The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness

The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness About the Front Cover The front cover illustrates the image detected by your r...

Author: Steven W. Smith

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The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness

About the Front Cover The front cover illustrates the image detected by your right eye as you stand a few feet from the Mona Lisa. The gray filaments are regions where you are totally blind, a result of blood vessels in the retina blocking the detection of light. Likewise, the large rectangular region is where the optic nerve connects with the retina, where humans are also sightless. This is called the blind spot, and is really quite large, about the size of an apple at arm’s length. As long as your eye remains fixed on the center of the painting, these gray regions are totally blocked from your gaze; you perceive nothing about the image in these areas. When you first looked at the cover, you probably wondered what the gray spider-like pattern represented. It probably struck you as quite odd, like something out of a bad science fiction movie. It was totally unfamiliar and foreign to your conscious experience. But how could this possibly be? This pattern has been superimposed on your visual field since you first opened your eyes as an infant. Even as you read this paragraph the pattern is present. It should be more familiar to you than anything you have ever seen. How is it possible that our conscious experience knows nothing of these blind areas?

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by Steven W. Smith

California Technical Publishing San Diego, California

The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness by Steven W. Smith copyright © 2001 by California Technical Publishing All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission of the publisher.

California Technical Publishing P.O. Box 502407 San Diego, CA 92150-2407 To contact the author or publisher through the internet, please visit our website at: www.InnerLightTheory.com ISBN: 0-9660176-1-7 Printed in the United States of America

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Table of Contents Section I. Defining the Problem 1. The Ancient Riddle of Consciousness . . . . . . . . 1 The problem at hand 1 Organization of this book 4 The strangeness of modern science 5 2. Reduction and Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Introduction 7 The method of reduction 7 The transmitted hourglass 12 Fuzziness of the endpoint 14 Consistent and chaotic realities 16 Emergence 17 Where does consciousness fit in? 21 3. The Third-Person View of the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Introduction 23 A brief tour of the brain 23 Damage to the association areas 34 The evidence 39 Brain activity and Information 41 4. The First-Person View of the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Introduction 45 How we discuss consciousness 45 Qualia 47 Mental unity 50 Semantic thought 50 Present tense 52 Free-will 53 One or more Elements-of-reality 56

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5. Defining the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Introduction 57 Simple ignorance versus paradox 57 The one and only problem 62 Previous attempts at solving the problem 67 Quantum Mechanics 72 Moving forward 79

Section II. The Information-Limited Subreality 6. Information-Limited Subrealities . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 What this chapter is about, and not about 81 The observer 81 Descartes’ evil genius 83 The brain in the vat 87 The Information-Limited Subreality 91 Episode 125: The Inner Light 94 The Principle of Relative Reduction 96 7. The Subreality Machine in the Brain . . . . . . . . . . 99 A most remarkable claim 99 The lesson from dreams 99 The realness of dreams 102 The basic premise of the Inner Light Theory 105 What we see and don’t see 106 Evidence from the three realities 112 8. The Function of the Subreality Machine . . . . . . 115 Introduction 115 Why is the sun yellow? 116 The sensory analysis problem 122 Filtering versus matching 126 The subreality machine in operation 132 The capacity of our brains 136 Why do we dream? 138

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Section III. Consciousness as a Limitation 9. Consciousness as a Limitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Introduction to the third section 141 Where we are 141 From the building to the bricks 145 What’s so special about a special child? 148 The fully-aware being 150 How the traditional view is mistaken 151 Seeing the forest between the trees 154 The Tale of Big Head Bill 155 10. The Tale of Big Head Bill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 The alien drug 157 Decisions, thoughts, and emotions 158 Bulging eyes and big head 160 The cup of tea 160 Intelligence and memories 162 My senses 163 Full-awareness 164 11. Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 The disturbing part 165 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Be sure to visit our web site:

www.InnerLightTheory.com T References and suggested reading T Links to other consciousness sites T Contacting the author or publisher T Information about the author T Comments and complaints! T Ordering information

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Preface

My Search to Understand Consciousness The problem of consciousness has gnawed at me for twenty-five years. It started when I was an undergraduate in college, leading me to study three diverse areas, Physics, Psychology, and Philosophy (the three “P”s, as I called them). While each of these gave me a different perspective on the human mind, they did not provide an acceptable answer to the fundamental question: what is this strange thing we call consciousness, and how is related to modern science? This dilemma fell to the back of my mind when I entered my doctoral program in Electrical Engineering. For the next two decades I put this mystery on hold, turning my attention to such things as medical imaging and digital signal processing. But as I became increasingly comfortable with computers and the methods of science, I became less comfortable with the nature of the mind. It seemed that the more I learned, the more intractable the problem of consciousness became. Of course, I wasn’t alone in this distress; scientists and philosophers have long pondered this mystery without relief. In the 1990s, the study of the brain rapidly expanded, primarily due to the arrival of three new medical imaging techniques, fMRI, PET and MEG. These devices are capable of monitoring the activity of the living brain, greatly expanding the ability of science to study this complex organ. Many began to feel that the time was right to finally solve the age-old mystery

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of consciousness. Dozens of books on the topic were published in the popular press. Some described the latest scientific work on the operation of the brain. Others presented philosophical arguments claiming that science alone cannot account for consciousness. Still others speculated on a “magic ingredient” in consciousness, such as Quantum Mechanics, emergent properties, and pseudoscientific explanations. But these efforts fell short of the goal; the problem of consciousness remained and became even more elusive than before. It was in this environment that I renewed my study of consciousness in 1999. Fittingly, many of the ideas in this book came together over the New Year’s Day holiday, the dawn of a new millennium. I am convinced that the Inner Light Theory is the solution to the problem of consciousness. The ideas presented in this book help me understand the world. They might help you. They might even be true. Science versus Religion I am frequently asked how the Inner Light Theory relates to the human soul. The answer is, I don’t know; I don’t have the vaguest idea. This is a book of science, and science knows nothing of the metaphysical concepts taught by religion. The Inner Light Theory is to the human soul, as evolution is to the biblical story of Genesis. If evolution offends you, then the ideas in this book will probably offend you as well. If evolution is compatible with your religious views, then a scientific theory of consciousness will probably also be acceptable. In the end, the compatibility of science and religion is an issue that must be decided by religion, not science. And I certainly can’t tell you what your religious beliefs are. Acknowledgments A special thanks to the reviewers who provided comments and suggestions on this book, Dan Reinecke, Eric Duff, Andy

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Berg, Jenny Smith, Cory Sinclair, and other reviewers who wish to remain anonymous. Their generous donation of time and skill has made this a better work. Of course, none of the opinions expressed in this book necessarily reflect those of the reviewers. Now the book is in the hands of the final reviewer, you the reader. Please take the time to give me your comments, be they ideas, complements or complaints. All it takes is a two minute e-mail from the book’s web site, www.InnerLightTheory.com. Thanks for your time; I hope you enjoy the ideas, and find them as enlightening and satisfying as I have. Steve Smith October, 2001

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The Ancient Riddle of Consciousness

The Problem at Hand Science has been very successful at explaining the world around us. Only a few hundred years ago our daily lives were full of mysteries: Where do the stars reside? How does life continue from generation to generation? What makes water different from fire? One by one these questions and countless others have been answered in the most explicit detail. The mysteries of our everyday existence are virtually gone. Science is now concerned with problems that are extremely obscure and far beyond our normal experience, such things as the curvature of space-time and the composition of subatomic particles. For instance, suppose that Galileo Galilei, the great 17th century scientist, had written down a list of his 100 top questions about the world. It is likely that all 100 questions could be answered today, at least to Galileo’s ability to understand. Well, almost. There is one question in our everyday lives that has seemed defiant of a satisfactory explanation, being as much a mystery at the beginning of this new millennium as it was in the day of Galileo. It is a question that has been argued by philosophers and scientists since the dawn of man. And that question is this: What is consciousness? We have all had the experience of waking from a deep dreamless sleep. In the first few seconds we realize that something new has been brought into the universe, something that did not exist the moment before. A conscious mind has come into being. It is our thoughts and feelings. It is what allows us to perceive the world around us, and move our bodies to interact in the world. It is the embodiment of our free-will, the ability 1

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to think and act in the way that we choose. It is who we are at the most personal and private level, the thing we identify as ourselves. This is how we see consciousness from the inside, the way we perceive our own minds by introspection. The problem is, science can see none of these things. Neurosurgeons have opened the skulls of living humans for decades, and in every case they have found a brain, not thoughts, feelings, free-will, or anything of the like. While we do not fully understand how the brain operates, it is now abundantly clear that it is a computational machine, one that is capable of producing the behaviors we see in humans. From the view of science, it is the brain that allows us to recognize our grandmother’s face, cry out in pain, and kiss a young child’s hand. As seen from the outside, consciousness and the mind are nothing more than the machine-like activity of the neural tissues within our skulls. But how can this be? How is it possible that the mind appears as one kind of thing from the inside, but a totally different kind of thing from the outside? This discrepancy is known in philosophy as the mind-body problem. It is a classic paradox, two points of view that should agree, couldn’t disagree more. And when scientists and philosophers have tried to force them together in some way, the results are unsatisfying, and often in conflict with established knowledge. Something seems to be missing, a fact, an explanation, a property, or something else that provides understanding and unification. This dilemma is presented to us each second of our waking lives. We see the redness of a rose, smell its fragrance, and appreciate its beauty. We contemplate the meaning of life, and freely decide how to think and act. How can these things be nothing but electrochemical activity in nerve cells? As put by the American Philosopher Patricia Churchland,1 “How do you get awareness out of meat?” 1. The Computational Brain, Patricia S. Churchland, 1994, MIT press, 560 pages. Neuroscience view of the brain.

Chapter 1: The Ancient Riddle of Consciousness

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Surprisingly, not all scientists agree that there is a problem here. For much of the 20th century the topic of consciousness was virtually banned from the scientific arena, and much of this sentiment can still be seen today. Young college professors are counseled to find other specializations, medical textbooks have little or no mention of the topic, and government funds are not granted for research. Since consciousness is something that can only be subjectively observed, many feel it has no place in the objective world of science. Nevertheless, the scientific attitude toward consciousness has changed significantly in the last two decades. The primary reason is that new brain scanners have been developed that can observe the neural activity in the living human brain. These go by such technical names as: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and Magneto-Encephalography (MEG). Human subjects are placed in these machines and brought into specific conscious states. For instance, a subject might be asked to perform mathematical calculations, recognize faces, listen to a symphony, or some other task. The brain scanner then identifies the regions of the brain that are active, the precise neural tissues associated with the mental state of the subject. This is immensely important work, and will eventually lead to a full and detailed understanding of the human brain. It will also tell us something very interesting about the mind-body problem, what brain researchers call the neural correlates of consciousness. This is the brain activity that is necessary and sufficient for a person to be conscious. For instance, imagine being strapped into a brain scanner one day in the distance future. After a few moments, the operator will tell you what you are thinking and feeling. He may say that you are deciding what to have for lunch, enduring the pain of a toothache, or feeling proud of your children. And he will be right; he will know the contents of your consciousness by looking at the neural patterns in your brain. Although a little frightening,

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there is every reason to believe that science may one day have this type of capability. However, does knowing everything about the structure and function of the brain also mean that we know everything about consciousness? Many claim that the answer is no; there is still something missing. How can the blueness of blue or the terrible feeling of pain be reduced to mere neural activity? How can human free-will or the meaning of our thoughts be created by something so dissimilar as brain tissue? In short, it is a common belief that “mind stuff” is different from “brain stuff,” and one cannot be used to explain the other. It is said that consciousness must entail something above and beyond the operation of the brain. But if these assertions are true, we are left with an even bigger mystery, why is there not the slightest scientific evidence that this “mind stuff” really exists? Organization of this Book The goal of this book is extremely ambitious, nothing less than providing a scientific explanation of consciousness, a solution to the mind-body problem. This intention is not to be taken lightly, or without due reverence for the work that has gone before. The journey to grasp the mind has been long and rocky, enduring centuries with little or no progress. First and foremost, this is a book of science, adhering to the rigorous methodology and skepticism that have brought us our current knowledge of the universe. As such, it invites and welcomes the most critical scrutiny. Even more, it demands it. This book is organized into three sections. In the first, Defining the Problem, we examine the foundations of the consciousness paradox, examining in detail why the mind-body problem is such a mystery. Our task is to precisely identify the problem, and just as important, outline what would count as a solution. The findings of this section are absolutely critical to the overall theory. Properly defining the question takes us more than halfway to the answer.

Chapter 1: The Ancient Riddle of Consciousness

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The second section is entitled The Information-Limited Subreality. This refers to a strange situation that could exist in our universe, where an observer is trapped within an artificial world. We explore this idea by using the theory’s namesake, The Inner Light, an episode from the popular television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. This leads us to a key property of how we observe and understand reality, what we will name the Principle of Relative Reduction. It is within this principle that we find the solution to the mind-body problem, as we defined it in section one. But there are consequences to this solution, requiring us to change the way we view reality and ourselves. The scientific evidence for these startling assertions is examined, from the origin and function of the human brain, to the strange world of our dreams. In the third section, Consciousness as a Limitation, we focus on how the mind is connected to the physical universe. Why does consciousness seem so disconnected from the material things around us? Could a computer ever become conscious? Is there any way to bridge the gap between the human mind and the physical world? In short, we are searching for the place that consciousness holds in the universe, and where the human mind sits in relation. The Strangeness of Modern Science Many readers will find the ideas in this book bizarre, something more akin to science fiction than science. But science itself has become increasingly strange during the last one hundred years. In the early part of the 20th century, Albert Einstein and his colleagues developed two new fields of physics, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. The first of these, Quantum Mechanics, deals with the very small, such as the physical laws that hold atoms together. In contrast, General Relativity deals with the very large, such as the structure of the entire universe. Neither of these can be understood from the events we experience in our daily lives. In

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fact, they grossly violate our everyday beliefs of how things should behave. For instance, Quantum Mechanics tells us that waves can collapse into particles, while General Relativity describes space and time being distorted by gravity. These laws of nature are more than unexpected; they defy commonsense. And there is no question that they are true; they have been verified in the finest detail. We will look at a few of these strange results in later sections of this book. The point is, something is not false just because we find it bizarre or in disagreement with our everyday experience. Indeed, the Inner Light Theory is tame compared to other areas of modern science that are accepted as fact. In the end, science has little use for our desires and expectations; the only thing that matters is the evidence and where it leads. Science is about keeping the method and procedures pure, and then accepting whatever consequences result. What we end up believing is not important; our justification for believing it is everything. This is the way of science. And on this note we begin the development of the Inner Light Theory, starting with the foundation and working upward. Brick by brick we will construct the answer to the ancient question: What is consciousness?

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Reduction and Emergence

Introduction The first step in understanding consciousness is to examine how we understand other things in the world. Reduction and emergence are the two main principles that we use to learn about the reality around us. Reduction is a top-down approach, breaking our complicated existence into more basic elements. Emergence is much the opposite, seeking to comprehend how complex entities arise from the interaction of fundamental components. The Method of Reduction The human mind inherently tries to understand complex things by breaking them into simpler components. This is a basic strategy we have all used since childhood; it is a fundamental part of the way we think. Analyzing problems in this way is called reduction, since it reduces something that is complex into something that is more elementary. It is the single most important method used by both scientists and everyday people to understand the world around them. Let's look closer at how reduction works and the kind of knowledge that it leads to. As an example, suppose that we encounter a grandfather clock for the first time and want to understand it in the greatest possible detail. Figure 2-1 illustrates the method we will use. We start by dismantling the clock piece-by-piece, taking great care to record how the individual components fit together. This disassembly leaves us with a few hundred parts spread out on our work table, plus a 7

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notebook full of sketches and descriptions that indicate how the parts can be assembled into the original object. At this point we ask the question: "What is a grandfather clock?" Our answer is simply: "A grandfather clock is the several hundred parts resting on the table in front of us, assembled in the way indicated by the notes we have taken." In other words, we have reduced the original object to two things: (1) a set of smaller objects, and (2) the assembly instructions. Being good scientists, we want to continue this analysis to its fullest conclusion. This means we need to consider each of the individual parts one-by-one, trying to reduce each to even more basic components. For instance, we might find that the face of the clock is a steel plate with a white background and black numbers. Accordingly, we stop thinking of the clock face as a single thing. Rather, we begin to view it as a sheet of metal and two kinds of paint, assembled in a specific way that we write down in our notebook. As we continue this process we eventually encounter objects that are composed of a single material, for instance, the glass window that the clock face is viewed through. We can no longer reduce this type of object by simple mechanical disassembly; the chemistry of the materials must be examined. For this particular example, a chemist may tell us that the glass is composed of atoms of silicon and oxygen, combined in a certain molecular and physical way. To fully reduce the object we must specify the type and exact location of each and every atom that forms the object. In addition, we also need to specify the state of each of these atoms, such as how they are bonded to neighboring atoms to form molecules, as well as similar properties that chemists and physicists know about. While this level of reduction is possible in principle, it is far beyond our present technology to actually carry it out. First, atoms are extremely small, making them very difficult to observe and measure. Second, the sheer number of atoms is enormous, far too large even for the most powerful computers

Chapter 2: Reduction and Emergence

FIGURE 2-1 Objects to atoms. The method of reduction breaks objects into elementary components through a systematic series of steps. In this example, a grandfather clock is reduced to its component parts; each of the parts is reduced to its component molecules; and each of the molecules is reduced to its component atoms.

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of today. For instance, there are about a million million million atoms in a single spec of dust. Will this level of reduction ever be feasible? Maybe, but certainly not in the next few decades; maybe not even in the next few centuries. However, the general idea is not as far fetched as you might think. As shown in Fig. 2-2, the detection and manipulation of individual atoms is something that can be done today.

FIGURE 2-2 Manipulation of individual atoms. In the early 1990s, scientists at IBM demonstrated that the scanning tunneling microscope could be used to move atoms into various formations, in addition to creating images of them. This sequence shows individual iron atoms, resting on a sheet of copper, being moved into a circle 5000 times smaller than a human hair. [“Confinement of electrons to quantum corrals on a metal surface,” M.F. Crommie et al., Science 262, pp218-220, 1993].


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The important concept is that the principle of reduction allows us to understanding the world by breaking it into smaller and smaller components. But where does this end? At what point can reduction no longer be carried out? A simple answer can be given to these questions. The method of reduction ends when the things being considered can no longer be broken apart; that is, when we have reached things that are irreducible. Identifying these irreducible things is one of the primary goals of science. If you open an introductory textbook on physics you will find many irreducible things discussed. This includes particles such as electrons, protons, and neutrons, the components that form atoms. It also includes forces, such as magnetism and gravity. Even stranger, we must include the dimensions that we exist in, namely, distance and time. Since these things cannot be analyzed by reduction, there is an inherent barrier to knowing exactly what they are. We can easily measure their characteristics and how they relate to each other, but why they have these characteristics and behaviors is much more mysterious. For instance, it is well known in science that an electron moving through a magnetic field will travel in a curved path. The amount of curvature can be calculated from the details of the problem, such as the speed of the electron and the strength of the magnetic field. However, this tells us nothing of what an electron is, or what a magnetic field is, or why the interaction takes place. In short, we can accumulate knowledge about how these irreducible things behave, but not about what they are. Day-after-day we exist in something we call reality. It is what we perceive with our five senses: vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It is what we measure with our instruments, such as thermometers, rulers and clocks. Reality is as familiar as anything can be. But what is it? The method of reduction is an attempt to answer this question by separating reality into two categories: (1) those things that are irreducible, which we will call the Elements-of-reality, and (2) the assembly instructions,

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which are Information. Figure 2-3 illustrates this extremely important concept. These two categories have very different characteristics. The Elements-of-reality are tangible; they can be measured with our instruments; they seem to have a real existence independent of our paying attention to them. And of course, they are irreducible, by definition. On the other hand, the assembly instructions are a type of Information. Information exists only when stored in some kind of physical medium, such as writing in a notebook, electronic signals in a computer, chemical changes in a brain, or the energy fluctuations in a radio wave. It can also be transferred from one storage medium to another without changing its content in the slightest. However, Information is lost forever when its storage is interrupted for even the shortest instant of time. One way to capture these elusive characteristics is to define Information as the thing that can be passed over a communications channel. Let's look at an example to see how this works. The Transmitted Hourglass Suppose in the future we make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization by radio signal. We find that the aliens are rather like us, having bodies that operate on similar chemistry and biology, and minds that think much the way we do. This is fortunate, because it allows us to create a common language for exchanging ideas. We go about this in much the same way that a child learns to speak. At first we transmit pictures of common objects, along with the nouns we use to describe them. Next, we transmit pictures of actions, along with the associated verbs. This leads to the generation of sentences, a dictionary, and the ability to express abstract concepts. Our communication with the aliens may not be perfect, but language never is, even between humans. The point is, there is no reason to think that our different backgrounds would stop us from communicating altogether.


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FIGURE 2-3 The endpoint of reduction. The method of reduction systematically breaks reality into two categories, the Elements-of-reality, which are irreducible, and Information, consisting of the assembly instructions.

Since the aliens exist in the same universe as we do, they will have the same Elements-of-reality, thereby providing common ground to build upon. After a few initial exchanges, the aliens send a message indicating they want to build one of our historical artifacts, so that they can better appreciate our technology and culture. The device they select is an hourglass, and they ask us how they should go about the fabrication. Our response is the most complete description possible, starting with how the individual electrons, protons, and neutrons are combined to form the required atoms. Next, we describe the position of each and every atom that is needed to form the hourglass, and how they are interconnected with each other. The size of the transmitted description is enormous, and we can't imagine that it is lacking in any way. We also provide instructions for calibrating the device, since we know that the alien planet will probably not have the same gravitational field as the earth. This tells the aliens how to change the distance across the neck of the hourglass so that the sand will drain in the correct amount of time.

