Consciousness is a mode of access.

Consiousness is.... it's contents... and the acts that give us access to these contents. (And furthermore, consiousness has an intentional structure such that acts of consiousness can be correlated with contents of consciousness.)

Science can investigate the acts of consciousness, the contents of consciousness and the correlation between the two.

In addition to our consciousness, our body is additionally a mode of access. The latter seems to be prior to the former since as far as we can tell our consciousness is embodied. And we can use tools to broaden access.

If there is something about consciousness that is more fundamental than that... access is limited.

Why? Because reflecting upon myself and my consciousess, it becomes quite clear that I have access to "me" but i have no real access to my agency - to 'I".

All modes of access tell me in one way or another about "me." But who - what-- am "I?"

"You" have no fundamental/privileged access either. Yes, the "him" that you have access to is other than "me" (overlapping in some ways, more revealing in some ways and less in others)-- but it is not "I" - it is merely "another aspect".

Can "I" -- my agency - go further in an effort to disclose "I?" Well, you may have a technique or practice, but here we have left the realm of science.

I think your question is part of a wider question: is human Science self-sustainable?

If it is, the puppet can eventually comprehend its part that is also the puppet-master.

If not, we are locked in the confines of a thinly veiled introspection.

Unfortunately, human science is very limited in measuring and very far from objective in distinguishing "real" from "perceived as real" phenomena..

Plato postulated it.

Heisenberg demonstrated it.

Godel proved it.

Turing applied it.

There was a good reason that the greatest minds, in 5th century BC, Greece, were philosophers. It puzzles us that they were not pure scientists. After all, higher science allows for better technology which, in turn, leads to increased returns in one's efforts.

However, just like this past decade, classical Greek thinkers considered science done for. They too had their (everyhting-from-nothing) cosmogony. They too had their (four) elements. They too had their (hydraulic) human physiology paradigm. So they went into Philosophy/Epistemology to see how far they could push the limits of human knowledge.

Today, we too accept that there is still much work to be done - but we also think that we have the basic theories down. Big-Bang, M-Theory, Evolution. It is only a matter of working out the techniques to prove them. And, once more, we find ourselves dwelling into Epistemology.

To answer your question, Absessamad, I think that the major obstacle in establishing a science of consciousness is our anthropocentric biases. We consider human science self-sustained when it is not.

Once we get past this obstacle, the vistas of understanding will seem new and endless. And we will have gained a sure footing to approach comprehending consciousness.

Your question is very general, but I will try to response anyway. The first step is define what consciousness is. Philosophically, consciousness is the mechanism that permit us be aware of the things... I mean, you know that something is red, and you have the qualitive experience what red is. Here, we crash with the "hard problem" of consciousness... could we transfer this conception of consciousnees into neuroscience research? Until now, we can´t cause as Baars said, quality is personal and untransferable. So we can only study consciousness in each case, cause all them are differents (if you are interesting read about "Hard Problem of Consciousness")

So, what can neuroscience do? We define consciousness in a different way. Consciousnees is a topic we can reduce to different neural systems. Consciouenss is a neural system that help us to integrate information into an unique concept, and use this concept to use it in our environment in a effective way. So, in a neurobiological way consciousnees have different dimensions: Arousal and awareness. Another interesting question is... Is someone that is only arousal conscious? (see coma, vegetative and minimal consciousness state disorder). So, I think that to emerge consicousness, a person have to be arousal and awareness, and these is supported by differens neural networks (see thalamo-cortical system and cortico-cortical system). If someone is alert and he dont responde in a effective way, his consciousnees is altered too (see brain damage), cause his capacity of integrate information is altared too.

So, this could be a good beggining to star understand all consciousness word. There are a lot of liturature, so look in pubmed and make your own point of view :)

This is sub quantum physics.

The consciousness (see the table of consciousness layers) is defined as the sum of all perceptive, governing and control mechanisms (potential and functional) which enable activation, dynamics, perspective and duration to a certain form of the existence. It represents the realization of the intelligence, which is the understanding of the existence from four aspects:

(1) aspect of the perspective (evolutionary intelligence),

(2) aspect of the need (emotional intelligence)

(3) aspect of the concrete causality (logical intelligence)

(4) aspect of the universal causality (intuitive intelligence).

From the list one can conclude that the form of the existence which could not understand its own existance, could not be able to preserve it, and would instantaneously cease to exist.

Non-living matter has two active consciousness layers (11th and 17th) and only two forms of the intelligence: evolutionary and emotional. In living beings there are eight active consciousness layers (1st, 3rd, 6th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 16th and 17th) and there are three forms of intelligence – evolutionary, emotional and logical one. Intelligent beings use actively all 17 consciousness layers and all four form of intelligence. Consciousness layers are ideal functional units for the optimal functioning of the integral interactive dynamics of the consciousness function. There exist 17 such layers on the level of total integral interactive dynamics of consciousness function. The 1st layer is entitled the conscious one while the other 16 are unconscious. Due to the fact that consciousness layers are independent energetically units, their individual characteristics manifest in the interactions of particular consciousness layers of certain organization level (non-living matter, living beings, and intelligent beings).

Intelligence, which is the understanding of the existance from four aspects:

(5) aspect of the perspective (evolutionary intelligence),

(6) aspect of the need (emotional intelligence)

(7) aspect of the concrete causality (logical intelligence)

(8) aspect of the universal (omniexsistancial) causality (intuitive intelligence).

From the list one can conclude that the form of the existence which could not understand its own existance, could not be able to preserve it, and would instantaneosly cease to exist.

Dear colleague(s),

The are over 40 different (some overlapping) meanings attributed to term ‘consciousness’ as discussed in

Vimal, R. L. P. (2009). Meanings attributed to the term 'consciousness': an overview. J Consciousness Stud (Available: http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2009-Vimal-Meanings-LVCR-2-10.pdf), 16(5), 9-27.

And

Vimal, R. L. P. (2010a). On the Quest of Defining Consciousness. Mind Matter (Available: http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2010-Vimal-DefineC-LVCR-3-2.pdf ), 8(1), 93-121.

Kindly decide which meaning you are interested to discuss.

If you want to discuss on the subjective experiences aspect of consciousness, then there are 4 major metaphysics: materialism, idealism, interactive substance dualism and dual-aspect monism. First three have serious problems that are discussed in (Vimal, 2010a). There as an extended version of dual-aspect monism that has the least number of problems; which is called the DAMv framework:

The extended Dual-Aspect Monism or the DAMv framework is the ‘Dual-Aspect Monism framework (Vimal, 2008) with dual-mode (Vimal, 2010b) and varying degrees of dominance of aspects depending on the levels of entities (Vimal, 2012a), where each entity-state (including the state of matter-in-itself) has inseparable physical and mental aspects. The mental aspect is from the subjective first person perspective and the physical aspect is from the objective third person perspective. This framework is optimal because it has the least number of problems (Vimal, 2010b).

Vimal, R. L. P. (2008). Proto-experiences and Subjective Experiences: Classical and Quantum Concepts. J Integr Neurosci [Available at ], 7(1), 49-73.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2010b). Matching and selection of a specific subjective experience: conjugate matching and subjective experience. J Integr Neurosci [], 9(2), 193-251.

Vimal, R. L. P. (2012a). Emergence in Dual-Aspect Monism. In A. Pereira Jr. & D. Lehmann (Eds.), The Unity of Mind, Brain and World: Current Perspectives on a Science of Consciousness (Vol.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. In preparation [Available for comments: ].

The above 3 articles are hard to read. I am in the process of writing two books, which may be easier to read.

1. Vimal, R. L. P. (2012b). Scientific Hinduism: Bringing Science and Hinduism Closer through Extended Dual-Aspect Monism (Dvi-Pakṣa Advaita). Vision Research Institute: Living Vision and Consciousness Research [Available: http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2012-Vimal-Scientific-Hinduism-Bringing-Science-and-Hinduism-closer-DAMv-5-4-book.doc ; summary at http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2012-Vimal-Dvi-Paksa-Advaita.doc

2. Vimal, R. L. P. (2012c). Scientific Religions: Science-Religion Unification through Extended Dual-Aspect Monism and its Novel Critiques. Vision Research Institute: Living Vision and Consciousness Research [Available: http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home/2012-Vimal-Bringing-Science-and-Religions-closer-DAM-5-3.doc

If you like you can be critique on this second book (see Section 4 for other critiques), which will be eventually published. You can write whatever your belief is and then critique the DAMv framework and I will respond.

For other articles: please download from

http://sites.google.com/site/rlpvimal/Home

You comments are most welcome.

Cheers!

Regards,

Ram

8/6/12

We went so far that banks have created High Frequency Trading performed by computers to avoid any human emotional interference.

The question is then not whether people have consciousness, but rather why businesses are not using the human consciousness.

That is west. Only machine

Hi,

I agree with some of the comments here that it is difficult to discuss or study 'consciousness' without having operationally defined it first.

In addition, once defined, some of these subtopics remain a challenge to scientifically study. The work by Libet (and many others) for instance attempted to draw a temporal relationship between the 'conscious' moment of intention with the time of movement-related neural activities (e.g., readiness potential, BOLD and single-cell activity in the SMA). While neuroscience has helped revolutionized the field in this respect, it is also important to ask whether these assumptions about the behavioral components are valid. Are these subjective reports truly represent the moments of awareness of intention? A subset of scientists have shown otherwise (e.g., our work shows that this moment of intention is postdictively inferred; Jeff Miller's work showed that the readiness potential is observed even when you are not performing an action). So, while I sincerely believe that neuroscience definitely is a great tool in studying consciousness as a science, we must be cautious at using it, and we must validate that neuroscience is measuring what it is supposed to measure.

