I'm really glad Curt pushed him in this interview, I appreciate your erudition, Curt. Andres and his mania make me very uncomfortable... which is maybe a reflection of my own shadow, but more likely is a natural reaction to his life and soul-denying philosophy couched in technical jargon
It occurs to me that what Andrés and his team did is that they skipped the entire history of philosophy and psychology to posit that they're "abolishing human suffering" through math and things like genetic manipulation(from one of his team: https://www.hedweb.com/ )
This strikes me as a total hubris of consciousness and a misunderstanding of the fact that it is the tension of opposites that makes happiness even extant. His approach is wrong from first principles up and I find a lot of his language to reek of New Ageism. The promotion of psychedelics as a cure to suffering is stupid and dangerous as well. I've taken 100+ hits of acid in my day, dmt, dxm, 2ci, 2ce, mdma, mda, amanita muscaria, cubensis mushrooms etc, and I know that they can lead you to a more connected vision of reality. However, as the Buddha warned; glimpses of emptiness can lead to a kind of inflation of the ego, where a taste of "stream-entry" makes you believe you're enlightened.
Andres and his QRI seems to use New Age conceptions of manifest destiny and Oneness as a heuristic under the cloak and jargon of technical and mathematical language. At one point he poked fun at the conception of meaning, asserting that our perception of sadness is an evolutionary leftover from earlier iterations of humanity that is now maladaptive. This smells like Transhumanism to me and I don't like it.
Meaning is a natural feature of absolutely every moment of your life through geometry. Meaning = relationships = geometry. You are a node in an interdependently arising network of geometric forms that may or may not be entirely comprised of consciousness, Andres is telling us to disconnect from that network. This is a description of a Satanic temptation in the metaphorical and symbolic sense. Its a form of mania to be happy all the time, and its aggressive; because it views the negative emotional states of others as something they just haven't gotten over yet and solipsistic because it assumes that ones own emotional state is happening in a vacuum. Go walk around the Gaza strip or in Liberia in a tent city with a goofy smile. This man is advocating solipsism and hedonistic pleasure as the ideal like every other hippie. I've watched every episode so far, and this guest was my least favorite and brought the least useful information to the table you can find in any Deepak Chopra book
I'm already baffled by his very first statement. I don't expect a scientific theory of consciousness to be able to answer why consciousness exists. Just the same way electromagnetism can't answer why there are two types of charges. Or why the forces between them exist.
This was my reaction also, there is no answer to "why does consciousness exist?" anymore than there an answer to "why is there something instead of nothing?", these are not questions for science, these are metaphysical questions that can never have a fully satisfying answer.
Emilson's list of requirements is by definition telling you there is no scientific theory of consciousness. Science cannot study that which is subjective. Science can study the physical correlates — but what are we correlating *against*? Proper science cannot say. The qualia are not physical. What science is (by which I mean *all that is based upon physics, or domain physicalism*) is a theory of what is *not conscious.* It is a "negativa". What is a good endeavor to do is push science to these limits, but humanely (not the Ai hype grift direction).
Evolutionary accounts are not causal accounts. Physics, hence all science — that which is measurable — has no notion of causality, do not forget this!! We only have lightcone structure, and even that is likely violated around the Planck scale.
Once you start believing science can explain consciousness you have become victim to a cult called Scientism, which is anti-science.
Whether it is an electron or a self every entity in this universe has an egomass centre. Egomass is the result of a void that is created as a first person observation. A first person observation means the observer is ignorant of its own reference frame this ignorance creates a void at the centre of the reference frame at which the observer is embedded the observer itself as an abstract entity. But the void at the centres creates a field with its lines converging at the centre this field creates the egomass. And thus the observer observes and its corresponding egomass interacts with the observed (“it” ) this duality represents one bit of information. N-number of such information create the fabric or the material of which the “balloon” as described by Andrew Gomes. This egomass curves the fabric creating a fractal chain of “balloons” above and within. And on the surface of this balloons lie the vrittis the or the information. Andrew’s description of five stages of reality lacked ontological vision. In Vedantic view there are five layers of consciousness around the void or the self.