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Some time later we receive a reply from the aliens thanking us for our help. They inform us that they were able to build an hourglass using electrons, protons, and neutrons from their home world, assembled according to the instructions we provided. They also tell us that the calibration procedure worked just as we indicated it would. The aliens' success is no surprise to us since they had access to everything they needed: Elements-of-reality, which they had locally, plus the assembly instructions we transmitted over the communications channel. Is there anything that the aliens could not reconstruct by using this procedure? According to the method of reduction, no. Taken to an extreme, the aliens could even create a duplicate of the entire earth with all its inhabitants. All they would need is enough raw materials and the assembly instructions. Now suppose that a few years later we are contacted by another extraterrestrial being, one that is unlike anything we know. This alien does not even reside within our universe, but in another dimension. The radio signal has somehow managed to cross the boundary between the two realms. For the sake of argument, we will assume that we can establish a common language for communicating with this being. Based on our previous success, we send the Information about the hourglass to the strange creature, and suggest that he build one to better understand our species and civilization. Much to our surprise, the alien replies: "Thanks for the Information and I will try, but there are a few things that I will need. Please send electrons, protons, neutrons, distance, time, and gravitational field." To our astonishment, we realize that we are communicating with a being that does not have the same Elements-of-reality that we do. The alien has the instructions for constructing the hourglass, but none of the raw materials. Fuzziness of the Endpoint While the method of reduction is a powerful tool for understanding the world around us, it does have limitations. A primary problem is that our knowledge of the Elements-of-


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reality is quite fuzzy and not well defined. This is because science keeps getting better at breaking things into more basic components. For instance, in the 5th century BC the Greek philosopher Empedocles believed that everything could be reduced to just four basic elements, air, fire, earth, and water. Scientists in the 1800s began to suspect that atoms were the basic element of all matter, a belief that Albert Einstein turned into accepted science in 1905. But this was short lived; by the 1930s it was known that atoms are formed from three more basic particles: electrons, protons and neutrons. By the 1960s these were further reduced into components called quarks. Today, research is attempting to express the world as even more fundamental entities known as strings. The point is, science has not yet discovered the ultimate Elements-of-reality. The "best guess" has changed many times in the past, and will undoubtedly change many times in the future. Science inherently progresses by incremental steps. We are in the middle of this process, not at the end. However, we are fortunate in one important respect; we live at a time when the search for the Elements-of-reality no longer involves the things in our day-to-day lives. As little as a few hundred years ago we could not answer the most basic questions of our everyday existence: Why does the sun feel warm? Where does water go when it evaporates? How does a poison kill us? Today we understand these things in great detail through the method of reduction. While the reduction process has not yet produced its final answers, the fuzzy edges have been pushed to very extreme realms, such as the nature of quarks, and how the big bang created the universe. These frontiers of knowledge are now so specialized and complex that they cannot be understood by the everyday person, or even the everyday scientist. Only scientists that have spent years studying these problems can grasp what they are really about. In the twentieth century the method of reduction moved from the realm of everyday experience to the realm of pure science

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and mathematics. This is clearly one of the most momentous landmarks in all of human development. This also sets a milestone in the study of consciousness, since it defines where the human brain fits into the scheme of things. Research during the last century has clearly shown that the brain operates by biology and chemistry, both of which arise from the interactions of atoms. Things smaller than atoms, such as quarks and strings, do not directly affect the operation of the brain, any more than they affect the operation of grandfather clocks and hourglasses. In other words, the fuzziness of the endpoint of reduction is almost certainly no longer relevant to our understanding of brain activity. Consistent and Chaotic Realities Why does the method of reduction work in the first place? To answer this question, imagine living in a reality of chaos, one that is ever changing and unpredictable. For instance, we might try to analyze our grandfather clock by the method of reduction on five successive days, Monday through Friday. On Monday we find it is composed of atoms in some particular arrangement. On Tuesday we find it is irreducible, and must be taken as an Element-of-reality in itself. The analysis on Wednesday reduces it to only two Elements-of-reality, simply placed side by side. Thursday's reduction shows the same two Elements-of-reality, but this time one inside the other. On Friday, we find it is rapidly oscillating between being composed of atoms and being a single irreducible object. Can we make sense of this changing reality? Does the method of reduction have any meaning or use under these circumstances? How do we go about understanding what we observe? Fortunately, science does not have to answer any of these questions, because we live in a universe that is well behaved and consistent. As far as we can tell, what was found yesterday is what will be found today and again tomorrow. The physical laws that apply on the earth also apply across the galaxy and across the universe. That is, our ability to make observations


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and use reduction does not change with time or distance. Science, as we know it, is critically dependent on this kind of consistency. Even Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, strange as they may be, are very consistent. Why does the method of reduction work? The answer is simply because it does. It is an observed fact, a characteristic of reality as we know it. However, as we will discuss in later chapters, this does not preclude the possibility of private realities (such as dreams) that are poorly behaved and full of chaos. Emergence The term Gestalt is used in psychology and elsewhere to mean, "the whole is more than the sum of the parts." For instance, the Gestalt view of a grandfather clock is that it has characteristics of its own, over and above the metal, wood and glass components that it is made from. After all, a grandfather clock tells the time, controls the storage and release of energy, inspires a sense of beauty and tranquility, and so on. None of the individual components have these characteristics; they emerge only when the parts are combined into the complete object. Even better examples of emergence arise when the components are combined in nonlinear ways. This is a fancy way of saying that the parts are not just added together, but merged in a more complex manner. Nonlinear combination is interesting because it can result in totally unexpected behaviors and characteristics. For example, suppose you had never seen fire, and one day you happen to encounter an unlit candle. Even in your wildest imagination you could not anticipate that this simple combination of parts could produce something as exquisite and complex as a candle flame. Again we find a case where the assembly appears to have something that is not contained in the components. At first glance, one might think that emergence is contradictory to the method of reduction. After all, how can a

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thing be reduced to its parts, if it is more than the sum of its parts? As we will see, reduction and emergence coexist without conflict, and are both important in science. To understand how this works, suppose that our alien friends become tired of constructing hourglasses and want to experiment with something more interesting. We learn that the atmosphere of their planet does not contain oxygen, and therefore they have never seen fire. We suggest that the best way for them to learn about this new concept is to construct a burning candle. Accordingly, we transmit to them the position and state of each of the atoms in a lit candle, including those in the flame and surrounding air. Will the aliens be able to reconstruct the burning candle? Of course they will; they have everything that they need. The ability to "be a candle flame" is inherently contained in the properties of the Elements-ofreality, plus the assembly instructions. Nothing else is required. In the jargon of mathematics, these things are both necessary and sufficient to produce the object. However, even though the aliens can construct a burning candle, they will not necessarily be able to understand it. For instance, consider what a human scientist would need to know to understand a candle flame. Being given the position and state of each and every atom would not be enough, simply because humans cannot analyze this type of raw data. The scientist would want to know something about the chemical reactions going on, the spectrum of the light being emitted, the patterns of air currents being generated, and so forth. While the Elements-of-reality plus the assembly instructions already contain all of this, it is not in a form that humans (or our alien friends) can directly understand. These ideas are illustrated in Fig. 2-4. When we say, "the whole is more than the sum of the parts," we are referring to human understanding, not to what actually exists in nature. A super intelligent being may look at a candle flame and proclaim: "I understand it fully from the Elements-


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FIGURE 2-4 Reduction versus emergence. Reduction guarantees that an alien could reconstruct a burning candle on his home world, given only the assembly instructions to do so. However, this does not mean that the alien would be able to understand it. Emergence is the process whereby humans (and presumably aliens) rearrange raw Information to create an explanation.

of-reality and the assembly instructions, and I need nothing more." Unfortunately, humans are not this smart; they require the Information to be rearranged and molded into a form they can more easily grasp. Just as a goldsmith shapes raw metal into fine jewelry, the scientist is an Information-smith, shaping raw Information into explanations. It is human nature to think of a candle flame as being more than a mere assembly of components, a thing in itself, an entity existing on its own. And there is nothing wrong with this; it is an important tool for understanding the world. Just don't make the mistake of believing that these “mental entities” are more than they really are. They are a way of thinking about things, not residents of the external world. In short, reduction is pure physics, an attempt to understand the nature of reality in its most basic form. In comparison,

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emergence deals with how humans choose to understand that reality, blending physics with bits of philosophy, psychology, historical context, personal preferences, and so on. While emergence does not have the purity of reduction, it is a key part of science as well as our everyday lives, and humans would be able to understand very little without it. The important point is that emergence deals only with Information, not Elements-of-reality. In other words, there is nothing that emergence can create that reduction cannot break apart. This means that reduction and emergence can be easily merged into a single framework for viewing the world. As shown in Fig. 2-5, this is done by adding another category next to the assembly instructions, something we call Emergent Properties. This is a broad and poorly defined depository for whatever explanations we need to understand the world. Of course, everything in this new category is redundant with what is already contained in the Elements-of-reality and the assembly instructions. In the end, reduction plus emergence breaks the world into the same two types of things as reduction alone, (1) Elementsof-reality, and (2) Information. This brings us to the first major teaching of the Inner Light Theory:

Major Teaching #1: How we Understand Reality We understand reality through the methods of reduction and emergence. These methods divide reality into two categories: (1) Elements-of-reality, those things that are irreducible; and (2) Information, those things that can be transmitted over a communications channel.


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FIGURE 2-5 The endpoint of reduction plus emergence. Even when emergence is added to reduction, reality is still broken into the same two categories, Elements-of-reality, and Information.

Where Does Consciousness Fit In? Science and our everyday commonsense are based on the methods of reduction and emergence. In turn, these methods tell us that everything that exists in reality can be divided into two categories, Elements-of-reality and Information. The obvious question is, into which of these two categories do we place consciousness? As introduced in the last chapter, we can look at the mind from two different perspectives or positions. The first of these is from the outside, the objective world of science, what is often called the third-person viewpoint. As shown in the next chapter, the third-person view sees the mind as nothing but the operation of the brain, meaning that consciousness is pure Information. The other way we can observe the mind is by introspection, where an individual turns his thoughts and scrutiny inward for self-examination. This is a view of the mind from the inside, a perspective referred to as the first-person. It is the personal and private way that we each see ourselves, the unique access we have to our own mental world. As we will discuss in

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FIGURE 2-6 The mind-body paradox. The first-person perspective sees the mind as one or more Elements-of-reality, but to the third-person viewpoint it appears as pure Information.

Chapter 4, the first-person perspective sees the human mind as a unified entity, a thing in itself, something that cannot be broken into components. In other words, it is irreducible, and therefore consists of one or more Elements-of-reality. This deep conflict is the heart of the mind-body problem, as illustrated in Fig. 2-6. From the third-person perspective the mind is Information, while from the first-person view it is one or more Elements-of-reality. Not only do the two viewpoints disagree, they disagree in the worst possible way. In the next three chapters we will look at these issues in detail.

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The Third-Person View of the Mind

Introduction The third-person view of the mind is from the outside, the objective world of science and medicine. It is how we are observed by those around us. The disturbing part is that our colleagues tell us, "Sorry old chap, but your mind is nothing but electrochemical activity in three pounds of meat." This is how science sees consciousness, nothing but the operation of the human brain. To make this even worse, the method of reduction tells us that brain activity is pure Information, something so abstract that it can be transmitted over a communications channel or stored in a computer memory. The goal of this chapter is to present the evidence for these stark conclusions. A Brief Tour of the Brain Medicine has a good understanding of the functions carried out by the body’s various organs. For instance, the heart pumps blood, the lungs deliver oxygen, and the kidneys extract waste. But what about the brain, what does medical science view as its function? The answer is that the brain is needed for movement. This is one of the fundamental differences between plants and animals. Since plants do not move, they do not need brains. Animals are different; their very survival depends on body movement to capture food, escape enemies, and find mates. This requires animals to have three specialized systems. First, they need muscles to actually move their bodies. Second, they need sensory organs, such as the eyes and ears, to examine their environment. Third, they need a way of tying the sensory 23

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organs and the muscles together. This is where the brain comes in. Its function is to receive information about the environment from the senses, decide how to move the body to achieve survival and reproduction, and control the muscles to carry out the planned action. Figure 3-1 illustrates this role of the brain as the link between the senses and muscles. Incredible as it may seem, all of these functions are carried out by a single type of building block, the nerve cell or neuron. Neurons come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on where in the nervous system they are located. However, all neurons have the same general structure and operate in the same basic way. As shown in Fig. 3-2, each neuron has a cell body containing a nucleus and other components needed to keep the cell alive. Two kinds of projections extend from the cell body, the dendrites, where the signals enter the neuron, and the axon, where the signals exit. To allow the signals to jump from one neuron to the next, the end of each axon is positioned next to the dendrites of its neighbor, forming a connection called a synapse. The neuron has a unique property that allows it to transport and process information. In the jargon of biology, neurons can fire. It works like this. The membrane around the neuron is capable of moving charged particles (ions) into and out of the cell. This pumping action results in the cell becoming a tiny battery, with the inside of the cell negative and the outside of the cell positive. The neuron remains in this condition until something stimulates one of the dendrites. For example, neurons in the eye are sensitive to light, and neurons in the ear are sensitive to sound. Neurons in the brain and spinal cord are only sensitive to the firing of neighboring nerve cells. When the dendrites receive sufficient stimulation, the cell membrane briefly flips its electrical polarity. For about one-thousandth of a second, the inside of the cell becomes positive and the outside negative, and then the cell returns to its normal condition. This brief polarity flip is called an action potential. Once the action

Chapter 3: The Third-Person View of the Mind

FIGURE 3-1 The function of the brain. Animals must move in their environment to survive and reproduce. This requires senses to provide information about where to move, and muscles to carry out the movement. The function of the brain is to connect these two.

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potential is started at the dendrites it cannot be stopped; it quickly spreads through the cell body and down the axon. In less scientific terms, tickling a dendrite causes the nerve cell to pop, sending a short electrical pulse from one end to the other. Although the action potential only lasts about onethousandth of a second at any particular location in a cell, it can take much longer to move down a long axon. For instance, some of the axons in the legs and spinal cord are several feet in length, and it would normally take nearly a second for the action potential to move from one end to the other. To overcome this time delay, most neurons have their axons covered with a fatty substance called myelin. As shown in Fig. 3-2, the myelin sheath is interrupted at regular intervals by small breaks called the nodes of Ranvier. An action potential moves along a myelinated axon very quickly because it jumps from node-tonode, rather than traveling in the normal way. This reduces the transit time by a factor of about one-hundred. For instance, you have probably stubbed your toe and thought to yourself, "that's going to hurt." Several seconds later the pain begins. This is because the neurons in your toe that detect pressure send their signals to the brain by fast myelinated axons. However, sensations of pain are conducted along unmyelinated axons, requiring several seconds to move from your toe to your head. As another example, you may be familiar with a person stricken with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease where the myelin degenerates. The resulting disruption of the neural transmission causes a variety of problems in sensation and movement. Now let’s take a closer look at the synapse, the connection between neurons. This is the most interesting location in the entire nervous system; it’s where the important things happen. Except in rare cases, the action potential from one neuron cannot directly cause the next neuron to fire. This is because there is an extremely thin space between the axon and dendrite called the synaptic gap. Instead, the end of each axon contains small containers of chemicals called synaptic vesicles. When an action potential reaches the end of an axon, it stimulates


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FIGURE 3-2 The neuron. The nerve cell, also called the neuron, is the basic building block of the brain and other nervous pathways. Stimulation of the dendrites cause the neuron to fire, sending a brief electrical pulse from the dendrites, through the cell body, and down the axon. This electrical pulse is called an action potential, and can be transferred from one neuron to the next through a connection called the synapse.

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the synaptic vesicles causing them to release their chemicals into the synaptic gap. These chemicals move across the gap and affect the neighboring dendrite in some way, depending on the particular chemical released. Some encourage the next cell to fire, while other act to discourage firing. These chemicals released into the synaptic gap are called neurotransmitters. A few of the most common ones are called: acetylcholine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and GABA. Figure 3-3 illustrates this process of an action potential traveling down an axon, resulting in the release of the neurotransmitter into the synaptic gap.

FIGURE 3-3 Neurotransmitter release. Action potentials do not jump directly from one neuron to the next. Instead, when an action potential reaches the end of the axon, chemicals called neurotransmitters are released into the synaptic gap. These chemicals then initiate action potentials in the neighboring neurons.


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To understand how these neural connections account for human behavior, consider what happens when we greet a friend. First, light is reflected from our friend's face into our eyes. After entering our pupils, it is focused onto the back surface of each eyeball. This is the location of the retina, a layer of neurons that fire when exposed to light. As an example, a neuron in the retina might fire 200 times each second when exposed to bright light, and only five times each second when in darkness. The axons of about ten-thousand of these neurons leave the back of each eye to form the optic nerve, carrying the signals that represent patterns of lightness, darkness, and color into the brain. The other senses operate in a similar way; neurons in the ears fire when stimulated by sound, those in the skin by pressure and temperature, and those in the nose and mouth by chemical reactions. All of this information is carried into the brain by action potentials traveling down axons. After a few seconds, we recognize our friend and respond by extending our hand to be shaken. This movement is controlled by neural pathways that start in the brain, lead down the spinal cord, and terminate in the muscles of the chest and arms. The force of the muscle contraction is determined by how fast these nerve cells fire, allowing the brain to control the movement in a smooth and well-coordinated manner. Most of the muscles in the body are controlled this way, except a few that need to operate on their own, such as the heart and digestive tract. The muscles that produce speech are also supervised by the brain. When we utter, “Hi Bob, it’s good to see you,” the muscles in the diaphragm, vocal cords, tongue and lips, are simply responding to action potentials traveling down neurons from the brain. Here is the important point: the only things that go into and out of the brain are firing patterns of neurons. But this brings us to the difficult part, to say the least. How does the brain determine what output to generate in response to a given input? For instance, how do we recognize the face of our friend, know what muscles to contract to extend our hand, or how to vocalize

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a greeting? Keep in mind that the brain must accomplish these tasks by using nothing more than cells that fire at different rates. At first glance, this problem of changing the sensory input into the muscle output seems overwhelmingly complicated. And when you look at it longer, it becomes even worse. How does the brain do it? First, there are an incredible number of neurons in the brain, roughly 100 billion. Second, each neuron is connected to a multitude of other neurons (not just a single one as illustrated in Fig. 3-2). In round numbers, each neuron in the brain influences about 1,000 of its neighbors, resulting in an extraordinary 100 trillion synapses. Scientists call this maze of interconnected nerve cells a neural network. Third, the pathways in the brain do not just go from the input to the output, but bend back on themselves to form loops in the neural network. Figure 3-4 illustrates this operation. Information from the senses is conducted to the brain where it joins the already circulating patterns of neural activity. Likewise, portions of this circulating neural activity break off and pass to the muscles for body control. Of course, this diagram is trivial compared to the enormous complexity of the human brain. For instance, imagine that you tried to count all of the brain's connections by looking through a high-power microscope. At a rate of one synapse every second, it would take more than 100,000 lifetimes to tally the entire brain. Lastly, there is a fourth general feature of the brain, it is highly adaptable. Each time a person learns something, be it a mathematical equation or the face of a new friend, the brain must change in some way to incorporate this knowledge. In adults, the primary change in the brain is a modification of the so-called synaptic weights. As previously described, when a neuron fires it affects its neighbors through the release of a neurotransmitter into the synaptic gap. The more neurotransmitter is released, the greater the effect on the neighboring cells, to either encourage or discourage them from firing. The term synaptic weight refers to how much one neuron’s firing affects it neighbors.


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FIGURE 3-4 Circulation of neural activity. Patterns of action potentials are sent from the senses to the brain where they enter the already circulating patterns of neural activity. Portions of this neural activity exit the circulation to control the muscles.

Long term memory is accomplished in the brain by modifying synaptic weights in response to experience. Suppose you meet a person for the first time and your brain tries to remember what their face looks like. The signals pass from the eyes to the brain along the optic nerve, setting up a pattern of neural activity in the brain that corresponds to the person’s face. This activity changes the synaptic weights between the affected neurons, such as by increasing or decreasing the level of the neurotransmitter that is released when each nerve cell

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fires. When you see the person’s face at a later time, it causes a similar pattern of neural activity. However, this time the modified neural weights already match the pattern of activity, a condition that the brain interprets as recognition. Present day science has a general grasp of how this can occur in neural networks, but a poor understanding of the details. For instance, little is known about how the synaptic weights are modified, and even where in the brain memories are stored. These are the challenges of twenty-first century brain research. Now let’s turn our attention to the actual human brain, as shown in Figs. 3-5 and 3-6. Different areas of the brain are responsible for different tasks; however, the tissue in each of these areas is of the same construction, an intricate maze of interconnected neurons. The outside of the brain is called the cerebral cortex, or gray matter from its appearance. This is the site of the most sophisticated activity in the brain, the densest part of the neural network interconnections. The complexity of the cerebral cortex is the single most important difference between the brains of humans and lower animals. Inside the cerebral cortex is white matter, which is used to transport neural activity from one part of the brain to another. It appears lighter than the gray matter because its axons are covered with the fatty myelin sheath, reducing the time for action potentials to move between locations. An important part of the white matter is the corpus callosum, a huge pathway that connects the left and right halves of the brain. More about this later. Since the brain’s function is to connect the senses with the muscles, it is not surprising that each location on the cerebral cortex has one of three general duties: (1) sensory, the analysis of signals from the five senses, (2) motor, the preparation of signals that go to the muscles, and (3) association, the processing needed to connect the first two. For instance, the rearmost portion of the brain, the occipital lobe or visual cortex, processes sensory information from the eyes. Likewise, touch and pain are processed in the sensory cortex, a narrow vertical


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FIGURE 3-5 The human brain. The outer layer of the human brain, the cerebral cortex, is where the most complex processing occurs. It is divided into many different regions, each performing a specific task.

strip on the sides of the brain. Interestingly, sensory cortex is arranged as an upside-down body. That is, sensations from the feet are processed at the top of the strip, sensations from the head at the bottom, and the rest of the body at corresponding locations in between. Motor cortex, which is the initiator of most body movement, is contained in another narrow vertical strip positioned alongside the sensory cortex. It has the same

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upside-down organization; feet are controlled at the top and the head at the bottom. Other examples of sensory and motor regions are also labeled in Fig. 3-5. These include: Heschl’s gyri where hearing is processed, Broca’s area that controls the muscles of speech, and the Cerebellum, a large section at the rear of the brain that makes movement smooth and well coordinated instead of jerky and erratic. Damage to the Association Areas Brain damage to the sensory and motor regions results in problems such as blindness and being paralyzed. However, these deficits do not directly alter the mind; the person still thinks, feels, and remembers the same as before the injury. But damage to the association areas is different; it affects the mind at its very core. The essence of what we are is changed. We will briefly describe six examples of this. Our first example is one of the most famous accidents in medical history. Phineas Gage was a railroad construction foreman in 1848 Vermont. One of his duties was to prepare blasting charges by pushing dynamite down a hole drilled into the rock. This was done with the aid of a tamping iron, a heavy metal rod about 3½ feet long and 1¼ inches in diameter. On September 13, Gage was preparing such a blasting hole when the dynamite accidentally exploded, driving the tamping bar completely through his head. It entered under his left cheek bone, passed behind his left eye, exited through the top of his head, and landed about 25 to 30 yards away. Incredibly, Phineas Gage survived the accident and lived for another 13 years, although much of the front part of his brain had been destroyed. The injury did not affect his sensory or motor abilities; he could see, hear, and move his body normally. It also did not affect his memory or intelligence. What changed was his personality, the way he thought about things and how he interacted with the world. Before the accident, Gage was regarded as well-balanced, cooperative and friendly. He was a capable supervisor and shrewd businessman. Afterwards he


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FIGURE 3-6 Cross-section of the human brain. Interesting regions include: ventricles, fluid filled holes in the brain; pineal gland, incorrectly believed to be the seat of consciousness by Descartes (Chapter 7); thalamus, a relay station for passing signals between areas; and substantia nigra, which is destroyed in Parkinson’s disease.

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was impatient and obstinate. He seemed to care little about those around him and was grossly profane. He was indecisive, seemingly unable to settle on any of the plans he devised for the future. According to his friends, he was no longer Gage. Modern patients with frontal brain damage exhibit similar problems. The second example is also from an unfortunate affliction, a patient identified in the medical literature only as H.M. In 1953, at the age of 27, H.M. underwent a brain operation in an attempt to control severe epileptic seizures. This procedure removed a region called the hippocampus, located deep within the brain (see Fig. 3-6). Although the operation was successful for his problem with epilepsy, it left H.M. with a bizarre mental condition. If you met and spoke with H.M., you would probably not notice anything out of the ordinary. However, if you then left the room and returned five minutes later, H.M. would have absolutely no recollection of having met you. His brain is totally incapable of transferring current thoughts into long-term memory. He can remember events before the operation, but virtually nothing since. H.M. is alive today, nearly 50 years after the procedure, but his mind is trapped forever in 1953. Example three is also a result of surgery to manage epilepsy, resulting in what are called split-brain patients. The left and right halves of the brain are virtually identical in structure, but are different in their function. For instance, the left half of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. Also, the left half of the brain only sees the right half of the image from each eye, while the right half of the brain only sees what is left of center. There are also other specializations, such as language being a left brain function, while spatial thinking and music perception are handled on the right side. Usually this segmentation of brain function isn’t apparent in our behavior because the left and right sides of the brain are in constant communication with each other. This occurs over the large tract of nerve fibers that runs between the left and right halves of the brain, the corpus callosum (see Fig. 3-6).


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Starting in the 1950's, brain surgeons began cutting the corpus callosum in epileptic patients. This was done in an attempt to keep the storm-like neural activity of the seizure from spreading from one side of the brain to the other. Surprisingly, these patients seem relatively normal after the procedure, just as long as you don’t look too closely. Clever experiments allow the researcher to communicate with only one-half of the brain at a time. For instance, if you display an object to the left of where the subject is looking, or have the subject press a button with his left hand, you are in communication with the right half of the brain. Likewise, when the subject writes a message with his right hand, or when he speaks, the left half of the brain is in charge. These tricks can be used to see what each half of the brain is thinking, feeling, remembering, desiring, and so on. These experiments provide strong evidence that split brain patients have two separate minds. For instance, the two halves of the brain can have different knowledge. If a familiar object is placed in the left hand, the right brain will recognize it, but the left brain won’t. They can also have different opinions. When asked about their own self worth, the right side might respond “good,” while the left side “inadequate.” The two sides can also have different goals. For example, the two halves of the brain can be given opposing tasks, resulting in the hands fighting each other. The compelling conclusion is that splitting the brain also splits the mind. Our fourth example is aphasia, the difficulty in understanding and producing speech due to brain damage, such as from strokes. Two regions of the brain are involved, Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, named after researchers in the mid 1800s who studied them. Both these areas are shown in Fig. 35, and are only on the left side of the brain in most people. Broca’s area controls the muscles used in speaking. Patients with damage in this region speak slowly and with poor flow; however, they know what they want to say and can comprehend the speech of others. In short, their mind is intact; they just have difficulty in getting out the sounds and syntax.

