Abstract
Introduction
Despite recent progress in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, consciousness nature still is the greatest philosophical and scientific puzzle.
There are numerous approaches to the problem area of consciousness. According to the chosen framework, you get different necessary and sufficient conditions of existing the consciousness phenomenon itself. A few researchers, like Chalmers, argue that consciousness is a kind of property of every physical system, so there are no conditions required. Others stand up for various sets of conditions, like the existence of neural networks or certain mechanisms of information processing, etc.
There are some well-known and rigorously developed problems in consciousness studies, some of with are case problems (mostly thought experiments), some of them are big theoretical ones – like The Hard Problem of Consciousness or the problem of mental causation. The question of prerequisites of conscious experiences is related to a different extent to all of this particular and abstract problems and questions. This question even becomes practical matter – as the AI tech has been making significant progress in its research and implementations the question of - how to differ «real» consciousness from its simulation and - what do we mean by «real» one becoming more and more pressing.
There are many articles about particular frameworks and research methods, about some of the consciousness properties and markers, but there is a gap in summarizing research results with regards to consciousness itself. So, in this paper, I go through selected approaches to consciousness to highlight conditions of conscious experience required within these theories and frameworks.
[кя1] Axel Cleeremans’ approach to consciousness: radical plasticity thesis and consciousness as a permanent learning process.
Axel Cleeremans is a Research Director with the National Fund for Scientific Research and a professor of cognitive science with the Department of Psychology of the University Libre de Brucellas, Brussels. He focused research on the differences between information processing with and without consciousness, in the domain of learning and memory, and more recently in the domains of perception, social cognition, and cognitive control. Thus, his views on consciousness include a well-developed position on conscious vs unconscious processing.
His approach to consciousness brings together high-level philosophical assumptions and low-level data from cognitive science with a common emphasis on learning and adapting processes.
The consciousness in Axel Cleeremans’ approach corresponds to Thomas Nagel’s «consciousness is what it feels like », P-consciousness in Block’s terms, but in practice, most of the arguments and theses relate to A-consciousness. We can find lots of definitions of consciousness in his works, one of the best in its simplicity is this one: “the brain’s non-conceptual, an implicit theory about itself.”
Axel argues that consciousness results from unconscious learning mechanisms through which the brain continuously re-describes, to itself, its interactions with itself, the world and other people. The main hypothesis, the ‘radical plasticity thesis’ proposes that through the brain’s continuous learning about its own internal states, some of these states become available to consciousness, thus suggesting that consciousness is a learned behavior rather than a static property. The brain learns to be aware through predicting and describing its own states and consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents.
The ‘radical plasticity thesis’ implies 4 assumptions[кя2]:
1. Both conscious and unconscious processing must be rooted in the same set of the representational system and neural processes. Thus, the difference between the conscious and unconscious mind is in the way of information processing.
2. Tasks will always involve both conscious and unconscious processing for awareness can’t be turned off in normal participants.
3. Plasticity is mandatory, which means that the brain learns all the time, without breaks. Learning in its essence is a pure adapting process.
4. Each experience leaves a trace in the brain, thus the third assumption is valid and correct.
There are three core ideas of radical plasticity thesis under the assumptions1:
1. Consciousness depends on Quality of Representation (QoR[кя3])
QoR determines the extent to which a representation is available to
a. Influence behavior
b. Form the content of awareness
c. Be the object of cognitive control and other high-level processing
2. Consciousness depends on metarepresentations
3. Metarepresentations depend on the process of redescribing and predicting own states in the form of functional activity or, unconsciously, in the form of predicting particular cerebral activity and activity in the brain (or another functional consciousness system)
Conditions
Cleeremans summarizes sufficient Conditions for Awareness[кя4] as follows:
1. Strong, stable, and distinctive (thus explicit) representations2
2. Consciousness depends on the quality of the representations. This thesis corresponds with Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness3.
3. Global workspace with the biased competition.
Bernard Baars coined the term global workspace. Its presence states the capacity of the system to integrate (make coherent, synchronize) activity of multiple neural networks (brain regions), unlike Baars and Dehaene, who compares consciousness modules to a board of directors as far as those modules are specialized and modular neural information processors, Cleeremans supports and develops models based on distributed and interactive computation.