1. Sense of physical body and perception ( Annamay Kosh) the outermost “balloon”
2. Sense of sensory oneness with the universe( Pranmay Kosh) the layer of second balloon
3. Sense of oneness of mind ( Manomay Kosha) your mind merges with the universal mind touching on the surface of third balloon.
4. Sphere of Knowledge( Gyanmay Kosh) here balloon structure is gone there is flat surface one feels like being one with ocean of knowledge or consciousness,
5. Anandmay Kosh- now the fabric or “mayerial” disintegrates you are lost in terms of modifications of all kinds but now as an observer you are able to observe from infinite dimension with sense of completeness. That’s the Vedantic view as realised by my twenty years of meditation, thanks Curt I love your approach to the truth and you are doing a wonderful job.
Sat-Chit-Anand is the most fundamental feature of reality. The meaningfulness in its purest form is Sat whereas Qualia its purest form is Ananad. When an individual consciousness is more focused towards meaningfulness it’s Gyan Yoga and when it is more inclined towards Qualia of increasingly higher order its Bhakti Yoga.
Ability to observe is the fundamental property of universe that is the manifestation of consciousness. The observer( Purusha ) is non computable non-destructible. The first person observation by the observer created the many. Kindly refer to Chhandogya Upanishad verse 6.2.3. The duality of “me” and “it” was created by this first person observation. It must be noted that me In Vedantic view universe was created as the result of observation.
Following the earlier comments about the impossibility of proving the unobservable through scientific observation. Could pattern recognition be a way to successfully measure a subjective experience with objective phenomena? Question: 'Why does consciousness exist?'. Consciousness exists in binary opposition to not existing. Consciousness wants to exist because not existing holds no purpose, no experience, and no knowledge of self. To inwardly experience self-existence before outwardly experiencing self-other participatory existence is fundamental to the nature of consciousness. The empty dormancy of non-arising consciousness is the zero point, the inner singularity and substrate from which thought, movement, time, and space outwardly extend. I have answered his other questions if anyone is interested. The pattern is a non-linear, non-dual/dual inward-outward multi-directional, multi-dimensional progression from a singular origin into a complex dynamic system.
Four aspects of the problem of consciousness are mentioned. Why consciousness exists to begin with. the qualia problem, the function problem and the binding problem. I believe that if we adopt the paradigm of a membrane-based "experiencer", we can address all of these issues.
If we assume a panpsychist universe and look for organization among its "monads", we should be looking in regions of "smoother than average" activity. Planar surfaces by definition exhibit physical smoothness and reduced severity of variation. Among implementations that can occupy those surfaces, we find the membrane, and in particular, the phospholipid bi-layer. Its hydrophobic inner layer is electrically silent, yet is able to interpret the ionic activity of its outer and inner layers, to orchestrate global membrane properties like tension, shape and permittivity.
Utilizing three "syntaxes" of energy management (ionic, thermodynamic, and morphic) by which raw reactivity is channeled into preparatory and predictive activity, organized sentience must develop models that incorporate uncertainty and probability. These "properties of time" do not manifest themselves instantaneously, so cognition must model a "super-world" that incorporates them. Qualia, it should be noticed, are durational, and imply -- actually "bleed into" -- a continuous temporality, exhibiting properties like intensity-variation and momentum that can be used to reify (and calibrate) time's continuity. There is a way to model brain activity that creates a "time-hologram" -- a compression of sequential activity from which diachronic trends can be extracted for the "thick time" modelling required for qualia. The hologram heavily relies on the information smoothness achievable by the juxtaposition of nearly identical membranes of activity that can masquerade as a "slab" of temporally sequential activity.
An "ontology of consciousness" can be achieved by an Escher-like application of the three syntaxes. It explains the "freedom of free will" as being due to a disconnect between the monadic (intransitive) expressions of restlessness->alleviation, and the collateral mechanical consequences of those expressions.