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Damage to Wernicke’s area is far more interesting for the study of consciousness. These patients can no longer associate words with their meaning. Even though they may hear normally, they cannot understand spoken language. They have lost their dictionary; the language they have used since childhood is suddenly foreign and incomprehensible. Their speech is even stranger. While it is grammatically correct and formed into complete sentences, it is gibberish and has no meaning. This is exactly the opposite of Broca’s aphasia. Wernicke’s aphasia patients have no difficulty producing the sounds and syntax, but their minds can no longer produce verbal meaning. The fifth example is the effect of psychoactive drugs. These are drugs that affect mental activity in some way, such as our moods, perceptions of events, and patterns of thinking. Most psychoactive drugs act by altering the neurotransmitters in the synaptic gaps, usually because the two molecules resemble each other. This allows the drug to change the patterns of neural activity by encouraging or discouraging the firing of individual neurons. For instance, alcohol produces relaxation, reduces inhibitions, and impairs judgement. Barbiturates and diazepam (Valium) calm people and reduce anxiety. Amphetamines and cocaine produce alertness and euphoria. Hallucinogens, such as LSD, mescaline and PCP, alter perception and thinking patterns. Nitrous oxide, and other drugs, change the way we perceive pain; it still hurts, but we don’t care. Still other drugs are successful at treating such psychological disorders as schizophrenia, depression, and manic-depression. Our sixth and last example is a strange condition called synesthesia,1 from the Greek words for “combined sensation.” About one person in every several thousand has their senses cross-linked in some unusual way. In the most common case, 1. “Do you see what they see?”, Brad Lemley, Discover, 20, Dec. 1999, pp 80-87. Also, search the web for many on-line references.


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the person perceives a color whenever shown a letter or number. For example, the letter “g” might always be seen as red, the letter “h” as blue, the digit “7” as yellow, and so on. These colors can be extremely vivid, and are often seen as a transparent glow around the figure. Slightly less common, colors can be evoked by sounds, odors, tastes, and pain. Much less frequently there are cross-links between the other senses, such as sound causing odor, or vision causing taste. It most cases, people with synesthesia are normal in all other ways. What causes synesthesia? The exact details are not known, but it is clearly related to neural activity in one area of the brain leaking into another area where it doesn’t belong. Imagine that we open a person’s skull and graft a nerve tract from one location in the brain to another. Since each location handles a different function, we would expect to see two types of brain activity, that are normally separate, becoming joined. One theory is that we are all born with synesthesia, a result of undeveloped neural pathways crisscrossing the newly formed brain. Most of these pathways die during the first few years of life, leaving the highly segmented brain we find in adults. Synesthesia might be caused by some of these pathways refusing to die, leaving a “neural leak” from one area to another. Synesthesia may seem strange at first encounter, but it is easily explained in terms of brain structure. In fact, all six of the previous examples provide this same lesson: The structure and function of the mind are totally dependent on the structure and function of the brain. All of these examples seem bizarre and unexplainable if the mind is taken to be an entity in itself. But when the mind is viewed as the operation of the brain, everything falls naturally into place, and the explanations become straightforward and simple. The Evidence By definition, the third-person view of the mind is from the outside, what is seen by an external observer. And what this external observer sees is brain activity, incredibly complex

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patterns of action potentials moving through a neural network. The following are undisputed scientific facts, and any theory of the mind must be able to account for each: First, there is an unbroken path of nerve cells running from the senses, through the neural network of the brain, and to the muscles. For instance, suppose a person sees an object and proclaims: “This is an apple.” Brain scanners and scientific instruments can monitor the resulting neural activity from its beginning to its end. Action potentials are generated by the eyes, pass through the sensory, association, and motor areas of the brain, and end up at the muscles that control speech. There is no “hidden area” in the middle; it is an unbroken chain of events. Second, neural networks do have the capability of changing various patterns of input into various patterns of output. This includes all the general things that science observes the brain to be doing, such as muscle control pattern recognition, short and long term memory, forming relationships between abstract concepts, and so on. This knowledge comes primarily from the study of artificial neural networks, computer programs that mimic the activity of the squishy things inside the brain. While this work has partly been motivated by brain research, it is largely directed at the development of better computer systems. We know that neural networks can carry out these general types of tasks because engineers use them on a daily basis. Present day artificial neural networks cannot match the performance of the human brain, but they clearly can perform the same kinds of functions. Third, altering the brain results in fundamental changes to the mind. Psychoactive drugs affect our emotions, patterns of thinking, how we interpret pain, and so on. Aberrant connections in the brain can cause us to “see sounds” and “smell colors” (synesthesia).


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Brain damage is even more dramatic, being able to literally rip the mind apart. For instance, it can obliterate judgement and foresight (Phineas Gage), prevent storage of new long term memories (H.M.), create two minds from one (split-brain patients), and prevent the association of words with meaning (Wernicke’s aphasia). This evidence overwhelmingly points to only one explanation: the mind is the activity of the brain. There is no reason for an external observer to believe that anything more is going on, because this explanation accounts for everything that can be seen from outside the mind. All of the things that we associate with consciousness, such as thinking, perception, emotion, and short term memory, arise from the neural activity circulating in the neural network loops. From the third-person perspective, this circulating neural activity is the mind; there is nothing more. Brain Activity and Information Our next step is to apply the method of reduction to this third-person view of the mind. As with everything in our reality, we find that the brain is composed of only two things, Elements-of-reality and Information. In other words, the brain is formed from ordinary materials assembled in an exquisitely complex way. But the mind is not the brain; the mind is the activity of the brain. Does this make the mind an Element-ofreality, or Information, or both? This question can be answered in two different ways, by looking at brain structure and brain function. To understand the importance of brain structure, consider the difference between a brain and a rock. Using reduction, we find that both objects are composed of the same Elements-ofreality, that is, the electrons, protons, and neutrons that form all ordinary matter. The difference between a brain and a rock is in how this raw material is assembled. The brain has an incredibly intricate biological and chemical structure, while the

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rock is relatively random and unorganized. It is this difference in structure that allows a brain to support a mind, while the rock is a mindless lump. From the third-person view, the mind arises from the structure of the brain, not the raw materials. Therefore, the mind is Information, and not an Element-ofreality. This same conclusion is reached by looking at brain function. To an external observer, the function of the brain is to generate an appropriate neural output in response to a given neural input. This means that the brain is manipulating Information, not Elements-of-reality. To illustrate this, imagine that your hand is stroking the soft face of a young child. Suddenly, this sensation is replaced by intense pain when the child bits your fingers. This unpleasant event will clearly change the activity of your brain and nervous system. A new pattern of action potentials will pass from your fingers, through your brain, and to your muscles. The final result will be your screaming and attempting to escape the child’s hold. However, the raw material that makes up your body will not be changed in the slightest. The same electrons, protons, and neutrons will be present after the event as before. In short, the activity of the brain involves only Information, not Elements-of-reality. Again we find that the mind is pure Information. While both these lines of reasoning reach the same conclusion, there is an important distinction between the two. The analysis using brain structure is based solely on the method of reduction. Here we are concerned with the identification of irreducible entities and how they are assembled. This is science in its most pristine form. In comparison, the analysis using brain function is based on emergence. This is an attempt to integrate our observations with existing human knowledge. We want to know more than what the physical structure is; we want an explanation of how and why the brain behaves as it does. The important result is that reduction and emergence, the two primary methods of science, lead to the same conclusion: the third-person perspective sees the mind as Information. An


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interesting consequence of this is that the mind will therefore act as all Information does. For instance, the mind can be transmitted over a communications channel or stored in the electronic memory of a computer. Using reduction, this would be accomplished by recording the exact location and state of each electron, proton, and neuron that forms a person’s brain. Duplicate copies of the brain could then be constructed by using other electrons, protons, and neutrons. Since the mind is the activity of the brain, this would also create duplicate minds. An even more interesting case of “mind duplication” is provided by emergence and the functional view of the brain. To create a duplicate mind, we do not necessarily need to create an exact duplicate of the brain. Rather, we only need to construct a device that duplicates the function of the brain. For instance, suppose we start by creating an artificial neuron, a manmade device that exactly matches what a real nerve cell does. How this device is constructed is of no importance; it may be a few transistors wired together, a tiny digital computer, or some other technology developed in the future. The important feature is the logical relationship between its input and output. When the artificial neuron is presented with the same input as a real neuron, it must generate exactly the same output as the real neuron. Now suppose that we use this device to treat brain deterioration in an elderly patient. As each neuron in their brain dies, we replace it with an artificial neuron, allowing the person to retain their full mental capabilities. But where does this process end? Eventually, all of the real nerve cells will have died and only artificial neurons will be left. This means that our patient's mind will have been transferred from their brain to a manmade computer. This line of reasoning is called functionalism and is one of the most striking conclusions resulting from the third-person view. In short, brains create minds by carrying out certain computational activities. Likewise, any machine that carries out these same computational activities will also create a mind.

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To summarize, science sees the mind as being synonymous with brain activity; they are one and the same. Taking this a step further, reduction and emergence tell us that brain activity is nothing but Information, and not an Element-of-reality. In short, the third-person viewpoint sees consciousness as pure Information. These conclusions are based on overwhelming scientific evidence, and there is not the slightest objective reason to suspect that they are not true. But now we need to look at the other side of the coin, a viewpoint that makes science cringe, the subjective view of the mind.

4

The First-Person View of the Mind

Introduction The first-person viewpoint is based on introspection, where the individual turns his attention inward to examine his own mind. This is the ultimate personal experience: What am I thinking and feeling? Why do I enjoy the taste of an apple? How do I recognize the face of a friend? And the most important question we ask ourselves: What am I? It is the self examination of one’s experiences, feelings, and thoughts. It is the mind perceiving itself. In this chapter we focus on five of the most striking aspects of the mind as seen by introspection: qualia, mental unity, semantic thought, present tense, and freewill. These and similar characteristics are the heart of the firstperson view of the mind. Most important, all of these things are irreducible; they cannot be broken into components. Therefore, as seen from the first-person viewpoint, the mind is one or more Elements-of-reality. How We Discuss Consciousness The first-person view of the mind is private; the individual alone has access to his innermost thoughts and experiences. No one can enter the consciousness of another. This is a formidable obstacle to our study of the mind. How can we communicate about things that are known only in this personal and private way? To answer this question, imagine you are thrust into a foreign land with those around you speaking an unfamiliar language. How do you convey your thoughts? The answer is, you point. If you want to eat, you point at food and then your mouth. If you want to leave, you point at yourself and then the 45

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door. Pointing allows us to indicate what object we are referring to without having to describe the object in more detail. This is the same way that we discuss our introspective experience. It would be easier if we could physically point at these things with our finger, but in most cases this isn’t possible. Our introspective pointing is primarily done with language. For instance, consider the phrase: the redness of red. These words point to a particular thing seen from the firstperson viewpoint. Most of us know what this refers to, because we have directly experienced it. Likewise, we expect others to understand it in the same way, from their personal experience. No one can tell another what the redness of red is. You either know about it from direct experience, or you know nothing about it at all. Either way, the words redness of red do not define the thing; they only point to something that we may or may not already be aware of. Communicating in this way has obvious limitations. First, it requires that both parties already know the thing being pointed at. For instance, you cannot discuss the beauty of a sunset with one who is blind, or the pleasure of a child’s laugh with one who is deaf. Second, language itself is an imperfect tool. As an example of this, imagine asking several people to describe a physical object, such as a book. Even though they are referring to the same thing, there will be a considerable difference in the language they use. This problem becomes worse when the thing being described is nonphysical, such as a “political party,” or a “computer program.” Trying to describe what is seen from the first-person perspective is perhaps the worst of all. Even if two people had an identical introspective experience, they would probably describe it differently. This brings up the third and most perplexing problem in communicating about our first-person knowledge. How do we know that others are having the same introspective experience that we are? Suppose you and a friend look at a clear sky and simultaneously proclaim, “what a wonderful shade of blue.” You are both experiencing something, and have agreed to call

Chapter 4: The First-Person View of the Mind

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your respective experiences by the same name. This seems reasonable, since both of your experiences correspond to the same physical object. But this does not guarantee that you are having the same experience. Suppose that your friend had surgery at birth to switch the blue and green neural pathways between his eyes and brain. When he now looks at the sky, he experiences what you would call “green.” However, he calls it “blue” simply because that is the name he has been taught. Taking this example a step further, now imagine that everyone has their visual system altered in this way. For instance, the blue, green, and red neural pathways might be randomly connected as a natural part of the brain’s development in the womb. Even so, we would not be able to tell this difference by speaking with each other. We would all still gaze at the sky and remark about its blueness, even though it would be a different experience for each of us. There is no way to tell if one person is having the same experience as another. Our ability to communicate about these things is just too limited. The primary purpose of this chapter is to show that the firstperson viewpoint sees the mind as one or more Elements-of reality. To do this, we will discuss five fundamental aspects of consciousness that are seen by introspection: qualia, mental unity, semantic thought, present tense, and free-will. Of course, we cannot define what any of these are; all we can do is use words to point to them. Your task is to look inside yourself by introspection and try to understand what is being referred to. The existence and nature of these things cannot be shown by words, but only by our individual and personal ability to experience them. Qualia We experience a wide variety of sensations in our day-today lives. For instance, vision allows us to perceive brightness, color and shape. Likewise, from hearing we experience loudness, pitch, and timber. The senses of touch, taste, and smell provide similar sensations that are equally unique. We

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are also aware of how it feels to have emotions, to think, to be in pain, and even to exist. All of these sensations are different; we can recognize one from another, and remember our previous encounters with each of them. Philosophers call these raw sensations qualia, after the idea that each has its own characteristics or qualities associated with it. We will use color as an example of qualia, beginning with the simple question: What is it about red that is different from blue? From the first-person perspective these two colors are clearly not the same. They are different in a basic characteristic; red has the property of redness, while blue has the property of blueness. Those with normal vision understand this concept very clearly; our words are sufficient to point to something that most people already know by direct experience. This allows us to communicate about the property, but only with the severe limitations previously described. For instance, a color blind person would think that the phrases redness of red and blueness of blue are gibberish. To examine this further, suppose we ask several scientists and medical researchers what makes red different from blue. A physicist might say that the two colors are different wavelengths of light. An ophthalmologist will have a slightly different answer, telling us that red and blue arise from the activation of different sensory cells in the retina of the eye. Lastly, a neurologist might describe the difference as being the neural activity in different parts of the cerebral cortex. These descriptions are accepted by science as a complete explanation for what is observed from the third-person viewpoint. But what about the first-person perception of color? Do these scientific accounts tell us why we consciously experience red and blue in the particular way that we do? Most people would say no; there is something about color that cannot be expressed in terms of wavelength or neural activity. Simply put, red looks red and blue looks blue. For instance, a color-blind physicist knows how science and medicine understand color, but nothing about how it feels to see a red apple or a blue sky.


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The reverse is also true; a person with normal vision knows about color from direct experience, but might be totally ignorant of the scientific explanation. In other words, the first-person viewpoint of color is one thing; the third-person viewpoint of color is another thing; and having a knowledge of one provides little or no knowledge of the other. Or so it would seem on the face of it. In this same manner, the ears detect vibration in the air; the nose and tongue detect chemicals in the air and saliva; and specialized neurons in the skin detect pressure, temperature and irritation. In the end, all of these result in neural activity in various parts of the brain. This is how the world of science sees raw sensations, the machinery of the physical world interacting with the machinery of our nervous system. But all these things appear drastically different from inside of our minds, the first-person perspective. We see an apple as red and smell it as fruity. We hear it crunch as we take a bite. We taste its sweetness, and savor the pleasure it brings to us. We feel the pain as we scrape our lip on the stem. Many find it inconceivable that these raw sensations, these qualia, arise from the machine-like activity of the brain. Even stranger, it is not even possible for one person to describe these things to another. All we can do is experience them for ourselves, and point at them for vague and incomplete communication. Why do qualia seem so elusive and hard to describe? The answer is very simple and straightforward. It is because qualia are irreducible; they cannot be broken apart by the method of reduction. For instance, if we could separate the redness of red into more basic components our task would be done. "It is simple," we would say, "our perception of red is A plus B plus C, assembled according to the instructions in D." But, of course, this is not possible. The redness of red, the terrible feeling of pain, the fragrance of a rose, and all of the other qualia, are irreducible; they are Elements-of-reality of the firstperson viewpoint.

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Mental Unity When we look inside ourselves by introspection, we see a mind that is unified, a single cognitive agent, one and only one consciousness. Our many emotions, thoughts, and sensations are inherently part of the whole; they do not exist independently on their own. The mind perceives itself as a single thing, not a mixture of individual components. From the first-person view we see exactly one mind, no more and no less. This mental unity is perplexing because it does not fit well with what we know from science. As briefly outlined in the last chapter, different areas of the human brain handle different mental tasks. For instance, speech is recognized in one area, bodily movements are controlled in another, and abstract reasoning takes place in yet another. Further, we must remember that the human brain is composed of about 100 billion individual neurons, each capable of producing nothing but individual action potentials. How is it possible that the neural activity in these many separate regions, and this vast number of individual components, can give rise to a conscious experience that is unified? Brain researchers call this the binding problem. In spite of being given a separate name, this issue it is no different from other aspects of the mind-body problem. The third-person view sees a multitude of individual action potentials passing through a neural network (i.e., Information), while the first-person view sees an irreducible unified mind (that is, an Element-of reality). Semantic thought In order to think, one must be able to form relationships between abstract concepts. This is obvious from both the firstperson and the third-person viewpoints. For instance, if you mentally say to yourself: “I am afraid of pain,” you can easily recognize the individual concepts (I and pain), and the relationship between them (“am afraid of”). In spite of this, introspection tells us that there is more to our thoughts than formal definitions and logic. From the first-person perspective,


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thoughts are semantic, that is, they have meaning. Each has a unique and personal message; they matter to us in a way that the individual components do not. The thought of “being afraid of pain“ is more than just words and syntax. To put this into context, we can compare it with a computer program designed to interact with humans by voice command. A good example is the telephone routing systems used by many companies. When you dial their telephone number, a computer generated voice answers and identifies the company. It may then give you several options, depending on such things as whether the business is open or closed, and which employees are available to take calls. As you proceed through the menus, you might be thanked for your selection, be informed of errors, told to wait, given more options, and so on. In other words, the computer program is selecting words and phrases from its memory, and combining them in various combinations according to predetermined rules. Of course, no one would suggest that these computers understand what they are saying. These are simply automated responses; it is unthinkable that these devices derive any type of introspective “meaning” from their activity. But now let’s take this a step further by making the computer program more sophisticated. We will increase the vocabulary of available words and phrases, improve the algorithms that control the sentence syntax, and enhance the logic that determines what to say in particular situations. If our programmers are clever enough, it may be difficult or impossible to tell that we are speaking with a machine instead of another person. However, even with this ability to fool us, there still isn’t any apparent way that the computer could be experiencing an introspective ”meaning” of its thoughts or speech. But if this is true, how is it possible that a machine such as the brain can generate “meaning?” In short, we have bumped into yet another example of the mind-body problem. The third-person viewpoint sees definitions, syntax, and logic;

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all of which are Information. However, from the first-person view we see irreducible “meaning,” an Element-of-reality. Present tense One of the most peculiar things about the first-person viewpoint is our perception of time. We are conscious only of the present. It can never be yesterday or tomorrow; it is always now. We can recall the past and anticipate the future, but only by doing so at the current moment. Our minds are trapped at the sharp dividing line between what was, and what will be. Language reflects this by categorizing events into three temporal divisions, what we call the past, present, and future tenses. For example: He ran; He is running; He will run. But we can experience only one of these divisions of time by introspection; consciousness exists only in the present tense. To understand why this is so strange, we need to look at how science views the nature of time. From the third-person, time is an Element-of-reality, a thing in itself, something that cannot be broken into more fundamental elements. It exists alongside the three dimensions of distance to form the framework of our universe. While it is difficult or impossible to say exactly what it is, we can certainly describe many of its characteristics. For instance, we know that time is a continuous dimension that can be labeled with a numbering system, such as done by clocks and calendars. We also know that the laws of thermodynamics define one end as the past, and the other end as the future. For instance, it would be easy to place several photographs of a bomb explosion in sequential order. First comes the unexploded bomb, then a small cloud of expanding gas, then a large cloud, and so on. Many unusual aspects of time were discovered by Albert Einstein, such as time slowing down near the speed of light, or in the presence of intense gravitational fields. But what does science have to say about the present tense? The astonishing answer is that science knows nothing of it. The concept of “now” is something that cannot be observed from the


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third-person perspective. For instance, stop and look at the time on your watch. Why is it this particular time instead of some other? Why is it not yesterday, or one minute from now, or ten million years in the future? Why are you now an adult reading this book, instead of a newborn baby seeing your mother’s face for the first time? For that matter, why do we not experience all times at once? Science has no answer to these questions. In the scientific view, time is something that stretches unbroken from the past to the future, from the big bang to the end of the universe. Other than the two ends, there are no locations that are unique or special; every point on this continuum is the same as every other point. But introspection tells us that the scientific view of time is incomplete; a unique point on the time line does exist. The instant of time that we call now is vastly different from all others. It defines our reality; it is a fundamental part of what we are. While we cannot describe exactly what it is, it is as real as anything we know; it is a self-evident truth of our existence. The present tense is an irreducible thing that can be observed only by introspection. It is an Element-of-reality of the firstperson viewpoint. Free-will Introspection tells us that we are free to think and act in whatever way we choose. We perceive that our minds are continually presented with decisions to be made, and that we make them one-by-one of our own accord, without being controlled by an outside influence. While we can be coerced by the promise of reward or the threat of punishment, nothing can force us to think or act in a way against what our mind chooses. We are free agents; our thoughts and actions are determined by us and us alone. This is more than just a petty philosophical issue; it is one of the founding principles that free societies are built upon. It would be meaningless for a government to provide freedom for its citizens, if those citizens could not think and act freely within

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their own minds. Even more important, society claims the right to punish its citizens for misdeeds, based on the premise that offending individuals freely choose to perform the prohibited acts. The nature of free-will is probably the single most important and far-reaching issue surrounding the mind-body problem. Our governments and laws are inherently based on the first-person perception of free-will. At the risk of toppling society, let’s look at how the thirdperson perspective sees the issue of free-will. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, scientists such as Galileo, Newton, and Maxwell developed our understanding of what is now called classical physics. This involves many different areas, such as motion, heat, energy, electrical and magnetic phenomena, and similar topics. An interesting aspect of classical physics is that it is deterministic. This means it is completely predictable; if you have a complete enough understanding about something at one moment in time, you can correctly determine what will happen in the future. Consider, for example, the start of the famous poem: ”I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I knew not where.” With due regards to Longfellow, this archer is obviously not a physicist. If he were, he would know exactly where the arrow landed. From the arrow’s initial speed and direction, the laws of classical physics exactly determine the trajectory taken and the point of impact. If a more accurate solution is needed, the scientist could take into account less important factors, such as air resistance and the rotation of the earth. However, these are also governed by the laws of classical physics. In short, classical physics tells us that nothing is free to behave as it wishes. Everything in our universe, be it an arrow or a brain, it constrained to follow a predetermined path, dictated solely by the initial conditions and the laws of nature. This deterministic view of nature radically changed in the early 20th century with the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. This is the study of how very small things behave, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons inside of atoms. Quantum


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Mechanics is absolutely bizarre; it is nothing like the world of our day-to-day lives. For instance, things of this small size interact as if they were waves, but suddenly collapse into particles when we try to measure them. Further, this collapse is random; it is not possible to know where the particle will end up being located until the collapse actually occurs. We will discuss Quantum Mechanics in the next chapter, when we look at approaches that have been tried to solve the mind-body problem. For now, the important point is that Quantum Mechanics is not deterministic. While we can predict the paths of arrows to an exceedingly high degree, much of the activity in the subatomic realm is fundamentally unpredictable. The brain operates by biology and chemistry, which do not involve the interaction of things smaller than atoms. Therefore, conventional wisdom tells us that the randomness of Quantum Mechanics does not affect brain function. On the other hand, there are still many mysteries regarding how neurons operate, particularly in regards to synaptic activity. It wouldn’t be an earth-shattering event if it were discovered that Quantum Mechanical principles played some role in the process. But even allowing for this possibility, nothing in the thirdperson view of the mind can account for our introspective perception of free-will. Suppose you are faced with a decision, such as to continue reading this book or to put it aside. Classical physics tells us that this decision is predetermined; the outcome is fixed even before you thought about the issue. On the other hand, if Quantum Mechanical principles are involved, the decision will have some truly random component to it, much like flipping a coin. The problem is, neither of these conditions, either alone or in combination, correspond to our first-person experience of free-will. Introspection tells us that the decision is ours to make; it is not predetermined, and it is not random. And just as with the other aspects of our introspective world, free-will cannot be broken apart or reduced; it is an Element-ofreality as seen from the first-person perspective.

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One or More Elements-of-Reality In this chapter we have discussed five specific aspects of the mind as seen from the first-person perspective: present tense, qualia, mental unity, semantic thought, and free-will. Our ability to list and discuss these as individual items can be interpreted in two different ways. On one hand, it could mean that the mind is not just one thing, but can be divided into several components. On the other hand, we could claim that these listed items are just different facets of a single unified mind. It is difficult or impossible to say which of these is correct, since introspection is such an inexact technique; different people will give you different answers. However, the important point is that all of these things, whether they are individual components or a unified whole, are irreducible. It is not possible to break apart such things as the present moment, the redness of red, the oneness of mental activity, the meaning of an idea, and the freedom to think and act. In other words, the first-person views the mind as one or more Elements-of-reality.

