Philosophers says the brain is an anticipation machine. I miss this statement in the present discussions of consciousness on RG. Is there any interrelation of consciousness, Qualia and anticipation?
Dear Wilfried,
In Visual Awereness,, Jan Koenderink
http://www.gestaltrevision.be/pdfs/koenderink/Awareness.pdf
On page 14, Koenderink describes the spark of enlightment model of consciousness proposed by Erwin Schrodinger
In short Schrodinger"biological consciousness model connects consciousness to learning and connect learning to the detection of the failure of anticipation.
Dear Wilfried,
In Visual Awereness,, Jan Koenderink
http://www.gestaltrevision.be/pdfs/koenderink/Awareness.pdf
On page 14, Koenderink describes the spark of enlightment model of consciousness proposed by Erwin Schrodinger
In short Schrodinger"biological consciousness model connects consciousness to learning and connect learning to the detection of the failure of anticipation.
The theory of "predictive coding" pretty much tries to explain consciousness and cognitive processes in terms of anticipation and sensory feedback. The book "The Predictive Mind" by Jakob Howhy is a good introduction to this. For a more advanced and technical account try to look into some of the papers by Karl Friston.
Anticipation often runs on model-based prediction. Daniel Dubois has contrasted this weak form of anticipation ("weak" because it is only as good as the predictive model) with the possibility of strong anticipation. He is not very specific about what strong anticipation might be, but he draws on the recent work in anticipatory synchronization where you find anticipations in systems that are not even independently alive, and they 'anticipate' purely in virtue of how they are embedded in a context. Embedding in a fractal architecture, Dubois suggests, can tune rather short-range and short-sighted behaviors by the organism in the context into the longer-range structure. Weak anticipation definitely relies on internal models, and so interpretation and so qualia. Strong anticipation may permit modeling and analogy, but these models and analogies are not interpretative and so qualia-free.
In http://arxiv.org/pdf/1310.8539v1.pdf
Temporal Naturalism , in section 7.1 Lee Smolin posits a daring hypothesis that is related to his principle of precedence at the orgin of all the laws of nature, he posits the hypothesis that a qualia is associated with an event without precedence. It would locate qualia to the core of the evolution of all aspect of reality from the origin of the big bang to the most recent human discoveries.
The biggest! So we are living in past, in present and in anticipation of future. So have we the continuity of consciousness!
I believe that anticipation is central to cognition!
Within the context of the Fractal Catalytic Model the brain is structured in real time by the senses such that certain areas in the brain are 'primed' to release energy whereas other areas are inhibited to do so. These patterned of primed vs inhibited areas form a structure or set of boundary conditions that may (or may not) allow for soliton solutions. The Fractal Catalytic Model argues that cognition correlates with these soliton solutions (or robust wave formations)ion of these non-linear dynamic solutions (solitons) is to dynamically 'anticipate' where energy should be located in the excitable media of the brain and act as self reinforcing catalytic agents releasing energy as they go. So, cognition preempts stimulus!
This is why when we watch someone walk down the street and they unexpected trip, it is often the case that we, as observers, often feel suddenly disoriented. It seems that anticipation is so central to the cognitive process that when our (subconscious?) expectations are not realized it throws cognition into chaos for a moment. It also stresses the important role that our own bodies play in the cognition of 'other' bodies.
In this respect it is interesting to note that autistics do not experience these moments of disorientation . This provides additional evidence that autistics do not 'see' the human form in the same way as 'normal' people and so do not have the same same intuitive expectations that would enable them to predict what should happen next. Perhaps this also explains why some severe autistics do not like being touched or held by other people.
Data Minds, Brains & Catalysis: A theory of cognition grounded in...
Thanks for your suggestions. It's very good stuff and is a good accordance to my own opinion.
Damian,
Phenomenal consciousness or qualia are self-evident phenomenal reality. Nothing to doubt about. If I burn my hand, it hurts , it is a plain phenomenal reality. When I open my eyes, I have a visual awareness that has nothing to doubt about. Even when I experience an hallucination, I experience it and there is no doubt that I experience something. Explaining its nature, its place in the world, understanding it, is difficult and among all the explanations that are offered there are not much that stand scrutiny and we should have a lot of doubts about them.
Oh, Louis, come now, be kind: I was making a point to agree with you where we can agree!
I don't think phenomenal consciousness is to be doubted. Equating those with qualia is, in my experience, nonstandard, and perhaps this equivalence is where your views are non-typical, as you had noted elsewhere. Qualia as separable packages of semantic content, now that's what I doubt--particularly when they become the sole property of the same organisms writing the science. If you don't take that to be what qualia means, then we may have no disagreement at all.
Damian
I know you were doing an effort. I was exploring where the territory of agreement was extending.
Damian,
OK, we agree that phenomenal consciousness is not to be doubted.
But you do not equate qualia with phenomenal consciousness. What is the difference?
That depends, Louis. Do you recognize qualia as the "separable packages of semantic content" that I had described--that is, packages of syntax-free semantic content? Or am I construing "qualia" to mean something different from what you think. What you cited Smolin, that was a sort of qualia that does not even require a conscious mind to observe/interpret/experience anything phenomenal.
Wilfried,
thank you for asking a question that attracts interesting and perhaps converging responses. Or at least I see them converging.
Being educated as a physiologist, I have always considered the concept of efferent copy from the sensori-motor experiments as an indication that what seems as subjective present (now I do or decide) is necessarily thick because it relies on feed forward and feedback loops combining past, future and perhaps present (a concept to define). This refers of course to the circular dimension of causality in biological systems. It does also develops on the "sablier" (hourglass?) metaphor used by Marc Jeannerod to account for the intermittent aspect of consciousness during action (in "Le cerveau volontaire", 2009).
As to the role of anticipation in consciousness, it opens a Pandora box. But, at least, it casts doubts on experiments tackling free will based on the idea that any mental phenomenon - such as a "decision" - could be instantaneous (say at the milisecond level). And if subjective time is thick in this sense, it is impossible to argue on precedence, such as in Libet type experiments.