My problem with his ideas of consciousness is the conflating of information processing with consciousness/awareness. Information processing, like any change of state, is phenomenal, a knowable occurrence, consciousness is non-phenomenal, it is what is aware of phenomenon. Consciousness can not be reduced to information processing. While information processing is observable and measurable (a phenomenal occurrence), it does not explain the non-phenomenal nature of awareness—the "knower" behind phenomena.
I model the mind and its activity of sensory data reception, reasoning and information processing, relating the information to a sense self and the emotive reactions, as a room with activity and the light illuminating that room with its activity as the consciousness.
The light remains continuous and uniform, however it may be obscured, in various degrees, from reaching certain areas in the room, by objects in the room, such as shades etc., or even near entirely obscured. The light may also appear as if fragmented, such as when reflecting in a glass of colored liquid or water, where it then appears as if different from the rest of the light pervading the room. But the light is always, however it may seem, intrinsically continuous and uniform.
In contemporary psychology, there is a boundary area between the conscious and the unconscious or subconscious, in my model the light is the conscious principle the room and its activity is not conscious, it is a portion of the unconscious that is illuminated, while outside of the room, the rest of the house is the portions of the unconscious that is unillumined, this is the personal unconscious, while the greater world is the collective unconscious.
This model need not be regarded as one of dualism, but rather it fits very neatly into a neutral monism framing. But rather than as we find in traditional neutral monistic approaches, where the mental and physical are the two aspects of one neutral substance, in this form of neutral monism it is one neutral existent with the two capacities of being simply aware, and, as appearing as knowable phenomena. These two capacities of the neutral existent can not be reduced to the other, but emerge in a interdependent and mutually contingent manner from the neutral existent. There can not be knowing with out a knowable, and there can be no appearance with out an ability of knowing for it to appear to. This form of neutral monism also differs from other pluralistic traditional forms, as not one of many tokens of the same neutral type, but a non-dual one neutral existent with the two capacities of knowing and the ability to be known phenomenally. So any convergence or interface of these two eternal capacities is, essentially, a self reflexive discrete knowledge event emerging from the one neutral existent, the capable, which has the two capacities. All phenomena is a convergence of these two capacities.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZSe6N_BXs
"(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
(Because I'm happy)
Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth"
I'm really glad Curt pushed him in this interview, I appreciate your erudition, Curt. Andres and his mania make me very uncomfortable... which is maybe a reflection of my own shadow, but more likely is a natural reaction to his life and soul-denying philosophy couched in technical jargon
It occurs to me that what Andrés and his team did is that they skipped the entire history of philosophy and psychology to posit that they're "abolishing human suffering" through math and things like genetic manipulation(from one of his team: https://www.hedweb.com/ )
This strikes me as a total hubris of consciousness and a misunderstanding of the fact that it is the tension of opposites that makes happiness even extant. His approach is wrong from first principles up and I find a lot of his language to reek of New Ageism. The promotion of psychedelics as a cure to suffering is stupid and dangerous as well. I've taken 100+ hits of acid in my day, dmt, dxm, 2ci, 2ce, mdma, mda, amanita muscaria, cubensis mushrooms etc, and I know that they can lead you to a more connected vision of reality. However, as the Buddha warned; glimpses of emptiness can lead to a kind of inflation of the ego, where a taste of "stream-entry" makes you believe you're enlightened.
Andres and his QRI seems to use New Age conceptions of manifest destiny and Oneness as a heuristic under the cloak and jargon of technical and mathematical language. At one point he poked fun at the conception of meaning, asserting that our perception of sadness is an evolutionary leftover from earlier iterations of humanity that is now maladaptive. This smells like Transhumanism to me and I don't like it.
Meaning is a natural feature of absolutely every moment of your life through geometry. Meaning = relationships = geometry. You are a node in an interdependently arising network of geometric forms that may or may not be entirely comprised of consciousness, Andres is telling us to disconnect from that network. This is a description of a Satanic temptation in the metaphorical and symbolic sense. Its a form of mania to be happy all the time, and its aggressive; because it views the negative emotional states of others as something they just haven't gotten over yet and solipsistic because it assumes that ones own emotional state is happening in a vacuum. Go walk around the Gaza strip or in Liberia in a tent city with a goofy smile. This man is advocating solipsism and hedonistic pleasure as the ideal like every other hippie. I've watched every episode so far, and this guest was my least favorite and brought the least useful information to the table you can find in any Deepak Chopra book
I'm already baffled by his very first statement. I don't expect a scientific theory of consciousness to be able to answer why consciousness exists. Just the same way electromagnetism can't answer why there are two types of charges. Or why the forces between them exist.