5

Defining the Problem

Introduction This chapter is a milestone in our study of the mind-body problem. Previous chapters have prepared the way for the two critical tasks that are undertaken here, (1) defining what the mind-body problem is, and (2) describing what would count as a solution to this problem. There is nothing more important in our quest to solve this mystery. Understanding the nature of the problem takes us more than halfway toward its solution. Simple Ignorance versus Paradox In Chapter 2 we saw that the method of reduction breaks reality into two different categories, Elements-of-reality and Information. By definition, the Elements-of-reality are things that are irreducible, such as elementary particles, time and distance. In comparison, Information is what can be transmitted over a communications channel. This way of thinking is the basis of modern science, as well as our everyday commonsense. However, when we try to analyze the mind with this strategy we come to an obvious discrepancy. This situation arises because we can examine the mind from two different perspectives, the first-person and the third-person viewpoints. As presented in Chapter 3, when we look at the mind from the third-person view we see pure Information. In comparison, in Chapter 4 we found that the first-person perspective sees the mind as one or more Elements-of-reality. Now, the problem in all of this could not be more obvious; how is it possible that one perceives their mind to be the exact 57

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opposite of what science contends it to be? This apparent contradiction is the mind-body problem in its most basic form; it is the thing that we seek to understand. Figure 5-1 illustrates this deep discrepancy; observers that should agree, couldn’t disagree more. Of course, there are other mysteries about the brain’s operation that are not included in the mind-body problem. For instance, science does not yet understand how learning and memories come about from synaptic changes. However, this is a completely different category of problem; it is a mystery totally contained in the third-person perspective. In other words, it is a matter of simple ignorance; we observe something and cannot immediately understand how to consolidate what we see with our previous knowledge. In comparison, in the mind-body problem we seem to understand what we are observing, but those observations are inherently contradictory. In other words, the mind-body problem is a paradox, something that is far more serious. To illustrate this difference between simple ignorance and a paradox, let’s look at two famous scientific problems that were solved in the last century. The first problem is how life continues from one generation to the next. For thousands of years, the common belief was that life involved some sort of mystical substance, often referred to as the vital force. Even though it could not be directly observed, it seemed clear that living things had it, and nonliving things did not. Life was seen as continuing from generation to generation by passing the vital force from parents to children. This was accepted as a reasonable explanation that accounted for the observations. Of course, this view was shattered in the 1950s with the discovery that the molecular structure of DNA held the instructions for creating new life, and that the vital force was nothing more than a myth. The important point is that this is a case of simple ignorance; scientists look at something from the third-person

Chapter 5: Defining the Problem

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FIGURE 5-1 The mind-body problem. From the first-person viewpoint the mind appears as one or more Elements-of-reality, but to the third-person viewpoint it appears as pure Information.

perspective and don’t understand it, or even worse, they misunderstand it. Science isn’t perfect; it doesn’t have a complete knowledge about the world and is bound to make mistakes. This is an inherent part of the scientific method.

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This can be compared to the twin paradox, one of the most confusing aspects of Special Relativity1 discovered by Albert Einstein in 1905. As typical in Einstein’s work (see Fig. 5-2), this is based on a thought experiment. Suppose that we take a pair of identical twins, keep one on earth, and send the other to a distant star in a spaceship. Since stars are incredibly far apart, the spaceship will need to travel very fast, almost at the speed of light. One of the basic principles of special relativity is that motion is relative. That is, the twin on earth sees his brother moving away rapidly, while he remains stationary. On the other hand, the twin in the spaceship sees himself as stationary, while his brother and the earth are moving away. Next, we bring in a second basic principle of special relativity, that is, time moves slower at high speeds. This means that the twin on earth sees his brother aging very slowly because of the spaceship’s rapid motion. However, the twin in the spaceship thinks his time is passing normally, while he sees his brother, and everyone else on earth, aging more slowly. This comes to a head when the spaceship completes its mission and returns to the earth. When the brothers meet, each expects to see the other as much younger than himself. Of course, they can’t both be younger than the other. This discrepancy is more severe than simply not being able to understanding our observations. A paradox has arisen; two sets of observations that should both be correct, are contradictory to each other. The point is, the modern study of the mind involves two different types of problems. The first problem is understanding the structure and function of the brain, which is a matter of simple ignorance. The second problem is the mind-body problem, which is a paradox. The purpose of this book is to present a solution to the second problem, to resolve the discrepancy between the first and third person views. But even 1. Relativity: The Special and General Theory, Albert Einstein, Reprinted 1995, Crown Publishers, 188 pages. Read the master’s own words! Mathematical, but written for a general audience.


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FIGURE 5-2 Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Einstein was a German-American physicist, best know for his discoveries of Special and General Relativity. Perhaps his greatest talent was being able to visualize problems in simple terms, and then analyze the consequences with rigorous mathematics. For instance, he wondered what it would be like to ride on a beam of light, or be trapped inside a moving elevator in space. These simple questions lead him to a mathematical description of curved space-time, the fundamental structure of the entire universe. Einstein struggled through his early school years, with his teachers believing he would never amount to much. Fifty years after his death, Einstein is widely regarded as one of the two greatest scientists of all time (the other being Isaac Newton)

if successful, the problems involving simple ignorance will still remain. Understanding the structure and function of the brain will likely require many decades of research. By the way, which twin is right? In 1915, Einstein published a far more extensive theory called General Relativity, which shows that the passage of time is also slowed by gravitational fields and acceleration. Since the twin in the spaceship is the one who underwent the acceleration during takeoff and landing, he is the one who ages more slowly. We will hear more from Einstein in the next chapter.

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The One and Only Problem A variety of well-crafted examples have been presented over the years to illustrate the mind-body problem. These have proven very useful in shaping our understanding of the issues at hand. However, a key teaching of the Inner Light theory is that every one of these examples, every description of the mindbody problem ever written, can be reduced to a single issue. And this issue is what we have spent the last four chapters developing: the third-person sees the mind as Information, while the first-person sees the mind one or more Elements-ofreality. This is the root of the mind-body problem; everything else is just window dressing. To illustrate this, Fig. 5-3 shows two lists. The “A” list contains words and phrases of how the mind is seen from the perspective of the third-person. As such, all of these items are Information. In other words, each of the entries on the “A” list could be reconstructed by a distant alien civilization, provided that we give them the assembly instructions and they have locally available Elements-of-reality. On the other hand, the “B” list contains words and phrases of how the mind is seen from the first-person viewpoint. These are all Elements-ofreality, things that are irreducible, entities that cannot be transmitted over a communications channel. Now suppose that we want to develop a new argument illustrating the mind-body problem. We pick an entry from the “A” list and hold it up in our right hand, and pick an entry from the “B” list and hold it up in our left hand. We then proclaim: “See, they are not the same; they have different characteristics; one cannot explain the other.” Let’s look at several examples from the philosophical literature to see how this strategy is used. To start, we will look at the catchy phrase from Patricia Churchland:


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FIGURE 5-3 A recipe for creating examples. Examples of the mind-body problem can be created by picking an entry from the “A” list (Information as viewed from the third person), picking an entry from the “B” list (Elements-of-reality as seen by the first-person), and then discussing why the two items are not the same.

This gets right to the point; we have an item from the “A” list, an item from the “B” list, and an insinuation that they are not the same thing. In this same way, we can question the possibility of manmade machines becoming conscious:

Likewise, American philosopher and law professor Thomas Nagel invites us to imagine consciousness in lower animals:2

2. “What is it like to be a bat?,” Thomas Nagel, The Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4, Oct. 1974, pp 435-450. Widely cited article stressing the first-person view of the mind. Look for it on the web.

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Other interesting examples of the mind-body problem are in the form of short stories or scenarios. For instance, Australian philosopher Frank Jackson poses the story of Mary,3 a brilliant scientist who is forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. In spite of her situation, Mary learns all that there is to know about the physical aspects of color, such as the wavelength of light, the different sensory cells in the eyes, and the neurophysiology of the brain. Then one day Mary is released into the world and has her first experience of actually seeing color. This is something new to her, something she has never known. Therefore her knowledge of the physical aspects of color (a member of List “A”) is not the same as her experience of color (a member of List “B”). Perhaps the most well known example of the mind-body problem is called The Chinese Box,4,5 developed by the American philosopher John Searle. Imagine being locked in a small room with nothing but a rule book, a pencil, and paper. Through a slot in the door you are passed Chinese writing, which you find incomprehensible since you do not understand this language. Nevertheless, you blindly look up each symbol in the rule book, which tells you the appropriate symbols to write down on a sheet of paper. When the rule book indicates you are done, you obediently pass the paper back out of the slot. On the outside of the room, a native Chinese speaker is having a delightful exchange. He writes down questions in Chinese, passes them into the slot, and receives an answer back in Chinese. In other words, your activity in the room, in 3. “What Mary didn’t know,” Frank Jackson, The Journal of Philosophy LXXXIII, 5, May 1986, pp 291-295. Search the web. 4. “Minds, brains, and programs,” John R. Searle, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: pp 417-424. See ref. 5 for updated version. 5. The Mystery of Consciousness, John R. Searle, 1997, New York Review of books, 224 pages. Excellent review of the present status of the mind-body problem, covering modern approaches from pure science to philosophy. At the top of the recommended reading list.


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combination with the rule book, is sufficient to carry on a written conversation in this foreign language. Now imagine that we replace you and the rule book with a computer that carries out exactly the same actions. That is, we give it Chinese writing, and it gives us back a reply in Chinese, all according to some predetermined computer program. The question Searle asks is this: Does the computer understand what it is doing? According to Searle, the answer is clearly no; if the man in the room doesn’t understand Chinese, then it is not possible that the computer understands it either. In short, syntax (the logical operations carried out by the computer program) is not the same as semantics (i.e., the kind of understanding or meaning that occurs in actual minds). Again we see the same pattern; an entry from the “A” list (syntax) is compared with an entry from the “B” list (semantics), with a discussion of why they are not the same. This brief overview certainly does not do these examples justice; they are thought provoking and full of twists and turns. The point is, all of these rest on the foundation of the same problem, and it is this foundation that we must identify and attack. It does little or no good to compare individual items from the “A” and “B” lists. What is needed is an explanation of why everything on the “A” list is different from everything on the “B” list. Anything less will be insufficient, and anything more will be superfluous. To understand this better, imagine that we want to prove that a magnetic field and an electronic document (such as created by a word processor) are not the same thing. As our primary argument, we will use the method of reduction, and state: Primary argument A magnetic field is an Element-of-Reality; An electronic document is Information; Therefore, a magnetic field is not an electronic document.

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We can also use a secondary argument, based on showing that the characteristics of the two things are not the same: Secondary argument A magnetic field has characteristics: P, Q, R, S, T. An electronic document has characteristics: U, V, W, X, Y. Therefore, a magnetic field is not an electronic document.

The point is, if the primary argument is valid, the secondary argument is unneeded and contributes nothing. If one thing is an Element-of-reality, and another thing is Information, we have proven that the two things are different to the full extent of our knowledge. In other words, the method of reduction has taken the issue to its ultimate conclusion, and we can learn nothing more by examining the details. This leads us to the second of the major teachings of the Inner Light Theory:

Major Teaching #2: Definition of the Mind-body Problem There is one and only one issue in the mind-body problem: How can the mind be seen as Information from the third-person perspective, but as one or more Elements-of-reality from the first-person viewpoint? This is the question we are seeking to answer, the heart of what puzzles us about consciousness. Furthermore, this also specifies what is required of a solution to this puzzle. Solving the mind-body problem is the same as explaining the discrepancy between the first and third-person observations. No more is required, and no less will suffice.


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Previous Attempts at Solving the Problem In this section we briefly look at previous approaches that have been tried to solve the mind-body problem. These methods fail for a variety of reasons. But in their failure we can learn a great deal about the nature of the problem, and how a potential solution must be evaluated. We will start by examining three traditional approaches, materialism, idealism, and dualism. These have been around for hundreds or thousands of years in the philosophical literature. Next, we examine three methods from modern day philosophy and science, epiphenomenalism, emergence, and quantum mechanics. Since the mind-body problem is a conflict between two points of view, an obvious approach to solving the dilemma is to assert that one of the points of view is wrong. This is the approach taken by materialism,6 which maintains that the third-person view of the mind is correct, and what is seen from the first-person perspective is in error. This means that the world of science is the only thing that we can believe, and what we learn by introspection is flawed and not reliable. As evidence, materialists point out that much of what introspection tells us is obviously mistaken. For instance, when we look at optical illusions we see something that is different from how the world really is. As even stronger evidence of our introspective fallibility, each of us spends several hours a day living in a world that clearly does not exist, something that we call dreaming. If we are mistaken about these kinds of things from the first-person perspective, isn’t it possible that we are mistaken about all of our introspective experiences? The flip side of this is called idealism, claiming that the first-person view is correct, and the third-person view is mistaken. This means that scientific observation is an illusion; 6. Consciousness Explained, Daniel Dennett, 1992, Little, Brown & Company, 511 pages. Popular, written for general audiences. Uses scientific and philosophical arguments to convince us that our introspective world is an illusion. This idea has offended many.

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there is no universe that exists independently of our thinking about it. The only thing that has a real existence is our mind, with its thoughts and ideas (hence the name, idealism). Interestingly, dreams can also be cited as evidence for the idealist position. If we can create our own private universe when we are dreaming, how do we know that we aren’t creating our waking universe in the same manner? This book in front of you seems real, something that exists independently of your mind. The problem is, tonight when you dream about this book it will seem just as real, just as independent of your thoughts. Of course, it won’t be. Idealists claim that the only thing we know for certain is that our minds exist; all else is just baseless supposition. Materialism and idealism assert that one of the two perspectives is flawed. The problem is, most people thinking about the problem don’t buy it; both of the views seem inherently correct. Nothing seems more obvious to us than the joint existence of the external world of science and the inner world of our own mind. There is a saying in science, popularized by the American astronomer Carl Sagan (19351996): “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The claims made by materialism and idealism are certainly extraordinary; they contradict our common sense understanding of reality at a fundamental level. Of course, this is not proof that they are false. However, the evidence in support of these positions is not compelling; in fact, it is almost nonexistent. While both realism and idealism are logically possible, little or nothing is given to make us believe that they are correct. This leads us to dualism, which contends that both viewpoints can be taken at face value; the universe seen from the third-person perspective exists, as does the world of our inner thoughts. The first and third-person viewpoints disagree about the nature of the mind simply because they are looking at two different things. The third-person sees mindless neural activity in the brain, while the first-person is in direct contact with some sort of elusive mental reality, something that is


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beyond our physical world. Dualism is a straightforward interpretation of what our senses tell us. We see an external world; we see an internal world; they both seem to be real; and they are not the same. In other words, the evidence for dualism is our personal observation that the mind and body are separate things. Given this, it is not surprising that dualism is the oldest and most widespread belief about the nature of the mind. Most religions are inherently based on the belief that humans have a soul or spirit that can exist independently of their bodies, such as after death. Even though dualism is logically possible, it is deeply inconsistent with the scientific evidence. For instance, if the mind and brain are separate entities, why does damage to the brain result in damage to the mind? Even more troubling, if a person’s actions are controlled by an independent mind, why does science observe the brain to be in control? While these and similar arguments are not absolute proof, the scientific evidence against dualism is more than compelling. As discussed in Chapter 3, science sees a mind that is embodied in the activity of the brain, and not a separate mental world. In short, all three of the classical solutions are logically possible, but are starved for evidence that they are true. Add to this that realism and idealism conflict with our personal observations, and that dualism is at odds with the scientific evidence. Now let’s turn our attention to the three modern day approaches to the mind-body problem and see if they are any more convincing. Epiphenomenalism7 is an attempt to modify dualism such that it does not conflict with the scientific evidence. In this solution, the brain controls all body activity, just as described in

7. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, David J. Chalmers, 1997, Oxford University Press, 414 pages. Uses philosophical arguments to emphasize just how difficult the mindbody problem really is. Very popular; good technical philosophy. Very questionable suggestion that epiphenomenalism is useful.

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medical textbooks. However, it is claimed that brain activity alone cannot account for our first-person experiences; there must be a separate “mind” to do this. The distinguishing feature of epiphenomenalism is that the “mind” is an observer only, it cannot affect the brain or body in any way. As you go about your daily activities, your brain is in control of analyzing data from your senses, making decisions, moving your body, controlling your speech, and so on. In contrast, all your mind can do is watch these events unfold, without having power to change them in the slightest. Simply put, your mind is connected to your eyes and ears, but not your arms, legs, or tongue. In the jargon of the field, the mind is only an epiphenomenon, meaning it exists upon or beside the main event. Epiphenomenalism is important because of how it fails. While the three traditional methods are “possible but lacking in evidence,” epiphenomenalism does not provide a logically possible solution. The fundamental principle in this approach is that the “mind” cannot affect behavior in any way; all of our thoughts and actions are determined solely by the machine-like activity of the brain. In fact, even if our minds did not exist, our brains would carry out exactly the same day-to-day activities, and the entire history of mankind would be unchanged. Herein lies the problem. If epiphenomenalism is true, then all of our words and writings about consciousness have nothing meaningful to say about the issue. After all, every book and article on consciousness would be exactly the same whether the mind did or did not exist, and any characteristics that the mind may or may not have. In short, accepting this as a solution to the mind-body problem leads us to the conclusion that we cannot think, speak or write about the problem in the first place. This is the logical quagmire of epiphenomenalism; it says of itself: ”I am meaningless.” Of course, our introspective experience tells us that this entire line of reasoning is flawed. If we know anything at all, we know that we can think, speak, and write about the nature of our minds.


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As previously discussed in Chapter 2, emergence 8-11 is one of the basic strategies we use to understanding the world around us. It works from the bottom-up, with complex entities being created from more simple structures. Just as a candle flame arises from the wick, wax and air, the human mind is viewed as arising from the neural activity of the brain. Emergent entities, such as candle flames and minds, are claimed to be more than just the sum of their components; they have an existence of their own. Emergence is very attractive to those studying neural networks and artificial intelligence. In short, it contends that if we look hard enough at brain activity, we will eventually find the recipe that accounts for the first-person experience. Emergence is a powerful technique, and its importance in understanding the mind and brain should not be underestimated. In fact, it is the primary way that we will solve the mysteries regarding the structure and function of the brain, those problems that involve simple ignorance. But that is not the task at hand; our concern here is to resolve the paradox of the mind-body problem. And to do this we must find an explanation of why the third-person viewpoint sees the mind as Information, while the first-person perspective sees Elements-of-reality. Can emergence provide such an explanation? The answer is no, it cannot. Emergence is a manipulation of Information, placing it in a form that humans can more readily understand and accept. But regardless of how Information is rearranged or packaged, it is still just Information; emergence does not have

8. Stairway to the Mind, Alywn Scott, 1995, Copernicus Books, 229 pages. Emergence from the viewpoint of a mathematician. 9. The Race for Consciousness, John G. Taylor, 1999, MIT press, 380 pages. From the view of a physicist and neural network expert. 10. The Astonishing Hypothesis, Francis Crick, 1994, Touchstone, 317 pages. Crick received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA. Seeks consciousness through brain research. 11. A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald M. Edelman, 2000, Basic books, 288 pages. Edelman received the Nobel Prize in 1972 for work on the chemistry of antibodies. A neuroscience viewpoint.

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the power to create an Element-of-reality. This is inherent in how the methods of emergence and reduction operate, as discussed in Chapter 2. In short, emergence fails as an approach to the mind-body problem because is it powerless to explain what must be explained. Our last approach is Quantum Mechanics, a topic so intriguing that we will give it its own section. Quantum Mechanics Quantum Mechanics deals with the world of the very small. Scientists began investigating this area during the first few decades of the 20th century (see Fig. 5-4). They found that atoms are composed of three smaller entities, the electron, proton, and neutron. Other residents of this subatomic world were also discovered, and given names such as the photon, muon, neutrinos, and quarks, to name just a few. But just what exactly are these things? Conventional science knows about two types of phenomena. First, there are waves, including sound waves, radio waves, waves on the surface of water, and so on. Second, there are particles, which are just chunks of matter, such as specks of dust, cannon balls, planets, and raindrops. Scientific commonsense tells us that the inhabitants of the subatomic world will also fall into these two categories; they must be either waves or particles. Fortunately, waves and particles have very different characteristics and simple experiments can tell them apart. To start, we need a source of the subatomic entity that we want to test. For instance, this might be a radioactive material that emits neutrons, a light bulb that produces photons, or a glowing hot wire that gives off electrons. In this example we will arbitrarily assume that we are using electrons, just to give us a name to refer to. However, other subatomic particles would produce the same result. Figure 5-5 shows the apparatus we will use. We will force the electrons being emitted from the source to pass through a


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FIGURE 5-4 Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) and Niels Bohr (1885-1962). [Left and right, respectively]. Pioneers in Quantum Mechanics.

small aperture, such as a hole in a thin plate of metal. The electrons that exit the aperture are then detected by a sheet of photographic film, which is sensitive to electrons in the same way that it is sensitive to light. If electrons are particles, as illustrated in Fig. 5-5a, they will travel in a straight line from the aperture to the photographic film. The developed negative will therefore show a group of dots in a circle about the same size as the aperture, with each dot corresponding to a single electron being detected. In contrast, Fig. 5-5b shows what will happen if electrons are waves. After passing through the aperture, the waves will expand many times in size before striking the photographic film. Also, they will form into a series of smooth concentric circles, a pattern referred to as an “Airy disk” (named after George Biddell Airy, a British astronomer who first explained the pattern in 1835). By “smooth” we mean that there is a gradual change between the dark and light regions in the pattern, without sharp edges or discontinuities. This behavior of waves is well known in science and completely understood.

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FIGURE 5-5 Particle and wave behavior. As shown in (a), particles move in a straight line and interact as individual events. In contrast, (b) shows that waves expand as they travel, and interact as a series of smooth concentric rings, a pattern called an Airy disk. These behaviors are well known in science and fully understood.

Now we come to the moment of truth; we turn on the electrons, run the experiment for a short time, develop the film, and look at the photograph. Do we see a large Airy disk with smooth rings, or a small circle of dots?


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FIGURE 5-6 Quantum behavior. Quantum entities move as a wave, but then abruptly collapse into a particle when they are measured. The location that the particle comes into existence is random and totally unpredictable (except in a probabilistic sense). If you don’t understand how this could happen, don’t worry; nobody understands how this could happen.

Much to our surprise, we find a mixture of these two results. As shown in Fig. 5-6, the photographic film records an Airy disk that is formed from individual dots. To understand just how strange this is, pick an individual dot in one of the rings and try to analyze how it could have been produced. In order for the photographic film to be exposed at this location, the electron must have moved as a wave between the aperture and the film. However, the individual dot means that the electron interacted with the film as a particle. In short, the electron behaves as a wave, but then suddenly turns into a particle when it is measured. This strange transformation is referred to as the “collapse of the wave function.” As previously mentioned, this wave-particle duality is seen in all entities of the subatomic world, not just electrons.

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This aspect of Quantum Mechanics bewilders scientists to this day. Consider this passage from one of the founders of Quantum Mechanics, Werner Heisenberg (Fig. 5-4): “I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair, and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighboring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: “Can nature possibly be as absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?” Quantum Mechanics has now been around for nearly a century, has been experimentally verified beyond all doubt, and is mathematically expressed in fine detail. Even so, the nature of the wave collapse is still as mysterious and puzzling today as it was to Heisenberg and his colleagues. What is the nature of the wave before it is measured? What causes the wave to collapse? Where exactly does the transition from wave to particle occur? These questions strike at the very heart of our ability to understand the reality we exist in. And the more one looks at these questions, the stranger they become.12 Einstein was a great skeptic of Quantum Mechanics, in spite of making many contributions to its success. For decades he presented Niels Bohr with thought experiments designed to show that Quantum Mechanics was incorrect, or at the very least, incomplete. In his heart, Einstein continued to believe that the quantum world must consist of ordinary waves and particles. Bohr closed Einstein’s loopholes one by one, but in the minds of these two giants the issue was never settled. On the day that he died, Bohr had a drawing of one of Einstein’s thought experiments on his blackboard. This great intellectual exchange is now referred to as the Bohr-Einstein debates. 12. Quantum Reality, Nick Herbert, 1985, Doubleday, 255 pages. What Quantum Mechanics says about the nature of our reality. For a general technical audience. Well written; highly recommended.