I also like the question. Makes me think on 'priming' in congnitive psychology, and in experience too. If you go play table tennis and take some rest first, think of nothing else than how to hit this little ball, it certainly feels like you are more aware of what is happening and play a better game too.
This is THE taboo question in science since Emil Dubois-Reymond, discoverer of the nerve pulse’s, “Ignorabimus" (we shall never know) answer of 1870.
And the most important one, of course.
See: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/emil-du-bois-reymond
then, Joris, it means anticipation is not optimal as it sets expectancies to check?
Phenomenal consciousness presents a world to its subject. So, to use the phrase Damian has introduced, separable packages of semantic content are not presented separately from the presentation of objects and events. I see blue, e.g., when I see a guy wearing a blue shirt walking down the street. I need a "little theory" of the world, of how, in general, things go together, as a condition for phenomenal consciousness. So I very much like Christopher's comment on this topic. My theory of the world includes the concept of walking, which includes the concept of tripping. But the concept does not include the expectation of tripping. When the man trips, I am surprised, concerned, amused, whatever. Our concepts of objects and events are, of course, not merely spatial in nature but temporal as well. Deploying them as part of the process of phenomenal consciousness (which is, presumably by definition, always in the present) includes a conceptual connection with the past and the future. Objects and events endure. For any object present to my consciousness I have expectations regarding its future disposition. This expectation is based on my concept of the object and the role it plays in my theory of how the world works. Thus I anticipate.
Priming is the anticipation of a stimulus due to experience with previous stimuli of the same sort. It is a characteristic of implicit memory. The question in my mind is the question of whether there is a stronger form of anticipation as well.
Evidence suggests that there might be an area in the orbital prefrontal cortex that models events, and predicts outcomes as well. If this is the case it would probably be involved in human consciousness.
There is another theory of interest, that suggests that the right brain acts as a modelling center while the left brain deals with details. If all three conditions exist, then anticipation could have three different mechanisms involved in it.
Thank you, Ian, for accepting my phrase into your discourse and noting where what it entails is unacceptable for an entire description of "phenomenal consciousness." What I've been trying to suggest to certain members following this thread is that the qualia, that separable package of semantic content (thank you for using blue instead of red, too! :-) ) is only worth anything when it is placed within a syntactic, computation-like formalism expressing the set of expected entailments.
My own affliction is an incapacity to believe that the latter syntactic relationships unfold free of semantics, and so I doubt the former (the separable semantic packages) without really doubting, as Louis had earlier suspected, the phenomenal consciousness.
Damian,
I do not understand what you mean by : ""the qualia, that separable package of semantic content is only worth anything when it is placed within a syntactic, computation-like formalism expressing the set of expected entailments.""
Well, to borrow from Ian, "blueness" would be a great example of qualia and the expectation of seeing a guy in a blue shirt would be the syntactic relationship with the qualia dropped in. See, if I understand Ian correctly (please, correct me, Ian, if I wander from your point), then blueness is the optional part that is not entailed by the syntactic relationship of "expecting a t-shirt with some color." We might drop the qualia of "redness" (to a communal groan at seeing redness come up again) or "greenness" (for novelty) in and the experience would amount to "expecting to see a guy in a green t-shirt" or a "expecting to see a guy in a red t-shirt."
Does that help?
Blueness by itself does not have experiental value without couching in some syntactic framework. It is somewhat analogous to asking participants what they will see if you actually cover their visual field with entirely homogeneous blue pigment. They will report "nothing." You need structure to situate purely separable semantics--and only when situated do the qualia mean anything that avails itself to what might be "the conscious mind."
Damian,
Our phenomenal experience is what it is because it is structured by the way we are built and enculturated to interact. Our sensory-motor system is an interacting (action) loop which contains a large number of hierarchically organized action mode. Each of these mode of action is modulated by the actual sensory-motor containt but also by the expectation built-in in the mode and where we are at in the acomplishment of the current action. Each of the action mode is a kind of expected story and the current state with regard to the expected or desired future outcome is central to the stucturation of our experience. Most of what is happening is out of our consciousness. The focus of attention , what we are more conscious of is the aspect of the action that is getting out of our control by the purely automated mode. These aspects have to be monitored and so extra cognitive resource, specialized action modes, can be put to the task.
Louis,
I agree with everything you say. I have told you what I think the word "qualia" entails and I have admitted that I don't believe in what I understand most people to mean by them. You have still not been up front in identifying your own definition of qualia. I am ready to understand that it may be non-standard, and that's why I'm enjoying our chat and looking forward to future comments. So, I enjoy your last comment and pump my fist heartily in agreement, but in so far as we are both interested in understanding the disconnect between our views better, your contribution of things we agree on is deflecting the discourse.
Please at the very least tell me what you think qualia are and where I've gone wrong in my discussion. I'm sure Ian would enjoy it as well in case he needs correcting for so kindly borrowing my maybe-wrong phrasing.
I'd like to keep things relevant to the thread by noting that if you have qualia in there, it is often because you also have qualia-less computation driving an inference machine. And lest anyone misunderstand, that is not to say that qualia are natural consequences of computation--it is to say that many people buying into qualia also buy into the idea that conscious minds have computational models that are mostly dedicated to the control of anticipatory actions.
Louis, Damian,
If I may attempt to mediate (which of course is nearly guaranteed to get me in trouble with each of you). I believe that Louis is uncomfortable with the idea of a stark contrast between (what has been called mere) animal consciousness and consciousness deploying what Damian is referring to as a syntactic framework or syntactic structures. If I'm right, Damian and I would regard only the latter as phenomenal consciousness. We might even go so far as to ask, what sort of consciousness, properly so-called, could it be that doesn't have these structures (or as I would say that doesn't present objects as objects). (And certainly here anticipation seems writ into the "syntax".)
