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

4. Conscious Integrated Information Knowledge

Torey, Zoltan. The Immaculate Misconception. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 13/12, 2006. Reflective awareness is a dynamic process that involves information gathering and its linguistic medium. Ones ‘self,’ our qualities of mind, agency, and free will, arise from this self-directed attention. A succinct, accurate comment.

In summary, we have seen that the new language-based dispensation turns baseline awareness conscious, hands the control of attention back to the brain, generates the experience of the ‘self,’ generates the module that is the ‘mind’ and the functional autonomy that is our ‘free-will.’ The immaculate misconception, the ‘obvious’ we all seem to overlook is that human consciousness is a production routine and not an entity, further that its components can be identified and their interaction traced. (109)

Varela, Francisco and Evan Thompson. Neural Synchrony and the Unity of Mind: A Neurophenomenological Perspective. Cleeremans, Axel, ed. The Unity of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Reflections on how our agental awareness emerges from both local to global “upward causation” and reverse “downward causation.”

There is now little doubt in cognitive neuroscience that specific cognitive acts require the transient integration of numerous, widely distributed, and constantly interacting functional areas of the brain. For this reason, any hypothesis about the neural correlates of a moment of consciousness must account for the integrated or coherent operation of large-scale brain activity. (268)

Velazquez, Jose Luis Perez. On the Emergence of Cognition: From Catalytic Closure to Neuroglial Closure. Journal of Biological Physics. 46/1, 2020. The systems neurophysician (search) now sited at the Ronin Institute posts an integral contribution so to admit and perceive a natural, ascendant primacy of informed consciousness. In regard, a neuronal synchrony of segregation and integration phases are seen to distinguish cerebral activity. A self-sustaining fluorescence is then traced from biochemistry to biobrains. See also Neuronal Compartmentalization by Renny Ng, et al in BioEssays (July 2020) for another view of an oriented cognitive development, and. Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon by Ramon Guevara, Diego Mateos and JLP Velazquez (Google title, names, June 2020).

In an analogous manner as occurred during the development of a connected metabolism that at some point reached what is called “life” ― due to a catalytic closure phenomenon when chemicals started to autocatalyze themselves into a linkage of chemical reactions ― it is here proposed that cognition and consciousness arose as a consequence of another type of closure within the nervous system. As proper brain function attains an efficient web of connections and a complexity of coordinated activities by cell networks, the emergent properties of cognition and consciousness occur. Seeking to identify main features of nervous system organization for optimal function, it is here proposed that while catalytic closure yielded life, it is the cerebral feature of neuroglial closure which produced cognition/consciousness. (Abstract edits)

Zanardi, Paolo, et al. Towards Quantum Integrated Information Theory. arXiv:1806.01421. As this IIT model gains veracity and broad acceptance, we note this certain entry because these USC physicists pursue its application to and synthesis with quantum phenomena as it lately becomes reconceived (see Quantum Organics) as a complex network system akin to all other “classical” phases.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) has emerged as one of the leading research lines in computational neuroscience to provide a mechanistic and mathematically well-defined description of the neural correlates of consciousness. Integrated Information (Φ) quantifies how much the integrated cause/effect structure of the global neural network fails to be accounted for by any partitioned version of it. The holistic IIT approach is in principle applicable to any information-processing dynamical network regardless of its interpretation in the context of consciousness. In this paper we take the first steps towards a formulation of a general and consistent version of IIT for interacting networks of quantum systems. (Abstract)

The main goal of classical Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is to provide a mathematical and conceptual framework to study the neural correlates of consciousness. In this paper we took the first steps towards a possible quantum version of IIT. Our approach is a quantum information-theoretic one, in which neural networks are being replaced by networks of qudits, probability distributions by non-commutative density matrices, and markov processes by completely positive maps. The irreducible cause/effect structure of the global network is encoded by a so-called conceptual structure operator. We have studied quantum effects in small qubit networks and provided examples, analytical and numerical, of families of low integration networks. (11)

Zelazo, Philip, et al, eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. With coeditors Morris Moscovitch and Evan Thompson, a formidable survey to date of the scholarly and scientific admission that human awareness in all its phases is a valid subject amenable to study and explanation. Part I: The Cognitive Science of Consciousness, contains sections of Philosophy, Computational Approaches, Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics, Developmental Psychology, Alternative States, Anthropology/Social Psychology of Consciousness, and Psychodynamic Approaches. Parts II and III are The Neuroscience of Consciousness and Quantum Approaches. An authoritative sample might by The Evolution of Consciousness by Michael Corballis, and Asian Perspectives: Indian Theories of Mind by Georges Dreyfus and Evan Thompson. On its Amazon page you will be directed to similar volumes such as The Oxford Companion to Consciousness (2009), and others as a good entry and survey.

Zeman, Adam. Consciousness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. An innovative, accessible work which situates human perceptual abilities in an evolutionary context. This course of earth life is seen as a long, developmental gestation whose phylogenesis generally similar to the ontogenesis of an embryonic organism and person.

Encephalization is associated with small broods, long lives, increasing biological intelligence, ever richer representations of the environment and increasingly flexible repertoires of response. (275)

Zlatev, Jordan. The Dialectics of Consciousness and Language. Journal of Consciousness Studies. 15/6, 2008. An introduction to a special issue on the cross-fertilization of linguistics and sentience. But with an all-male cast, the reality of such discourse seems to be more what some man has previously written on the subject.

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