Respectfully yours,

Eve Isham

Thanks to all, and a way to show that I agree with all the above, here I’m listing keywords (that some conferences accepts as a taxonomy continually updated):

- Philosophy : The concept of consciousness; Ontology of consciousness; Materialism and dualism; Qualia ; Machine consciousness; Mental causation and the function of consciousness; The "hard problem" and the explanatory gap; Higher-order thought; Epistemology and philosophy of science; Personal identity and the self; Free will and agency; Intentionality and representation

- Neuroscience: Neural correlates of consciousness; Vision; Other sensory modalities; Motor control; Memory and learning; Blindsight; Neuropsychology and neuropathology; Anesthesia; Cellular and sub-neural processes; Quantum neurodynamics; Pharmacology; Neural synchrony and binding; Emotion; Sleep and waking ; Specific brain areas

- Cognitive Science & Psychology : Attention; Vision; Other sensory modalities; Memory and learning; Emotion; Language; Mental imagery; Implicit and explicit processes; Unconscious/conscious processes; Sleep and dreaming; Cognitive development; Artificial intelligence & robotics; Neural networks and connectionism; Cognitive architectures; Ethnology; Self-consciousness and metacognition; Temporal consciousness; Intelligence and creativity

- Physical and Biological Sciences: Quantum theory; Space and time; Integrative models; Emergent and hierarchical systems; Nonlinear dynamics; Logic and computational theory; Bioelectromagnetics/resonance effects; Biophysics and living processes; Evolution of consciousness; Medicine and healing

- Experiential Approaches: Phenomenology; Meditation, contemplation & mysticism; Hypnosis; Other altered states of consciousness; Transpersonal and humanistic psychology; Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy; Lucid dreaming; Anomalous experiences; Parapsychology

- Culture and Humanities: Literature and hermeneutics; Art and aesthetics; Music; Religion; Mythology; Sociology; Anthropology; Information technology; Ethics and legal studies; Education

- ...

The impressive number of topics covered by consciousness studies and here above listed, can be checked with debates hold within various topics in ResearchGate. Among other things, it can explain the debate incidents occurring when same topic is approached simultaneously through views belonging to different classes of this taxonomy ( e.g. Trying to predict neuroscientific findings with religion based approach).

Finally, I just would like to precise that the current thread is not another one on the nature and origin of consciousness specifically. It’s rather about whether we are close to what we can accept as “a science of consciousness” and objective obstacles if not.

Consciousness is part of non-locality Quantum theory.

I doubt nonlocality is specifically quantum. In my opinion you find it observing how a critical system responds to perturbations. The infinite susceptibility makes it respond at once, without a wave propagation. I guess consciousness has to do with some criticality, maybe self-organized criticality. This would be in line with Tononi's phi meausure.

Consciousness is nonlocal. Working on the principle of a hologram. The main problem in physics is that information changes the state of the system without the high energy

Nenad Delic, you are talking about Baar´s, Dehaene and more people theory: Global Workspace or Neural Global Workspace.

I view consciousness as a brain-constructed avatar, designed to act on behalf of embodied brain. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163487/

If so,the conscious Avatar exists as a unique configuration of neural circuit impulse patterns. Since this avatar is a physical representation (see my book, Atoms of Mind, 2011), it is amenable to scientific study. Many experiments demonstrate correlates of the Avatar, but it is not yet clear which of these are causal. We are still faced with the "hard problem" that the Avatar is aware of some of the external and internal environments much akin to the way unconscious mind is aware, but we still have little insight into how the Avatar knows that it knows.

The basis on which I have been working is the recognition that science only engages with one of the two principle human "ways of knowing" identified independently by (1) Teasdale and Barnard, who called them the implicational and propositional subsystems and (2) Ian McGilchrist. who regarded them as right-hemisphere and left-hemisphere dominated, but with a much more detailed view of the hemispheres than hitherto and using a very wide-ranging survey of the implications. (We have now all met and agree that these are equivalent.) .

A *science* of consciousness by definition of science is based on our propositional system, but in order to do justice to the subjectivity of the phenomenon it must take into account the role of the implicational system on which the qualitative aspect is based. This we can in principle do by modelling our I.S. using non-standard context-dependent logic. These tools then allow us to make sense of quantum theory (which up to now has been something of a mess) by mapping the above mentioned logical model for the implicational onto Isham's topos logic for quantum theory.

Sorry this is so compressed - a book's coming out in February!

(see http://www.scispirit.com/role.pdf - but it doesn't go far enough and I've now realised there are major mistakes)

Chris

The above comment encourages me to cite Dennett trying at his turn to “do justice to the most private and ineffable subjective experiences” in (Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, New York: MIT Press, 2005):

“(…) there are, however, some events that occur in my brain that I do know about, as soon as they occur: my subjective experiences themselves. And these subjective experiences, tradition tells us, have “intrinsic qualities”—qualia, in the jargon of philosophers— that I not only do have access to, but that are inaccessible to objective investigation. This idea has persisted for centuries, in spite of its incoherence, but perhaps its days are finally numbered.”

I don’t subscribe to all positions of that popular and best selling thinker. I’m just referring to his Sweet Dreams book as recognizing (even in a reductionist way ?) “philosophical obstacles” to a science of consciousness.

Gentlemen! What do you think, not a private matter, it is yours interaction with nature.

Dear All,

I think that consciousness is essentially “self awareness”. May see this link “reality of the self”.

http://dmrsekhar.wordpress.com/article/reality-of-the-self-3ecxygf1lxcn2-81/

Also I think that the spring head of consciousness is “genome” and “brain” is only a peripheral of genome. May see these links.

http://dnadecipher.com/index.php/ddj/article/view/20 and

http://www.jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/view/193 or contact me for reprints.

Thanks,

Sekhar

Re: Sekhar

Yes, I agree. The brain starts developing a sense of self in the womb. Everything that happens in the womb (mother's heart beat sounds, vomeronasal and taste sensations in embryonic fluid, feedback from embryo limb movements, etc.) are all teaching the brain to reference these external stimuli to itself. It is learning there is an "out there" and an "in here." As sufficient circuitry develops at around age 2, consciousness and self-consciousness start to co-emerge.

I have a book chapter on this theme coming out in the Fall. If you want a copy, e-mail me at wklemmATSIGNcvm.tamu.edu

Dear Dr Klemm,

There is some problem with your email ID. Kindly send your paper to [email address deleted]

Thanks,

Sekhar

Consciousness has proven intractable, in my view, because the two conventional approaches, via brain science on the one hand in the last century since Ebbinghaus, and from philosophy on the other over four centuries since Descartes are both incapable, in principle, of yielding any insight.

Brain science has yet to inform us how mental activity becomes available to us humans: it shows simply where and when activity occurs, including some directness of internal communication under certain experimental conditions. The experimental manipulation (the why) elicits some response (the what) but the internal flow of causality is opaque except under the most behaviourist of conditions which only reveal characteristics of the complex human as an animal: simple straight-through processing.

On the other hand, by framing its conjectures in language, and presuming authority to speak on behalf of oneself, philosophy fails to repudiate both a mind and the self which are the very explananda of consciousness, at least in the form of the 'hard problem'.

The answer surely must lie in some new avenue which exposes something of the underlying structure of brain activity as it supports mental activity. I myself presume that this cannot have become genetically encoded, so cannot derive from innate competence; rather such structure must be acquired in childhood, and then quite early on (preschool).

For these reasons I have trawled the cognition and related literature for half a decade in the '80s, and more recently for another decade have occupied myself drafting monographs (6 and 600K words) which collect my ideas into six complementary themes. Three complementary modes of cognitive processing seem necessary (CAC2004); experience seems as though it is recorded in a highly structured manner as a result, at least in relation to the progressive building of the fabric of the self-model (MTPP2006); any system of higher brain functioning must provide an envelope of animation, autonomy and directness in which the work of cognition becomes structured with experience (HWA2007); complex knowledge that is captured is likely made 'systematic' on the rich template (a three-part inheritance array) of the emerging self-model whose primacy derives from the intimacy of its relation to early experience (NKD2008); and the self-model itself, which must become unified from its parts in order to gain its ultimate authority to act, like other forms of useful knowledge, can only emerge on the basis of some kind of differentiable perspective (SMS2008).

The monogram draft which I have now compiled as a result (Human Cognition ISBN 9781456307400) of these preliminary analyses draws the pieces into a rather coherent whole to the extent that the changing morphology of consciousness of the child in the critical 3-6 years becomes obvious: a purely behaviourist phase to begin, a proto-linguistic refinement which orients cognitive processing into a sequentiated mode to activate mental capability in transition, and ultimately, by (rediagonalising cognitive competence into two new principal components) developing the two task-oriented sub-models of the self which admits the unified self-model which takes authority to act (or not!).

Sadly, all this private language is hardly generally accessible, but I am convinced that the human cognitive system of the kind I am now able to describe is competent to naturalise the 'hard' problem of consciousness - and that consciousness will remain impossible to understand without such an appeal to the system of human cognition.

I am hopeful of producing an intelligible account before the third decade of my quest is ended (Jul5, 2015).