However, I think Louis would prefer to leave open the idea of a "purely" animal consciousness, perhaps populated by qualia and little else. (He may be something like a traditional empiricist in this regard.) This way his has an explanation not only of animal behavior, but of the contribution of our own subconscious to our behavior and thought. (And he may have an explanation of subconscious anticipatory behavior.) Furthermore, it looks to him, at least in principle, as though the developmental story of any organism that makes the transition from having mere animal consciousness to having phenomenal consciousness will be less problematic to tell. The story may seem more plausible if it is a story about gradual emergence rather than a story about a sudden "winking on" of a syntactic capacity replete with the presentation of a view on the world.
My own concern is that cashing out the "at least in principle" aspect of this position has been shown to be something of a pipedream numerous times through the course of the history of philosophy, not least in the case of Hume's associationism. No matter how much one attempts to "complex up" qualia, one never arrives at the presentation of an object (as an object). The biology of the transition aside, phenomenal consciousness seems to have content requirements the acquisition of which cannot be explained by appeal to some process of "reflecting upon" qualia.
Ian! I love it. Let's write the book, man.
Thank you kindly for being so articulate in your mediation. I will read this several times to get the flavor into my mouth and hopefully sprinkle such clarity on my keyboard next time I find myself composing.
The new medical nobelists uncovered the neural substrate of spatio-temporal anticipation. It is a major breakthrough.
I think cats do it, when they want to catch a bird, they sit and think and plan... than act with great agility. Climbers do it too, and other sportsmen. So yes, anticipation plays a role in good quality of action, and therefore, of awareness, and of consciousness in a psychological sense.
Human phenomenal consciousness is primarily a mammalian consciousness and iis structures around actions. So what I have described applies to all mammals and us. Nothing in what I describe has anything to do with language or thinking or any specific human phenomenal consciousness. I think that the origin of humanity unique consciousness stems that we have a nervous system that can extend our interacting interface and the range of action with these multiple bodies. I can develop why we have this unique capacity and how it create a first form of singing dancing language etc but it is way out of the topic of the discussion. Anticipation is built-in these schema of action; it is true for all higher animal including ourself. The objects in the phenomenal consciousness are built-in in the detection structure of the senses and these basic detection structure are the same for all mammals. Again the difference with human is that we can extend it at will. A tree for the visual system is a structure in image and a tree detection structure in the visual system which can be extended with experience. When we use the word in language and hear it then we self-enact this tree detection schemata and the whole sentence is used to self-enact a pre-existing action schema , the same one used to control action. I can elaborate on that but again it lead way outside the topic.
Thanks Damian for your compliments. Perhaps we should get started on the book. :)
Louis,
I share most of your propositions, but for reasons linked to my research objects, I wonder why you do not mention the phylogeny of episodic memory as an important contribution to consciousness and extended representations of "possible future events". And perhaps to acknowledge the O'Keefe recent Nobel price in what his contribution goes beyond the so-called GPS in the head. The hippocampus as a cognitive map includes a chapter speculating on possible contribution of spatial rules to language...
and thank you for the clarity of your comments
I blush but I touched on some of the above subjects in my recent (co-authored) book "Chaotic Harmony" with Springer.
Louis,
I agree with your contribution.
When climbing stairs, the anticipation is very clear. If we do not look on the stage, it may happen that you stumble, because you still have expected a stage where no more is.
This is only a simple example. I think anticipation is universal in all our actions and even in our self image. If the anticipated situation match with the sensed situation we have Qualia of a realistic scene. if not we are surprised (but not for long) because our anticipation fails. To act we need necessarily a mental map (O'Keefe, Nobel price).
And, Francoise, language needs also such a map. We often argue out of our position in relation to persons and objects even if we do not see them.
There is a good reason for anticipation.
Essentially sensory data is different on a momentary basis. By anticipating what comes next, filters can be put in place to limit the novelty of similar states. The higher the dimensionality of the filter, the longer it goes between changes. Thus at low dimensional levels changes happen instantaneously, but at higher dimensional levels they vary over longer periods of time. By anticipating the higher dimensional changes, and triggering off of novel changes that aren't predictable only, the brain can conserve its ability to deal with novelty for those situations that are not predictable.
In essence it (the brain) predicts to limit it's cost of processing. It can easily be seen that humans have more anticipatory strength than other animals. A dog for instance must constantly recheck it's anticipations.
Grame,
I agree with all you said above. That is exactly what I wrote in "Anticipation as a Principle of Process Data Reduction in Autonomous Systems" on RG page.
Thanks for your kind confirmation.
Wilfried,
I agree with your position on anticipation.
For me, the question concerning the hippocampus involves episodic memory organization, real, symbolic and abstract spatial representations) This suggests a key concept that the spatial categorization is unique: there only one "here" and now, at least for animals I guess. But this is another story.
Francoise,
Anticipation operates at different temporal scales. The visual system has temporal schema operating from 200 ms up to one second. Our primate ancestors have developed episodic schema which extend the temporal scale of the schema to period of time measured in minutes (Origins of Modern Mind, Merlin Donald). But such episodic memory is an implicit one, only human have explicit memory or the capacity to self-enact a narrative of autobiographical events. This is allowed by the evolution of a full capacity of self-enactment of the whole mammallian tool box of action schemata which gave rise to mimesis and its full expression in the first human collective singing dancing. Merlin Donald has put forwards part of this story but he did not touch how mimesis works. I do not know any details about O'Keefein"s GPS in the head but I do not see this as key to the human transition. I see this research as the discovery of another sensory map, an important one but just another one. The key for the human transition is the use of the mammalian nervous system at a compositional level for the creation of new action mode. The human nervous system is like an author using the structure of the action mode created in biological evolution and use it directly as an author to create new characters. We are a kind of theatrical animal.