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What does this have to do with consciousness? At the most basic level, Quantum Mechanics and consciousness are both frustrating mysteries. The question is, are these two mysteries connected in some way? Many renowned scientists believe that such a connection does exist. Unfortunately, their reasons are highly speculative and poorly defined, to say the least. For instance, John Von Neumann (Fig. 5-7) worked out the formal mathematics of Quantum Mechanics in 1932. As part of this, he tried to determine where the wave collapse occurs. Finding no special location, he concluded that it must be at the one place he did not understand, the interface between the mind and the body. The logic of the situation forced him to reluctantly accept the idealist view that reality is created by our minds. It must be remembered that Von Neumann is often regarded as the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. If he concluded that something was true, you had better think twice before disagreeing! Von Neumann’s reasoning is simple: Since Quantum Mechanics cannot be understood by itself, something like consciousness must be involved.

FIGURE 5-7 John Von Neumann (1903-1957). Hungarian-American John Von Neumann is often considered to be the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. If it was new and exciting, Von Neumann was there to lend a hand! His concept of a stored program is the foundation of modern computers. He is also known for his work on the atomic bomb and his development of the formalized mathematics used in Quantum Mechanics.

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Now we want to look at the flip side of this, a view that is expressed in the work of Roger Penrose.13 Penrose enters this debate with the claim that humans are capable of solving certain mathematical problems that cannot be solved by computers. For instance, consider the statement: “This sentence is unprovable.” After a considerable amount of thought, a human will judge this statement to be true. The reason is, judging that the statement is false results in a logical contradiction. However, Penrose claims that this conclusion cannot be reached by computational means; something more is required. In other words, the human mind has mathematical abilities above and beyond what can be explained by neural activity. To account for this extra ability, Penrose suggests that quantum effects may be at work. Simply put: Since consciousness cannot be understood by itself, something like Quantum Mechanics must be involved. In conjunction with Stuart Hameroff,14 Penrose speculates that the underpinnings of consciousness arise in microtubules, tiny tube-like structures contained within nerve cells. Quantum effects in the microtubules influence synaptic activity, thereby linking the operation of the brain with the quantum world. A particularly interesting part of this view is that the wave function collapses because of a natural process, a new physical principle called quantum-gravity. In the Penrose-Hameroff model, quantum effects cause consciousness, not the other way around as seen by Von Neumann. In summary, theories about quantum-consciousness come in two general varieties: (1) consciousness causes the wave 13. Shadows of the Mind, Roger Penrose, 1996, Oxford University Press, 457 pages. Very difficult reading. Penrose is a prominent mathematical physicist, well know for his work on black holes. 14. “Quantum coherence in microtubules: A neural basis for an emergent consciousness?” S.R. Hameroff, 1994, Journal of Consciousness Studies 1:91-118. Search the web for current work.


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function to collapse, and (2) the wave function collapse causes consciousness. Taken separately or together, these possibilities lead to a variety of different scenarios about the nature of the mind and its relationship to reality. While a connection between consciousness and Quantum Mechanics is intriguing, there is little evidence that it is true. Experts are very skeptical of the arguments presented by Von Neumann and Penrose. Even if they are true, there is an enormous gap between seeing a few dots on a photographic film and explaining introspective experiences such as qualia, freewill and semantic thought. If there is a connection between Quantum Mechanics and consciousness, it must be shown by hard evidence, not just the possibility that an answer is hiding in the unknown. To date, this evidence is not there, not in the slightest. In addition, there is a colossal reason to believe that Quantum Mechanics and consciousness are not related. Quantum effects generally occur at very small distances, far smaller than nerve cells and synapses. This makes it very difficult to believe that neural activity is affected by the quantum world. It is much like trying to imagine how birds and insects could affect the path of a hurricane. The vast majority of scientists dismiss the possibility that Quantum Mechanics is related to brain activity. And if it doesn’t affect brain activity, it is difficult to understand how it could be related to consciousness. Whether consciousness is involved or not, the mysteries of Quantum Mechanics will continue to intrigue scientists and philosophers alike. This is one of the great puzzles of our time. Moving Forward These brief descriptions of the previous approaches only capture their flavor, not their full substance. There are many variations and subtle issues that we have ignored altogether. Nevertheless, this short presentation demonstrates the wide variety of approaches that have been used, and the equally wide

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variety of ways that they have failed. But from these failures we can learn what is required of an acceptable solution to the mind-body problem:

# It must be logically possible and not self contradictory. (unlike epiphenomenalism)

# It must be able to explain what must be explained. (unlike emergence)

# It must not merely invoke a mystery to explain a mystery. (unlike Quantum Mechanics)

# It must be consistent with our scientific knowledge. (unlike dualism)

# It must be consistent with our introspective knowledge, or convincingly explain why. (unlike materialism and idealism)

# It must be more than just possible; there needs to be compelling evidence that it is true. (unlike most of the previous approaches) In the last five chapters we have outlined the problem we are trying to solve. We have also defined what would count as an acceptable solution to this problem. Now it is time to move forward, to start the actual construction of the Inner Light Theory of Consciousness. In the next three chapters we discuss a strange situation that could arise in our universe, something we will call an Information-Limited Subreality. As we will see, this holds the solution to the mind-body problem, as we have so carefully defined it in the previous chapters.

6

Information-Limited Subrealities

What This Chapter is About, and Not About Previous chapters have laid out the problem: observations from the first and third-person perspectives disagree about the nature of the mind. The solution to this paradox will become apparent in this chapter. But first, a word of caution: this chapter is not about consciousness; it is about physics. It is about the way that the universe operates, and how we can observe and understand that operation. The central topic of this chapter, the Information-Limited Subreality, is an objective and physical phenomenon, something that we can scientifically define and describe the properties of. Its relevance to the mind-body problem will be discussed in upcoming chapters. For now, our task is one of physics, not philosophy or psychology. This is important because we will use the concept of the Information-Limited Subreality to define what consciousness is. Therefore, we must take care not to explain the Information-Limited Subreality in terms of consciousness, thus leading to a circular definition. The Observer In the last chapter we introduced Special Relativity, a strange area of physics developed by Albert Einstein in 1905. A key topic in this work is the concept of the observer. For instance, in the last chapter we saw that a person on earth will see the universe differently than his twin brother in a speeding spaceship. In short, Einstein showed that how you view the world depends on your condition, such as your velocity, 81

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acceleration, and even the gravitational field you are in. For instance, consider a group of scientists on the earth, a single astronaut in route to a distant star, and a sophisticated robotic probe exploring the intense gravitational field of a black hole. Since each of these entities is in a different condition with respect to how they observe the universe, we refer to them as three different “observers.” The important point is that being an “observer” refers to your condition, not to what you are. As in this example, an “observer” may be a group of people, a single individual, or even a nonconscious computer. For instance, look at how Einstein used the concept of different observers to explain the equivalence of acceleration and gravity, a key part of the General Theory of Relativity: “We imagine a large portion of empty space, ... far removed from stars and other appreciable masses, ... let us imagine a spacious chest resembling a room with an observer inside who is equipped with apparatus. Gravitation naturally does not exist for this observer. He must fasten himself with strings to the floor, otherwise the slightest impact against the floor will cause him to rise slowly towards the ceiling. To the middle of the lid of the chest is fixed externally a hook with rope attached, and now a “being” (what kind of being is immaterial to us) begins pulling at this with a constant force. The chest together with the observer then begins to move “upwards” with a uniform accelerated motion ... But how does the man in the chest regard this process? The acceleration of the chest will be transmitted to him by the reaction of the floor of the chest. He must therefore take up this pressure by means of his legs if he does not wish to be laid out full length on the floor. He is then standing in the chest in exactly the same way as anyone stands in a room of a house on earth. ... and he consequently comes to the conclusion

Chapter 6: Information-Limited Subrealities

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that the chest is suspended at rest in a gravitational field.” “On the other hand, an observer who is poised freely in space will interpret the condition of things thus: The rope must perforce take part in the accelerated motion of the chest, and it transmits this motion to the body attached to it. The tension of the rope is just large enough to effect the acceleration of the body.” In short, the observer inside of the chest sees a gravitational field, while the observer outside the chest sees acceleration. While there is only a single phenomenon, it can be viewed from two different observational conditions. Descartes’ Evil Genius The basic idea of the “Information-Limited Subreality” is very old. The first systematic account was provided by René Descartes in 1641 (See Fig. 6-1). Descartes was troubled that philosophy was very subjective and controversial, especially when compared to the certainties of mathematics. Of principal concern was the possibility that we may hold false beliefs, such as being deceived by others, ourselves, or the natural world. For instance, he notes the delusions of the insane: “...certain persons, devoid of sense, whose cerebella are so troubled and clouded by the violent vapors of black bile, that they constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are really quite poor, or that they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass.” While Descartes dismisses these ramblings of madmen, he has a more difficult time with dreaming, where normal people encounter gross deceptions about their existence. Of this problem he writes:

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“How often has it happened to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressed and seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressed in bed! ... I see so manifestly that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulness from sleep that I am lost in astonishment. And my astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I now dream.” This potential for deception prompted Descartes to undertake a philosophical method designed to avoid error at all costs, a search for those things that could be known with absolute certainty. In doing so, Descartes intended to elevate philosophy to the same high stature as mathematics. He does this by considering a worse-case scenario, that an all-powerful being is intentionally trying to deceive him about the nature of his existence. He first considers that this deceiver may be God; however, he soon rejects the idea that a supremely good being would perpetrate this type of deception. This leads him to the idea of an evil genius, powerful enough to deceive him as God could, and malicious enough to do so: “I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of truth, but some evil genius not less powerful than deceitful, has employed his whole energies in deceiving me;...” The problem now facing Descartes is to determine what things this evil genius could deceive him about, and what things he could not deceive him about. Certainly, an all-powerful deceiver is capable of making us dream, as well as driving us mad. Therefore, anything we can potentially experience in either of these two states is something that we can be deceived about. As Descartes notes, the evil genius could even deceive us about the very nature of our existence:


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FIGURE 6-1 René Descartes (1596-1650). René Descartes, a French physiologist mathematician and philosopher, is best known for founding analytic geometry, and defining the mindbody problem. The quotes in this chapter are taken from his most influential work, the Meditations, first published in Latin in 1641. Descartes was one of the greatest thinkers of the 17th century, and the starting point for all discussions on the nature of consciousness.

“... I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity; I shall consider myself as having no flesh, no blood, nor any senses, yet falsely believing myself to possess all these things.” Given that the evil genius has such great power of deception, is there anything that we can be sure of, or is everything that we believe under a cloud of doubt? Descartes comes to the logical conclusion that there is something that he could not be fooled about, no matter how powerful the evil genius. And that something is that his mind exists. As Descartes reasoned, even an all-powerful being could not fool him into believing that his mind was real, if there were no such thing as his mind. The simple mental act of thinking that you exist is completely sufficient to guarantee that you do exist. As eloquently put in his famous passage: “I think, therefore I am.”

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Descartes extended this line of reasoning to identify the basic nature of the mind-body problem. That is, the mind is the thing that thinks and is guaranteed to exist, while the body is a separate thing that we perceive with our senses and we might be deceived about. Further, Descartes had some recognition of how the method of reduction further separates these two things: “... we cannot conceive of body excepting in so far as it is divisible, while the mind cannot be conceived of excepting as indivisible. For we are not able to conceive of the half of the mind as we can do of the smallest of all bodies; so that we see that not only are their natures different but even in some respects contrary to one another.” Or as we phrased it more precisely in the last chapter, the third-person view sees the mind as Information, while the firstperson perspective sees it as one or more Elements-of-reality. Descartes’ solution to the mind-body problem was dualism, that the mortal body is a separate and distinct thing from the immortal soul. He even speculated on the exact site within the brain where the interaction between the physical body and the immaterial mind occurs, the pineal gland. This is a small organ located deep within the brain (see Fig. 3-6). It is about the size and shape of a pine nut, after which it is named. Descartes identified this as the seat of consciousness for two reasons, (1) the pineal gland is the only body in the brain that does not have a duplicate in the left and right halves, and (2) it is found only in humans, not animals. Both of these are now known to be incorrect. To this day, some spiritual groups identify the pineal gland as the gateway to the soul. Of course, medical science doesn’t hold this view. The pineal gland is known to release the hormone melatonin in response to environmental lightness and darkness changes, part of the subject’s biological clock. While questions about the relationship between the mind and body have been around since man began to think, Descartes


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was the first to place these issues into a systematic framework. This has made Descartes widely regarded as the father of the mind-body problem. As far as the Inner Light Theory goes, we want to focus on one very specific aspect of Descartes’ work: everything that we perceive might be an illusion, something completely different than the true physical world. The Brain in the Vat In the mid 1900s this same idea reentered philosophy in a scenario known as The Brain in the Vat. In the 300 years since Descartes, medical science had learned the basic operation of the brain. In particular, it became known that the brain can only experience what enters its neural inputs, and can only communicate and instigate body motion by means of its neural outputs. This paves the way for Descartes' evil genius, something that no one really believes to exist, to be replaced with something even more terrifying, technology. Imagine the following scenario. One night while you are deep asleep, a scientist enters your bedroom, surgically removes your brain from your body, and carries it back to his laboratory. He plops it into a vat of nutrient solution to keep it alive, and then goes to work attaching electrodes to the ten-million or so neurons that enter and exit your brain. In the morning you wake up and start your daily activities, completely unaware that all of your perceptions now originate from an electronic computer. Everything that you see, hear, feel, touch, and taste is not real; they are nothing but computer algorithms generating the appropriate neural signals into your brain. Even though you believe you are walking, talking, and otherwise moving your body, it is nothing but an illusion. The neural output from your brain is being monitored by the scientist's computer, which then generates the appropriate signals back to your brain. The computer signals make you believe that you "see" the scenery change, "feel" your body parts move, and "hear" the sound of your footsteps. And the most amazing part, you can’t tell that

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anything has changed in the night; everything seems the same as the day before. This strange story is illustrated in Fig. 6-2. But what if the scientist doesn't want you living the same life you had? By typing a few commands on his computer keyboard, he can change everything that you perceive. One moment you are sitting at your kitchen table enjoying your morning breakfast, and the next you are an astronaut exploring the surface of a distant planet, or a ballerina dancing across a stage. In the next instant, you have no physical substance at all; you are a disembodied spirit floating effortlessly through the air, able to move yourself and objects around you by mere thought. You are at the scientist’s mercy; he can give you pleasures beyond imagination, or pain and horror exceeding your worst fear. Even stranger, the physical laws in this inner reality are up to the scientist’s whims; gravity may cause objects to fall upward, matches may burn before they are struck, and our bodies might be able to move through solid objects. Even more bizarre, this inner reality may be composed of a different dimensional structure, say, four dimensions of distance, two dimensions of time, and one dimension of phase-shift (something that is completely alien and unknown to us). The inner reality does not even need to be consistent; its characteristics might abruptly change for no apparent reason. Indeed, the nature of this inner reality could be virtually anything. Of course, this is the same scenario that troubled Descartes. The difference is that we now have a detailed understanding of how this strange situation could come about. Descartes’ vague “evil genius” has been replaced by physical structures and welldefined operations. This allows us to analyze the phenomenon by using rigorous scientific methods. As mentioned in the introduction, our concern here is physics, not philosophy or psychology.


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FIGURE 6-2 The Brain in the Vat. The human brain can only interact with the external world by means of neural inputs and outputs. If this neural activity were provided by an advanced computer system, a disembodied brain could experience any conceivable reality.

Since this is a book of science, our starting point must be that the scientific view of our reality is correct. That is, there is a physical universe that exists independently of our minds. It consists of three dimensions of distance, one dimension of time, and obeys consistent physical laws, such as described by biology, chemistry and physics. Our minds arise from the operation of this universe, not the other way around. While it is possible that we are brains in a vat or victims of Descartes’ evil genius, there is not the slightest reason for us to

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believe that this is true. Indeed, giving credence to such ideas is meaningless and counterproductive. For instance, imagine hearing a strange sound as you lie in bed one night. What could it possibly be? The list is endless! It could be a small asteroid destroying the house next door, or a dinosaur eating your tulips. It could be mole-men digging tunnels under your bedroom, or an alien spaceship carrying away your home. Do you give any of these scenarios a second thought? Certainly not; it would be a waste of your time. While every observer must acknowledge the possibility that their reality is not genuine, they will reject this as a meaningless thought. Our scientific observations tell us that our minds arise from the activity of our brains, and that our brains are but a very small piece of an immense universe. Lacking credible evidence to the contrary, this is the only reasonable thing for us to believe. But now we want to turn our attention to something that could exist in our universe, a brain in a vat. This is something that humans or other intelligent creatures could conceivably construct. It is a physical apparatus, and as such, it can be analyzed in the finest detail, even down to the level of individual atoms. The problem is, if we regard the world on the outside of the vat as the true reality, how are we to understand and classify the reality experienced by this disembodied brain? First of all, the brain in the vat may or may not know of its true condition. That is, the brain may know that its experiences are being generated by a computer and that nothing in its perceived reality is genuine. For instance, the sadistic scientist may place a video camera over the vat and send the electronic signal into the visual cortex of the captive brain. “See, you are nothing but a disembodied brain in a vat, and I am your God!” the scientist might taunt. On the other hand, the scientist could completely withhold all information about the outside world. Lacking any reason to believe otherwise, the captive brain would believe that its


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experiences originate from the external physical universe that it perceives. It would even call its reality the “true reality.” While the brain must acknowledge the possibility that it is nothing but a “brain in a vat,” it would have no reason to suspect that this is true. In other words, the brain in the vat would understand and perceive its reality in exactly the same way that you and I perceive our reality. But, of course, we would know that it is mistaken. We are in a privileged position to know with certainty that the captive brain’s reality is an illusion; it is not a true representation of the external physical universe. This is the situation that we want to understand and explore, and where we will focus our attention. The Information-Limited Subreality Using the “brain in the vat” as a guide, our task is to now define the physical phenomenon called an Information-Limited Subreality. Two observers, which we will call the outer observer and the inner observer, exist in a physical universe. The outer observer has the ability to perceive this universe directly, without distortion or misrepresentation. This means that the reality perceived by the outer observer is genuine; it originates from and represents exactly what it seems to, an external physical universe. In comparison, the inner observer is in a much more complex condition, being totally unable to observe the physical universe. This handicap results from the information accessible to the inner observer being systematically distorted by some process. Moreover, this distortion is not random, but has two key characteristics. First, it blocks all knowledge of the physical universe to the inner observer. Second, the distorted information is completely consistent with another physical universe, one that could exist, but doesn’t. Of course, the inner observer does not know that what he perceives is an illusion; it is as real to him as real can be. It is the only reality that he knows. But the outer observer can see this situation as it truly

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is, a false reality that is generated by manipulating information. For this reason, the outer observer would refer to the experiences of the inner observer as an Information-Limited Subreality. Since this is such a long name, we will call it an inner reality for short. Likewise, we will refer to the reality experienced by the outer observer as the outer reality. Of course, the inner observer would not use any of these terms; to him there is only reality. This definition encompasses Descartes’ evil genius, the brain in the vat, and a variety of other important situations. Perhaps the most important way that this definition broadens our understanding is that we are now using the term observer. As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, referring to an “observer” is a way of specifying a condition under which observations are made. By definition, who or what is doing the observing is irrelevant; only the nature of what is observed is important. For instance, there is absolutely no requirement for an observer to be conscious. As an example, imagine we built a sophisticated robotic probe, designed to explore the surface of a distant planet with minimal human guidance. We perform a final test by stimulating its sensors with computer generated signals designed to simulate what the probe will encounter on its mission. For instance, the probe might observe that it is in a methane atmosphere, with a temperature of 132 degrees, and total darkness. Of course, this is an illusion; the probe is really in our well-lit and comfortable laboratory. In short, we have placed this nonconscious observer in an Information-Limited Subreality, according to the definitions we have laid out. Both the inner and outer observers will regard their reality as genuine. While each knows that it is logically possible that they exist in an Information-Limited Subreality, they have no reason to believe this is true. Each will make the claim: “My reality derives from an external physical universe.” For the outer observer, this statement is true; for the inner observer, it is false. But what is most important, the truth or falsity of this


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FIGURE 6-3 Kurt Godel (1906-1978). Godel was an interesting man. He is often regarded as the greatest logician (one who studies logic) to have ever lived. Godel spent time with Albert Einstein and published work on the mathematics of time and time travel. He is also known for his interest in psychic phenomena and his effort to develop a logical proof for the existence of God. Godel starved himself to death at age 72, believing that his doctors were trying to poison him.

statement cannot be proven from within the reality that the statement is made. This touches on one of the most important mathematical discoveries of the twentieth century. In 1931, the AustrianAmerican mathematician Kurt Godel shook the foundations of the mathematics world by proving what are now known as the Godel Incompleteness Theorems. In nontechnical terms, Godel (Fig. 6-3) showed that within any system of rules there are statements that are true, but cannot be proven to be true within the system of rules. This could not be more disturbing to mathematicians, since mathematics itself is a system of rules. In short, Godel showed that there are mathematical statements that are true, but can never be proven to be true, regardless of how clever mathematicians are or how long they work on them. As a pertinent example, suppose our inner observer utters the words, “I exist in an Information-Limited Subreality.” This is a true statement, but the ability to prove that it is true does not exist within the Information-Limited Subreality. Its truth can only be proven by examining the situation from “outside of the system of rules.” That is, by looking at things from the perspective of the outer observer.

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The Information-Limited Subreality is a phenomenon that could logically exist in the physical universe as we know it. As such, it is something that we can examine, classify, and determine the properties of. This brings us to The Inner Light, a story that allows us to understand the most extraordinary property of the Information-Limited Subreality, the property that is the root of consciousness. Episode 125: The Inner Light The Star Trek movies and television episodes have become an icon of popular culture. Their contribution has reached far beyond mere entertainment, they have provided unique commentary on social issues and helped to shape our vision of the future. The Inner Light, Episode 125 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, is one of the most highly acclaimed stories in these collective works, and it holds a special place in our search for the nature of consciousness. The story begins with the starship Enterprise passing through an unknown region of space. Its commander, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, stands diligently on the bridge, surrounded by his first officer and bridge crew. The ship’s sensors detect an alien probe of unknown design, and they approach it with caution. Without warning, the probe begins to emit a narrow nucleonic beam (a 24th century term) which engulfs the Captain, causing him to fall to the floor. His first officer kneels over him to give care. As Picard looks up from the deck he sees his world change; the face of his first officer fades away and is replaced by that of a young woman, obviously relieved to see him regaining awareness. Picard looks around and finds he is no longer on the bridge of the Enterprise, but in the living area of an unfamiliar residence, wearing unfamiliar clothing. As is common in his century, Picard believes he has been abducted from the Enterprise by a teleportation beam. “What is this place?” Picard demands. The woman seems genuinely confused by the question, as she tenderly responds, “This is your home,


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of course.” She pleads with him to remain calm, explaining that he has been feverish for over a week. He ignores her advice, and leaves the residence in search of answers. Picard finds that he is in the small community of Ressic, on the planet Kataan. The residents know him as their longtime friend Kamin. The woman he awoke to is Eline, his wife of three years. Those around him dismiss his claims of being a starship captain as delusions of the fever, stealing the memories of his true life. Over the next days, weeks, and years, Picard struggles to find the reason he has been taken from the Enterprise, and to find where in the universe he is being held. But all is in vain; he can find no evidence to support his memories. All that he encounters tells him that he is Kamin, an ironweaver in the community of Ressic, husband to Eline. Even after five years we find that Picard is still struggling with the memories of his former life. But absent any evidence, and in deference to the wife he has grown to love, Picard puts these memories aside and accepts his new existence. He becomes Kamin, and silences the inner voices that know him as Jean-Luc. Over the next 30 years, Kamin lives a happy life with Eline. He has children and grandchildren, becomes a member of the community’s governing council, and spends his days in scientific pursuits and exploring the countryside. He also experiences the human tragedies of life, the death of friends and family, unfulfilled dreams for those he cares about, and struggling against hopeless situations. In one particularly poignant scene, Kamin tells Eline how realistic his memories still seem, even after many years. He looks at her and the village around him, and softly utters, “It was real– it was as real as this is.” Now, the viewer knows that this is a very strange statement, since Picard hasn’t gone anywhere; he is still laying on the deck of the bridge of the Enterprise. The nucleonic beam is controlling his brain, making him perceive that he is a mere ironweaver from Ressic. Picard’s mind is trapped in an Information-Limited Subreality. His

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lifetime of experience as Kamin is being played out in only a few minutes, as the Enterprise’s medical staff furiously labor to end the attack. The other details of this story are not important to our investigation of consciousness, so we won’t give the away the ending. Suffice it to say that it is haunting and memorable. In 1993, The Inner Light won a well-deserved Hugo Award for best dramatic science fiction presentation. At first glance, one might think that this story adds little to our understanding of Information-Limited Subrealities. Picard trapped as Kamin seems well within the principles laid out by Descartes’ evil genius and the brain in the vat. Indeed, when this episode first aired there was no special importance given to it by philosophers or physicists. The reasons that make The Inner Light relevant are subtle, yet of great importance. First, a lesser point, the issue of believability. It is easy for us to make the statement: “The brain in the vat experiences a reality just like ours.” Further, we can verbally explain why this statement is true and what consequences it has. This is an intellectually sufficient description. However, humans are more than intellectual creatures; we have emotions, attitudes, and knowledge that are difficult or impossible to communicate to others. Learning about the aurora borealis in a physics class is one thing, having seen it with your own eyes in quite another. The Inner Light allows us to understand the InformationLimited Subreality in a personal way. We empathize with the characters and relate their experiences to those in our own lives. We gain an intimate knowledge that the inner reality is indistinguishable from our own. We come to deeply understand that what happened to Picard could happen to us. The Principle of Relative Reduction Now we come to the most important lesson from The Inner Light, what will become a central concept in our understanding of consciousness. While Picard is a starship commander, he is


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also a trained scientist. Not surprising, he carries his scientific methods and attitudes into his life as Kamin. During his 30 years on Kataan, Kamin engages in a wide variety of scientific research, such as microbiology, astronomy, and climatology, to name just a few. He carries out these activities as he would in his former reality, and the results are just as consistent and well behaved. Kamin has as much ability to be a scientist as JeanLuc Picard. The primary tool used by science is the method of reduction, which Kamin instinctively uses to understand his reality. Just as in his former life, he finds that everything he observes can be divided into two categories, Information and Elements-of-reality. While the Information he finds is not especially interesting to us, the Elements-of-reality are critically important. When Kamin examines his world he finds such things as elementary particles, electric and magnetic fields, and the dimensions of time and distance. He observes these things to be irreducible, and therefore by definition, Elements-ofreality. Of course, none of this seems strange or unusual to Kamin; it is the same as he has always known. But now we must look at this from the perspective of the medical team working to free Picard from the nucleonic beam. They can also use the method of reduction to examine the situation. If they are clever enough, they may even be able to tell what Picard is thinking, feeling, perceiving, and so on. But from their vantage point, they will only observe Information, nothing but the activity in the nucleonic beam and Picard’s brain. Everything that Picard observes to be an Element-ofreality, the medical team observes to be pure Information. And the reason for this is simple, the medical team sees the situation as it truly is, while Picard’s observations are compromised by the Information-Limited Subreality. This example leads us to an inescapable conclusion: the method of reduction is relative. By this we mean that a phenomenon can appear as Information to one observer, but as

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an Element-of-reality to another observer. Further, each of these observers is fully justified in their belief, having reached their conclusion through the most stringent rules of the scientific method, as well as basic common sense. We must again emphasize that this result does not rely on any of the observers being conscious. This same answer would be found, for example, if the two observers were mindless computers, programmed to observe their environment and classify entities as Information or Elements-of-reality. We will call this crucial finding the “Principle of Relative Reduction,” and it is one of our major teachings:

Major Teaching #3: The Principle of Relative Reduction The inner observer of an Information-Limited Subreality will perceive Elements-of-Reality, while the outer observer will see these same things as nothing but Information. This is a purely physical phenomenon, something that we can examine and understand in the finest detail.

