia. La novela psicológica, o el cine psicológico, abren los ojos a la atención sobre nuestra experiencia de vivir como una consciencia en flujo y una atención variable que pasa como un proyector luminoso de un aspecto a otro del paisaje barroco interior, y del exterior, resaltándolos y llevándonos al siguiente momento de ese tiempo interior construido casi como un telefilm producido, dirigido y emitido en directo.

Atención, motivación, percepción e interpretación

 

—oOo—

 

Los circuitos neurales de la consciencia: Modo offline

Una de expectativas autocumplidas

 Retropost, 2013:

Veo que aparece en una de las revistas electrónicas del SSRN, llamada Rhetorical Theory eJournal, mi artículo sobre Erving Goffman subtitulado "La realidad como expectativa autocumplida y el teatro de la interioridad." Que versa sobre la aplicación de la teoría de marcos a la construcción del mundo exterior, y del interior también. El título aparece en inglés, "Goffman: Reality as Self-Fulfilling Expectation and the Theatre of Interiority"—pero está en español. También apareció el artículo en otra revista, Literary Theory and Criticism eJournal. Esta perspectiva sobre lo que llamo "el teatro de la interioridad" puede completarse con la que presento en otro artículo sobre Goffman,"Somos teatreros: El sujeto, la interacción dialéctica y la estrategia de la representación según Goffman."

El tema de las expectativas autocumplidas quizá lo siga desarrollando, en relación con la teoría de la narración, en un proyecto de investigación sobre hermenéutica en el que tengo pensado participar. Venciendo mi pereza y mi alergia a los proyectistas. O quizá no, porque es bastante previsible que no se van a conceder muchos proyectos de investigación este año que viene, a tenor de las últimas noticias. Ni muchos, ni pocos tan siquiera—en cuyo caso investigaremos sólo por aquí y en nuestro teatro interior, crowded & cold. 

Versiones de la realidad

 

 

—oOo—

Redes neuronales y consciencia

 

The Enigma of Awareness (of Awareness)

Retropost, 2012:

 
Consciousness as simplification, of decision, of making the world manageable. (See my theory on Attention). And then, the mystery of our awareness of this process, the reflexivity of the whole. With Zizek:





"The subordinate mediator becomes the subject". That seems to be a quite general law governing human action and attention, or, to be more precise, what becomes the subject (and the object of attention) is a successful subordinate mediator.

In this respect, we might consider Malabou's reading of Hegel's linguistic anthropology: "Chapter 3 [of The Future of Hegel] then raises the question: if humans are not the only animals that develop habits, what is it that gives us a capacity for self-determination that other animals lack? Chapter 4 responds that the use of language differentiates human beings from other animals and makes our habitual behavior unique: "Man is exemplary because the human formative power can translate the logical process into a sensuous form" (74). This, Malabou concludes, makes each of us capable of plastic individuality, of transforming our own singular essence in unforeseeable ways by incorporating what was formerly accidental."

Note btw that Malabou's reading is consistent with my own view of Hegel as a demythologizer in religion, and as a philosopher who acknowledges the productive dimension of reflexivity.


____


Zizek: "History means there is no metalanguage" —you cannot stand on your own shoulders, cognitively speaking, and any panorama of philosophy, any reading of another philosophy, is done from a situated philosophical standpoint. For Hegel, the meaning of an act arises through the act itself; meaning is not pre-existing: it is created retroactively. History is one big process of exaptation.

Acercándonos al saber absoluto

Preserved Self-Awareness

Un abstract que nos pasan por PsyArt:

Preserved Self-Awareness following Extensive Bilateral Brain Damage to the Insula, Anterior Cingulate, and Medial Prefrontal Cortices.
Philippi CL, Feinstein JS, Khalsa SS, Damasio A, Tranel D, Landini G, Williford K, Rudrauf D.


Division of Behavioral Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neurology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, United States of America.

Source:    PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e38413. Epub 2012 Aug 22.

Abstract

It has been proposed that self-awareness (SA), a multifaceted phenomenon central to human consciousness, depends critically on specific brain regions, namely the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Such a proposal predicts that damage to these regions should disrupt or even abolish SA. We tested this prediction in a rare neurological patient with extensive bilateral brain damage encompassing the insula, ACC, mPFC, and the medial temporal lobes. In spite of severe amnesia, which partially affected his "autobiographical self", the patient's SA remained fundamentally intact. His Core SA, including basic self-recognition and sense of self-agency, was preserved. His Extended SA and Introspective SA were also largely intact, as he has a stable self-concept and intact higher-order metacognitive abilities. The results suggest that the insular cortex, ACC and mPFC are not required for most aspects of SA. Our findings are compatible with the hypothesis that SA is likely to emerge from more distributed interactions among brain networks including those in the brainstem, thalamus, and posteromedial cortices.

The Neurology of Self-Awareness

 

CONSCIOUSNESS AS RATIONALITY AS INTERNALIZED DRAMATISM

 CONSCIOUSNESS AS RATIONALITY AS INTERNALIZED DRAMATISM

From George Herbert Mead's Mind, Self, and Society (§42, 'Summary and Conclusion'), pp. 334-36.

