Christof Koch -- Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist
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Koch is trying to explain the possibility of consciousness (or
sentience or awareness), which he also calls phenomenal experience.
But, perhaps we need to ask why it needs explaining.  If it's a
fundamental and irreducible aspect of reality, perhaps it needs no
explanation, or, at the least, would have a different kind of
explanation.  If it's an emergent feature out of an organized
something, for example dynamic information structures in the brain
as Koch suggests, then perhaps we only need to know that it is
emergent and from what, and nothing more.  After all, to say that X
is emergent from Y is equivalent to saying that X is built up out of
Y but that we have *no* explanation for how it is constructed from
and of Y.

Koch says things like: If X is an emergent phenomenon from Y, then X
can, ultimately, be reduced to Y.  His point in saying something
like that is that there is no hidden elixir, essence, soul, etc;
there is nothing other than Y.  But, it's a slippery slope from
saying "X can be reduced to Y" to saying "X can be explained in
terms of Y".  And, one of the points of saying that it is an
*emergent* property of phenomenon is to assert that Y is *not* a
sufficient explanation of X.

Since Koch says that he wants to solve this problem before he dies,
we can surmise that, as of the time he wrote this book, he had not
solved it.  So, perhaps we will want to wait for his *next* book.

One troubling thing about Koch's discussion is the question of what
difference it makes whatever explanation we have for consciousness.
How would it change our lives, the way we interact with and treat
others, the way we treat animals of different kinds, etc?  Would we
live our lives differently?  I can't imagine that we would.

And, what if we come to the conclusion, as Koch seems to, that
consciousness is an emergent phenomena from the increasing
complexity of information.  Then would we be led to treat all things
that have and hold complex information, even computers, smart
phones, and the like, as if they are sentient?  Or, would be
distinguish between sentient beings and conscious beings?

Koch wants to suggest (1) that consciousness is associated with
integrated information represented by a coalition of neurons that
gives rise to conscious sensation and thought and awareness; and (2)
that consciousness and awareness are associated with brain
integration.  Perhaps, but so what?  What does that mean or imply?
What does a definition or description like that do for us?  Is in
any better than saying that consciousness rises somewhere in the
brain, or even in some specific region of the brain?  Perhaps it
allows us to say that humans are conscious but computers are not and
cannot be (according to that definition).  But, that restriction
seems somewhat arbitrary.

There is an interesting mix of science in this book.  Koch attempts
to use the latest brain and neuron science to help answer questions
about the status of consciousness.  There is also some biology and
biochemistry and even quantum physics.  That's all good and
informative.  But, it seems to be a little like trying to use more
and more powerful microscopes to "see" the connection between the
brain and consciousness, between the physical world and the mental.
Perhaps understanding this advanced science it good, but it is
*physical* science and it won't explain something that is not
physical.  In particular, it won't explain the connection between a
physical brain and non-physical consciousness.  The brain science
etc. will have valuable payoffs in other areas of our lives, but I'm
afraid that it is just misleading on this issue (consciousness).

Let's take Koch's suggestions that consciousness is complex,
integrated information seriously.  If it's just information, we can
save it.  We can copy it.  If it is some process that is that is
actively processing that information, then we could imagine saving
the current *state* of that process, effectively saving the
information at an instant in time.  Then, we could copy that.  That
leads us to the idea that a consciousness is a process containing
complex information states.  And, we can imagine running that
process on a variety of processors.  It's an interesting idea, but
I'm not sure we want to go there.  And, by the way, this thinking
also implies that we could "save" a consciousness and re-activate it
later.  That would be a form of non-biological cryonics.  I'm not
sure we want to go there either.

However, with respect to *explaining* consciousness, the point of
calling something an emergent phenomenon, as Koch does, is that what
emerges is *not* reducible to that from which it emerges, and that
there is something "added" that we cannot easily describe.

In case you are inclined to believe that Koch believes and is saying
that consciousness is rational, read chapter 6 on "The unconscious",
and you will find out that Koch is nowhere near that naive.  He is
aware of what a large portion of our brain processes, or what we
might even be inclined to call "mental" processes are unconscious.
He gives a number of examples that support the claim that are
behavior is controlled by unconscious processes and that these
behaviors occur before we are aware of deciding to perform them or
even without any awareness at all.  And, given this picture of the
relationship between unconscious processes and brain processes,
wouldn't we conclude that consciousness is an epiphenomenon, that
consciousness is something that happens because of brain processes
(and not the reverse), and that consciousness or the self, rather
than controlling the brain, is controlled *by* the brain.  But, a
self that is controlled by and determined by physical processes may
not be the concept of a self that will satisfy us at all.

I find myself coming to the opinion that this book has more
questions than answers.  It's also a very personal book: it's has
quite a bit about Koch's personal quest to find answers to this kind
of question.  That's OK, perhaps even good.  You might want to read
"Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist" as a
providing examples and guidance for *how to* muse on and think
through these questions about the status of our thoughts on minds
and consciousness and awareness.

It might be that in the future AI (artificial intelligence) will
give us more help with acquiring a model for mental activity, but I
have my doubts.  In the first place, much of AI programming to date
has been in the form of writing standard, deterministic programs
that seem, from the user's point of view, more intelligent, but,
because of the style in which they are implemented, do not model or
mimic human brains at all.  And, now and in the future, programs
that "learn", that do pattern matching, that possibly use some kind
of neural net implementation, and, in general, that improve their
performance based on trial, error, and feedback, operate in such
complex ways that their internal behavior may not be explanatory or
helpful to someone trying to understand how the brain does or
possibly could function.  This is somewhat analogous to my claim
that if mental activity and consciousness is an emergent phenomenon
from the activity of neurons in the brain or from dynamic
information structures in the brain, then emergence makes it opaque
in the sense that we cannot understand it in terms of neurons and
information.  Likewise, if learning and intelligence in an AI
program is acquired through matching, sorting, and feedback based on
massive amounts of trials, then that intelligence may also be
emergent and, as such, will be opaque in the sense that we cannot
understand its behavior in any single case in terms of some simple
set of instructions or information.

You might, if you cared, wonder whether I am at a loss or even
depressed about our lack of understanding of consciousness and it's
relationship to the brain.  Well, not so much.  And, that's because
I'm a bit of a Spinozist myself, and I would be even more so, I
suspect, if I understood Spinoza better.  I view the mental and the
physical as simply two distinct aspects of the same underlying
reality.  Likewise, the brain and consciousness (or awareness) are
just two different ways of viewing the same reality.  Spinoza would
say that they are two attributes of the same thing.  For me, that
solves these problems, even though it doesn't explain much about
them.  But, then for me, in spite of all the wordiness of this
review (I'm a recovering philosophy major, after all), the goal is
to get past these issues and on to something more useful.  I believe
that John Locke's advise is wise on this: we should not attempt to
make inferences or claims about that which is beyond or outside of
our experience, and since we have no experience about the connection
between brain and consciousness, we should not try to make claims
about it or to explain it.

03/20/2015

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