Now, the applicability of this to the mind-body problem could not be more striking. In the first half of this book we painstakingly showed that the mind-body problem was a paradox; the first-person perspective sees the mind as one or more Elements-of-reality, while from the third-person vantage the mind is pure Information. The Principle of Relative Reduction describes in explicit scientific terms how this could come about. This is the heart of The Inner Light Theory of Consciousness.

7

The Subreality Machine in the Brain

A Most Remarkable Claim In the last chapter we introduced a strange situation that could arise in our universe, the Information-Limited Subreality. But just because something is possible does not mean that it really exists. Descartes' evil genius, the brain in the vat, and the Star Trek episode are just fictional stories, scenarios that have never actually occurred. Now we want to turn our attention to something that does exist in our universe. The Inner Light Theory makes a most remarkable claim, each of our minds is trapped within an Information-Limited Subreality. Everything that we perceive and experience has been created for us by manipulating information. And the perpetrator of this act is none other than our own brain. This chapter examines three pieces of evidence for this extraordinary assertion. First, we look at dreaming, our strange ability to enter another reality as we sleep. Second, we discuss a phenomenon called change blindness, and what it teaches us about our waking consciousness. Third, we compare the three realities that humans deal with, the physical universe, the dream state, and our waking consciousness. Looking ahead, in the next chapter we will examine how and why the brain creates this Information-Limited Subreality, outlining the evolutionary advantage of such neural activity. The Lesson from Dreams Look around and concentrate on what you experience. Perhaps it is a warm summer day and you are sitting on an outdoor patio. You see a deep blue sky and smell the fragrance 99

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of the flowers in bloom. Wind blowing through the branches of a nearby tree provides a soothing melody. You feel the texture of this book in your hands, and can still taste the last sip of your beverage. Of course, your experience will be different; you may be in a university library, at your desk at work, or relaxing on the couch in your home. You may be smelling the fragrance of flowers, the sweetness of newly baked cookies, or the lingering odor of disinfectant. You undoubtedly will be experiencing many things from your five senses, plus an introspective view of your mind's operation. These are the things you perceive, and are therefore the things that define your reality. But now imagine that you suddenly awake and realize it was only a dream. The things you had been experiencing can now be seen from an enlightened perspective. Before you awoke, you justifiably believed that the sights and sounds you experienced were genuine, originating in an external physical universe. The tree, book, and patio seemed more that just your perception of them; they were real objects with an independent existence. Or so you thought. But now that you are awake you have gained a greater knowledge, the knowledge that your previous reality was not genuine. The things that you had been perceiving exist only in your mind, and nowhere else. The lesson here is extraordinary; the world of our dreams is an Information-Limited Subreality. By far, this is the single most important clue we have to unravel the nature of the mind. In previous chapters we have discussed three other examples of Information-Limited Subrealities, Descartes' evil genius, the brain in the vat, and The Inner Light episode. However, none of these three really exist; they are simply thought experiments used to explore what may be possible. But dreams are different; they do exist, and are a part of our daily lives. To expand on this further, we will divide the functioning of the brain into two general parts, the conscious and the unconscious. The conscious portion is formed by those mental activities that we are aware of, such as our thoughts, feelings,

Chapter 7: The Subreality Machine in the Brain

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decisions, and control of our body movements. It is what we perceive by introspection on a moment-by-moment basis. In comparison, the unconscious portion consists of information processing that we are not aware of, but must be occurring somewhere within our brain. Of course, this is a very simplistic way of dividing up our mental activity. Nevertheless, it does match the general way we see ourselves from both introspection and the world of science, and is sufficient for our present discussion. As an example, consider what happens when you encounter a picture of George Washington. Your conscious perception is one of immediate recognition. There seems to be no effort involved; the knowledge that "this is George Washington" simply enters your mind. But this is very deceptive; massive unconscious activity has taken place to carry out this task. For instance, the visual image from each eye must be segmented into regions of similar brightness, color, and texture. These segments must then be identified as facial parts, then as a face, and then as the face of the first American president. Of course, nearly all of these individual steps are hidden from your conscious examination; the end result simply appears in your conscious mind without apparent effort or action. In our day-to-day lives we take this unconscious mental activity for granted. It is something we generally ignore unless we have a reason to examine it more closely. For instance, we might want to design a computer system that mimics its operation, or develop a medical treatment to prevent its loss to disease or injury. It is upon this closer examination that we find out just how complex and extensive this unconscious processing is. The unconscious is no less than the foundation of our minds; it is what consciousness is built upon. The point is, dreams teach us an immensely important lesson about the interaction between the conscious and unconscious portions of our mind. So important, it becomes our fourth major teaching:

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Major Teaching #4: The Subreality Machine in the Brain Our unconscious mental activity has the capability of placing our conscious mental activity in an InformationLimited Subreality. We know this for a fact; it is clearly demonstrated to us each night as we dream. It is undeniable that the machinery to accomplish this feat is present in each and every human brain. The nature and extent of this “subreality machine” remains for us to determine; but one fact is indisputable, it is there.

The Realness of Dreams Our next step is to examine how realistic dreams seem to be, so that we can better understand the subreality machine creating them. Are dreams a vivid and detailed reality, or just a pale imitation of our wakening experience? Normal adults dream several times each night; however, very few of the episodes are remembered upon waking. It seems ironic that most of us know so little about something that occupies almost one-tenth of our entire lives. Do we dream in color? Can we feel pain in our dreams? Can a dream really fool you into thinking that you are awake? Definitive answers to these questions come from Lucid Dreams.1 This is the name given to dreams where the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming. This may have happened to you. For instance, you might witness something very strange or impossible, such as being able to breathe under water, or having Queen Victoria steal your clothes. You mumble to yourself, this is weird, am I dreaming? Suddenly you realize that you are dreaming, and that the reality you are experiencing is coming 1. Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold, 1991, Ballantine Books, 335 pages. Excellent overview of the topic, including tips for having lucid dreams.


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from within yourself, not from an external physical world. As such, you are no longer bound by the physical laws of the universe, nor the dictates of social and moral responsibility. You might flap your arms and fly, run naked down main street, or gun down your enemies without mercy. And none of it matters in the least, because you know that it is only a dream. You experience a level of freedom that simply cannot occur in the waking world. Lucid dreaming is a skill that can be learned, and some experienced individuals can invoke them almost every night. This makes lucid dreams a unique scientific tool for understanding the nature of our minds. The dreamer can carry out experiments within the dream, and report back his subjective observations when awake. For instance, the lucid dreamer might concentrate on distinguishing colors, recalling memorized facts, performing tasks such as mathematical calculations and reading, controlling the unfolding of events in the dream, and so on. This provides us with highly reliable data concerning the differences and similarities between our dream and waking states. Researchers have even developed a way for lucid dreamers to communicate with the external world from within a dream. When a lucid dreamer rapidly moves his eyes back and forth in a dream, his physical eyes also move in this same manner. This provides a way for the dreamer to signal those in the waking world. For instance, it might be prearranged that the dreamer will use this signal when he begins some specified activity in the dream, such as reading or listening to music. When the scientists monitoring the dreamer detects this signal, they can study the corresponding neural activity occurring in the dreamer's brain. In one classic experiment, it was prearranged for the dreamer to move his eyes back and forth once each second when he realized that he was dreaming. In the laboratory, the scientists watched the subject's physical eyes to see how fast they moved. This was to test the possibility that dreams occur

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at an accelerated rate, where hours or days in the dream world might only require a few seconds or minutes in real life. The result? The subject's physical eyes moved back and forth once each second, showing that dream time occurs at the same rate as in the wakening world. Lucid dreams have provided science with a good understanding of what we experience in the dream world. It is clear that our mental capabilities are limited in some ways during dreaming. For instance, the ability to use written language is very impaired, as is the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory. It seems that some areas of the brain really are asleep during our dreams. But what is most important, dreams are as real to the dreamer as real life is to those who are awake. The subreality machine inside our brains creates a world that is nearly indistinguishable from our waking reality. Let's look at an example to make this more concrete, the simple act of eating an apple for lunch. You see its bright red color and feel its smoothness against your fingers. It smells fruity; it crunches as you take a bite. The taste is sweet. You enjoy the sensations; they bring you pleasure and fill you with anticipation for the next bite. You think to yourself, "This is a good apple." After you finish your snack, you go about your day's activities, and eventually fall asleep for the night. You begin to dream, and within this inner reality you encounter an apple. You see its bright red color and feel its smoothness against your fingers. It smells fruity; it crunches as you take a bite. The taste is sweet. You enjoy the sensations; they bring you pleasure and fill you with anticipation for the next bite. You think to yourself, "This is a good apple." The point being, the introspective experience of the apple is the same in the dream world as it is when we are awake. However, in one case the experience is being generated by the unconscious activity of the brain, while in the other case it is derived from an external physical object. Of course, this kind


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of deception is possible in our universe, as shown by the brain in the vat and other thought experiments. But just because something is possible does not explain why is should actually exist. Why should our brains have the capability to make us perceive an apple, when we are really in bed fast asleep? What possible purpose could this serve? Furthermore, how can the apple of our dreams be such a precise match to the apple of our waking world? The Basic Premise of the Inner Light Theory As we have shown, dreams are an Information-Limited Subreality created by the unconscious mental activity of our brains. This "subreality machine" is activated several times each night, providing a conscious experience that is identical to our waking world. The Inner Light theory takes this a step farther, asserting that this "subreality machine" is also activated during our waking hours, just as during our dreams. The unconscious processes that create our dream reality, also create our waking reality. This is not to suggest that the external physical world is an illusion. On the contrary, when we are awake and perceive an apple, we have every reason to believe that the universe contains such an object. However, we do not, and cannot, experience the physical apple directly. The best we can do is to capture clues about the object's nature. These clues come in the form of light photons, sound waves, molecules of various chemicals, and mechanical interactions. These are the physical principles that underlie our five senses, resulting in neural signals being sent to the brain. These indirect clues are all we know about the physical universe, and the only things we can know about it. But of course, our conscious perception of an apple is nothing like photons, sound waves, or neural activity. We see an apple as red, feel it as smooth, and taste it as sweet. This is our introspective experience, because this is the representation that the subreality machine has created for us. Our unconscious

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mental processes fused the multitude of sensory data into the thing we recognize as an apple. Everything that we are conscious of has been created in this way. Our consciousness exists in this inner reality, not the physical world. When we are awake, the inner reality is constructed to mimic our external surroundings. When we dream, the inner reality exists on its own, without regard for anything outside of our brains. But either way, all we can consciously experience is the subreality created for us by our unconscious mental activity. The apple in our dreams seems the same as the apple in our waking world. And the reason why, it is the same, exactly the same. What We See and Don’t See Dreams are overwhelming evidence that our unconscious mental activity can hold our conscious minds in an InformationLimited Subreality. But is there evidence that this subreality machine is also active when we are awake? The answer is yes; experiments show that the world we are conscious of is far more than can be explained by what enters our senses. For instance, suppose you stand a few feet from the Mona Lisa, close your left eye, and stare at a fixed point in the center of the painting. Figure 7-1 illustrates the image that is detected by your right eye, and sent along the optic nerve to your brain. The gray filaments are regions where you are totally blind, a result of blood vessels in the retina blocking the detection of light. Likewise, the large rectangular region is where the optic nerve connects with the retina, where humans are also sightless. This is called the blind spot, and is really quite large, about the size of an apple at arm’s length. As long as your eye remains fixed on the center of the painting, these gray regions are totally blocked from your gaze; you perceive nothing about the image in these areas. When you first looked at Fig. 7-1, you probably wondered what the gray spider-like pattern represented. It probably struck you as quite odd and perhaps even a little creepy, like something out of a bad science fiction movie. It was totally


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FIGURE 7-1 Blind areas of the eye. This represents what is seen by the right eye when standing a few feet from the Mona Lisa. The gray areas are where the eye is totally blind, a result of blood vessels and the optic nerve displaced sensory cells in the retina. The left eye has a similar patten, flipped left-for-right. How is it possible that humans are unfamiliar with these blind regions?

unfamiliar and foreign to your conscious experience. But how could this possibly be? This pattern has been superimposed on your visual field since you first opened your eyes as an infant. Even as you read this book the pattern is present. It should be more familiar to you than anything you have ever seen. How is it possible that our conscious experience knows nothing of these

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blind areas? How can we perceive a complete and unbroken image when large portions of our visual field are blocked? Experiments show that these blind areas are “filled in” by the brain to match their surroundings. For instance, Fig. 7-2 provides an experiment to demonstrate the blind spots in your own eyes. As indicated in the caption, when you gaze at the cross with your right eye, the circle seems to disappear. Likewise, when you look at the circle with your left eye, the cross cannot be seen. In both cases, the missing object seems to be replaced with the background grid pattern. In other words, the image that we are conscious of seeing is composed of two sections, (1) areas that our eyes can directly observe, and (2) areas that have been filled in from neighboring regions. When we look at the world we believe that we are seeing a complete scene. It seems like a photograph, capturing all that is within our visual field. However, the “filling in” of the blind spot shows that at least some of what we see is being created by our brain. Further, studies of a phenomenon known as change blindness demonstrate that this is just the tip of the iceberg. As strange as it may seem, there is compelling evidence that much of what we seem to see is being generated from within ourselves, and is not a representation of the physical world. In a typical change blindness experiment, a subject is asked to look at an everyday picture displayed on a computer monitor. For instance, it might show people eating in a restaurant, a sports activity, or several boats on a lake. After a few seconds the display is changed to a second picture, which is nearly identical to the first. The difference between the two pictures might be as subtle as changing the color of a chair or moving a vase, or as extensive as removing an entire mountain range in the background. The goal of the experiment is to have the subject identify what parts of the picture have been changed. The basic idea is that the subject will be able to detect changes in the things he or she is conscious of. Likewise, if the subject cannot discern when a particular thing is changed, we can infer


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FIGURE 7-2 Demonstration of the blind spot. Hold the above illustration at normal reading distance and stare at the cross. As you close your left eye, the circle will be within the blind spot of your right eye and disappear from view. You may need to move the figure a few inches closer or farther than your normal reading distance to see this effect. The blind spot in your left eye can be demonstrated by staring at the circle and closing your right eye, making the cross disappear.

that they are not conscious of that particular thing. In most experiments, the two pictures are alternately displayed for a few seconds each, until the subject can identify the changing item. Actual change blindness experiments are slightly more complicated than this explanation because the human visual system is extremely sensitive to transients. This is the technical name given to the temporary disruption caused when something is changed. For instance, imagine throwing a rock into a lake. The surface of the water is smooth before penetration, and is also smooth a short time after. However, the actual event is marked by waves and turbulence that takes a few seconds to subside. A similar process occurs in our visual systems when something is changed within our field of view. We have all had the experience of looking in one direction when suddenly we detect that something has changed off to the side. We don’t know what it is, only that something is different from it was the instant before. In other words, we are not aware of the object itself, only the disruption caused by its insertion or removal.

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FIGURE 7-3a Change blindness images. The images in (a) and (b) are alternately displayed on a computer monitor for three seconds each. To mask the visual transients, a white screen is displayed between the two images for one-tenth of a second. Subjects typically require five exchanges before realizing that the background is changing.

Since our goal is to determine what we are consciously aware of, change blindness experiments must include a way to eliminate the ability of the visual system to detect transients. Fortunately, this is quite simple. In one technique, the pictures are changed when the subjects blink their eyes, or when they move their eyes from one location to another. In another method, a brief flash of light is inserted between the two pictures. Either way, the transient caused by the changing picture is hidden by a disruption of the entire visual field. Figures 7-3a&b show typical pictures from a change blindness experiment. This is quite an extreme case, where


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FIGURE 7-3b

almost one-quarter of the total image is changed between the two pictures. During testing, each of these images is alternately displayed on a computer monitor for three seconds, with a pure white image displayed between them for one-tenth of a second. The images are full color, good quality, and displayed on a large monitor. The question is, how long does it take subjects to realize that the background of the picture is changing? Our subjective impression is that vision provides us an accurate and full representation of the physical world. We believe that there is a rigid one-to-one correspondence between what we see and what really exists. Accordingly, it seems that we would immediately notice such large changes as in these pictures. But this is not the case. It typically takes subjects five exchanges before they realize that the background of the picture is changing. For an average of fifteen seconds, the subjects

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look at the alternating pictures and perceive a single scene. When finally found, the changes seem obvious, and the subjects are dismayed that it took them so long. The results of change blindness experiments are surprising, to say the least. While it is easy to detect changes in the key elements of a picture, it is very difficult to detect when secondary aspects are changed. For instance, suppose the picture is of a couple eating lunch in a restaurant. The key elements are the man, woman, table, and perhaps the plates of food. These are the objects that define what the scene is about, the central features of the picture’s meaning to us. As we would expect, subjects can immediately notice when these main portions of the picture are changed. However, secondary aspects of the picture, such as the paintings on the walls and the other diners in the background, can be dramatically changed without the subject noticing. Even if these secondary aspects are quite obvious in the image, subjects can require minutes of observation to detect when they are being changed. When we are awake and looking around, our attention directs us to a few key elements in the visual field. However, we are also conscious of seeing secondary features in the visual field, a background that is of lessor importance. As disturbing as it may seem, these perceived secondary features have little or no connection to the external physical world; they are being generated from within ourselves. Evidence from the Three Realities In short, the argument is laid out like this. We know that our brains contain the machinery required to place our conscious activity in an Information-Limited Subreality. This is proven by our ability to dream. The assertion being made is that this same machinery is also activated when we are awake, and that we can be conscious of nothing but this inner reality. As evidence, experiments show that much of what we subjectively experience when we are awake does not come from the external world. For instance, we “see” regions in the visual


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field where our eyes are completely blind, and make up secondary features in visual scenes. This is strong evidence that at least some aspects of the “subreality machine” are active when we are awake. But there is a far more compelling argument that the subreality machine is fully switched on whenever we are conscious. This can be shown by examining the structure of the three different realities that humans deal with. The first of these realities is the physical universe. This consists of all the things that scientists study, such as force fields, particles, distance, time, plus all the entities that can be created by combining them. This is the unfeeling and uncaring world that activates our sense organs, such things as light photons, sound waves, molecules of various chemicals, and mechanical interactions. The second reality we must consider is that of our dreams. As we know, this reality is constructed by the unconscious activity of the brain, and has little or no correspondence to the structure of the physical universe. In fact, its characteristics are nothing like those of the physical universe. Rather, its Elements-of-reality are the entities that we discussed in Chapter 4, such as qualia, mental unity, semantic thought, present tense, and free-will. This is the reality where we see an apple as red and taste it as sweet, we feel love and anger, and experience our thoughts as having meaning. The third reality to be examined is that of our normal waking consciousness, the reality you are experiencing at this very moment. The question is, where is this third reality coming from? Is it being generated by the subreality machine, or does it correspond to the external physical universe? The answer to this could not be more clear. The reality of our waking consciousness is virtually identical to the reality of our dreams, but is totally dissimilar to that of the physical world. In other words, reality three is the same as reality two, but completely different from reality one. The conclusion seems inescapable;

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the subreality machine within us creates not only our dreams, but all of our conscious reality. This is our fifth major teaching:

Major Teaching #5: The Origin of our Conscious Experience All of our conscious experience is created by the subreality machine contained within our brains. When we are awake, this inner reality is constructed to mimic our external surroundings. When we dream, this inner reality exists on its own, without regard for anything outside of ourselves.

To be perfectly correct, we should say a few words about the statement: “our consciousness exists within an InformationLimited Subreality.” In Chapter 6 we carefully defined the characteristics of the Information-Limited Subreality. One of these characteristics is that the inner observer is completely isolated from the external world, with no knowledge of it whatsoever. This is simply the definition we have chosen to use. However, it is obvious that our conscious minds do know something of the external physical universe. When we are awake, our inner reality mimics the external world, allowing us to move our bodies in a productive manner. Even when we dream, our inner reality is structured in rough accordance to the external world, based on past waking experiences. For these reasons we cannot rigorously say that our consciousness exists within an “Information-Limited Subreality.” A certain amount of information about the physical world leaks through to the inside. Accordingly, it might be more correct to say that consciousness exists within a “Leaky” Information-Limited Subreality,” or some similar qualifier. However, we won’t go to this extreme, and will continue to use the shorter phrase, opting for simplicity over strict formality.