Dear Venkateshappa Shrikanth,

I am of the opinion that self programmability, consciousness and free will are the properties of matter in the “state of life” or living state. May I request you to see these links and comment.

http://dmrsekhar.wordpress.com/article/the-paradox-of-life-3ecxygf1lxcn2-35/

http://www.atheistnexus.org/profiles/blogs/its-life-jim-but-not-as-we?xg_source=activity

http://dmrsekhar.wordpress.com/article/reality-of-the-self-3ecxygf1lxcn2-81/

Thanks,

DMR Sekhar

Dear VS,

You are welcome to disagree. What is the difference between a “living system” and a “physical system”? Have you seen this link ?

http://dmrsekhar.wordpress.com/article/the-paradox-of-life-3ecxygf1lxcn2-35/

Thanks,

DMR Sekhar

Dear Abdessamad If there is no a science of the soul then there is no either a science of consciousness. The soul is the hard problem in order to answer what is life?

Soul is energy field, that allows knowledge to remain available for the next incarnation.

If we would like to study the soul, maybe we have to forget consciousness as a reductionism perspective of view. Do someone know Schödinger? Maybe Neuroscience, phylosophy and physics should work together to study the soul as a quantum perspective of view.

Consciousness is future physics. Nikolas Gisin from Geneva told me that.

My dears. Nobody knows what consciousness is and Nobody knows what the soul is either. Theses words are as the word "intelligence" or "God".

While I’m “liking” independently all contributions as a way to thank respective contributors, verry short replies are hardly helpful: For example, I spent a lot of time to decode this message “Nikolas Gisin from Geneva told me that.” I finally was able to discover that Nenad Delic was referring to a working paper of his own that he titled “Sub Quantum Information Theory” and shared in https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?id=4f018e097ef0684764000001&key=d922b4f018e09e4baf

Very well Alejandro. God is the simultaneous intelligence in terms of Jung.

Dear All,

genopsych is to genome is as mind is to brain. May I request you all to take a look at this link?

http://rivr.sulekha.com/genopsych-some-aspects-of-philosophy_253350_blog

Thanks,

Sekhar

Phantom is not matter as Intelligence is not God. You must remmember this: "Nobody can answer the question What is God?" _So, Jung made a little mistake.

I'm afraid this thread is being transformed misleading its original goal. Let's keep giving to science what belongs to science. Other threads can give to god what belongs to god.

this is a very interesting question. All we call science is actully, at last, consiousness content. It is a very special content of consiousness, because it is stated to be a more objective one, in contrast to the common, so caled, subjective content of consciousness. Notwithstanding consiousness itself is rarely made object of science, althoug lots of very determinate statements are made on it, like: nobody can know what it is - it is subjective, etc. What is it we have in front of us if we make consiousness the object of our science, not what philosophy says, not even what says neuroscience. To say if it is possible ore not to make science with it we should first make it object of our investigation without any pre-statement, any qualification, etc. If it is ore not, if it is transferale ore not, etc. All statements must be based on some experience. Even the statement of its subjectivity should base on objectivity. How is it we come to the objective statement: consciousness is subjective. The interesting thing is that all science is consciousness content, but if consciousness itself can be object of science, is still a question. So science itsef is still a question, as stated by Dimitrios. Now I must go to the Theatre. I'll try to continue tomorow. Sorry for my bade english. Very interesting question.

Here is a conference poster on my account of human cognition (and consciousness)

Consciousness is a mode of access.

Consiousness is.... it's contents... and the acts that give us access to these contents. (And furthermore, consiousness has an intentional structure such that acts of consiousness can be correlated with contents of consciousness.)

Science can investigate the acts of consciousness, the contents of consciousness and the correlation between the two.

In addition to our consciousness, our body is additionally a mode of access. The latter seems to be prior to the former since as far as we can tell our consciousness is embodied. And we can use tools to broaden access.

If there is something about consciousness that is more fundamental than that... access is limited.

Why? Because reflecting upon myself and my consciousess, it becomes quite clear that I have access to "me" but i have no real access to my agency - to 'I".

All modes of access tell me in one way or another about "me." But who - what-- am "I?"

"You" have no fundamental/privileged access either. Yes, the "him" that you have access to is other than "me" (overlapping in some ways, more revealing in some ways and less in others)-- but it is not "I" - it is merely "another aspect".

Can "I" -- my agency - go further in an effort to disclose "I?" Well, you may have a technique or practice, but here we have left the realm of science.

Thanks Michael: I'm currently following a thread about a novel model of consciousness in:https://www.researchgate.net/topic/Neuroscience/post/Declarative_Memory_Model_VS_DCPM

I think it close to your statement "Consciousness is a mode of access".

Dear Michael,

Every thing about consciousness starts with self awareness. To under stand self awareness we should know “I” and the criteria for self awareness. May see my attempts here:

http://rivr.sulekha.com/genopsych-some-aspects-of-philosophy_253350_blog

http://dmrsekhar.wordpress.com/article/reality-of-the-self-3ecxygf1lxcn2-81/

Thanks,

Sekhar

It is interesting that there is allways a pre-established limit to investigation of consiousness. On the other hand it is in consiousness where all objectiv satements are made. We know no other place in universe where objectivity is etablished. Dimitri thinks our obstacle to science of consciosness is our "antropocentric blases". Are we making science for someone else than for us, antropos? We are the ones that want to know. And why should we stop investigation when we arive to ourselves? We are sure about lots of statements about the universe but we don't know who we are, because there is something like an "I" behind our "me" and if we would reach it through some exercise, ore practice we would be leaving the realm of science. In all other objects of universe we develop the most incredible theorys. In statements about ourselves we are limited, or we get religious, and all we don't know we call God. I will continue soon.

@AbMo: on "A science of consciousness: How far did we get?"

I wonder that you will get the first hand right explanations/infoormation

I am not an expert to discuss about the "science of consciousness", but as a student of this domain I have realised that persons who have achieved "consciousness-awakening", they do not intend to disclose/discuss about it with others. They say that if you have achieved it you will get the right message at right time to go further in the next phase/plane, and will not like disturb the "knowledge ecology" of the society. Perhaps one requires the similar status/IQ/mental state to understand this "science of consciousness" and beyond. While i was in active science, I tried to put 2 x 2 i.e. modern science vs science of consciousness. I even convinced a Yogi to allow clinicians to map his metabolic/cardiovascular/neurological/.../... parameters during different states of his mind/body. But clinicians refused that they do not wish to be a part to some body's fatal actions/state e.g. High BP beyond all limits, heart stopping for longer stretches, body temperature rising to unbelievable levels, ..,......,......,.....,...

I was told to read and re-read "Bhagawad Gita"

These days I am reading/listening "Bhagawad Gita" - the last word on "consciousness". This sacred book is a mile stone towards spiritualism not related to any religion.

Some books:

Sangeetha_Menon (2007) has published a book "The Beyond Experience: Consciousness in "Bhagavad Gita" i Blue Jay Books, New Delhi).

A reference on brain and consciousness:

Menon, Sangeetha (2011) Brain-challenged self and self-challenged brain: The central impasse in consciousness studies. In: Brain science and kokoro: Asian perspectives on science and religion. Nanzan Institute of Religion and Culture, Nagoya, Japan, pp. 79-120.

There are some videos also on the web covering very broadly "Bhagavad Gita" in principle (Please see links::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDicVnZX654;

Some websites:

http://wisdombeyondbeings.com)

But, no body tells how to achieve "Consciousness" as well as who has achieved what in this field.

Finally I wish people tell about their progress/achievement, at least for the sake of science and come out with a "consciousness-awakening" made easy - step by step.

There are a couple of reasons why we haven't done as well on consciousness as a science, as we wanted to. One is Clutter, like a packrats nest, there are too many different definitions for consciousness, some 90 in all, and many of the proponents of them are trying to outlast all the other definitions, or blast them out of the water by sheer volume of writings.

Secondly we , as humans, find it especially difficult to abstract out of consciousness consistent chunks that can be further analyzed, because consciousness feels like a single unit, and therefore many people bridle at it being broken into smaller units. In DMMC I stated numerous times that I was not trying to explain all of consciousness, but was working with a single type of consciousness, yet was still accused of not taking everything else into account.

It was not until I stressed that I was working towards a cognitive architecture that the furor cut down. But then, they started up the "You can't get there from here" type arguments. Essentially these arguments claim that there is something unique about life that makes it possible for it to be conscious, while machines cannot be. However, that set of arguments does not take into account the fact that I am working on a specific part or type of consciousness that I hope I can make work as a machine, and ignoring the rest of the clutter, at least until I know a bit more about it.

The main problem in consciousness research is the sheer dogged persistence of religious and philosophical leaders in claiming to be experts on it, because their particular religion or philosophy has something to say about it. Even on a purportedly scientific social media like researchgate you can be shouted down for trying to limit discussion to your research topics or thread topics. One reason that philosophers and scientists have historically refused to allow anyone who is not protected by tenure from research in this field, is simply because the tempest against any conclusions, will axe the future prospects of younger researchers and destroy their reputations. As an amateur, I have no reputation to destroy, I can literally choose to ignore the furor when it becomes too limiting, the only academic that can do the same, is tenured professors emeritus.