In the closing sections of his book, Mead summarizes his view of human consciousness as disctinct from the wider "ecological" conception of consciousness. A general ecological-interactional approach to consciousness gives us a generalized and emergent conception on consciousness (also espoused by Mead), according to which an organism reacts in a more or less complex way to its environment, and in so reacting creates novel and emergent aspects of the world. Consciousness, then, is not contained "in" the mind, but is inherently relational, a function of the organism's relation to its environment. But (within this general framework) there is a specific mode of consciousness which requires human selves and rationality, and involves the peculiarly human structure of internalized social dramatism, involving taking the role of the other, or putting oneself imaginatively in the other's stance. Which in turn gives rise to a generalized social consciousness, in which we take the attitude of a "generalized other". Such rationality involves a distribution of social parts, and a generalized understanding of what these parts are, and of the choreography and collective stage management of the whole social play, under the virtual direction of the "generalized other." These are the last paragraphs of Mead's section on "Society", before the Supplementary Essays:

"The other conception that I have brought out concerns the particular sort of intelligence that we acscribe to the human animal, so-called 'rational intelligence', or consciousness in another sense of the term. If consciousness is a substance, it can be said that this consciousness is rational perse; and jut by definition the problem of the appearance of what we call rationality is avoided. What I have attempted to do is to bring rationality back to a certain type of conduct, the type of conduct in which the individual puts himself in the attitude of the whole group to which he belongs. This implies that the whole group is involved in some organized activity and that in this organized activity the action of one calls for the action of all the others. What we term 'reason' arises when one of the organisms take into its own response the attitude of the other organisms involved. It is possible for the organism so to assume the attitudes of the group that are involved in its own act within this whole co-operative process. When it does so, it is what we term 'a rational being'. If its conduct has such universality, it has also necessity, that is, the sort of necessity involved in the whole act—if one acts in one way the others must act in another way. Now, if the individual can take the attitude of the others and control his action by these attitudes, and control their action through his own, then we have what we can term "rationality." Rationality is as large as the group which is involved; and that group could be, of course, functionally, potentially, as large as you like. It may include all beings speaking the same language.

Language as such is simply a process by means of which the individual who is engaged in co-operative activity can get the attitude of others involved in the same activity. Through gestures, that is, through the part of his act which calls out the response of others, he can arouse in himself the attitude of the others. Language as a set of significant symbols is simply the set of gestures which the organism employs in calling out the response of others. Those gestures primarily are nothing but parts of the act which do naturally stimulate others engaged in the co-operative process to carry out their parts. Rationality then can be stated in terms of such behavior if we recognize that the gesture can affect the individual as it affects others so as to call out the response which belongs to the other. Mind or reason presupposes social organization and co-operative activity in this social organization. Thinking is simply the reasoning of the individual, the carrying-on of a conversation between what I have termed the 'I' and the 'me'.

In taking the attitude of the group, one has stimulated himself to respond in a certain fashion. His response, the 'I', is the way in which he acts. If he acts in that way he is, so to speak, putting something up to the group, and changing the group. His gesture calls out then a gesture which will be slightly different. The self thus arises in the development of the behavior of the social form that is capable of taking the attitude of others involved in the same co-operative actvity. The pre-condition of such behavior is the development of the nervous system which enables the individual to take the attitude of the others. He could not, of course, take the indefinite number of attitudes of others, even if all the nerve paths were present, if there were not an organized social activity groing on such that the action of one may reproduce the action of an indefinite number of others doing the same thing. Given, however, such an organized activity, one can take the attitude of anyone in the group.

Such are the two conceptions of consciousness that I wanted to bring out, since they seem to me to make possible a development of behaviorism beyond the limits to which it has been carried, and to make it a very suitable approach to the objects of social psychology. With those key concepts one does not have to come back to certain conscious fields lodged inside the individual; one is dealing throughout with the relation of the conduct of the individual to the environment." (334-36)

Thus far Mead. I would only want to add that this description of universal and complete communicability, or of the universal exchangeability of positions, is the description of an ideal model. Actual social behavior, and the concomitant phenomena of consciousness, are just as much dependent on partial, approximative or plainly mistaken moves in the internalized dramatism, as they are on the partial success of an ideally frictionless social conduct.

 

These reflections by Mead on the 'Generalized Other' can be profitably compared with Adam Smith's notion of the 'Impartial Spectator' in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this paper I examine the implications of Smith's concept for an evolutionary of mind—the kind of theory that Mead would fully develop.

"Selección natural del Espectador Imaginario." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 15 March 2022.*

         https://vanityfea.blogspot.com/2022/03/seleccion-natural-del-espectador.html

         2022

 

On the evolution of God and sociality, see also:

 

Johnson, Dominic. God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human. New York: Oxford UP, 2015.

 

Legare, Christine (Associate Professor of Psychology; U of Texas, Austin). Rev. of God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human, by Dominic Johnson. Reading Religion 21 May 2016.*

         http://readingreligion.org/books/god-watching-you

         2016

The Mind Messing With the Mind

 

Atención: No hay conductor

 

Tom Stoppard and Nicholas Hytner on 'The Hard Problem'

Christof Koch - Consciousness

Who's In Charge

Prospección, Retrospección, Retroproyección, Retroalimentación

 

When the curtain is pulled back