4. Also, some type of competition between inner representations is required to choose a single interpretation from numerous possibilities. “Winning coalition in a large-scale competition determines the contents of consciousness”, so the single representation complex is the whole consciousness content, another representation is not conscious for the moment. Not necessarily GW implies the existence of biased competition. Biased competition is also considered as one of the keys to strong AI.
5. Knowledge of own internal states
6. Ability to form learned redescriptions of ones’ activity to oneself, so developing systems of metarepresentations. As centuries ago John Locke said, “consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.”, Cleeremans states that conscious system must redescribe own states and form new coalitions of them, which will be used to predict the following states and consequently act in a complex environment.
7. The emotional value associated with internal states
Examples
Unlike Chalmers[кя5], Cleeremans doesn’t support thermostats being conscious. It's sensitive to temperature, that’s all–it doesn’t know that it’s sensitive to temperature, and it doesn’t care about temperature. Thermostat lacks knowledge of own private states and emotional value linked with them, also it has none global workspace or inner representational systems, it’s not conscious to any extent.
What it takes AI to be conscious? Take for example Karmiloff-Smith’s networks (ссылку почему то не нашел). The networks contain representations, but these representations are in the system, not for the system –thus they are not accessible to networks as representations. The Karmiloff-Smith’s networks lack knowledge of their own internal states and, given their simplicity, lack emotional value associated with internal states and biased competition in a global workspace. So, these networks are not conscious, but what if all the aforementioned conditions will be fulfilled? From the functionalist point of view, such an AI system will be completely conscious. The answer depends more on the philosophical basement, namely functionalism, but how to implement these prerequisites is not clear at all, at least nowadays.
Cleeremans A. and his approach, my references:
1. Cleeremans A. (2011). The Radical Plasticity Thesis: How the Brain Learns to be[кя6] Conscious. Frontiers in psychology, 2, 86. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00086
2. Cleeremans, A. (n.d.). Prediction as a Computational Correlate of Consciousness, 11.
3. Carruthers, Peter, "Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness", The Stanford
4. Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
5. Chalmers D. J. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York, NY: Oxford University Press
6.
Baars’ Global workspace theory: where all experiences meet.
B.J. Baars emphasized neсessity of global availability for conscious information processing. His Global workspace theory is mostly about cognitive architecture, but it also gives us some prerequisites of consciousness, which have been developed in later theories. Actually, the first scientist who emphasized some kind of global availability of information processing was John McCarthy, who published a paper on it in 19592. The nature of the global workspace depends on the particular realization of the GW framework, it can be an electromagnetic field of the brain3, or some kind of functional mechanism, or a level of coalitions of neurons4.
The Global Workspace theory has been criticized for its too abstract propositions and for missing the hard problem of consciousness, by focusing on one of functional mechanism (for example see J. W. Dalton’s article5). The theory intents to explain A-Consciousness, not P-consciousness, so the critique likely is mistargeted.
The core concept of the theory is the notion of Global workspace, which connects different information processors implemented by distributed neuronal networks.6
The important metaphor from Theory is a theater one:
«GW theory may be thought of as a theater of mental functioning. Consciousness in this metaphor resembles a bright spot on the stage of immediate memory, directed there by a spotlight of attention under executive guidance…»7
D. Dennet is opposed to this metaphor in spite of using the notion of GW.
Conditions
Baars’ condition for A-Consciousness are
1) Existing global workspace (GW) – the concept is the key feature of his framework and is required in most of the functionalist frameworks as well, although, it differs from theory to theory, depending on theoretical contextual surrounding.
2) The functional structure that enables the GW to connect and work with distributed processors. It means that we need some organized platform to «run» consciousness on it.
3) Particular functional realizations of processors, such as some form of neural networks, but not necessarily them, there are no restrictions on nature or realization details of these information processors.
4) Interaction with a «self» system, for example with Gazzaniga’s narrative interpreter of the dominant hemisphere one7. It’s not so obvious that the existence of conscious experiences requires the existence of a «self» system. But Baars theory it is the strong prerequisite.