Thanks Dear Graeme. Just to give an idea on the DMMC model to visitors of the current thread, here is a link to some colleted interventions of Graeme whithin RG on his Declarative Memory Model of Consciousness:

https://www.researchgate.net/file.PostFileLoader.html?id=504386dce39d5e5f19000003&key=79e41504386dc4e0fd

I have worked out how to make Human Cognition (pp459, ISBN 9781456307400; www.createspace.com/3494821)

and its more colourful Part 1 (www.createspace.com/900002233, soon to be available as an iBook on Kindle, and which

describes the essential origin of a mind in the brain) the penultimate and ultra-concentrated version of Cognitive System Theory and its implications.

I am now planning the trajectory of the narrative linking the fifty or so innovative concepts which jointly and severally form the CST skeleton (the 'posts'

of the story, which can remain only partially understood on early readings). Linking these will be, in various multimedia forms, a far more open and

accessible form of narration. Say fifty 'posts' which can be slowly better appreciated in substance and significance, and simple, punchy linking text

between them as 'rails' devised using Apple OS 10.8's automated speech to text facility, will make accessible oral narrations and equivalent translated text

- either fully searchable for spoken/heard keys or alphabetised text keywords - substitutable in both cases from the original english into alternative linguistic forms

for direct access to non-english speakers.

Totally electronic multimedia, interactive DVD or web-based format should provide a few decades of utility to broadcast what is essentially the basis of a

totally new discipline which fills the currently enormous gap between education and psychology, and infills the coherence gap (the connection between

brain wetware and rational forms of behaviour), the control gap (between brain biology and the metaphysics of consciousness/knowledge/mind content) and

the self-awareness gap (how does the person get into the piece of meat).

Now your attendees are thoroughly practical people, and can't be asked to digest masses of pure theory no matter how (ultimately, IMV) so persuasively

integrated, internally cohesive and ecologically valid it presents itself to be. Lets call this the Mendeleevian level of competent description of how the brain works

(system brought into alchemy via a Periodic Table to characterise both commonalities and distinctions in chemical behaviour of various elements), not yet addressing

what fifty years later Bohr saw more deeply in explanation by description (from just Hydrogen he could see a building principle to 'make' other atoms), nor attempting

any 'final causes' which Aristotle would expect and Schrodinger unveiled (and Heisenberg, and Dirac severally developed) a decade later.

We are not trying to do everything with CST, just bring sensible system and order to our thoughts about how various brain processes (i.e. cognitive processes) work AT ALL.

For this audience, I want instead to pose a practical problem relatable by every attendee: how to make their machine, or robot, or drone, self-aware.

My title will be:

(Title:) "The Feasibility of Constructing Self-Aware Robots as Sensitive and Companionable Carers for Humans of all Ages."

(...

The proposal is for presentation at the 2013 BRiMS conference in San Antonio (brimsconference.org) in March12-14...Peter Burton

I think that there is a matter of timing involved, the proposal as aired here, assumes that we know enough at the psychology level to do a workman - like job of describing how various brain processes work, and the example, self-awareness seems to fit into one of the blind spots of psychology. My own work lies between neuroscience on one hand, and organ level psychology on the other, and it is hard work finding the bridging concepts, especially since organ level psychology is based on top-down tests and lesion studies, and neuroscience is based on bottom-up work at the cellular level or lower. My discipline Tissue Psychology which is just in it's infancy, hopes to bridge what I perceive as a gap in understanding of the limits of neurons, and why they have to form the structures they do, in order to achieve what they do. I hope to make it much more feasible to design robots with self-awareness, but like I said there is an aspect of timing, it is taking too long to lay the groundwork.

From what I gather, we have never demonstrated that other beings do not have consciousness. Also, what I understand from Graeme Smith's remark is, from a neurological perspective since many organisms have neurons it is possible that consciousness just exists.

The question is, if we design robots with self-awareness, what do we do with all the other livings that currently have consciousness. At what point will we make appropriate changes?

Allow your consciousness to creatures survive in the environment. You have to have ethics not endangering other beings.

Do other creatures have consciousness?

Once you realize that Cartesian dualism (a habit of thought) and not nature has "removed" the possibility of consciousness from "other creatures" (so Decartes had to conceive of them as "machines") - and you begin anew to reason from the vantage of "organism" and environment" (rather than dualistically from mind and brain/body) it becomes clear that:

1. Of course "other creatures" (other living things) have consciousness.

(But remember that " having consciousness" is not the same as "having self-consciousness". (So - regarding the problem of "self-consciousness" - we get into phenomena such as recognizing onself in a mirror, or hunting in packs....)

And of course other living things do not have "human consciousness"

2.when and where does "consciousness" (not yet "self-consciouness") dawn in living things?

Origin is in the sensitivity that organisms displays toward their environment. But the previous sentence can only be meaningful if we have a clear notion of what the "organism" and "its environment" are/mean. Certain criteria must be met...

A. Living organisms constantly act in order to sustain their ongoing existence.

B. living organisms are necessarily separate from their environment - at the same time they maintain an openness to this environment and engage in transactions with it. (So there must be metabolism.)

C. The living organism must undergo constant change, while always maintaining a sameness of self throughout this change (hence the identity of the organism is in the organizational structure and not in any changing components).

Could machines simulate all that?.....Go and build one! ...

Maybe the start should be to prove the existence of consciousness in all beings, and then how self-consciousness interacts with the environment.

As humans, I am not sure how we can say that many have self-consciousness yet they disregard the whole consciousness. Michael, it seems that we are already those machines so, are we trying to replicate "us"? or we create indestructible AI?

Ok, to put a damper on the idea of all beings being conscious, I will take the architectural view that the particular structures that support human consciousness are not uniformly distributed in the animal population, and therefore, there is reason to ask if consciousness is not limited to the vertebrata. My Theoretical model called DMMC works from within my admittedly limited understanding of what must be happening within the human declarative memory to explain the reflexive aspects of human consciousness, always looking to how these are mirrored in other vertebrates, suggesting that in fact many mammals and birds may in fact be conscious, but that insects and invertebrates may not. Other animals may very well be conscious, but not from the same mechanisms as humans are. Rather than arguing about tool using octopi, I work with the architecture that we are most familiar with at this time, and ignore the question of insects and invertebrates for now. Birds have slightly different brains from mammals, so I can't claim to know the architecture of their consciousness, but some birds are tool using, and some are definitely verbal. The common ground seems to be evolutionary pressure to become omnivores due to limited food supplies.

The "Mirror Neuron" concept suggests that omnivores tend to be more aware of others, and able to mimmic them when required to get to food. This in turn creates the need for a theory of agency that allows the organism to separate its own actions from those of other organisms, which might eventually become a theory of self. Whether or not that is what is tested in the Mirror Test, is not yet my job to say. The interesting thing is that the omnivorous aspect is probably not shared across all the mammals so self-awareness cannot be uniformly spread across them either, unless all mammals had an omnivorous ancestor at some point. This draws into question the self-awareness of cats, and cows, cats being universally carnivorous, and cows being universally herbivorous.

In my case, to answer Dorina, the idea is to build a model of human consciousness so we understand ourselves better, and have a test bed on which to base things like robot caregivers. Indestructable robots are out of range, in that actuators currently available for robots are simply too easily destroyed, and therefore the robots themselves are too easily immobilized. Indestructable robots are not likely therefore, however given enough mechanical supports there is no reason why robots cannot conserve their destructability and operate longer than current generations do. Self-repair for instance is a real possibility.

Graeme, isn't it what all living organisms do, self repairs. All are equipped with regenerative mechanisms, but the challenges are processes that are complicated and complex. If we are to create a model, most likely we need to create in vivo consciousness, and then connect it to "robots", but then are we not almost replicating ..Cloud Computing's architecture?

Dorina:” If we are to create a model, most likely we need to create in vivo consciousness…” thanks Dorina, I had the same thought in a conversation with Graeme in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Declarative_Memory_Model_VS_DCPM

I was wondering if “a biological being is needed for a total simulation of consciousness ”. I hope Graeme can bring more light in this thread.

Meanwhile, let me doubt for a while (!): Cloud computing is a “business model” in the managerial meaning of the term (ie IT as an (on demand) service) as it is initiated by Amazon and standardized later and its “architecture” may refer to the front and back end platforms as well as the network needed to compose the cloud. Now “create consciousness” somewhere and then “connect” it to robotS as an “on demand” service , while technically plausible for machines, with (human?) beings this join the idea that consciousness would be an almighty ‘something’ independent from all beings but those beings can choose freely to be conscious or not (ie to demand consciousness service or not). This (re)implication of cloud idea in the real world considering “consciousness as an on demand service” can be religiously or philosophically supported but I doubt it could be supported by science. Could it?

Dorina:"...isn't it what all living organisms do, self-repairs."

Yes of course, but at a much lower level than a robot currently needs, the robot needs to replace it's actuators at the unit level, where the organism can grow new tissues within it's actuators (muscles) in real time.

Dorina:"If we are to create a model, most likely we need to create in vivo consciousness and then connect it to "robots", but then are we not almost replicating ..Cloud Computing's architecture"

You ask a cogent question, can we offer consciousness as a service. My feeling is that it needs to be integrated too closely with the memory of the individual unit, to be offered as a service. This is why my model is called Declarative Memory Model of Consciousness or DMMC, it must be integrated into the declarative memory within each unit. The declarative memory can be offered as a service within the Unit, but it must retain information related only to that unit, and it is tightly linked to implicit memory via the STM. My guess is that it is impractical to offer consciousness as a service across multiple robots. Which means an in vivo consciousness would have to be the brain of a robot, attached to lower centers of processing. We can do like tetherbots, and build it in a separate box, but that is not the same as offering it as a service, it is more like offering multiple bodies to a "Brain Box". Only one would be active at a time.

