VII. Our Earthuman Ascent: A Major Evolutionary Transition in Twindividuality

4. Conscious Integrated Information Knowledge

Northoff, Georg, et al. As Without, So Within: How the Brain’s Temporo-Spatial Alignment to the Environment Shapes Consciousness. INterface Focus. March, 2023. As cognitive awareness becomes commonly amenable to scientific and conceptual subject, to cite another approach here GN, University of Ottawa, Phillipp Klar, University of Dusseldorf, Magnus Bein, McGill University, and Adam Safron, Johns Hopkins University describe in detail a triune, self-similar foreground, middle stage and background environment model and method.

O’Doherty, Fiona. A Contribution to Understanding Consciousness: Qualia as Phenotype. Biosemiotics. 6/2, 2013. A UPMC Beacon Hospital, Dublin, clinical psychologist brings a novel interdisciplinary vista to expand our contextual imaginations of how and why we humans gained an informed, meta-cognitive sentience. Again, linguistic aspects are implicated from the earliest onsets. Such sentient expressions are seen as internal to the organism, along with a behavioral component through social and environmental interactions.

In this model consciousness is a form of memory. We are essentially “living in the past” as our experience, the qualia, is always of past events. Consciousness represents the storage of past events for use in future situations and it is altered by external experience of the organism. Psychological frameworks of conditioning and learning theory are used to explain this model along with recent neuropsychological research on synaesthesia and phantom limb pain. Consciousness results from the gradual evolutionary development of the human information processing function. Language is hypothesised to have evolved at a pre-conscious stage of human development as a function of the need for ‘within-organism’ data storage. Communication with others may not have been the initial evolutionary advantage conferred by language. The later incidental use of language as a communication tool, which results in the reflecting back of one’s experience through others, is what has triggered a conscious experience. (Abstract)

Instead of searching for new types of data to explain consciousness, a useful focus can be to put existing knowledge into a new framework in an attempt to get a better understanding through stepping outside the prism and prison of single disciplinary research to gain that new perspective. Whereas it is not possible for this or any one paper to review all of the relevant literature from Psychology, Zoology, Physiology, Genetics, Philosophy and Computational models, this paper attempts to draw from all of these disciplines in understanding consciousness. From a combination of evolutionary principles, learning theory, behavioral theory and the process of conditioning it is proposed that a sufficient may be provided in which to explain human consciousness. (192)

A phenotype is any observable characteristic or train of an organism, either structural or behavioral, that develops as a result of interaction with the environment. It will be argued that the hard problem of qualia is a phenotype and that language is the precursor to consciousness that shapes it over time through conditioning. It will also be argued that consciousness is a phenomenon resulting from interactions between organisms rather than being located within an organism. (192)

Oizumi, Masafumi, et al. From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0. PLoS Computational Biology. 10/5, 2014. With Larissa Albantakis, and Giulio Tononi, University of Wisconsin psychologists write a highly technical essay on parallel degrees of knowledge content and sentient awareness (Tononi 2008) that has become a prime explanatory approach in neuroscience. As a capsule, in a “solipsistic” way, one’s consciousness is self-generated, self-referential, and holistic. An implication, we add, would be a quickening cosmos that similarly comes to its own self-witness and cognizance.

Oizumi, Masafumi, et al. Unified Framework for Information Integration Based on Information Geometry. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113/14817, 2016. Oizumi, and Shun-ichi Amari, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan, with Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Monash University, Australia provide a December 2016 example of how dedicated neural network dynamics, via the popular Integrated Information Theory (Tononi), can serve as an iconic exemplar for all manner of nonlinear complexity from physical to social phenomena. By a natural philosophy view, our worldwide science is lately quantifying a universe to human repetition of the one, same organizing system as distinguished by nodal and relational complements. If of a mind, here is a 21st century confirmation of the perennial wisdom quest. The next step, in translation, would be its actual identity as a cosmos to children genetic code.

Quantitative assessment of causal influences among elements in a complex system is a fundamental problem in many fields of science, including physics, economics, gene networks, social networks, ecosystems, and neuroscience. There have been many previous attempts to quantify causal influences between elements in stochastic systems. Information theory has played a pivotal role in these endeavors, leading to various measures, including predictive information, transfer entropy, and stochastic interaction. Drawn from consciousness studies involving measurement of integration of neural activity, the mathematical concept of integrated information is also useful as a framework for analyzing causal relationships in complex systems with multiple elements. Whereas the original motivation for integrated information is intended to elucidate the neural substrate of consciousness, it can in principle be applied to many research fields. (14817)

Osaka, Naoyuki, ed. Neural Basis of Consciousness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 2003. Essays consider how to approach the study of the cerebral correlates of knowing sentience.

Many scientists studying consciousness consider that the evidence and theory currently have to be developed in a sustained way, and a firmer understanding of consciousness is now being accelerated by new evidence from cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neurophilsosopy, neuropsychology and “new neurophysics,” quantum brain dynamics. (Introduction, 1)

Overgaard, Morten. Consciousness Studies: The View from Psychology. British Journal of Psychology. 97/3, 2006. A book review essay of Adam Zeman, Maxim Stamenov and Vittorio Gallese, Jeffery Gray, and Susan Blackmore, which expands to a survey the history, definitions, and nascent admission of our evanescent sentience.