Wilfried,
Learning kata by slowly doing the movement again and again, playing on a musical instrument slowly a piece again and again while doing that we automated our nervous system for the given task, we extend our interacting schemata and later on we do what we have learned at full speed effortlessly and so in full anticipation. Suppose now that you like a song and listen to it again and again then at some point you gradually cease to like it, I think that it is because you learn it so much that you anticipate it too much that you cease to pay attention and cease to be in the moment and all your emotion goes away because not necessary to anticipate.
@Louis,
I really like what you said about anticipation happening at many time scales. I suppose I lose my taste for the model-based (i.e., "weak" according to Daniel Dubois) theories of anticipation exactly on this point, though. Build whatever model you like, and you simply cannot find a compelling way to computationalize the many different scales, some of which the organism may not even have discovered (...or may not even have reached out and created!) yet.
Damian,
As everybody know organism evolved and each new layer of evolution is sitting on top of all other ones. For higher organisms, there are mechanisms operating in all time scales and dealing with phenomena in all time scales. In the limited domain of visual perception, there is a image analysis geometrical framework called the space-scale-time that was put forward in the 1980"s by Jan Koenderink. It is based on a few basic axioms: structure at all spatial scale (no privilege one), structure at all temporal scale (no privilege one), structure in all orientation (no privilege one) and form that you get a Gaussian diffusion space. From that I built my own crease network approach of image analysis based on a schemata image structure detection tree mirroring the hiearchy of image structure tree. What is amazing is that hiearchy is history by the sequence of symmetry breaking point that generate the images and so you get image structure detection as an ontogenic process that recapitulate the ontogeny of the process creating these surface structuere out there. This approach can be generalize to all images, all maps of whatever information. Going back to image, a human body image structure correspond to a hiearchy of structure which are those of the development of the surface of the human body. The diffusion of the image of the human body is a kind of reverse evolution of these surface. The diffusion of the image surface obey the same equation as the heat diffusion equation. This is the optimal path (in reverse) for the creation of this surface, the inverse optimum thermodinamical path. The diffusion also work in the spatial domain. If you take an image with a camera with different shutter speed (different spatial scale) , at large shutter speed, moving object will be blurry but the image contains the trajectory of their movement including the projection in the future of these trajectory. Comic streep of moving objects oftern show these trajectories. The low spatio-temporal scale of the images are processes to detect these trajectories as crease structures providing against anticipation.
Regards
Louis,
"We are a kind of theatrical animal."
This is a very good idea!
There is a gap between compassion mediated by mirror neurons and acting as a different person (theater). In this case the actor has a model of the represented character.
Louis,
I am not sure in your opinion about the catchy song. It is only tedious and boring to listen such a song any more.
Louis,
I love what you wrote there. I especially find resonance with my own ideas in what you say about "hierarchy being history." At this point, I think we push the envelope of what is meant by a model, but what you may be articulating for (worthy) engineering purposes as a "model" is what I've been referring to as the cascade dynamics (equally hierarchical) that are coordinating events within/outside of/across the organism/environment "boundary" at many different scales even when behaviors we might call "prediction" fail or are impossible.
Wilfried,
Why is the catchy song at first interesting? Part of the answer is that when we listen to new music or not too familiar one we enter a self-enact body dancing narrative which generate an emotional narrative constantly trying to anticipate its continuation and as long as our own anticipation does not exactly match the unfolding of the external musical narrative, we pay attention and keep trying and get pleasure in our success. But when we succeed, we loose interest because we got it. Really interesting music have multiple layers of interpretation and correspond to important emotional narrative of humanity and they become classic of world music.
Your other question is much more challenging. When we observe other humans with our eyes and listen to them we tries to understand them using our own sensory-motor system including our emotional system. If you look at another person moving, in order to really interpret the visual information , you have to self-enact a motor movement that match the one observe so you can perceive what is not even in the visual field. If facial expression are done, you self-enact them and feel what the other people feel because these self-enact facial narrative generate the same emotion for you that for that person you are observing. So when we think we are empathic, what we really do is put the other person into ourself and act it and feel it and assume that it is what the other person feel. Actor use the same empathy system. So we are able to self-enact our body as representation of other person. Biological evolution in mammals has lead to an internal know thyself that is used to interpret the world.
From the fact the mimesis and empathy is the basis of the human type of mind we can to understand the origin of the religious prescription against internal group killing. Our theory of mind naturally embody the other and it is almost impossible killing another human being when we are in an empathic state. Our theory of mind deal with inanimate object into a manipulative instrumetal way and deal with higher living being in a gradual sympathy with them. The soldier is a human and is empathic and so have an built-in difficulty to kill. Killing other human beings will most likely destroy the capacity to be empathic because of the trauma such capacity generate after the fact. Soldier training often proceeds by trying to objectify the ennemy, make it simple, animal like and finally object like and so the soldier is order to destroy that object. Some cultures have managed to create warrior who do not get destroy psychologically. They have ritual of respect for the ennemy. They learned to love the ennemy and they do not kill like destroying object. Native north-american of the north-west do not even cut a tree without a respect ceremony when their life and the life of the tree are related in mutual respect.
Damian,
It sound interesting. Do you have a paper that describe this cascade dynamic model?
Louis,
I agree with your in all parts. I like your insight and love your answers.
Wilfried,
Thank you very much. I will let some space for other to express now.
Regards,
Louis,
Thank you! The cascade dynamics model is better described by Daniel Schertzer and Shaun Lovejoy both of whom are on RG and post their papers generously. I link below to the articles where I have sought to apply their ideas to anticipation.
Best wishes,
Damian
Article Strong anticipation: Multifractal cascade dynamics modulate ...
Article Strong anticipation: Sensitivity to long-range correlations ...
Hi Wilfried,
We discuss exactly this, the origin of consciousness in the anticipatory nature of motor control in human development. It begins in utero, at the beginning of the second trimester, and the anticipatory nature of consciousness develops in reach from that point forward. Paper attached.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
Article Sensorimotor intentionality: The origins of intentionality i...