Graeme, interesting, why you have mentioned that it can only be activated one at a time. If we consider that many people have Alzheimer, Dementia, Parkinson etc. why not provide them with the service at the same time. If we use our brain to download memory, we can create DMMC for uploading it in the same way? or not?

Hi Abdessamad, I tried to read the maps by following the link but I do not have access to .vue. We will get into the same controversy, science vs. religion. So far, there are people who suffer, and whether or not they suffer because they lost the connection to self-consciousness, I am sure that there are ways to be reconnected. Now, if there are religious groups who are preventing this then the subject should be discussed separately- my own opinion.

Dorina, you have raised a whole slew of questions with that rather simple question.

Currently we do not have the ability to upload and download memories to the human brain. While there are some that still feel it is practical they are talking about having to preserve your brain in plastic, and scan it with thousands of expensive scanners to read the state of your mind, in short, it is not something that we can do while you are still alive.

On the other hand, VUE is short for Visual Understanding Environment and can be downloaded from vue.tufts.edu, it is a java applet and will run on any computer that has an implementation of java.

DMMC is not meant to upload memory, to a service, it is a model of how memory of a certain type creates the reflexivity of consciousness. It is not that I would not like to offer uploading and downloading as a service, but the model cannot easily be expanded to allow that. Uploading and downloading memory to a computer system cannot be easily achieved because the nature of the brains mechanisms of storage are so different from the computers. This is not to say that we could not build circuits with today's technology that work in an analogous manner to the brain, but that those circuits would work on completely different principles than current computer memory circuits. Until I can afford the laboratory time, I will not be able to see just how close we can come. Even if we had analogous storage there is still the problem of how to read in copy of the mind, so that we can store it in the fancy storage. The most promising technology for that seems to be the MEG, but that technology has its limits, and a major one is cost, the unit is expensive and maintenance costs especially for the cryogenic cooling needed are astronomical. Another promising technology is MDI an offshoot of MRI that has a higher resolution, and might be practical with stains to increase the contrast. But so called UPloading will have to wait mostly until we can do it without killing you first.

Thank you, Graeme, we do have all the knowledge on doing it since we have been “carrying” within us, but for some reasons, it seems that there is a “switch” mechanism that might be outside of our access. MRI, PET, CT’s etc. built are still not capable to provide information at the level required for storing and retrieving information. I think more in terms of an inside tracking system. One of the issues that I can think of is the relationship between soul and body, how it interconnects and detection levels.

OK, if you say so, but the minute that you talk of soul, you are into the realm of philosophy and religion, and out of the realm of science. There is no scientific proof of the existence of anything that can be called a soul.

Thanks to keep the thread within the realm of science…

Still it would be interesting to prove its existence scientifically, wouldn't be? Same as we proved God's particle, Junk DNA's etc.

Graeme: Mind instantiated in a dead brain? But what if and only if mind emerges as an aspect of a living brain embeded in a living body in the world? What if (as per Hans Jonas - "consciousness" devolves from a living, metabolizing organism (so a robot exhibiting mind rather than a simulation of mind would have to ... metabolize... for starters..)?

What if the moon was made of Green Cheeze.... Oh sorry that argument is out of date. what is mind that you need life to achieve it? What magical properties of life would be needed. No, quite simply that argument won't fly. There is nothing magical about life, we can build our own artificially designed micro-organisms borrowing liberally from other organisms, life is not sancrosanct. What it is, is often confusing, because it doesn't do single purpose design, everything has multiple purposes.

Lets not turn our confusion into an excuse for a new religion.

Lets turn the question around on itself, and ask, what if there is no magical thing we need to design mind, what if we are just confused about how to do it, yet. If that is the case, and I assure you it is, then there is a very real chance that sometime someone will be able to design a machine with a mind. In that case when we look back, people will wonder why so many people were dumb enough to ask that particular question, so many times. Scientifically speaking of course, there is nothing magical about life, it is a natural process, that follows knowable rules, and we know many of them already.

If there were something that was needed that only life supplied, roboticists would simulate it, and get nearly the same effect. Fact is there is no missing piece, that isn't covered by a simple lack of knowledge about how the brain works. But there is, a real lack of understanding of how neurons turn into psychology, and I for one think that there is room for a new discipline called Tissue Psychology, to learn about how the neurons form tissues, which in turn act in ways that create our psychology.

Frankly I think Jonas is looking on the wrong side of neurons for new ground, there is lots to learn in the tissues that they make up, we don't need to agonize over metabolism.

I don’t see any magic or new religion here. Living things (including neurons) have a certain structure/organization that – quite fundamentally -- anticipates consciousness. Jonas quite successfully spells this out. Roboticists can simulate this – by building an organism……

If you follow Jonas, and he is worth following, it is not in “the neuron” or “neuronal tissue” but rather in the manner in which this tissue is intertwined in an organism in the world. So yes, if you build a metabolizing organism in the world which contains a metabolizing brain and this brain contains metabolizing neurons properly arranged as metabolizing tissues, etc, you will build a conscious, psychologically capable “thing.” No magic here (and the method for “building this” is already well known, is it not?) Can all this be simulated? No doubt…

If you admit that it can be simulated, then you are either already accepting that a machine can do it, or, you are caught up on something Searle tripped over, the idea that a simulation is not the real thing, and therefore cannot do what the real thing does. Which considering that Consciousness is a simulation running in the brain in much the same way that a virtual machine in the computer is a simulation of the original computer, or an alternate architecture just running on the original silicone hardware. In essence the brain is a massively parallel system, that operates in a merely very parallel manner, and the mind acts quasi-serially as if it were only able to do one thing at a time. This type of architecture swapping can be done either in soft systems, or in hardware, and since much of the brain is done in wetware (Biological computing) I see little difference between the hardware-software and wetware-software, except that the difference between the two Wares is much less obvious in wetware systems because we can't read the language they are programmed in.

I am not sure I agree at all with Jonas about how easily the body becomes conscious, I think he has made the mistake of listening too closely to those who claim phenomenal consciousness directly from the dynamic core. My personal view, which is why I came up with the declarative memory model of consciousness is that consciousness came late, and required a repurposing of a former action center that could only happen in vertebrates. While I cannot prove that nothing else came up with a similar answer, I see no reason to assume that consciousness was easily achieved but that it was a hard fought battle over millenia that culminated in it. I have to admit, that I have not read Jonas work, but I don't find it's assumptions from what I have heard of it, at all attractive.

“If you follow Jonas, and he is worth following…”: There is a Jonas known as a prophet in Abrahamic religions. While a prophet may have “followers” , scientist’s findings must be falsifiable. Hans Jonas is the auothor of “The Gnostic Religion”. I don’t think him seeking a “new religion” as here above mentioned but rather reinterpreting old ones in philosophical terms. He is a reference in biological philosophy.

“Many of the topics Jonas addresses in his analysis of the phenomenon of life are to be found in Hartmann’s earlier works (…) . Both have a precursor in Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985)(…). Plessner (1975) holds that consciousness is to be understood out of the biological constitution of living beings. A living being, he explains, is a metabolizing (stoffwechselnde, that is: stuff-exchanging) entity that sets its own boundary(…) Hartmann actually refers to Plessner’s study, while Jonas mentions neither of them.” state this paper http://www.akerma.de/Akerma_Consciousness-Hartmann-Jonas.pdf

I knew it was sounding too religious to be pure philosophy. Stuff Exchanging eh?

In a certain loose manner that could be taken to be a variation of multi-level feedback. Plessner's work without the religious reinterpretation might have been good science, but once religion gets it's hands on it, I am no longer interested.

Why we consider our internal life that is supposed to be "rich" and fulfilling as part of religion and/or philosophy? Science should be able to consider all elements that make the whole rather than disregard some theories as untouchable.

Every science must have an underlying postulates.

Postulates of the science of consciousness are:

1) Everything that exists has an awareness including inanimate matter, sentient beings and intelligent creatures.

2) Consciousness is a set of mechanisms that enable:

-activation

-dynamics

-perspective

-duration

Nenad :"Everything that exists has an awareness including inanimate matter, sentient beings and intelligent creatures"

Sorry but that Science of Consciousness is not Scientific, there is no proof in science that everything that exists has an awareness, in fact it is generally agreed that inanimate objects probably do not. Just because someone calls something a "Science of Consciousness" does not mean that it actually is science. Beware the finalized terms, they are an indication of another type of thinking entirely. Science is made up of hypothesis, theory, postulates, and so on. It tends to avoid Laws, and final statements because it attempts to prove things often by soft proofs rather than hard statements of fact. For instance most scientific merit is based on statistics, these days.

What are the statistical likelihoods that inanimate matter is aware? Pretty small right?

Only a religion or philosophy would claim otherwise.

So, instead of being just Negative, lets offer an alternative

There exists, a condition called Consciousness that:

a. Is detectable in humans

b. may be shared by some subpopulation of animals

c. is subjective in nature and therefore hard to detect except by self-report

d. is associated with a wakeful state

e. has reflexive characteristics.