8

The Function of the Subreality Machine

Introduction In the last chapter we showed that our unconscious mental activity places our conscious mental activity in an InformationLimited Subreality. A “subreality machine” exists in each of our brains, creating everything that we consciously experience. This is a general description of what is going on. In this chapter we turn our attention to the question of why the brain operates in this way. Science understands the human body as a collection of individual parts, with each part carrying out a specific function for the benefit of the whole. For us to understand why the brain contains a subreality machine, we need to understand the function being performed by this mental architecture. We will look at this issue in two different ways. In the first, we examine the basic components of the subreality machine, the information processing upon which it is based. Human color perception provides the platform for us to conduct this examination. In our second approach, we investigate the specific function carried out by the subreality machine in the human brain. How can the creation of an inner reality facilitate our finding food, attracting mates, or escaping enemies? Just what problem did evolution overcome by endowing humans with a subreality machine? And of all the different information processing architectures that could have developed in the brain, why do humans have one that generates a seemingly detailed and elaborate inner reality? As we will show, the answers to these questions come from a single starting point: it is difficult to analyze sensory data. 115

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Why is the Sun Yellow? Science has known for over 100 years that light is a wave of electric and magnetic fields. We are all familiar with waves moving on the surface of water, where the distance from one crest to the next might be as small as a few inches, or as large as hundreds of feet. This distance is called the “wavelength,” and is the most important parameter associated with a wave. The wavelength of light is very short, between about 400 and 800 nanometers (billionths of a meter). To scientists, the “color” of light is exactly the same as the “wavelength.” Now we want to explore how humans perceive color. The retina in the eye contains four different types of cells that are sensitive to incoming light. One of these four, called the rods, is used only in night vision and cannot distinguish color. This is why the world looks black and white in dim light. The other three receptor cells are called the blue, green, and red cones. Each cone contains a different pigment, causing it to be sensitive to a different wavelength of light. In particular, blue cones respond best to light at a wavelength of about 450 nanometers, green cones at about 550 nanometers, and red cones at about 580 nanometers. Of course, this is very simplified explanation of a complex topic. The important point is that light in the physical universe can have any wavelength between about 400 and 800 nanometers. However, the eye separates this continuous range into only three channels. For instance, if we shine a light at 450 nanometers into a subject's eyes, the blue receptors will be mainly activated, resulting in action potentials passing along the blue neural pathway into the brain. Likewise, light at 550 and 580 nanometers causes the same events in the green and red nerve pathways, respectively. When a mixture of wavelengths enter the eye, as is the normal case, these three channels activate in varying amounts. In short, the only thing that the human brain knows about color is what can be contained in these three channels. If neural signals are present on the blue channel, the subject will

Chapter 8: The Function of the Subreality Machine

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experience the color blue. Likewise, if the green or red channel is activated, the subject will report seeing green or red, respectively. Since blue, green, and red are the only “pure” colors that the human visual system can detect, we call these the physiological primary colors. All other colors that humans can experience are nothing more than a mixture of these three. A good demonstration of this is provided by color televisions and computer monitors. If you look closely at the screen with a magnifying glass, you will see that the display is composed of a large number of small dots, each being either red, green or blue. By varying the relative intensity of these three basic colors, it is possible to generate all possible colors that the human visual system can perceive. However, it cannot generate all the possible combinations of wavelengths that exist in the physical universe. Now we come to the interesting part, what the brain does with the color information that it receives. Suppose we conduct an experiment by displaying three different colored circles on a computer monitor. To start, we will make the three circles the primary colors, one red, one green, and one blue. We then tell a test subject the name of a color, and ask him to point to it on the display. Of course, he has no trouble doing this; any person with normal vision can easily recognize red, green, and blue. But now we change the colors being displayed so that each is a combination of two primary colors. That is, one circle is blue and green, one is blue and red, and one is red and green. This is illustrated in Fig. 8-1. We then ask our subject to point to "blue-green." After looking for a few seconds, he points to the circle where the blue and green channels are simultaneously illuminated. When told that scientists call this color cyan, he shrugs his shoulders and says that blue-green is more descriptive. We find a similar result when we ask him to show us “blue-red,” a color also called magenta. Without difficulty, he points to the correct circle. But now we find something very strange. When we ask the subject to indicate red-green he hesitates. After a few moments

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of thought he tells us that there is no such thing as “red-green”; it is something that he is totally unfamiliar with. When we show him the circle with the red and green channels illuminated, he protests that the color is yellow, and there is not the slightest thing about it that he perceives as red-green. He explains that red and green remind him of apples on a tree or Christmas decorations. "That's what red and green are," he insists. "The color you are pointing to makes me think of the sun and bananas." This phenomenon is well known in science and medicine. While there are only three physiological primary colors (red, green and blue), there are four psychological primary colors (red, green, blue, and yellow). In other words, our brains transform a mixture of red and green into something that is not a mixture of anything. Yellow is perceived as a pure color, not a composite. Yellow is as different from red, green and blue, as red, green, and blue are different from each other. To appreciate just how strong this effect is, consider the colors used in traffic lights. There are three conditions that must be indicated, stop, go, and caution. The colors we choose to represent these three conditions should be as different as possible, making it easy for drivers to distinguish between them. Given this, an obvious choice might be to use the three primary colors, red, green and blue. We can also identify an infinite number of bad choices. For instance, using forest green, lime green, and pea green would be a disaster, since they are so similar. But now let's look at the colors that are universally accepted for this purpose, red for stop and green for go. So far so good; these two colors are as different as possible. But the color used for caution is yellow, which is a mixture of red and green entering the eye. If we consider physiology alone, this is the absolutely worst choice that could have been made. The caution light should catch our attention; it should alert us that the situation is different than it was before. But the sequence of colors: green to green/red to red, would seem to do the opposite


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FIGURE 8-1 Color perception experiment. Humans view the combination of blue and green as a combination of blue and green. Likewise, a combination of blue and red is seen as a combination of blue and red. However, a combination of red and green is seen as yellow, a primary color that cannot be separated into components.

of this, minimizing the abruptness of the transitions. But, of course, it doesn't. Humans do not perceive the combination of red and green to be a combination of red and green. Rather, they perceive the combination of red and green to be yellow, a primary color in itself, something that has no relation to either red or green. For engineers and computer scientists this is all quite uninteresting, because its explanation is so simple. As an example, suppose we asked an engineering team to create an electronic device that mimics this phenomenon. We might start

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with a color video camera that produces signals for red, green and blue, just as the human eye. However, the video recorder we want to use might be designed to store color from four channels, red, green, blue and yellow. The question is, how does the engineering team go about changing the data represented in three channels into data represented in four channels? The answer is that they build a converter, a device that has three channels entering, and four channels exiting. The blue channel simply passes through without being altered. The other output channels (red, green, and yellow) are calculated from the other input channels (red, and green) by simple arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction, and comparison. Figure 8-2 shows a computer algorithm for this conversion, if you are familiar with such things. The important point is that this converter could be implemented by analog or digital electronics, computer software, a biological neural network, or any similar information processing technology. Constructing this kind of converter is extremely simple, almost trivial, to an electronic designer or computer programmer. Now suppose we ask a scientist to examine the video recording without providing him the background on how it was made. After due inspection, the scientist proclaims that it represents a world containing four primary colors, red, green, blue and yellow. By this he means that each of these four colors is irreducible, and that none of these colors can be created by combining the other three. In other words, the knowledge that yellow was created from red and green is not contained within the recording. Based on the recorded video alone, yellow is as separate and distinct from red and green, as blue is from red and green. Of course, this is exactly the situation occurring in the human visual system. Humans perceive red, green and blue as Elements-of-reality. That is, they are irreducible, they cannot be broken into more basic entities. In comparison, the colors of cyan and magenta are Information, since we perceive that they


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FIGURE 8.2 Color converter. This algorithm shows how three primary colors (blue, green, and red), can be converted into four primary colors (BLUE, GREEN, RED, and YELLOW).

are composed of blue and green, and blue and red, respectively. This is just another way of saying that red, green and blue are primary colors, while cyan and magenta are not. And none of this is surprising, given that the eye inherently detects three and only three channels of color, red, green and blue. But what about yellow? As the color signals move between the eyes and the brain, yellow is nothing more than a mixture of red and green. This means that it is Information, exactly the same as cyan and magenta. However, when yellow is perceived by our conscious mind, it is irreducible; it is an Element-ofreality of our introspective world. But as we know, nothing more than elementary operations are required to make this change, the kind of operations that are fundamental to all information processing systems. This lesson here is momentous; the most basic operations used in information processing have the ability to change Information into Elements-of-reality. A critical point to understand is that changing Information into an Element-of-reality does not require that something be added, it requires that something be taken away. It is accomplished by presenting a thing, but at the same time hiding

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how the thing can be reduced to more fundamental components. Humans look at the color yellow and proclaim that it is irreducible, a thing in itself, an Element-of-reality. But this is a handicap, not a capability. It is a fundamental limitation on understand the thing in question. If we could look at the color yellow and perceive that it was red-green, we would be more informed, not less. In Chapter 6 we showed that the Information-Limited Subreality has this same property, allowing the inner observer to see Elements-of-reality, while the outer observer sees only Information. We called this property the "Principle of relative reduction." This is information manipulation on a large scale, sufficient to manufacture an entire reality for a human or other observer. In contrast, our example of the color yellow is on a small scale, using the most basic information processing operations. In more poetic words, we have now examined the building and also looked at the individual bricks. The Sensory Analysis Problem Now we want to examine why the brain contains a subreality machine. As discussed in Chapter 3, the function of the brain is to enable movement, allowing the animal to locate food, escape enemies and find mates. This requires the animal to have sense organs to examine its environment, and muscles to actually move its body. The brain is the link between these two, analyzing sensory information, deciding where to move, and controlling the muscles to carry out this action. We will focus on the first of these tasks, understanding how the inner reality facilitates the analysis of sensory information. While it is possible that the inner reality is also used in determining and controlling movement, this is much more speculative and we will not pursue it here. To start, look at the photograph in Fig. 8-3 for a few moments. When done, speak a sentence or two on what this picture is about, such as if you were briefly describing it to a friend.


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FIGURE 8.3 An old photograph. This is easily recognized as a man and a woman standing in a laboratory, taken around 1900.

Your response is probably something such as: “This is an old photograph of a middle-aged man and woman standing in a laboratory, probably taken about 1900.” You might have even recognized it as a photograph of the great scientists Pierre and Marie Curie, famous for their work on radioactivity. You were able to extract this key information with only a few seconds of examination. It wasn’t even difficult; this is a task that can be quickly carried out by any normal adult.

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Now suppose that we want to build a computer to perform this same action. That is, we want to show it a picture that it has never seen before, and have it provide a short description of what the picture is about. We gather together a team of engineers and scientists that are experienced in this area, such as connecting video cameras to computers, developing software to recognize shapes in digitized images, and creating databases of stored information. We describe the goal of the project to our technical team, and ask them to give us an estimate of how long it will take, and how much it will cost. In other words, we want to get a general idea of how difficult this task really is. From a technical standpoint, is this something that is relatively easy, or is it something that is relatively hard? After hearing our goals, most of our technical group gets up and walks out of the room, mumbling that we have wasted their time. The few that remain are kind enough to explain. One of them offers, “I rate the difficulty of new projects on a scale of 1 to 10, and this one is about 100." Another tells us, “Assuming our current rate of technological learning, this is the kind of project we might tackle 50 to 100 years from now.” Still a third comments, “We have all the basic tools, but the overall complexity is just too great; it reminds me of a man holding a brick, looking up at the great pyramids.” The point is, the analysis of sensory data is extremely difficult, far exceeding the capabilities of present day computer technology. We perceive it as effortless only because this brain activity is blocked from our conscious examination. The primary reason that sensory analysis is difficult rests with the data itself. The information provided by our senses is very poor quality; it is incomplete, ambiguous, contaminated with interference, and degraded in a variety of other ways. As an example, when you looked at Fig. 8-3 you probably didn’t notice anything unusual. But Fig. 8-4 points out a variety of aspects of this picture that are difficult to reconcile with the physical world. For instance, some of the objects merge together without a distinct boundary between them, such as


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FIGURE 8-4 Image discrepancies. Vision and the other senses provide a poor representation of the physical world.

Pierre’s foot and the floor. Other objects have an incomplete relationship with their surroundings, such as the dark rectangle floating in mid air. A scratch in the photograph shows up as a horizontal line, with no relation at all to the viewed scene. Severe problems are created by representing the threedimensional setting as only a two-dimensional image. This produces missing elements, such as Marie’s legs, Pierre’s hand, and the back side of all the objects. It also makes whole bodies

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appear as discontinuous, such as the elbow being separated from the remainder of the arm. Further, the resulting geometric distortion changes the shape of objects, such as the rectangular table top appearing as a parallelogram. Your first impression might be that the comments in Fig. 8-4 are trivial and unimportant. No so; these are problems that present day computer scientists struggle with on a day-to-day basis. But the human brain has already solved these problems; it is capable of finding the relevant data in the exceedingly poor information provided by our eyes, ears, and other sense organs. The question is, how does the brain do it so well, and what does this have to do with an inner reality? Filtering versus Matching To answer this question, let’s look at two techniques engineers have developed to analyze poor quality data. As an example, imagine that we want to receive a radio signal from an orbiting satellite, as illustrated in Fig. 8-5. The signal being transmitted is very simple, nothing but a sine wave at a constant amplitude and frequency. This is very familiar to those who work with electronics. If you don’t have such a background, just look at the pictures to get an idea of what is going on. The important point is that the signal sent by the satellite is very smooth and regular. In an ideal situation, the signal received on the ground would be identical to the one being transmitted by the satellite. Unfortunately, this is never the case when dealing with signals that have passed through the environment. As illustrated in this figure, the received signal is very degraded; it generally resembles the transmitted signal, but it is very jagged and irregular. This is the result of many different problems. For instance, the height of the peaks may fluctuate because the satellite is in motion, or from atmospheric turbulence. In extreme cases, this can result in sections of the received signal being completely missing. Another problem is interference; for instance, our receiver might inadvertency pick up the radio


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FIGURE 8-5 Passing signals through the environment. The received signal is a poor replica of the original transmitted signal, due to noise, interference, and similar problems.

transmission from an aircraft flying overhead. This becomes part of the received signal, degrading our ability to detect what is coming from the satellite. Still another problem in acquired signals is random noise, a term scientists and engineers use to describe a wide variety of fluctuations. This results in such things as “snow” in television pictures and static in radio broadcasts. Random noise can arise from many different sources, including the mere motion of atoms and electrons. In our example of Fig. 8-5, this type of noise shows up as a “roughness” in the received signal. The key point is that the signal we receive on the ground is a poor quality replica of the signal transmitted by the satellite. It is distorted, missing sections, and contaminated with random noise and interference. The question is, what do we do about

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it? How can we change the received signal to more resemble the original? Figure 8-6a shows our first approach to this problem, what engineers call filtering. There are many different ways to carry this out, and we will only give a general description leaving out the technical details. The basic idea is to pass the signal through an electronic circuit or computer routine that changes the signal’s characteristics in some desirable way. For instance, if we know that the signal being transmitted from the satellite is relatively smooth, our filter might remove the roughness in the received signal, as illustrated in this figure. If you don’t have a background in electronics, think of this as performing the same function as the suspension on an automobile, providing a smooth ride even over a bumpy road. Filters are very common in electronic circuits, and can be very simple to extremely complex. But even the most advanced filters have limitations on how well they can work with highly degraded data. As in this example, when interference and random noise dominate the received signal, the output of the filter still looks like interference and random noise. Now we want to turn our attention to an alternative technique, called the phase lock loop. This is far less common in electronics, being used in only a few specialty applications. Just as before, we will only give a general description that leaves out the technical details. As shown in Fig. 8-6b, the phase lock loop is composed of two parts, a comparing circuit and a sine wave generator. The sine wave generator does just that; it produces a pure sine wave, without distortion, interference or noise. The function of the comparing circuit is to continually compare this created signal with the signal received from the satellite. If a difference is found between the two, the comparing circuit generates a “correction signal” that is fed into the sine wave generator. This, in turn, causes the sine wave generator to alter its output in an appropriate way to make a better match. The overall effect is that the phase lock loop generates a perfect sine wave that is the best possible match


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FIGURE 8-6 Filtering and PLL operation. As illustrated in (a), filtering attempts to “clean up” a contaminated signal. In comparison, (b) shows how a phase lock loop generates an entirely new signal.

to the received signal. Even if the satellite stops transmitting, the phase lock loop will still produce a pure sine wave output, its best match to the remaining random noise and interference. The phase lock loop has one tremendous advantage and one tremendous disadvantage compared to filtering. The advantage is that it can operate with extremely high levels of interference and random noise, while still producing a near ideal output. Filtering can’t come close to matching the phase lock loop in this respect. The disadvantage is that the phase lock loop only knows how to detect one very specific thing, a pure sine wave.

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For instance, if the satellite started to transmit a waveform of some other shape, the phase lock loop would respond in the same old way, producing a sine wave output. In short, the phase lock loop works well with degraded data, because it is only looking for a single thing. It is a commonplace belief that our minds directly perceive the physical universe. As an engineer would put it, the objects around us result in signals being passing into the brain, where they are somehow perceived by our conscious minds. Various filtering operations may be applied to these signals by our neural circuits, but what we end up experiencing still has a oneto-one correspondence with the external world. However, this view is simply not true. The brain does not “filter” the signals; it generates new signals that it believes are the best matches to the nearby environment. In other words, it operates like a phase lock loop, not an electronic filter. As we move about the world in our day-to-day activities, our brains must continually keep track of what is around us. The brain is also responsible for identifying other aspects of the local environment, such as its sounds, smells, and tastes. This information about the surroundings comes to the brain through the senses, usually in a highly degraded form. The brain’s task is to extract relevant information from this jumble of interference and noise, allowing it to plan and execute movements. To do this, it takes advantage of the fact that nearly everything it encounters is familiar. Our daily lives are composed of objects and situations that we have experienced many times before. This means that the brain does not need to identify every possible pattern and scenario that could ever exist. On the contrary, during most of our conscious lives our brain only needs to recognize those things that it has recognized in the past. Just as the phase lock loop only looks for a single waveform, the brain only needs to look for a limited number of patterns. That is, at least most of the time. As a demonstration of this, look at the “ambiguous” figures shown in Fig. 8-7. These are illustrations that can be interpreted


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FIGURE 8-7 Ambiguous figures. On the left is “Rubin’s vase,” named after Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin who first presented it in 1921. This figure can be alternately seen as a black vase, or as two white faces in profile. The illustration on the right is often referred to as the “Boring figure,” after psychologist E.G. Boring who explored the psychology of it in the 1930s. This figure can be seen as either a young woman or an old woman. It dates to at least the 1890s, when the Anchor Buggy company used it in an advertisement with the caption: “You see my wife, but where is my mother-in-law?”

in more than one way. In (a), the image can be seen as either a black vase or two white faces. In (b), either a young woman or an old woman can be seen. However, you cannot “see” both interpretations at the same time; your mind is always locked onto one or the other. At any particular instant the figures are not ambiguous; they are a consistent representation of what you believe you are seeing. You see the vase or two faces; you see a young woman or an old woman. Even though the data entering your brain is ambiguous, your instantaneous conscious experience of the image is not ambiguous. Your brain has scoured the incoming data for a match. When found, you are conscious only of the consistent features of the match, not the inconsistent features of the raw data.

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Let’s look at an example to show just how powerful the approach of “matching” is. The images in Fig. 8-8 were created by degrading pictures of three common scenes, all of which you would immediately recognize. The resulting image quality is so poor that they hardly look like pictures at all; they seem more like random ink blots. Suppose we conduct an experiment where we show these three degraded figures to a group of 100 people and asked them to identify the pictures. How many correct responses would we expect? Of course, the answer is zero; these images are so poor that it would be impossible for anyone to do much better than guessing. But now suppose that we redo the experiment with one significant change; we make it a multiple choice test. We start by telling our subjects that the three original images were (1) Abraham Lincoln, (2) a sunset, and (3) the Eiffel tower, in no particular order. We again ask them to identify each picture, using this additional information. After looking for a few moments, all 100 of our subjects come up with the correct answers. In other words, by narrowing the choices we have enormously improved the ability to identify patterns in ambiguous, incomplete, and noisy data. As in this example, we have changed a task that was virtually impossible, into one that can be carried out with perfect reliability. The Subreality Machine in Operation How does this relate to an inner reality? When we move around in the world, our brains are flooded with raw information from the senses. This data stream is so large, and such poor quality, that it would be impossible for the brain to analyze it for every possible pattern. The brain is simply not powerful enough to do this. For instance, suppose you walk into an office building for the first time. Your brain is suddenly inundated with information from your eyes and ears about the new environment. It responds by searching these data for what it expects to find, desks, chairs, people, computers, telephones, carpeting, and so on. When a match is found, the brain labels


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FIGURE 8-8 Degraded images. These images cannot be recognized as they are. However, it is a simple task to match them with the original photographs from which they were derived: The Eiffel tower, Abraham Lincoln, and a sunset (clockwise from top-left).

it, and then moves onto portions of the raw data that have not been recognized. This continues until the brain believes it understands the surroundings well enough to carry out its planed activities. And none of this is surprising; it is not much more than the common sense view of how our minds work. But now let’s reexamine this process using an additional assumption. We have already discussed how the analysis of sensory information is enormously difficult. Of course, this is a relative statement; it is “enormously difficult” compared to

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what? The assumption we will make is that sensory analysis is difficult according to two criteria, the brain’s computational power and its memory capabilities. To understand the first of these, imagine you see a chair when you walk into the new office. How long does it take you to recognize it as a chair? Of course, this happens very quickly, perhaps a tenth of a second. But how long would it take you to recognize it as one very specific chair, say, one that was part of your family’s furniture when you were growing up? Since this is a more difficult task, it will take much longer, perhaps a few seconds. This is important because we live in a world where critical movements need to be made in a fraction of a second. If it took you a few seconds to identify a nearby alligator, you would be his lunch! The point is, the time it takes to complete a mental task depends on the difficulty of the task and the computational power of the brain. When we say that “sensory analysis is enormously difficult compared to the brain’s computational power,” we are commenting on the types of mental tasks that can be carried out within a fraction of a second. Specifically, within this key time constraint, we can sort objects into general categories, but not recognize specific entities, or search for particular characteristics. After you enter the office and identify the chair, the next task for your brain is to take an appropriate action concerning this object. This is where the criteria concerning memory capabilities comes in. How do you know what this object is for, what its characteristics are, how it is used, its potential dangers, and so on? There are two obvious ways that you can obtain this information. First, your brain could search the sensory data it is receiving to answer these questions. Second, you could rely on your past experiences with this type of object. That is, you could retrieve your accumulated knowledge concerning “chairs” and assume that this particular chair has the same characteristics. Our assumption that “sensory analysis is enormously difficult compared to the brain’s memory capabilities” means that the second option is faster that the first.


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That is, it is faster for the brain to retrieve known information about objects in general, than it is for the brain to deduce this information each time it encounters the object. Since the brain is a product of natural selection, it should be highly adapted to its function and environment. If sensory analysis is extremely difficult compared to the brain’s computational power and its memory capabilities, this should shape the way that our mental processes are carried out. Given these assumptions, we now ask, how would we expect the brain to operate? Again we will use the example of walking into a strange office. In this new situation the brain must quickly identify those things in the environment that are critical to its survival. It must do the most that it can in the first fraction of a second, the timescale that critical events happen in our world. And the best it can do is to categorize the key elements of the scene, the main features that will dictate the appropriate movements that must be made. From the sensory data, it recognizes the area as a typical office, containing a desk, chair, table, and a man. However, it determines little or nothing about the particular characteristics of these things; it only knows that they are typical members of their categories. This is all the brain can know in the first fraction of a second; its computational powers are not sufficient to extract anything else from the sensory data. But the brain needs to have detailed information about these objects in order to move our bodies among them in a productive way. The quickest way for it to attain this information is from its own memory, what it has previously learned about objects in these particular categories. While these stored generalizations may not be accurate, they are the best that the brain can do, given the time constraint it is working under. Keep in mind that the function of the brain can be divided into three parts, (1) analyze the sensory data to understand the environment, (2) decide where to move, and (3) coordinate the movement. Accordingly, step one must produce a “description” of the local environment that can be used by steps two and

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three. Given the assumptions that we have made, we would expect that this “description” would be composed of two parts, coarse information about a few key elements in the nearby environment, with the remaining details filled in from stored memories. In short, the brain creates an inner reality that is (1) based loosely on the surroundings, (2) consistent with previous memories, and (3) free from noise, interference and ambiguity. This important concept is the sixth major teaching of the Inner Light theory:

Major Teaching #6: The Function of the Subreality Machine The subreality machine in the brain provides efficient sensory analysis. It achieves this by inspecting the poor quality data from the senses, and constructing an inner reality that is an estimate of the actual environment. This inner reality provides the consistent and noise-free information needed to plan and execute movements.