I would add that anticipation is a key property of any living system. Like cellular memory, as defined as the trace left by an adaptation effort (see LTP principle), it allows to better adaptation in "similar" environmental (inner and external) conditions. Somehow, it is a way to remain "almost the same", having thus anticipated the change. And, as proposed by Nikola, to maintain simulated continuity in the self. Again, for me it is a property of the "thick time" of living objects.
The fact that a major property of living systems contributes to reflexive consciousness is another consequence of the often mentioned fractal organization.
again, thank you Wilfried for having triggered these comments... and to joke about anticipation, the question is now to what extent You did anticipate them!
Perfect response, Françoise. I agree completely.
Can you recommend key papers to the notion of homeostasis as a psychobiological principle driving evolution and development of anticipation?
Wilfried.
I too congratulate you on tapping such a rich vein for discussion. I'm wondering, though, whether you are satisfied with the extent to which your original concern for qualia, as you understand them, and their role in anticipation and consciousness in general has been drawn into the discussion.
just for fun... but not only:
If the question had been that consciousness is anticipation because it allows to the reactivation of past and possibly future events as a private experience?
I admit that Wilfried might not agree, but perhaps this discrepancy might redirect the debate and orient towards more specific aspects of the original question
Indeed Francoise. One question might be: In those conscious systems which enjoy private experience, if we grant such a thing, does the private experience itself play an essential, or ineliminable, role in the explanation of how those systems anticipate? Or is it merely "epiphenomenal", a causally inefficacious feature of the functioning of the biological substrate?
Jonathan,
I suggest you visit K. Friston site in RG. There are (for me) some very abstract and quantitative approaches. There are also more "applied" attempts to develop an economy-homeostatic principle to mental functions such as in the case of schizophreny, where impaired anticipation mechanisms are involved (does not mean there is no anticipation at all, but most likely a less cognitive one). Or a hypothesis that free energy minimization mediates exploration and curiosity (Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, DOI 10.3389).
also Moshe Bar has been working on anticipation for the last 10 years, but is perhaps less inclined in considering physiological homeostasis, it seems.
As a fan of spatial then episodic memory, I have always considered that it had a function of underlying possible anticipation and thus served, even in rats, as a link between here-now and then. In human language, a coherence principle provides continuity and tends to filter contradictions. This relates to the fact that an "archaic" plane geometry thought reduces the risk of contradiction in two rules: here is not over there! and there are no two separate "here and now".
I second Francoise's comments about the fundamental aspect of anticipation to living systems--or I third them, since Ian got there before me (I'm beginning to enjoy Ian's anticipation of my own ideas in his comments).
I do worry that principles of evolution might push us too far towards a parallel thread now ongoing on RG regarding the applicability of specifically teleological causation, and that may interest Jonathan. I'm particularly curious to hear how far down the biological totem pole Wilfried is willing to accept qualia in the efficacy/mechanism of anticipation: I believe that this input from Wilfried would shed light on his definition of "qualia."
Ned Block has just posted a publication on RG that I think is relevant to this discussion. To me its main value for this discussion is highlighting a distinction between what it may mean for a brain and its visual system to "anticipate", as distinct from what it may mean for a mind to (consciously) anticipate. Unfortunately he uses the notion of 'seeing-as' in a way I do not recognize as orthodox. Nor do I see how the notion has any application to the adaptive phenomena his discusses. Nonetheless, there may be a basis for making sense of anticipation at the level of qualia, albeit a kind of anticipation that is nonconceptual and subconscious, and so distinct from anticipation associated with conscious experience, etc.
Article Seeing-As in the Light of Vision Science
Hi Ian,
is it reasonable to consider separate conscious intention (i.e., for me, a verbally declared anticipation) from all its underlying non conscious ground preparation? I mean in real life... It would suffer the same weakness as decision processes considered by Kahneman: biases being intrinsic dimensions of individual decision. Then the question is whether conscious anticipation can emerge from a think tank, in which unconscious components can be identified and declared...
I am sorry but I feel always uncomfortable with the idea of a purely conscious process... even more so when it is conscious anticipation
Ian,
Any behavioral habit has stabilized on the basis of that the habit is grounded is a context that regularly repeat itself and so making the habit successfull. We do many things at the same time and do not pay attention to most of what we do and so are not conscious of most of what we do automatically. When drvng my car towards my work, I do it mostly subconsciously and look at the trees or tries to solve all kind of problems. But if suddently a car on the left lane tries to move on my lane without seeing me then bang I am there here and now trying to control my car. A few second before, I did not pay attention and now I am fully attending to the driving. So attention and consciousness seems to be triggered by the failure of the success of a automated mode of action that is important and we then cease to function in the driving zombie mode and start driving with a fully focus mode of attention.
On Block"s paper , one comment:
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." -Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception: The New Version, p.5.
or, more naïvely expressed, the subject's model of a hypothetical continuity with only some changes expected from its actions, forms the basis of a mismatch detection...
So one can suggest that there is a default assumption that "my actual representation of me in context" is likely to remain the same, depending on the conditions. Hence the need to be curious and to integrate relevant changes (but not all, remember change blindness, perhaps with a priority to the changes requiring a motor reaction). The subject has thus a conservative mind, a strategy requiring a "chronically curious mind", one could say.
Francoise,
Do you believe in qualia? If you do, do you say they are or are not part of the subject's model of hypothetical continuity?
I'd also be curious to know what the contributors here make of Damian's analysis of strong anticipation. One feature his research suggests, much as the research Block reports on in his paper does, is that anticipation of this kind is better explained without recourse to the idea of an "internal model" (or whatever it is we would like to call the cognitive basis upon which explanations of anticipation, and failures of anticipation, often depend).