Graeme, are you not conflating "consiousness" with "self-consciousness"? With what Plessner wonderfully described as "eccentric positionality" - or perhaps we should spell this "excentric positionality?"

You gotta be kidding to dismiss the very thoughtful work of Hans Jonas in philosophical biology as "religious!"

There really should be no place in a scientific exchange for such silly "name calling".

On the other hand - Jonas views on the philosophy of science are very relevant to this discussion. Especially his move - in the philosophy of life - from "dualism" to a notion of "organism-in-its-environment." And his sticking to the consequences of such a move.

There is NOTHING "religious" about this. Or if you see something "religious" here, please point it out?

Otherwise..... well you are engaging in "politics", not "science" ........

True, Jonas was not familiar with the work of Plessner, Portmann, etc..... This deficiency has been pointed out in the past - he was also not familiar with the work of Marjorie Grene. Well as they say, standing on the shoulders of giants we who follow can perhaps see further... but first we have to restrain ourselves from gazing at the warts on the back of their necks.

Actually, Michael, I might just be conflating consciousness with Self-Awareness why, do you know a better thing to conflate it to?

As for Jonas, as the author of a book on the Gnostic Religion he has shown a penchant for thinking in terms of religion, I am just noting that fact, not name calling at all, I did not drop Jonas name, just said that I have no time for something that has been touched by religion.

I still remain unimpressed with the image you present, if bluster was all that was needed to impress me, I would still be a Christian. My Dad did bluster well.

Organism in it's environment, means that we understand the environment, something I am not convinced of. He may defend his work, I just have no time for it.

Please note that despite the author of this thread asking that the thread be kept in the scientific realm, the main arguments are almost always in the philosophical realm or the religious realm. Quite simply, one of the reasons why little of consensus is possible, is because there are those who insist on forcing the conversation out of the scientific realm, probably as an exercise in culture jamming. This more than any other reason is why this thread exists. How can anything lasting be built, if the people who are studying it, are constantly being jammed up by people who are more interested in pushing a philosophy, than in learning what is being attempted?

"Consciousness" does not have to be conflated with "self-consciousness."

That's one of the issues that Plessner and his notion of "excentric positionality" deals with. This is a very useful concept.

For example, consciousness can be centered in an organism (this includes you and me), as "a mode of access" -- or consciousness can be "ex-centric" -- it can be "positional" (eg - I can envision myself "over there", looking at me "over here" -- or in the future, or yesterday - these are all modes of consciousness characterized by eccentric positionality.

The development of "eccentric positionality" (certainly a gradual development, but a development nonetheless) is a way in which human consciousnessness differs from consciousnessness in other living creatures. Without that there would be no consciousness of future, nor of past, etc.

Human's can also experience consciousness that is centered -- consciousness in which there is no future, no past, etc.

“Could machines simulate all that?.....Go and build one! ...”:

Sorry to rewind the discussion at a point in Michael’s intervention in a former post.

Biological computers are of some reality: still long way to go but already NAND logical components were “created” with biological cells rather than (while comparable to) electronic components and some kind of computations (DNA?) were executed with such biological components in a Turting machine fashion. This is a great step for science and technology. Unfortunately in a misleading direction toward “biologically” intelligent and may be conscious machines since that new technology is replicating the SAME electronic logical computation with the same reference to turing machine (s). I’m not aware of experiences that would be led to create real biological microprocessors rather that biological version of electronic ones.

So yes, scientists are going and “building” one, and biologically, but inheriting same fundamental questions!

Michael:""Consciousness" does not have to be conflated with "self-consciousness." "

Ah but I said I was conflating it with self-awareness, obviously you are not self-aware enough to realize you are preaching to yourself. Or, you simply have no idea that there is a difference between consciousness and awareness.

By the way, by expressing excentric positionality, you have added a new reason to believe that the declarative memory is involved. Previous to the declarative memory positionality is not factored out to be available for integration.

It will be much easier with DMMC as the basis to implement a self-aware electronic Mind, than one that is imbued with excentric positionality, so go ahead and build one yourself!

It seems that science of consciousness is in a state similar to where physics was when the traditional Newtonian paradigm was to be supplemented by the new concepts where intuitively easy-to-grasp rules and laws of mechanics did not help much in understanding reality. So far most of the good science of consciousness has provided us with some data on neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) explored by brain-imaging methods combined with experimental psychological tasks of perception and attention (and exploring the contrasts between awake, conscious states and unconscious states like sleep or anesthesia). We have wanted to "see" NCC directly from brain-process recordings made by EEG, MEG, fMRI, PET, microelectrode recordings. I think the true NCC are hidden within the directly observable recordings of time-frequency plots of periodic brain activity or from "lit up" fMRI pictures. I believe some advance has to be reached such that from the raw recordings data one can compute abstract indices as signatures of NCC. This means that science of consciousness will become a computational science dealing with brain-imaging data and taking advance from the contrastive analysis (cg Baars, Koch, Crick, etc; see also a recent paper by Jaan Aru et al. in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Rev-s).

Aplogies: forgot to mention that some already move in this direction (Tononi and his associates for example). Although in most cases the abstract quantitative measures are too much remote from the brain-process recordings data obtained in specific experiments where unconscious and conscious brain processes in response to a specific stimulus (the precise content of which we can experimentally control therefore) are compared and contrasted.

Thank you Talis

I am looking for a direct correspondence between the MMNna signal and stages of Memory. This links activity in the prefrontal cortex, and architectonic structures of for instance the core belt, and parabelt, to achieve particular processing stages in the perceptual realm. It has long been noted that there is a wave of between 60 and 100 ms period in this area during the MMN EEG trace. Current wisdom is that this is the timing signal for Consciousness, but my theory suggests that the trace is, instead an attentional trace, that builds ala Libetts timing work towards eventual declarative memory based consciousness.

When comparing the state of science of consciousness to an era in the history of physics, perhaps a better comparison is to the years before the quantum formalism (although I admit this may be wishfull thinking on my part).

The replies to this question show that what is needed in the very near future is a Solvay-like series of conferences in which a consensus formalism can be arrived at, containing postulates that make absolutely clear what it is science means by consciousness. From such a formalism theories may be built that can compete for predictive power and empirical accuracy just like happened in quantum physics.

The point is, scientific theories should not be concerned with descriptive, or explanatory power of a theory. As long as it appears the universe behaves according to the theory and measurements, we stick with that theory. What it all means, the interpretation, is the realm of metaphysics, philosophy, perhaps religion. Quantum physics has at least 40 different intepretations and thus a low explanatory power. But a quantum theory has one predictive power and one empirical accuracy and they are extremely high, the are the best scientific theories human minds have ever produced about the world around us. We just do not have a clue why the universe behaves as it does. QM has shown that does not stand in the way of developing a science.

The same could be true for consciousness. If we succeed in moving away from religious or philosophical interpretations (because there will be even more than in QM) and use predictive power and empirical accuracy of theories constructed within a clearly defined consciousness formalism as a guide, we may see some progress in a science of consciousness.

The reason I am probably wishfully thinking consciousness science into the same stage as the fathers of quantum mechanics were in the eraly 1920s, is that we do not have a clue about such a formalism. In previous replies there is talk of brain imaging / neuron recording research which assumes the seat of consciousness must be the brain, but what about these anomalies to that hypothesis:

- There are many known cases like the one reported here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-shocks-doctors.html in which a normally functioning human (education, job, family, social skills) turns out to have just a fraction of the brain tissue compared to other normally functioning humans.

- A patient has recently been observed who has severe brain damage in all the brain areas that neuroscience has identified as important for consciousness and high-level cognition who is still able to pass the famous "mirror test":

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038413#pone-0038413-g001

I believe the right direction is consensus formalism, but there may be some work ahead of us to get there :)

If consciousness lies in the brain, it is not as suggested above dependent on the bulk of the brain but is instead supported by the bulk of the brain while being dependent on a relatively small percentage of it. As such, a "Man with a tiny brain" is no impediment to basing consciousness in the brain. On the other hand, if ALL the areas of the brain important for consciousness and high level cognition are damaged, they still might have some function, as do those with massive dementias caused by brain damage from strokes or alzheimer's disease.

Consensus, seems especially far away from us, at this point.

Currently the problem is to find predictive elements that actually help us predict the nature of consciousness. In Anesthesia the best candidate is the 40hz AEP SSR signal which can have it's latency adjusted chemically, and once it reaches a certain level of latency, consciousness seems to drop out.

It is my theory that the SSR signal is set to some extent by the ARAS system, and as a result when it becomes too latent the ARAS system is also too latent, and necessary signal timing required for consciousness to operate, is lost. Of interest is the 40hz ARAS based signal that I think is associated with the S synapse. When this drops out, the short term memory is limited to about 3 seconds in duration, and consciousness is not longer practical. If there is a brain frequency link to which parts of the brain are active at which point in time, gamma waves or Beta waves may be needed for true consciousness.

Unlike those who believe that gamma waves are signs of consciousness however, I believe that they are in fact signs of a precursor to consciousness the habituation of the cell, so that it can retain it's memory longer. Without this preliminary step, and without some explicit addressing which I assume is done at the neural group level, Memory cannot be stored for longer than about 3 seconds. It is memory that is capable of being stored for longer than that, that is the basis of consciousness.

Graeme, those are very sensible observations. However, they appear to be a "mere" attempt to find necessary conditions for consciousness in humans, but are they also sufficient? I could state that a heart pumping blood through the body is just as necessary as SSR in order to observe consciousness.