This was my reaction also, there is no answer to "why does consciousness exist?" anymore than there an answer to "why is there something instead of nothing?", these are not questions for science, these are metaphysical questions that can never have a fully satisfying answer.
Emilson's list of requirements is by definition telling you there is no scientific theory of consciousness. Science cannot study that which is subjective. Science can study the physical correlates — but what are we correlating *against*? Proper science cannot say. The qualia are not physical. What science is (by which I mean *all that is based upon physics, or domain physicalism*) is a theory of what is *not conscious.* It is a "negativa". What is a good endeavor to do is push science to these limits, but humanely (not the Ai hype grift direction).
Evolutionary accounts are not causal accounts. Physics, hence all science — that which is measurable — has no notion of causality, do not forget this!! We only have lightcone structure, and even that is likely violated around the Planck scale.
Once you start believing science can explain consciousness you have become victim to a cult called Scientism, which is anti-science.
Very much agreed.
Whether it is an electron or a self every entity in this universe has an egomass centre. Egomass is the result of a void that is created as a first person observation. A first person observation means the observer is ignorant of its own reference frame this ignorance creates a void at the centre of the reference frame at which the observer is embedded the observer itself as an abstract entity. But the void at the centres creates a field with its lines converging at the centre this field creates the egomass. And thus the observer observes and its corresponding egomass interacts with the observed (“it” ) this duality represents one bit of information. N-number of such information create the fabric or the material of which the “balloon” as described by Andrew Gomes. This egomass curves the fabric creating a fractal chain of “balloons” above and within. And on the surface of this balloons lie the vrittis the or the information. Andrew’s description of five stages of reality lacked ontological vision. In Vedantic view there are five layers of consciousness around the void or the self.
1. Sense of physical body and perception ( Annamay Kosh) the outermost “balloon”
2. Sense of sensory oneness with the universe( Pranmay Kosh) the layer of second balloon
3. Sense of oneness of mind ( Manomay Kosha) your mind merges with the universal mind touching on the surface of third balloon.
4. Sphere of Knowledge( Gyanmay Kosh) here balloon structure is gone there is flat surface one feels like being one with ocean of knowledge or consciousness,
5. Anandmay Kosh- now the fabric or “mayerial” disintegrates you are lost in terms of modifications of all kinds but now as an observer you are able to observe from infinite dimension with sense of completeness. That’s the Vedantic view as realised by my twenty years of meditation, thanks Curt I love your approach to the truth and you are doing a wonderful job.
3. Sense
Sat-Chit-Anand is the most fundamental feature of reality. The meaningfulness in its purest form is Sat whereas Qualia its purest form is Ananad. When an individual consciousness is more focused towards meaningfulness it’s Gyan Yoga and when it is more inclined towards Qualia of increasingly higher order its Bhakti Yoga.
Ability to observe is the fundamental property of universe that is the manifestation of consciousness. The observer( Purusha ) is non computable non-destructible. The first person observation by the observer created the many. Kindly refer to Chhandogya Upanishad verse 6.2.3. The duality of “me” and “it” was created by this first person observation. It must be noted that me In Vedantic view universe was created as the result of observation.
Following the earlier comments about the impossibility of proving the unobservable through scientific observation. Could pattern recognition be a way to successfully measure a subjective experience with objective phenomena? Question: 'Why does consciousness exist?'. Consciousness exists in binary opposition to not existing. Consciousness wants to exist because not existing holds no purpose, no experience, and no knowledge of self. To inwardly experience self-existence before outwardly experiencing self-other participatory existence is fundamental to the nature of consciousness. The empty dormancy of non-arising consciousness is the zero point, the inner singularity and substrate from which thought, movement, time, and space outwardly extend. I have answered his other questions if anyone is interested. The pattern is a non-linear, non-dual/dual inward-outward multi-directional, multi-dimensional progression from a singular origin into a complex dynamic system.