Ian,
thank you for addressing a direct and for me difficult question,
first I was struck by its formulation ... "whether I believe in qualia". But it is after all the only possible way to consider qualia, considering a pure definition of their properties such as uniqueness, impossibility to share or declare. Hence I have often the intuition that this definition (as distorted by Dennett, I know) was just claiming that you can only believe in such a mental property. Maybe it is the reason why, being not a philosopher at all (though with some fascination for several philosophers, among them Bergson), I simply do not feel the need to use this word. To be honest, I never did til now. Nevertheless, when I try to consider the complexity of the network activated during an emotional adaptation, I am not far from this and use the metaphor of " a paysage intérieur", some sort of a global ensemble, just impossible to assess from its detail.
You could think I am a cold materialist... but I would disagree unless you call me a dynamic materialist. Reason why I call myself psychophysiologist. To refer to the historical development of physiology as "anatomie en mouvement". Because you need a dynamic perspective to account for system physiology (think only of the cardiovascular system where consequences become in turn causal...). Indeed, time is a difficult concept, but I came onto it when I realized that "now" is thick, as I wrote somewhere above. And is thickened by this prolonged echo of the past constituting our sense of continuity. And now, if this a qualia, why not?
... I though I would be short, but the question was a difficult one, and english not my thinking language. English is OK to collect data and design new experiments, but not for playing with ideas that in turn play with me .
On what (philosophers think) qualia are (as distinct from phenomenal consciousness).
http://youtu.be/evQsOFQju08?list=UU6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA
Ian,
I think that this video do as much desinformation than it informs. The colours that we perceive for example, the video is saying that they are not there in the world but all in our head. This is desinformation. Then the video bring us to doubt of what I consider red and the other consider red are the same in the respective head. This is very fallacious way of thinking. For communication purpose the assumption that we naturally do that what we call the same are the same in each of us does not bring us in any problem. What is the benefit that doubting that could bring someone? I think that there are a lot of unbeneficial effect in doubting this. O'reagan dispell of lot of this kind of confusion http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/. Then the video goes on the question of the possibility of experiencing something out of a verbal description without the capacity to actually experiencing it in a normal way. O'reagan also does some debunking on that.
It's not disinformation Louis, it's just philosophy. Although the fact that apes do not ask questions is new to me. The idea that some perfect language exists, or could exist that could make someone who has never seen colour see colour is not part of the main philosophy of qualia, it was added by the raccounter, methinks he was enjoying himself too much explaining qualia, and didn't want to stop at the standard argument.
Graeme,
You are right. I think what frustrate me is the philosophical doubting method which very often remove our natural tendency to thrust our senses and prematurally replace it with a ungrounded philosophical discourse. Children should instead do art and sports and oobserve nature and develop their senses first before they can face these kind of questions. I really do not see that productive for kids.
It's not a beginning story, although it is presented as such, but one that depends on existing prejudices to make it's points.
There is an important book by Robert Rosen "On Anticipatory Systems," recently re-edited.
The aim of posting the qualia video was to provide a plain presentation of what philosophers understand qualia to be. (It is meant for "popular" consumption, which to the non-american eye may seem, understandably, indistinguishable from something meant for consumption by children.) Qualia are that aspect of mental content that cannot be expressed, or in any way given to another person or mind. They are (thought to be) in principle private. Many respectable philosophers don't believe in qualia. But they understand the idea of qualia. And they understand that were there qualia, qualia should be distinguished from phenomenal consciousness in general, most of the contents of which are expressible. Surely Graeme Smith is right. Belief in qualia depends upon existing prejudices. So doing without those prejudices may allow us to jettison the very idea of qualia. In that case, the discussion of anticipation should drop the idea and proceed without it. Certainly many philosophers have done just this in their own work. I guess anyone insisting that qualia exist, or have a role to play in anticipation, will have their work cut out for them on this thread.
Ian,
I thought is was a science for kids program because the same type of fast speech overly enthusiastic that is used for teenager science program. I generally appreciate popular presentation of science that tries to summarize in a simple ways some of the issues that are debated or studied. In that sense, this video does a good job of presenting how some philosophers frame the qualia problem. They are simply not my kind of philosophy but all philosophy have something good to offer. When I hear thing that there are no colour in the world, it really get on my nerves. I spent quite a number of years studying perception and colour perception to know that is quite extreme as a statement. When we see a ripe tomatoe or a ripe apples because of the colour we perceived it is abusing to call this perception something that is entirely in the mind. When I used a volmeter and determine the difference of potential between two locations of an electrical circuit , I do measure something in the world. We do not say, this difference of potential is totally inside the voltmeter, build it differently and then you will get another reading.
Louis,
As I said, qualia are not necessary to my way of studying brain and behaviour functions. I do not say that they do not exist. I share a position (yours?) that perception emerges from a relation built from the interaction between a "sensitive being" and its environment. For a relation to exist, we need two "partners", in your case photons with a "certain" wavelength, a receptive tissue. To express a consistent response to this colour, the "sensitive being" must have experience based memory and a behavioural repertoire, crude or sophisticate. To call this red, the subject needs a socially animated learning process.
To go up to qualia, I suppose we aim at describing "what it does to" the sensitive being, and my understanding is limited by behavioural responses, their quality and intensity as well as behavioural "biases".
Beyond this, I simply do not know whether qualia "exist" because I do not use them.
What role has qualia?
It is interesting that humans and animals have sensors to analyse objects. There are colors, smells, tastes and other sensations. Some philosophers (and physicists) insists that colors do not exist. Naturally there is also no smell of roses or apples or any thing else (in this sense) but only some ester molecules in the air. This naive physical viewpoint leads to nothing.
Biological subjects extract specific information out of the physical data. A couple of wavelength is summarized to one color impression, some hundreds of different molecules becomes a flavor and so on. This sensory processing is a brilliant trick for data reduction.
Where is this color or flavor? It is in the mind of the creature to evaluate objects. This subjective result of perception allows behavioral answers.