Don't we need a more abstract idea about those necessary and perhaps sufficient conditions? For instance... As you point out timescales of physiological processes in the CNS are often associated with consciousness ... But what is the role of the behavioural time scales, much slower than the Gamma waves of the brain, for the emergence of consciousness?

Studying these timescales, some argue for a reversal of roles in which the brain is actually a Blue Collar worker for the body: http://www.frontiersin.org/Fractal_Physiology/10.3389/fphys.2012.00207/full

An application of such ideas can be found in the growing field of Cognitive developmental robotics in which certain developmental milestones are thought crucial for building a human-like AI ( http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4895715&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4563672%2F5038478%2F04895715.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4895715 )

Of course this also runs the risk of triviality by claiming that a condition is that consciousness needs an environment to be conscious about.

It is not that difficult to formalise such notions (consciousness emerges in systems... necessary: with a boundary that allows dynamic interaction with its environment; necessary: in which internal and external processes on different time and spatial scales interact), but in order to make them meanigfull a consensus of the consciousness science community would be needed.

Ok, lets try this again.

Fred:" However, they appear to be a "mere" attempt to find necessary conditions for consciousness in humans, but are they also sufficient? I could state that a heart pumping blood through the body is just as necessary as SSR in order to observe consciousness. "

First of all I never said that they were necessary and sufficient, merely that they are useful in anesthesia. Considering that some have characterized consciousness as being awake, there is some question as to whether even a heartbeat is "Necessary", though obviously the brain will not be awake for long without it.

I think that there are a lot of supports needed for consciousness to exist, and that it is perhaps a mistake to look too closely at brain waves for ideas of how the brain works. Instead neuro-physiologists are working with the EEG and similar tools to attempt to time the transmission of signals through the body. AEP research for instance is giving us ideas of how long it takes for signals to pass through the circuitry of the brain. In many cases the 100 ms cycle that some scientists think is consciousness is barely time for signals to enter the brain proper. Libetts 500 ms is looking better and better to me all the time.

In DMMC it is suggested that declarative memory is an important part of consciousness, that in fact it is the feedback from the hippocampal area that is what we "Experience" this in fact may require small amounts of beta frequency waves. Since beta frequency waves are slower than gamma waves, I am not one to kick at the idea that slower frequencies are part of the issue.

What all the waves that operate within the brain do, is however, I think over interpreted by philosophical and religious leaders at the expense of science. At some point all they are is changes in potential and they do not it seems give us a complete map of the processing going on.

If the EEG and its big brother the MEG can't really give us a good idea of how the brain works, then attempts to overanalyze it won't help either. In fact that is one of the problems with consciousness studies, it has been overanalyzed to the point where the analysis has taken on a life of it's own and the real circuit, is lost in the shuffle.

Instead of spending my time overanalysing it again, I am working back from the circuits, and trying to understand how they might work. I have developed a seminal attempt at a tissue psychology on which I base my DMMC model. I can't claim to have all the ducks in a row, (It is seminal after all) but It seems to hang together better than I had hoped.

I did not mean to imply that trying to find such conditions is a useless endeavour, hence the quotation marks around merely (and to be fair I wrote: appears to be. It is my analysis and interpretation of your argument), also I can relate to your remarks on overanalyzing the significance of brain "observables".

Ok, I do not know the details of your model and would appreciate a reference/link because it sounds very interesting. Even so -and at the risk of having to discard and apologise for everything that follows below- there are still some questions that, in my mind, cannot be evaded that is, if the ultimate aim is to advance the science of consciousness.

- If a genius engineer could build your model just as you intended it, as some machine and you plug it in, do you expect it to have a consciousness right away? Or does it need to learn/develop the consciousness? If the latter is true the model has provided the necessary conditions for consciousness to emerge, but to be a complete theory of consciousness it would have to include specifics about learning and development as well.

- I can see why one would want to look at the circuitry and start building from there. But this would require ideas about a kind of statistical mechanics for neurons that somehow relate to declarative memories and experience. Or is that (memories and experience) already the level at which the model operates? This happens quite often, there is either a good model of the biology/physiology or a good model about the cognitive side of things, but what is missing is a theory about how two relate. Like statistical mechanics aims to connect the laws of mechanics that describe the movements of particles to thermodynamics.

- There is accumulating evidence that the topology af many brain networks is scale-free (degree distribution of nodes is a power law) as well as the ensemble oscillations measured in EEG, MEG and fMRI timeseries (the log-log power spectrum displays a power law). This makes it less likely, as you also pointed out, that specific frequency bands are (causally) associated to specific behaviour, because each frequency that makes up the power law is an essential part of the whole without which it would cease to be a power law. Such power laws are ubiquitous (and under experimental control) in series of repsonse times of cognitive performance. This implies that the time mean or average duration of a cognitive process or task is not a good statistic to quantify the observed series.

In other words, I have good reasons to believe that building a science of consciousness will in the end not consist of debates about wether a 100ms or 500ms process is crucially involved. I argue it should be about how all those processes and structures on different time and spatial scales coordinate to give rise to consciousness. I do not believe that is over analyzing... just what it would require based on the empirical records of several different disciplines of science.

Hope that clarifies what I was trying to get across.

I feel Hinduism can throw some light on this discussion, definitely.

We have to know his also, before arriving at the Science of Consciousnes:

"What is Soul (Atman, Atma, Supreme Primal Energy or Self in Hinduism) and What is the difference between soul and kundalini in Yoga?

Yoga means Union with Divine! Union with Divine is the goal of human life!

Yoga is spiritual science that ends all pains & miseries and unites our Soul with Super-Soul!!!

Atman means 'self' in Sanskrit. In Hinduism Atman is the individual self or the eternal soul which is identical to Brahman in essence. The short answer to your question is – There is not much difference between Soul (Atman) and Kundalini. They are just the different names or perspectives of the same principal. To be more specific, Kundalini is a major part, but not complete, of awareness or the Atman (Sanskrit) that we call as Soul (English).

Here is my effort to explain the difference between Soul (Atman) and Kundalini

What is God or Divine Consciousness?

First of all let me explain what is God or Universal awareness before we go into Soul within us.

The God is an endless (eternal) and changeless stats of bliss. This state of bliss can only be experienced and can not be perceived (It is beyond the perception of human mind and five senses and organs). This state also an intelligent state with an ability of creation.

God’s energy that is running the universe (i.e., creation, sustenance and destruction) is Chaitanya (also called as Divine, Cosmic consciousness, Absolute Purity, Universal Consciousness or Super Soul).

What is Soul?

With respect to a person, the reflection of the Universal Chaitanya is known as Chetana (this is what we refer to when we say God is within me) and it is this part of God’s energy required for the functioning of a human being (or any being for that matter). Chetana is the pure self, soul or the pure consciousness, which exists beyond senses, illuminating them all, sustaining everything, without any attachment and without any attributes.

The Chetana is of two types and, depending on its state of activity, it takes on two different names.

• Active Chetanaa – also known as prana-shakti or vital energy. The vital energy or prana-shakti sustains and gives energy to the physical body, mind, intellect and subtle ego. It is distributed through subtle channels known as nadis. These nadis are prevalent throughout the body and supply energy to the cells, nerves, arteries, lymph etc. Breathing is the physical manifestation of the active Chetanaa

• Non-active Chetanaa – which is known as the Kundalini. This Kundalini lies dormant in a person until activated. Kundalini is forced into a dormant state by the layers of Vikar (Kam, Kodh,Lobh,Moha,Ahankar) and Sanchit Karma. Tamasik person has iron like layers while Satwik person has thin layers over the Kundalani

This Chetanaa (combination of active and non-active Chetanaa) is generally called the Soul in simple terms of an average individual (in non technical terms.) Chetana is the same as, Atma, Parjna, Prana or Soul.

Chetanaa or Soul is not the one that mind can comprehend, but it is the one by which mind comprehends.

Upanishads describe it as Brahman or self. Brahman is the power which is behind the mind to think, eyes to see, ears to hear. Thus Chetana which is Self of Brahman is the eye of the eye, ear of the ear, breath of the breath, mind of the mind. It is not the one that mind can comprehend. It is the one by which the mind comprehends.

Chetana, the soul or the Atma and is the essence of everything, the force behind everything living and non living in this universe. It is intangible and it is simply impossible for the mind to perceive or comprehend the Chetana. Therefore, a normal person can never perceive the soul. Most of the people talk about soul many times but none of them can comprehend what the soul is, this is because of the reverse relationship between mind and the soul. (It is the soul by which the mind comprehends and not the vice versa)

Chetana: the supreme primal energy (soul)

Panchabhootha (ether, air, fire, water and earth) and the Panchendriya (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) hold our body together, but it is the Chetana, the supreme primal energy (soul), that makes them do their functions. Therefore, chetana is the driving energy behind the life. When chetana leaves the body we call the soul has left the body.

Chetana is the super-sensory world and the controlling force. The whole universe is one with Chetana as it gives life to all beings, assumes all forms, animates and illumines all. To realize this you must steer you mind to a plane higher than the physical plane. This is where the fourth dimension is or what we call it as the sixth sense of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP).