5) Some kind of hierarchical competition between information processed within the Global Workspace.
Examples
B.J. Baars and his approach, my references:
1. Baars BJ. The conscious access hypothesis: Origins and recent evidence. Trends Cogn Sci. 2002; 6:47–52.
2. McCarthy J. Symposium on the mechanization of thought processes. London: HM Stationery Office; 1959. Discussion of Oliver Selfridge, “Pandemonium: A paradigm for learning”
3. Prakash, R., Prakash, O., Prakash, S., Abhishek, P., & Gandotra, S. (2008). Global workspace model of consciousness and its electromagnetic correlates. Annals of Indian Academy of Neurology, 11(3), 146–153. doi:10.4103/0972-2327.42933
4. Maia TV, Cleeremans A. Consciousness: Converging insights from connectionist modeling and neuroscience. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005; 9:397–404.
5. Dalton, J. W. (1997). The unfinished theatre. _Journal of Consciousness Studies_ 4 (4):316.
6. Baars, Bernard J. (1988). _A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness_. Cambridge University Press.
7. Baars, Bernard. (2005). Global workspace theory of consciousness: Toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience. Progress in brain research. 150. 45-53. 10.1016/S0079-6123(05)50004-9.
Daniel Dennet’s approach to consciousness: the model of consciousness as ‘cerebral celebrity’, with emphasis upon intentionality and physically-evolved nature of consciousness.
Daniel Dennet is one of the most well-known philosophers of XI century. He carefully developed a profound and intrinsic understanding of consciousness within the functionalistic approach. His main life-long project is consciousness theory, which operates entirely in the explanation filed of content, representation, and intentionality. Everything above that kit is not only unnecessary but also dangerous, mystification, for example, qualia.
The problem with phenomenal consciousness does not exist since the P-consciousness by itself is a big illusion, so the Hard Problem of Consciousness will be solved when we will clarify our language, build a more complex and profound theory of Intelligence (maybe AI will help) and unravel the tricks of qualia.
By not supporting the concept of qualia, Dennet defends the most physical position on consciousness prerequisites ever, because qualia existence probably requires some kind of ontological and psychological conditions to be possible.
There is the elimination of the qualia concept, which means that Dennet does not believe that something «to be like» exists, more precisely exists somehow differently – not as a part of the physical functional system produced by brain’s hardwiring. More importantly, it means that phenomenal consciousness and qualia do not exist at all – they are only illusions, so all sets of consciousness prerequisites based on qualia-included frameworks are misleading and incorrect.
Dennet pointed out the well-captured description of his position on qualia illusion by Richard Power: «we conceptualize the medium of our internal representations by abstracting some features from the content and attributing them to some kind of spiritual or ghostly substance. That is the best we can do because actually we cannot experience the medium at all and have to look for analogies in the external world. The idea that the medium is some state of the brain seems intuitively absurd, so powerful is the illusion that we are dealing with an iconic representation in a medium of spirit. » (Daniel Dennet, 2018)
After Chalmers came up with The Hard Problem of Consciousness plenty of researches have tried to approach the qualia mystery. Dennet warns that this approach to consciousness studies is misleading, actually, we should devote more attention to the Hard Question of Consciousness (Daniel Dennet, 2018), named in analogy to original Chalmers invention. The question is that: «once some item or content ‘enters consciousness’, what does this cause or enable or modify». And from the Dennet’s point of view answer or real progress to it will be from areas such as neurobiology and cognitive psychology. Philosophy will clarify the concepts and burst illusions like cartesian theatre metaphor.
From the point of our goal, namely, to define consciousness prerequisites, Dennet’s’ approach is not easy one (and definitely is not easy in general). We should connect conditions from cognitive psychology via connectionism with philosophical conditions from Dennet’s vision on mind philosophy.
From the standpoint of Functionalism, the nature of the medium of conscious experience plays no role. Dennet follows the same view, he even developed tricky thought experiments and modified existing ones to demonstrate distinctiveness between our neurological medium and another one, for example, look at his discussion on Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment (Daniel Dennet, 1978), which is «intuition pump» (Daniel Dennet, 2013) from Dennet’s point of view.