Four aspects of the problem of consciousness are mentioned. Why consciousness exists to begin with. the qualia problem, the function problem and the binding problem. I believe that if we adopt the paradigm of a membrane-based "experiencer", we can address all of these issues.
If we assume a panpsychist universe and look for organization among its "monads", we should be looking in regions of "smoother than average" activity. Planar surfaces by definition exhibit physical smoothness and reduced severity of variation. Among implementations that can occupy those surfaces, we find the membrane, and in particular, the phospholipid bi-layer. Its hydrophobic inner layer is electrically silent, yet is able to interpret the ionic activity of its outer and inner layers, to orchestrate global membrane properties like tension, shape and permittivity.
Utilizing three "syntaxes" of energy management (ionic, thermodynamic, and morphic) by which raw reactivity is channeled into preparatory and predictive activity, organized sentience must develop models that incorporate uncertainty and probability. These "properties of time" do not manifest themselves instantaneously, so cognition must model a "super-world" that incorporates them. Qualia, it should be noticed, are durational, and imply -- actually "bleed into" -- a continuous temporality, exhibiting properties like intensity-variation and momentum that can be used to reify (and calibrate) time's continuity. There is a way to model brain activity that creates a "time-hologram" -- a compression of sequential activity from which diachronic trends can be extracted for the "thick time" modelling required for qualia. The hologram heavily relies on the information smoothness achievable by the juxtaposition of nearly identical membranes of activity that can masquerade as a "slab" of temporally sequential activity.
An "ontology of consciousness" can be achieved by an Escher-like application of the three syntaxes. It explains the "freedom of free will" as being due to a disconnect between the monadic (intransitive) expressions of restlessness->alleviation, and the collateral mechanical consequences of those expressions.
My problem with his ideas of consciousness is the conflating of information processing with consciousness/awareness. Information processing, like any change of state, is phenomenal, a knowable occurrence, consciousness is non-phenomenal, it is what is aware of phenomenon. Consciousness can not be reduced to information processing. While information processing is observable and measurable (a phenomenal occurrence), it does not explain the non-phenomenal nature of awareness—the "knower" behind phenomena.
I model the mind and its activity of sensory data reception, reasoning and information processing, relating the information to a sense self and the emotive reactions, as a room with activity and the light illuminating that room with its activity as the consciousness.
The light remains continuous and uniform, however it may be obscured, in various degrees, from reaching certain areas in the room, by objects in the room, such as shades etc., or even near entirely obscured. The light may also appear as if fragmented, such as when reflecting in a glass of colored liquid or water, where it then appears as if different from the rest of the light pervading the room. But the light is always, however it may seem, intrinsically continuous and uniform.
In contemporary psychology, there is a boundary area between the conscious and the unconscious or subconscious, in my model the light is the conscious principle the room and its activity is not conscious, it is a portion of the unconscious that is illuminated, while outside of the room, the rest of the house is the portions of the unconscious that is unillumined, this is the personal unconscious, while the greater world is the collective unconscious.
This model need not be regarded as one of dualism, but rather it fits very neatly into a neutral monism framing. But rather than as we find in traditional neutral monistic approaches, where the mental and physical are the two aspects of one neutral substance, in this form of neutral monism it is one neutral existent with the two capacities of being simply aware, and, as appearing as knowable phenomena. These two capacities of the neutral existent can not be reduced to the other, but emerge in a interdependent and mutually contingent manner from the neutral existent. There can not be knowing with out a knowable, and there can be no appearance with out an ability of knowing for it to appear to. This form of neutral monism also differs from other pluralistic traditional forms, as not one of many tokens of the same neutral type, but a non-dual one neutral existent with the two capacities of knowing and the ability to be known phenomenally. So any convergence or interface of these two eternal capacities is, essentially, a self reflexive discrete knowledge event emerging from the one neutral existent, the capable, which has the two capacities. All phenomena is a convergence of these two capacities.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461