Our experiences are within a very small range just sufficient to sustain our life

The Panchendriyas are the tools that give us the ability to recognize the physical world around us. They, however, restrict our information to their range of sensitivity which has only a limited boundary. The sound we hear is between 20 and 2000 cycles per second and ultrasonic is far greater than this limited range. We see only one fifth of the Electromagnetic Radiation Spectrum. Only the VIBGYOR range is visible, which is - Violet Indigo Blue Green Yellow Orange Red. The infrared is felt as heat, and ultraviolet, X-rays and Gamma rays are not seen, even though their disastrous effects are felt.

So, what we see, hear, smell taste or touch is within a very small range just sufficient to sustain our life. The range beyond our sensibility is very vast. This explains why a very vast area of our brain is apparently 'silent' without any discernable function assessable by scientific parameters.

More about Kundalini

As explained above, Kundalini is the non-active chetana part of the soul (combination of Active and non-active Chetana) Kundalani energy system is the Human form of the Divine Consciousness, Cosmic consciousness, Absolute Purity or Super Soul.

Just as the heart is the principle centre (organ) of the circulatory system and the brain of the nervous system, similarly the Kundalani energy system has various centers (chakras), channels and ducts.

There are 72,000 subtle channels (nadi). Of these channels, the three main subtle channels are:

1) Sushumna nadi, that is, the central channel that extends from base of spine to the top of the head,

2) Pinglaa or the surya (sun) nadi, that is, the channel that runs to the right of the sushumna nadi, and the

3) Ida or the chandra (moon) nadi, that is, the channel that runs to the left of the sushumna nadi.

The vital energy (active chetana or prana-shakti) is transmitted in the body through the surya (sun) nadi and the chandra (moon) nadi and the other smaller nadis. The vital energy flow alternates between the surya (sun) nadi and the chandra (moon) nadi.

The kundalini is the spiritual energy that generally lies dormant, coiled at the base of the sushumna nadi for an average person. Through spiritual practice it begins to rise from the base of the spine through the sushumna nadi right till the top of the head.

When the Kundalini reaches the Sahasrar-chakra and stays there permanently we call this as enlightenment. This is where union with God occurs.

Hope this helps

Fred:"Ok, I do not know the details of your model and would appreciate a reference/link because it sounds very interesting. Even so -and at the risk of having to discard and apologise for everything that follows below- there are still some questions that, in my mind, cannot be evaded that is, if the ultimate aim is to advance the science of consciousness."

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Declarative_Memory_Model_VS_DCPM

is the latest link, if you can find one of the copies of the PDF I think aug31 is the latest

Otherwise you are stuck fighting you way through the discussion. If you want to read the mind maps you can download a copy of Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) at vue.tufts.edu. Not all of them have been integrated with the document yet.

Fred:"- If a genius engineer could build your model just as you intended it, as some machine and you plug it in, do you expect it to have a consciousness right away? Or does it need to learn/develop the consciousness? If the latter is true the model has provided the necessary conditions for consciousness to emerge, but to be a complete theory of consciousness it would have to include specifics about learning and development as well."

I think there is something to be said for either way on that question. It will likely be the engineer that makes the decision. My guess is that the system might have to be naive to start with, but that it could respond consciously from the start.

Fred:"- I can see why one would want to look at the circuitry and start building from there. But this would require ideas about a kind of statistical mechanics for neurons that somehow relate to declarative memories and experience. Or is that (memories and experience) already the level at which the model operates? This happens quite often, there is either a good model of the biology/physiology or a good model about the cognitive side of things, but what is missing is a theory about how two relate. Like statistical mechanics aims to connect the laws of mechanics that describe the movements of particles to thermodynamics."

It's too early yet for a statistical model, what I have is a model based on the Constraints that biology places on certainty. Essentially I have an intuitive grasp of when science tries to push order onto a biological system that isn't really as ordered as the scientists would like it to be.

What I am looking at, is the data that can be processed at any point in time versus the expected processing depth, to get a feel for what stages in processing need to be. An example is the problem of rehearsal of an implicit priming memory. Priming memory is by nature a context accessible type of memory and doesn't lend itself easily to place-code addressing. Delay memory on the other hand is dependent on something called rehearsal where a place-code address is required to sustain a memory longer than about 3 seconds. There has to be a transition step where one gets mapped onto the other and the characteristics of that transition are hard processing probably requiring a serial dependency that means that only one cluster of memories can be rehearsed at a time. Without full understanding of this, many scientists make the error of assuming that you can rehearse priming memory.

They are assuming away a major processing architecture that affects a significant amount of our memory architecture. But knowing the distance between context accessability and place - code addressing I can factor in the necessary complexity.

Fred:"- There is accumulating evidence that the topology af many brain networks is scale-free (degree distribution of nodes is a power law) as well as the ensemble oscillations measured in EEG, MEG and fMRI timeseries (the log-log power spectrum displays a power law). This makes it less likely, as you also pointed out, that specific frequency bands are (causally) associated to specific behaviour, because each frequency that makes up the power law is an essential part of the whole without which it would cease to be a power law. Such power laws are ubiquitous (and under experimental control) in series of repsonse times of cognitive performance. This implies that the time mean or average duration of a cognitive process or task is not a good statistic to quantify the observed series."

While that may be true, a difference of half an order of magnitude between one measure and another might indicate that there is some aspect of the signal that might correspond to an actual architectural division. It is my contention that the 100ms signal corresponds to memory stages rather than to consciousness.

Fred:"In other words, I have good reasons to believe that building a science of consciousness will in the end not consist of debates about wether a 100ms or 500ms process is crucially involved. I argue it should be about how all those processes and structures on different time and spatial scales coordinate to give rise to consciousness. I do not believe that is over analyzing... just what it would require based on the empirical records of several different disciplines of science."

I think we are as scientists getting tied up in the complexity and missing the architecture for the sheer complexity of the signal-scape.

Oh, and Ravi, I didn't find that helpful at all!

“The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness “ is said to be a first tentative seeking a kind of “consenssus” towards a science of consciousness (kind of a body of knowledge). In its introduction, the editor elegantly “apologize” not to take into account some “eastern” ways to explain consciousness including Hinduism. So yes, thanks RAVI to give an idea of the omitted part of the handbook but please not in such a detailed way that can lead to confusions : I for example had a difficulty to follow the details since I’m “religiously” educated not to consider soul as a scientific topic. Religious education or not, I do NOT consider soul as a scientific topic. Linguistic issues are other obstacles to follow local details (For example, in our local culture, “chetana” is the feminine form of chitan that is Satan as it’s known in Abrahamic religions! ).

Indeed, RG is for scientists and once I log into it, I simply forget about religions including my own one!

Frankly I am never happy when someone does a data-dump of religious dogma on RG The fact that dogma has been acreted for centuries, does not change the other fact that the old dogma does not meet the new standards of evidence for science.

I wrote earlier that the soul is an energy field that keeps the total knowledge. So as each field can be destroyed, not ethical actions. The soul is thus the guardian of the total knowledge.

When using the phrase energy field, one should always be sure to indicate what form of energy the field is made up of. For instance magnetic energy fields are used in magnetic storage devices to code information. Essentially a coded structure of magnetic domains acts to store the information so that it can be retrieved by passing a read-head across the magnetic media, and reading the changes in magnetic dipole polarity. When talking about free-form energy fields as are expected if there actually is a soul, then the problem becomes not only what form of energy is used, but also what mechanism is used to write and read from the free-form field. Since no form of known energy has been shown to store information from inside the head, outside the head, it is generally considered poor science to talk about the soul, on a science media.

Philosophy is neither science nor religion - and there is both "philosophy of science" and "philosophy of religion." Many people do not like the relentless and hardnosed criticism of their "self-evident" dogmas - be they - dare I say - sometimes in science and sometimes in religion (of course never in YOUR science or - well I won't even go there. I profoundly intend no disrespect). But epistemological and ontological investigations of self evident assumptions - about methods, presuppositions, etc can be illuminating... If uncomfortable.

Here in the West, we have a scientific corpus. Much of it does presuppose a fallacious mind/body dualism (let's not even get into positivism, etc.) On the subject of consciousness there have been remarkably helpful investigations by, say Hartmann, Portmann, Jonas, Jaspers to move this discussion along. From the non-Western vantage, there is indeed SO much of value in, say, Hindu philosophy. And once again, I will emphasis that you don't have to be a member of a particular faith to learn something - in this case even about science - from studying it's philosophy - unless of course you already have all the answers...then why waste your time. But I would refer you to Karl Jaspers comment which I will paraphrase (and no one would call Jaspers dumb or against/ignorant of science). Basically (paraphrasing): many who do science think they can ignore philosophy - but they all wind up being defeated by it in one often obscure manner or another.

One of the wonderful attributes of ResearchGate is it's affordance of a truly global pluralogue on scientific topics such as this one that giants such as Jaspers could only dream about. I welcome comments from Ravi and other colleagues - who certainly leave me with much to consider - digest - respond - challenge - agree...?? May the pluralogue continue!!

"May the pluralogue continue!!" far from ANY religion.

May the pluralogue continue!

Consciousness is "in there" and it is also "out there" and at the same time it is "nowhere."

All of this makes sense -- immediately - as a "real fact" when we grasp Hartmann's insight that unlike material substances - which exist in all four dimensions -- consciousness has NO spatial dimensions but DOES most certainly exist temporally.

So there is some association between temporal consciousness and spatio-temporal "material things" -- but this association is hard to grasp.

For Hartmann, this meant, among other things, that temporality was the fundamental dimension.

For our science of consciousness, here is a problem and an insight.