Conditions
The first necessary condition of consciousness from Dennet’s position is intentionality. Generally, intentionality «is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. » (Jacob, Pierre, 2019). Of course, this prerequisite is framed in Dennet’s theory differently than in other theories. Viorel Rotilă even thinks that the notion of «intentionality system» and related theoretical consequences of these systems usage defines Dennet’s framework. (Viorel Rotila 2015). So, to understand what Dennet means by this prerequisite we have to grasp his understanding of intentionality. It’s definitely not the same concept as one in the phenomenological discourse, which is a more common frame for intentionality. Dennet himself defines intentionality in his work «Kinds of minds» like this: «Intentionality in the philosophical sense is just aboutness» (Daniel Dennet, 1996). His definition allows the evolutionary analysis of intentionality, which is a great step towards a completely physical consciousness explanation. There are different levels of intentionality and related concepts. The important one is the intentional stance: „The intentional stance is the attitude or perspective we routinely adopt toward one another, so adopting the intentional stance toward something else seems to be deliberately anthropomorphizing it.” (Daniel Dennet, 1996). The intentional stance is not directly a part of intentionality, rather it is our cognitive bias towards behaviorally complex (and sometimes not so complex) systems. A plain and simple description of the intentional stance we can find in Viorel Rotella's article: «The attempt to understand another entity based on intentional attitude is a form of anthropomorphizing, relying on a specific form of empathy, which employs the assumption that the entity is an intentional system» (Viorel Rotila 2015). The second important concept here is the intentional system one, it is a prudent one. From the functionalist point, from Dennet’s point, the intentionality is not necessary a human unique feature, so we are not talking about humans or animals, we are talking about systems, which can be also silicon implemented or quantum computer ones, or even some sort of unimaginable and unearthly ones. We are such systems, emerged in the evolution process, but there can be more. Overall, the concept of intentionality in Dennet’s framework refers not to some kind of phenomenological state, but to the evolved functional mechanism. Of course, it has attracted a lot of criticism, for example, John Searle wrote: „…there is the eliminativist view of intentionality; there really are no intentional states. The belief that there are such things is just a residue of primitive folk psychology, one that a mature science of the brain will enable us to overcome. A variant of the eliminativism is what we might call interpretativism. The idea here is that attributions on intentionality are always forms of interpretations made by an outside observer. An extreme version of this view is Daniel Dennet’s conceptions that we sometimes adopt the ʻintentional stanceʼ and that we should not think of people as literally having beliefs and desires, but rather that is a useful stance to adopt about them for the purpose of predicting their behavior.” (John Searle, 2004)
The second necessary condition of consciousness from Dennet’s position is the metaphysical one. He assumes that brain equals consciousness, period. All his arguments and thought experiments prove this position, but the metaphysical foundation here is belief – we don’t need any other dimensions above physical one. For example, Сhalmers’ version of Panpsychism implies some kind of qualia dimension.
Other points of Dennet’s condition list are variations from Cleeremans one. No wonder –both of them are physicalist functionalists with a strong emphasis upon evolutionary nature of consciousness. Global workspace is required for «fame in the brain» principle of Dennet which is an alternative way to say about hierarchical competition in GW. GW in Dennet’s views is decentralized one, without homunculus.
Daniel Dennet’s approach, my references:
1. Dennet, Daniel. (2018). Facing up to the hard question of consciousness. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 373. 20170342. 10.1098/rstb.2017.0342.
2. Jylkkä, Jussi & Railo, Henry. (2019). Consciousness as a Concrete Physical Phenomenon. 10.1101/557561.
3. Dennet, Daniel. (2019). Review of Other Minds: the octopus, the sea and the deep origins of consciousness: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2016. Biology & Philosophy. 34. 10.1007/s10539-018-9650-2.
4. Dennet, Daniel. (1992). The Self as a Center of Narrative Gravity. 46. 10.5209/rev-ASEM.2013.v46.42862.
5. Dennet, D., 1978, 'Toward a Cognitive Theory of Consciousness', in Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6. Dennet, D., 2013, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, New York: W.W. Norton and Co
7. Rotila, Viorel & Professor, Assoc. (2015). Daniel Dennet: intentionality system. An interpretation of intentional strategy. Annals of “Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL AND HUMAN DISCIPLINES. SERIES 2015 VOLUME I. 9-29.