Françoise,
Science is more confortable with relations where the measuring and the measured are very simple, so simple that from one we get the other. Quantum physics had to give up this idea. In the case of perceived colours of surfaces It is a complex relationship where it is not easy to clearly specify what is it in the world that our nervous system respond to. But the simple fact that we do have the ability to reliably pick the ripe fruit based on this establish it as a kind of measurement, but not a simple one or one that can easily be comprethended.
Ian,
''Qualia are that aspect of mental content that cannot be expressed, or in any way given to another person or mind. They are (thought to be) in principle private. ''
Is it an accepted definition?
All that is expressed in language are private aspect of our experience but aspect that we can share through language communication. If I say to you ''there are 5 apples on my table'', by reading that you can self-enact an experience that is similar to mine up to a certain level of details. What is most precise in that communication is the number 5. It is a subjective experience that reliably be communicated, this is the essence of mathematics. That there are some aspects of our experience difficult to share through language is true. Fictions and poetry allows to share a lot of type of experiences. Language were not created to share irrelevant experience for social life. For the Iniuit, snow colour is very relevant to their way of life and so they can express much more colour of snow in their language in a way we can't in our language. So some qualia for an English speaker become objective description of snow for the Inuits. The number 1000 was is a qualia for someone not knowing to count. For him it become infinite. I had a friend that was colour blind and after a while I realized that he did not distinguished many colours and that he was not confident in his choice of clothe colour. He detected himself his problem and his friends detected. It could not remain private. I cannot even imagine something that I am aware and which I would find no way to make other aware. I can because other have more or less the same body than me and we can communicate by all kind of means. What we communicate is never the experience but the means by which somebody else could self-enact the same experience. Doubting demolishes the very implicit assumption that allow communication , that we are the same. But we are not exactly the same. All my four children could see the colour of numbers and musical notes and I can't.
Louis,
You hit on a crucial point. Our experiences are, we presume, to a great degree qualitatively the same between persons. However, each person has his own numerically distinct experience. (To share this numerically distinct experience would constitute a phenomenon of self-disintegration or something like that. For you to share my numerically distinct experiences would be for you to BE, at least in part, me.)
To address your Inuit example, the qualia proponent will say that every color sensation is or contains a quale, and that this is true no matter how finely or crudely articulated one's color categories are. The sensation of pain, of course, is the standard case of last resort for the qualia proponent. Few believe in powers of empathy so acute that someone could literally feel another's pain. Perhaps we might image someone who claims to be an actual empath. "I feel his pain," he says. We respond: No. You have your own pain; he has his. What you are claiming is that your pain is qualitatively identical to his. (And what we would ask is, how do you know that? If the answer boils down to: well my pain receptors are firing in a like manner, the qualia proponent simply says THAT is not the quale, i.e.that is not the pain.)
Ian,
One need a Ph.D. to be able to hear that much of nonsense and stay calm. The pain explanation was particularly painfull to hear. So maybe when torturer torture people , maybe they don't feel anything. We have no real proof of that. Maybe animals do not feel pain! Maybe in a couple of days if I come down I can a simple argument to stop all this nonsense.
Louis, Damian, Francoise, et alia: First, thanks for a fascinating discussion and valuable references. Three comments FYI (and apologies if I'm badly out of date or missing things -- took 4 years off philosophy to go to vet school and forgot a lot in order to make room for feline idiosyncrasies, still catching back up):
Re qualia: From a Merleau-Pontian standpoint, what's misguided about the usual Anglo-American notion of qualia is the assumption that perception occurs in individual bits (analogous, say, to pixels) which are then combined. Merleau-Ponty's alternative: The most basic perception always involves some aspect of comparison/contrast. (When we think of the individual bits, we've derived them by abstracting them from the basic perception.) The comparison/contrast may be in the form of a Gestalt figure against a background, or may be much simpler. After all, even for aquatic animals with proto-eyes that only sense the presence of light, there is an implied absence of light at other times. M-P's Gestalt approach involves something like Damian's semantic structure, but it doesn't rely on language, so is applicable to non-humans too, which Louis might like. The different kinds of consciousness would be more differences of degree, not of kind. Francoise: Are you perhaps influenced by Merleau-Ponty?
Second comment, a recommendation: From the humanities (music) perspective, David Huron's 2007 book Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation fleshes out much of the phenomenology of anticipation in useful ways. It still might be useful to scientists even now, and I suspect it didn't get much coverage outside the music world, sadly.
Third comment: From what I understand, there's no strong evidence for any qualitative difference between humans and other reasonably intelligent vertebrates, despite the continued search for one. One fascinating recent candidate was the human ability to coordinate movement with others, e.g. in dance; I think someone on this thread referred to that. But some other species can coordinate movements, including some parrots. And even dogs, who can't match rhythm themselves, seem to notice and enjoy it when humans keep time with the dogs' rhythms, e.g. playing music to match their breathing.
A few years ago, a major candidate for that elusive differentiating human characteristic was a sense of self over time that, in theory, only humans could achieve, by unifying the elemental moments of consciousness into a personal narrative. But the new discoveries about anticipation's importance for consciousness should put that old approach to rest. Even chickens anticipate things, so presumably have a sense of experience over time.
Am I making any blunders here, or are people just giving every possible chance of success to the idea of human uniqueness? Will trade cat medical advice for neuroscience advice and references!
Barbara, Humans are convinced of our uniqueness.
However this doesn't mean that the difference isn't subtle, and well hidden. We are waiting with baited breath for someone to prove why we are so unique. I think that most of the problem is that we keep making assumptions about what other animals don't have, and getting rebuffed.
It isn't any one thing that makes humans different, it is a combination of things that work together to make the difference, some of which are quite subtle. For instance, we now have evidence that apes that can talk with hand gestures don't ask questions. It simply does not occur to them to ask. This has been taken to mean that they do not have a theory of mind, but some experiments seem to fly in the face of this assumption. If they do have a theory of mind, it is not the same as that of humans obviously. But we do not have the mechanism to test this hypothesis since we don't know how it is different.