Palmer, Tim. Human Creativity and Consciousness: Unintended Consequences of the Brain’s Extraordinary Energy Efficiency?. arXiv:2020.03738. This contribution by the Oxford University polyphysicist (search) was an invited talk at the Models of Consciousness Conference at Oxford in September 2019, see herein. As our human scientific acumen now seeks to unite with deep quantum physical origins, a reference to the cognitive dual process model with its opposite but complementary left and right, brain-like propensities is seen as a vital aspect. In accord, whatever will it take to realize that nature avails and requires this salutary balance at each phase and instance, so that it might at last be applied to resolve our political destructive conflict between them.

It is proposed that both our creativity and consciousness are consequences of the brain's extraordinary energy efficiency. These topics are treated separately, though have a common sub-structure. Creativity is seen to arise from a synergy between two cognitive modes which broadly coincide with Daniel Kahneman's systems 1 and 2. In the first, available energy is spread across a relatively large network of neurons. In the second, energy applies to a small subset of neurons in a deterministic operation. The notion of consciousness is then defined by way of a perceived awareness of nearby counterfactual worlds in state space. It is argued that in situations where quantum physics plays a role in the brain, it does so for reasons of energy efficiency. (Abstract excerpt)

The idea of changing from a mode of thinking where one focuses hard on a problem without distraction, to one where one simply relaxes, is suggestive of a switch in modes of cognition which refers to simply as “System 2” and “System 1” respectively. Kahnemann refers to System 2 as slow, effortful, logical, calculating; whilst System 1 is fast, automatic, frequent, emotional and stereotypic. Although it is simplistic to characterize cognition entirely in terms of such a dichotomy, it is conceptually convenient to do so here. (3)

Perl, Yonaton, et al. Non-equilibrium Brain Dynamics as a Signature of Consciousness. arXiv:2012.10792. Eight neurophysicists posted in Argentina, Belgium, Germany the UK, and Spain including Enzo Tagliazucchi describe evident neuroimaging parallels between dynamical systems theories and recorded states of aware cognitive consciousness.

The cognitive functions of human and non-human primates rely on distributed neural assemblies. As such, it seems unlikely that cognition can be supported by an overall brain dynamics at the proximity of thermodynamic equilibrium. We confirmed this hypothesis by investigating electro-corticography data from primates undergoing unconscious states (sleep and anesthesia), and magnetic resonance imaging data from humans. All states of reduced consciousness unfolded at higher proximity to equilibrium dynamics than conscious wakefulness. Our results establish non-equilibrium macroscopic brain dynamics as a robust signature of consciousness, opening the way for the theoretic characterization of cognition and awareness by way of statistical mechanics. (Abstract excerpt)

Pestana, Mark. Complexity Theory, Quantum Mechanics and Radically Free Self Determination. Journal of Mind and Behavior. 22/4, 2001. Self-similar patterns of neural activity are shown to possess quantum and nonlinear properties by which to substantiate an indeterminate ‘radically free will.’

It has been claimed that quantum mechanics, unlike classical mechanics, allows for free will. In this paper I articulate that claim and explain how a complex physical system possessing fractal-like self similarity could exhibit both self-consciousness and self determination. (365)

Pickering, John. The Self is a Semiotic Process. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 6/4, 1999. On the symbolic, content-rich essence of sentience and personhood.

Popiel, Nicholas, et al. The Emergence of Integrated Information, Complexity, and “Consciousness” at Criticality. Entropy. 22/3, 2020. An international neurotheorist collaboration posted at Western University, Canada, Monash University, Australia, and Research in Advanced Neurohabilitation, Italy suggests a way that the “critical brain hypothesis” (Chialvo, et al) can be joined with IIT so to reveal a similar poise in this model. Once again this state of dynamic balance is seen to be natural evolution’s preferred optimum.

A growing body of evidence has emerged suggesting that many disparate natural, and particularly biological, phenomena reside in a critical regime of dynamics on the cusp between order and disorder. More specifically, it has been shown that models tuned to criticality exhibit similar dynamics to the brain, which, has led to the emergence of the Critical Brain Hypothesis. Systems tuned to criticality exhibit a number of useful informational properties that allow for the efficient distribution of, and susceptibility to, information. (1)

Ultimately, this study is best framed in the context of the emerging complexity of our world. The brain is one of the most complex objects ever studied and the theory of it acting critically is gaining credence. New research into critical systems has shown that criticality may be useful for learning, and for optimizing information processing. Phase transitions and criticality are gaining more relevance, and the evidence in this paper demonstrates that by defining consciousness with IIT and using the Ising model as a substrate, ‘consciousness’ undergoes a phase transition at criticality in the investigated neural network motifs. This, when combined with evidence that the brain may be critical, suggests that ‘consciousness’ may simply arise out of the tendency of the brain to self-organize towards criticality. (8-9)

Revonsuo, Antti. Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. A psychology professor at the University of Turku, Finland, draws on the latest neuroscience to argue that embodied brains are intrinsically capable of generating mental awareness. This approach termed “biological realism” is facilitated by a first-person “world-simulation metaphor.”

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