8. Jacob, Pierre, "Intentionality", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
9. Rotila, Viorel & Professor, Assoc. (2015). Daniel Dennet: intentionality system. An interpretation of intentional strategy. Annals of “Ştefan cel Mare” University of Suceava PHILOSOPHY, SOCIAL AND HUMAN DISCIPLINES. SERIES 2015 VOLUME I. 9-29.
10. Daniel C. Dennet, Kinds of minds. Toward an Understanding of Consciousness (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), 35.
11. John Searle. Mind, A Brief Introduction (Oxford: University Press, 2004): 163.
David Chalmers' theory of consciousness: naturalistic dualism, which holds that consciousness is a fundamental non-physical feature of the world, which is causally generated by functionally characterized physical states.
David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy from New York University focuses on the P-consciousness. He was one who comes up with the hard problem of consciousness and he also has a path to a solution, at least he thinks so (Chalmers, David, 1996).
All aforementioned theories and frameworks to varying degrees relate to so-called functionalist views; Chalmers views are considered as panpsychistic ones. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines Panpsychism as «the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe»1, which means that consciousness is not some phenomenon in the World, but the varying property of the World – so framed Panpsychism basically is the David Chalmers' naturalistic dualism.
One of the core concepts in Chalmers discourse is Supervenience. In general, the topic of Supervenience is independent of the problem of consciousness, the term means a unique form of relating: «A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A -properties without also differing with respect to their B -properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A -difference without a B -difference”. » (McLaughlin, Brian, and Bennett, Karen, 2018). Chalmers is of the opinion that consciousness does not logically supervene upon the brain or any functional information-processing system, here is only natural Supervenience. From the support of this rule, Chalmers infers irreductive nature of the Consciousness. (Chalmers, David, 1996). Of course, the process of proving is more complex and not so straightforward, but the core is given.
The surprising consequence from naturalistic dualism position, if we’ll take it seriously, is that the consciousness exists everywhere bit by bit since it is not a state to the phenomenon, but rather a property of the World. Seems like the only prerequisite for consciousness existing is the particular set of properties of Universe – since we can imagine other Universes without consciousness. The last arguments are not a strong one, but it is one of the milestones in Chalmers argumentation. (G. Antukh, 2018)
David Chalmers and his approach, my references:
1. Chalmers, David J. (1996). _The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory_. Oxford University Press.
2. Goff, Philip, Seager, William and Allen-Hermanson, Sean, "Panpsychism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
3. McLaughlin, Brian, and Bennett, Karen, "Supervenience", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
4. G. Antukh, Gennady. (2018). On self-contradiction of antiphysicalism in David Chalmers' theory of consciousness. Vestnik Tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Filosofiya, sotsiologiya, politologiya. 92-102. 10.17223/1998863X/45/10.
Conclusion
We went through prerequisites of conscious experience in most influential frameworks. Even though there are similarities between them, we can’t differentiate the core conditions of consciousness existence\emergence.
The problem lays in theoretical differences between researchers and between paradigms. I’m not sure that we should formulate the only «genuine» understanding and definition of conscious experience, but until the point of at least some agreement, we won’t see any global progress in the unification and standardization of consciousness prerequisites.
The question becomes more and more thorny as we are probably close to developing some kind of complex AI, which in some point of AI evolution will be so powerful, that we can’t differentiate it from human in Turing test. The test was considered as robust in the past, but for the next generation of AI, we need more complex and well-reasoned one (Bishop John, 2018).
Acknowledgments
… (в самом финале)…
1. Seager, W. (2016). Theories of consciousness: An introduction and assessment. 10.4324/9780203485583.
2. Bishop, John. (2018). Is Anyone Home? A Way to Find Out If AI Has Become Self-Aware. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 5. 10.3389/frobt.2018.00017.
3. M. Owen, Adrian. (2019). The Search for Consciousness. Neuron. 102. 526-528. 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.03.024.
Черновые подходы (кандидаты, остальные подходы и доп текст в файле 2!)