Barbara,
The Gestaltists and MP have done a lot for demonstrating that there is not a separation of labor between cognition and perception , that perception is intrinsically cognitive, that perception is always about type of things and that the senses is not dum and in needed of intelligence to make senses. In fact, intelligence not lead by the intelligence of the senses (Arnheim) get lost in the vap of discourses.
Thank you for the David Huron’reference. I am trying to developed a model of humans based on a new perspective about what a body is. In that perspective, a body is what is integrated into the control or participation of a nervous system. So body can be extended and can be coupled and merged. In that conception, the evolution of mammalian type of body up to the primate lead to a new type of control of the body which allow their polymorphic extension and merging into all forms of bodies. Central to this polymorphic capacity is the conscious self-enactment capacity and I located the history of its evolution from the primate into the communal singing-dancing activity. Here our musically untalented primate ancestors have gain access to the mammalian self-enactment control room providing them with polymorphic bodies. I think Huron’s finding will provide me with some of the ingredient to build this model.
This is where I see the nature of what is to be human: to be a polymorphic body, to be polymorph, to be all kind of animals in the pleotora of worlds it can then crafted with all these bodies. A violonist is a human that extend his body to include a violont in the sense of being able to play the violont. Whe this violonist plays with an orchestra , the violonists and all other instrumentists participate in the orchestra body, they merge their bodies to form an orchestra and doing something very similar to what create humanity.
Thanks for the replies! Louis, if you are not already familiar with Michael Thaut, you might find him useful, too. His 2005 Rhythm, Music, and the Brain explores his use of music to help Parkinson's patients recover more initiative in motility. It sounds as though you are working with Steven Mithen and Ellen Dissanayake. I was thrilled to find these while writing an article (due out in January) on the perception of time and anticipation in music. (My punchline is that aesthetic experiences of apparent timelessness ironically reveal how much consciousness relies on memory, anticipation, motility-based "purposiveness," and their interactions through time.)
I like that your approach would subvert further the old atomistic notion of personal identity, since objects and even organisms could be functioning as parts of more than one nervous system simultaneously. Not only does this seem plausible in systems terms, but, amusingly, it's how musicians subjectively experience playing or singing together. And I do think that humans can get some limited sense of a non-human's experience by synchronizing breathing and pulse rates, though this sense isn't quantifiable or always reproducible. I'm assuming this occurs via subconscious inferences as to what would make one's own biological oscillations take those patterns, though perhaps there is a different connection. In any case, it may explain how pleasantly hypnotic we find purring cats. Am I understanding this right?
Again, thanks for your time, you all.
Barbaras,
I do not have a researcher empoyment and my research activity is the hobby of a polymorph. I did not read their book but read a review. I came to this idea as a convergence of multiple thread of thoughts I am following. I do not have the time to review all the litterature I know could be usefull so I have to be very selective and focus on researcher who I feel came closer to the central issues. The identidy of a polymorh is mostly a cultural one and there is no possible clear-cut separation between the collective and the personal. We are real actor (theatrical animal). What is the identity of an actor? It cannot be described in term of roles. Most mammals can function within a herd or at least temporarily during the maturation of the youngs. Sea mammals , whales in particular are always in group and they have group songs which change over time. Some hit song in the atlantic become hit songs in the pacific and vice versa. Our perception of animal movement from film get tremendously improved if the appropriate music accompany the music. Walth Disney found that out while trying to create an animation movie on whales. Parrot can dance on rock and roll music without extensive training. So all mammal have limited body merging but this get tremendously improve in the case of a polymorph given that this polymorph capacity is primarily based on self-enactment. So a bit like the first polymorphic cell , the Eukaryotic could merge together in organisms through an ontogenic process where specialized from eukaryotic stem cell , human societies could forms from polymorph.
Thank you, Louis, for the Koenderink link with Schrödingers model.
http://www.phenomenologyandmind.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/S.-Ferrarello.pdf
See Protension in phenomenologie / Husserl
http://www.iep.utm.edu/phenom/
the research aubout Motivations in Ideas II // Husserl
I agree with Schrodinger model mentioned by Louis Brassard. In the 60's Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman introduced the concept of "Quantum Vacuum" regarding the tiniest state of matter experienced by an investigator in meditation using the following equation. A = F (A) where A is the tiniest state of matter (or energy) having no frequency of vibration and F is the function (or unchanging operator)
While searching for a cause-effect relationship the operator, A cannot be further differentiated, reaching a steadfast state (subjective experience) having vast potential. According to ancient Vedanta Philosophy of India this is a state of enlightenment when a person reaches the ultimate Truth or pure Consciousness; the beginning point of creations and meeting point after their dissolution. I believe, from this state of becoming, Schrodinger experienced the Quantum field looking at various possibilities as well as the improbabilities.
In couple of my articles, on mind-body bioenergetics and thought-processing by the brain, I have recently used the above-mentioned concepts.
Sorry, I noticed an error in the first line of second paragraph,and the sentence should read as "While searching for a cause-effect relationship the matter or energy, A cannot be further differentiated; reaching a steadfast --------------" where the "operator" should read as "matter or energy".
The unchanging operator, F, had this subjective experience.
Happy New Year
to all who have contributed their valuable posts and to all who will do this soon.
Wilfried,
I would say that consciousness is growth (learning). There could be no learning without anticipation because learning is necessary only when anticipation fails. Repeat an experience over and over again, an experience which stay always the same and you will gradually be less and less conscious of what you are doing. It will take an effort to notice it. We talk and are totally not conscious of how we move our tongue. If you focus and try to notice it , it will impede your speech. But if you have difficulty with a new word then your attention will be require to learn how to pronounce it but after a while this consciousness will fade away as it will not be required.
Hanno,
I like your answer but it is a very short. My post would provoke a contradiction but I hoped it would be a little longer than my question.
Dear Wilfried,
I´m waiting for arguments wich I could accept as physicist. Please help me!
Without anticipitation of future and memory for past, we have no the continuity of our consciousness and our self.
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