The Capacity of our Brains In order for this scenario to work, the brain must have stored information about a vast number of categories of objects. This leads us to ask, is it really possible that the brain could categorize all of the familiar things that it knows? After all, we are familiar with everything from the whiskers on a cat, to the sound of a locomotive, to the taste of peanut butter. Aren’t there just to many things that we are familiar with to make this possible? To answer this question, we can make a rough estimate of just how many “things” a human knows. Of course, we can do no better than a general approximation, since we haven’t


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defined exactly what a “thing” is. For instance, a “thing” might be the cat’s whiskers, or the whole cat, or all mammals in general. Nevertheless, it is still useful to go through the calculations to get a general idea of the size of the library stored in each of our heads. The key to making this estimate is a very simple principle: we cannot know something unless we have learned it sometime in our past. This is important, because we know very accurately how long each of us has been learning things. For instance, a typical adult has been alive for 30 years, which is the same as 10,950 days. This means they have been awake for about 175,000 hours, 10 million minutes, or 600 million seconds. The question is, on the average, how often do we learn a new thing? Is it every second? Every minute? Every hour? To answer this, think about a motion picture that you saw five to ten years ago. Now suppose that you are shown a one second segment from this movie, along with a one second segment that was shot for the movie but not included in the final release. Could you reliably pick the one you had seen before? Of course not, indicating that we do not learn new things on a second-to-second time scale. But if the segments are made longer, say ten minutes, your recognition would become much more accurate. Making the segments an hour long would make your recognition nearly perfect. Using this line of reasoning, we can estimate that we learn one new “thing” about every ten minutes or so. This corresponds to about six new things per hour, 100 new things per day, 36,500 new things per year, and about one million new things in an entire lifetime. Keep in mind that this only pertains to long-term memory, those things that can affect our mental capabilities years after they are learned. At this instant you can probably recall hundreds of things from the last one-hour of your life. However, nearly all these will fade away, and not become a permanent part of who you are. In short, our brains have a mental capacity of about one million “things.” For comparison, this is about the same number of sentences in an encyclopedia, giving us additional

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reason to believe this estimate is reasonable. Of course, this number may be off by a factor of ten or more either way, especially since we have not really defined what a “thing” is. The point is, our mental world consists of a finite number of concepts that can be manipulated. Further, this finite number is not a trillion, or even a billion, but only in the neighborhood of about one million. This is important because it allows us to compare our mental capacity with the physical structure of the brain. We know that the brain is composed of about 100 billion neurons, making about 100 trillion synaptic connections. In other words, the brain contains about 100,000 neurons and 100 million synaptic connections for each concept that the mind can ever process, seemingly more than sufficient to carry out the task. Going back to our original question, is it possible that the brain has the capacity to categorize all of the things that humans know? While much of the brain’s operation remains a mystery, the answer to this question seems to be a clear yes. On a more philosophical note, this estimate of our mental capacity is a bit unsettling, especially for scientists that are accustom to dealing with very large numbers. For instance, there are about a trillion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy, and a billion trillion atoms in a single drop of water. Compared to these enormous numbers, a brain capacity of one million concepts seems quite small and almost insignificant. Why Do We Dream? The Inner Light Theory provides a very specific answer to the question, What are dreams? Each of our minds contains a subreality machine to facilitate the analysis of sensory data. Dreams result when this machinery is operated without input from the senses, resulting in an inner reality that does not correspond to the external world. Dreams are the subreality machine running amok. This tells us what dreams are, but it does not tell us why we should have them. Why should the subreality machine activate


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periodically in the night without an apparent purpose? Why isn’t it always shut-off during our sleep? The Inner Light Theory does not directly answer this question. However, the mental architecture described in the previous chapters does allow us to speculate on possible reasons. To start, we will assume that nature has some reason for disconnecting the senses from the brain at night. Perhaps this is nothing more than preventing us from stumbling around in the darkness and injuring ourselves. The question then becomes, why does the subreality machine periodically activate when the sensory input is removed? When phrased in this way, any good electrical engineer will have an immediate answer to what is going on. Manmade signal processing systems, such as those based on electronics and computers, often employ circuits to automatically adjust their sensitivity. As an example of this, consider the operation of a handheld video camera. When used to record a loud party in bright sunlight, the sound and light levels are large enough that the device can easily operate. The camera detects this and automatically reduces the sensitivity of its audio and video circuits to avoid over-driving the recording. But now suppose that you walk into a dim room where the people are quietly talking. The camera can no longer detect the light and sound because they are below the current sensitivity level. Consequently, the recording will be nearly black and silent. However, the camera reacts to this situation by gradually increasing the sensitivity of its video and audio circuits. For instance, the camera may slowly become ten times more sensitive to light and sound over the period of a few seconds. As soon as the camera is sensitive enough to operate properly under these low-light low-sound conditions, the sensitivity stops changing and a usable recording can be made. Of course, when you walk outside the reverse process occurs; the sensitivity of the camera will gradually decrease over the first few seconds until it is appropriate for the bright and loud conditions. In short, the sensitivity of the device automatically adjusts itself to

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match the level of the input signals, and requires a few seconds to react to changing conditions. This is how the automatic adjustment is suppose to work, but engineers know that many things can go wrong. For instance, during the design of the video camera an engineer had to balance the interaction of many different parameters. This includes the maximum and minimum sensitivities, how fast the camera adapts to new input levels, and the characteristics of the audio and video signals themselves. Suppose that during the initial product design these parameters were not set properly, such as the maximum sensitivity being too high or the adaption being too quick. What would happen? When the input signals are abruptly reduced, the sensitivity of the camera will increase as expected. However, the sensitivity will overshoot and become too great, causing the recording to be a jumble of distortion and highly amplified noise. After a second or so, the camera will realize that the sensitivity is far too high, and try to correct the situation by drastically reducing it. But just as before, it overreacts, and reduces the sensitivity to a value that is far too low. This makes the recording black and completely silent. After a short time, the camera will detect this new situation and try to correct it by greatly increasing the sensitivity, starting the whole cycle over again. In the end, the recording will show brief segments of noise and distortion, separated by sections that are black and silent. The comparison here is obvious. Dreams are an activation of the subreality machine when the input signals are taken away, with each episode occurring for about 5-10 minutes at periodic intervals of 60-90 minutes. To an electrical engineer, this sounds like oscillation of a sensitivity adjustment circuit.

9

Consciousness as a Limitation

Introduction to the Third Section In the first section of this book, Chapters 1-5, we defined the mind-body problem. The second section, Chapters 6-8, showed how this paradox arises from the operation of the subreality machine in the brain. In our third and last section, Chapters 9-11, we explore a particular aspect of this mental architecture, consciousness as a limitation. By definition, computational machines process information. Further, this information being processed may include details about the internal activity of the computer itself. In other words, computers can be self-aware. The question is, how does this type of computational self-awareness relate to the human experience of consciousness? Is self-awareness sufficient for consciousness, or is something else required? And if something else is required, what is the nature of this “extra thing?” We begin this chapter with a brief review of the concepts already covered. This leads us to the main topic of this section, the idea that consciousness arises from limitations of our mental capabilities. Our next stop is an examination of the “traditional” view of the mind, and how it is based on a fundamentally incorrect assumption. We end the chapter with a milestone in our quest, a formal definition of consciousness. Where We Are We started our journey with an examination of the main tool of science, the method of reduction. From this we learned that everything in our reality is composed of only two types of entities, Information and Elements-of-reality. This is the basis 141

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of modern science, as well as our everyday commonsense. It has allowed us to understand everything from the structure of the universe to the process of life. The method of reduction has served us well, but when we use it to examine consciousness we come to a disturbing contradiction. This arises because we can observe the mind from two different perspectives, the third-person and the firstperson. The third-person viewpoint sees the mind as pure Information, nothing but the operation of the human brain. In comparison, from the first-person the mind is seen to be one or more Elements-of-reality, such things as qualia, free-will, semantic thought, and the present tense. This paradox is the mind-body problem in its most concise form. It is the heart of what we are seeking to understand, stripped of all that is superfluous and inessential. This is a milestone in understanding consciousness for two reasons. First, it allows us to condense a wide range of subjective and poorly defined arguments into a single concise definition. Our investigation can then be directed at the root of the phenomenon, rather than its secondary effects. Second, it defines what would count as a solution to the mind-body problem. Since the problem is a paradox between two points of view, the solution must explain how and why this paradox arises. Further, this explanation must be compelling from both perspectives; it must be formulated in rigorous scientific terms, while simultaneously satisfying our introspective judgements. This is the task at hand. Our next step was to develop a concept called the Information-Limited Subreality. This is something that could logically exist in our universe. We understand how it could arise, what its characteristics would be, and how it relates to the known laws of nature. It is based on the idea that reality is defined by observations, such as what we see, hear and feel, as well as what our scientific instruments tell us. For instance, our scientific and everyday observations indicate that we exist in a physical universe consisting of three dimensions of distance and

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one dimension of time. This is what we observe; therefore, this is our reality. Lacking evidence to the contrary, we are justified in believing that these observations do indeed arise from an external physical universe, just as they appear to. That is, we conclude that the reality we perceive is genuine. However, it is clearly within the laws of nature to alter observations by manipulating or distorting information. The Information-Limited Subreality takes this possibility to an extreme by creating a totally artificial reality for an observer. By definition, an observer trapped inside an InformationLimited Subreality has no knowledge of the external physical universe. Rather, this inner observer’s reality is consistent with another physical universe, one that could exist, but does not. While the inner observer will acknowledge the possibility that he is trapped inside an Information-Limited Subreality, he will dismiss this as an unacceptable belief. Both the inner and the outer observers are justified and compelled to believe that their reality is genuine. Of course, the outer observer knows that the physical universe perceived by the inner observer does not really exist. Into this setting we bring The Inner Light, the story of a scientist who becomes trapped inside an Information-Limited Subreality. As all good scientists do, he uses the method of reduction to classify the entities in his reality as either Information or Elements-of-reality. The problem is, everything that this inner observer classifies as Elements-of-reality will be seen as pure Information by the outer observer. In spite of this, each of these observers is complying with the most stringent rules of the scientific method, philosophical logic, and plain commonsense. They have reached the correct conclusion for their respective realities. Further, this does not require the observers to be conscious; it is a property of what is observed, not who is doing the observing. We call this disagreement between the inner and outer observers the Principle of Relative Reduction. But what is most important, the Principle of Relative

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Reduction is something we fully understand; it may be strange, surprising, and even a little disturbing, but it is not mysterious. Now we make the critical assertion: the Principle of Relative Reduction is the solution to the mind-body problem. This means that the first-person and third-person perspectives view the mind differently because there is an InformationLimited Subreality separating them. The first-person view is inherently from the inside of this Information-Limited Subreality, while the third-person view is from the outside. Introspection is the inner observer, while the world of science is the outer observer. On the face of it, this explanation has the general form to explain what is needed to be explained. That is, it uses well understood scientific principles to show how introspection can see the mind as one or more Elements-of-reality, while science sees the mind as pure Information. In short, we have shown two things, (1) that the mind-body problem is a certain type of paradox, and (2) that the Information-Limited Subreality has the ability to cause this type of paradox. However, this explanation requires us to accept a most extraordinary claim: human consciousness exists within an Information-Limited Subreality. This is an unsettling notion, completely at odds with our everyday perception of how our minds operate. We instinctively believe that the mind is an observer of the physical world; we seem to be directly aware of objects and events external to ourselves. But the Inner Light theory tells us that this is not true; everything that we consciously perceive is generated by a "subreality machine" within the brain. When we are awake, this inner reality is constructed to coarsely represent the physical world. When we dream, the subreality machine is running amok, creating an inner reality that is disconnected from the outside universe. This is where we are. Our next task is to take a broader view of these ideas, searching for the general relationship between information processing and this strange thing we call consciousness.


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From the Building to the Bricks The Inner Light Theory asserts that human consciousness is based around an Information-Limited Subreality. This mental architecture accounts for our perception of a detailed and elaborate inner world, our ability to dream, results from change blindness experiments, and the very way that we experience reality. Most important, the Information-Limited Subreality has the ability to make us see pure Information as Elements-ofreality, the key aspect of the mind-body problem. But now we want to expand our investigation to be as general as possible. We will do this by using a result from the last chapter. As illustrated by our perception of the color yellow, the basic operations used in information processing also have the ability to change Information into Elements-of-reality. This is an inevitable result of presenting a thing, but at the same time hiding how the thing can be reduced to more basic components. To use the metaphor from the last chapter, the InformationLimited Subreality is the building, while basic information processing operations are the bricks. Taking this further, the ability to change Information into Elements-of-reality resides within the bricks, not the architecture of the building. To be more specific, there are some aspects of human consciousness that clearly arise from the structure of the Information-Limited Subreality. This includes our perception of a complex inner world, one that is distinct and different from the external universe. However, there are other aspects of our mind that can be adequately explained by much lower level operations. For instance, a full-fledged subreality is not needed to explain why we see yellow as a psychological primary color. In developing a general theory of consciousness we want our understanding and conclusions to be as broad as possible. In particular, we do not want to define consciousness solely in terms of the mental architecture present in humans. That is, we want to accept the possibility that nonhuman creatures might be conscious, even though their “bricks” may be arranged in a different way.

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Accordingly, in the remainder of this book we will carry on the discussion at the level of the “bricks,” providing as little restriction as possible on how they are assembled. In short, we are moving toward a definition of consciousness that rests upon low-level information processing, and not the creation of a detailed inner reality. The rationale for this is simple; we want to consider an entity “conscious” if it views itself to be an irreducible thing, regardless of the other properties that it may or may not have. A good starting point along this path is to revisit the structure of the human brain. It is easy to lose sight of just how complex an organ the brain really is. For instance, one might take the mental architecture we have presented and try to identify corresponding structures within our heads. Naively, we might expect to find a section of the brain that is the conscious observer, surrounded by brain tissue that creates the subreality. But unfortunately this isn’t the case; science has found no singular areas of the brain that implement these functions. It could also be argued that this relatively simple mental architecture is inadequate to explain key aspects of our introspective experience. If the human mind is an observer trapped within a subreality, this would explain how we see Information in the outside world as Elements-of-reality. For instance, this could account for qualia being irreducible. However, this doesn’t necessarily explain how the observer could see itself as irreducible, such as experiencing semantic thought or mental unity. As an analogy, imagine being trapped with a translucent plastic bubble. Everything in the outside world will look distorted and unclear; however, everything on the inside of the bubble will still look as it truly is. Figure 9-1 depicts a more realistic picture of the brain’s exceedingly complex operation. It is clear from scientific studies that the “observer” is broadly distributed over the brain. For instance, vision is processed and understood in one area, moral judgement in another, initiation of body movement in


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FIGURE 9-1 Distributed consciousness. The “observer” is broadly distributed within the brain, with processed data passing along internal pathways. The Information-Limited Subreality does not surround this observer, but is inherently intertwined with the neural circuits that create the observer.

another, and so on. These various areas are linked together by interconnecting pathways, passing summaries and high-level concepts among the fragmented and discontinuous regions. We have a poor understanding of how these individual regions interact; however, it is clear that there is no central place where it “all comes together.” Many regions of the brain are involved in this thing we call “consciousness.” The point is, the Information-Limited Subreality within the brain is not a single bubble around an observer. At the least, it is a large number of smaller bubbles dividing the observer into many isolated regions. More likely, the information processing that creates the subreality is inherently intertwined with the neural circuitry that creates the observer. It may not even be possible in principle to say where one ends and the other begins.

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In short, the human mind sees itself as irreducible because of limitations distributed within itself. These aspects of the brain are an inherent part of what we are, not some external structure holding us prisoner. This brings us to our next topic, a discussion of how the traditional view of consciousness is mistaken. We will start with two stories, the special child and the fully-aware being. What’s so Special About a Special Child? Suppose that sometime in the future you have a most unusual house guest, an alien exchange student from another planet. Since the goal is to familiarize your guest with humans and their culture, you arrange for the alien to meet a variety of people from different walks of life. One of the activities you arrange is a visit to a care center for mentally retarded children. Of course, political correctness suggests that we refer to these disadvantaged youths as "special" rather than "mentally retarded." Accordingly, you tell the alien that he will have the opportunity to spend a few hours with several special children, without elaborating on what this means. After the visit you ask the alien what he thinks. He tells you he enjoyed the experience, and was very impressed by just how different and unique these children are. In an attempt to understand their nature better, he asks you to describe the "special" attribute that these children have. He has observed that these children are different in some way that he can't quite describe. He wants your help in identifying and defining exactly what must be added to a normal adolescent to create a special child. His question is very basic and to the point: Just what is this "special thing" that these children have, that most children do not? When we hear this question we realize that the alien has made a fundamental mistake. The alien can clearly see that special children are different from normal children. However, he has incorrectly assumed that this difference results from some "thing" that special children possess, but normal children


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do not. But this is not true; a special child is created by taking away abilities from a normal child, not by adding something. The behaviors and unique traits that the alien seeks to explain are a deficit, not an addition. Why would the alien make this mistake? Perhaps the primary reason is his lack of experience with normal children. He is trying to understand how a special child is different from a normal child, without having a good understanding of what a normal child is like. Given this, it is understandable that he might make a mistake in interpreting the relationship. In addition, we may have biased the alien by our comments. Our society refers to these children as “special” because the word is soft and without stigma, especially compared to the harshness of “retarded.” Unfortunately, this word is somewhat inconsistent with its meaning in other contexts. When we say “special children,” we mean that they have special needs. However, the term “special children” could be incorrectly interpreted to mean “exceptional” or “extraordinary,” something above and beyond the normal child. Since this mistake has been made by many humans, it is not surprising that it would be made by an alien unfamiliar with our culture. Lastly, it is common for humans, and presumably aliens, to think about things as a composite of parts. Further, these parts may include voids or missing regions that are treated as components in themselves. For instance, we speak of the "hole" in a doughnut, and an "unfilled" position in a company's personnel roster. Even though these are not actual things, we think of them as such to simplify the description of the overall object or concept. This might predispose the alien to think about the difference between a normal and a special child as a “positive” entity, rather than a void or deficit. Regardless of these reasons, the fact remains that the alien is wrong. He has made incorrect assumptions, and they have led him to an incorrect conclusion. We will return to this story shortly, but first we need to define an important new concept, the fully-aware being.

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The Fully-Aware Being Again we will imagine a scenario occurring in the future. In this case we envision a group of scientists constructing an artificial person, an android that mimics human thought and behavior. They give their creation a body that appears very human-like from the outside, even though it is made from mechanical and electrical components, not biological tissue. The android's “brain” is an advanced computer, carrying out algorithms, programs, neural networks, and other sophisticated information processing techniques. The android can perceive the world around him by means of his camera-eyes and microphone-ears. Further, he can understand what this sensory data means, being able to recognize objects in the environment and reconcile them with previously learned concepts. He can understand and generate speech, with the ability to carry on intelligent conversations. In short, the scientists design their creation to interact in the world the same way as you and I. But most important, the android is designed such that he can monitor everything about his internal information processing. He knows the exact status of each and every digital bit and analog signal. He can observe the raw information gathered by his electronic senses, monitor its consolidation with previous memories, and examine how it affects his current mental status. There is nothing about his internal computational activities that he does not know. If you offer the android a cup of tea, he will send it away with a wave of his hand, and then apologetically tell you that he does not drink. But then he can discuss with you in the finest detail the billions of computer operations that were needed to carry out these actions. This is what we will refer to as a fully-aware being, a computational machine having a complete and detailed knowledge of its internal states. Of course, such a creation is far beyond our current technology; however, it appears that this is a clear and direct extension of our present capabilities. Those that work in computer science expect that this will come about as computers become more sophisticated, and few knowledgeable people


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would disagree. In addition, it is within the realm of possibility that a biological creature could be a fully-aware being. For instance, in the future we may encounter extraterrestrial aliens with the ability to monitor their inner mental operations to the last detail. Even stranger, one day we may be able to modify the human brain to be fully-aware. This premise is the topic of the next chapter. For now, our concern is with the fully-aware android, something that science will be capable of developing at some time in the future. The question we want to pose and examine is this: Is this android conscious? How the Traditional View is Mistaken The “traditional view” of consciousness tells us no, there is nothing contained within this android that could result in it being conscious. According to this view, consciousness is something above and beyond computations and information processing; it is something “extra” that must be added. To complete their creation, the scientists must open the android's head and pour in a quart of "consciousness stuff," so to speak. Without this extra ingredient the android is nothing but a collection of mindless gears and cogs. The rationale behind this view is very straightforward. The world of science sees the brain as a machine. In contrast, introspection sees a mind that cannot be reduced to machine operations. In fact, the mind has aspects that cannot be reduced to anything; such things as qualia, mental unity, and semantic thought are irreducible. Therefore, according to the traditional view, consciousness must be something in addition to the machine-like operation of the brain. Of course, this is where the bottom falls out. The problems associated with this traditional view are severe and deep. For instance, if consciousness is something beyond information processing, why is there not the slightest scientific evidence for this “extra thing?” Worse yet, how can something that is not detectable by science interact so easily with the human body?

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And just as troubling, why should we have this "consciousness stuff" at all? If information processing is sufficient to control our behaviors for mating, escaping enemies, and finding food, why would evolution give us consciousness in the first place? The traditional view is filled with these types of seemingly unsolvable problems. The more you try to grasp the thing, the more it slips through your fingers. And here is the reason why. The traditional view of consciousness is based on a flawed assumption, the same error made by the alien visiting the special children. Consciousness is not some entity beyond full-awareness. Rather, it is a limitation, a deficit in one’s ability to perceive and understand oneself. Introspection sees the mind as being irreducible because of these limitations, not because an extra entity is present. Consciousness is not created by adding something to full awareness; it is created by taking something away. As an example of this, our fully aware android perceives the world through his camera-eyes and microphone-ears. Just as in humans, this raw sensory information must be processed before it is meaningful. For instance, the visual field must be broken into regions of similar color and texture, these regions grouped together into objects, and the objects recognized. Lastly, the relevance of the objects must be evaluated. Is this a face? Whose face is it? Is this an enemy or a friend? Hearing and the other senses have a similar hierarchy of information processing. The important point is that our fully-aware android can perceive and understand each and every step in this process. He can perceive it all, from the raw data, through the intermediate stages, to the final result. If we show him a picture of George Washington, he will not only recognize it, but can tell us in the finest detail how he recognizes it. By definition, this is what it means for our android to be fully-aware. But now we want to give our android a human-like mental experience. We do this by blocking his ability to perceive the lower stages of this information processing. We allow him to experience the result of the process, but not the process itself.


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To test our modifications we show him the picture of George Washington and ask him what he sees. As before he tells us that the face is of the first president of the United States. But when we ask him how he knows this, we receive a blank expression. He does not know how he knows, only that he does know. The experience of seeing and recognizing the face has come to him without explanation, support, or evidence; it just appears in his mental processes. The experience that “this is George Washington” is now an irreducible part of his world. While our fully aware android saw the event as nothing but Information, our “conscious” android experiences it as an Element-of reality. This is the Principle of Relative Reduction in its most basic form, a blockage of Information flow resulting in pure Information becoming an Element-of-reality. The Inner Light Theory tells us that human consciousness is something less than full-awareness, not something more. If we were fully-aware beings, we would know each and every operation being carried out by our brains, from the firing of individual nerve cells in our sensory organs, to the large-scale patterns of neural activity that represent our higher thoughts. There would be no mystery to our minds whatsoever; introspection would provide a complete and detailed understanding of exactly what we are. But of course, this isn’t our nature. Our physiology does not allow us to be fully-aware; the information in our brains is segmented into local groups without global accessibility. The low-level workings of the brain cannot be examined by the high-level workings. We do not know how we recognize a face, experience pain, or develop a thought, only that we can do these things. Our internal mental world appears to us as results without process, conclusions without justification, and things that exist in themselves without a supporting structure. Therefore, all of these things appear to the first-person perspective as irreducible. However, this is not because they are entities above and beyond the brain’s activities, but because of the brain’s limited ability to perceive its own operation.

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Seeing the Forest Between the Trees Why have we been mistaken about this for so long? Why is it not obvious that consciousness is a limitation and not “something extra?” Perhaps for the same reasons that the alien misunderstood the special children. First, in order to see consciousness as a limitation, we must compare the human mind with a fully-aware being. Trying to compare it with a lesser computational machine, such as a business computer, is meaningless. Unfortunately, no human has ever had direct contact with a fully-aware being; we know them only through our imagination and thoughts. If fully-aware beings lived among us, perhaps it would be obvious that our minds are limited compared to their computational powers, not the other way around. In other words, understanding the nature of the mind requires a reference point, and this reference point is something we have little experience with. Second, human nature itself predisposes us to think of the mind as something beyond the neural machinery of the brain. As one example, consider how we cope with death. Humans are social creatures, forming their lives around closely woven circles of family and friends. These relationships and bonds are often viewed as the most important things in our lives. But death rips this apart, attacking the survivors on a fundamental level. However, this extreme loss and pain can be minimized by the simplest of acts, merely believing that the mind of the departed still survives in some manner. Nature literally tortures some people into believing that consciousness is something beyond the physical body. Third, as previously discussed, it is human nature to think of voids, missing regions, deficits, and limitations as positive entities. For instance, a doughnut is thought of as a piece of sweetened bread, plus a hole. And there is nothing wrong with this; it simplifies our understanding of the world. The problem is, this predisposition to “positive entities” can bias our analysis of the world. An unexplained phenomenon is inherently viewed


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as a “thing,” rather than a “void.” We must overcome this inherent prejudice to see limitations as they truly are. But regardless of the reason, the traditional view of consciousness is mistaken. The first-person perspective sees the mind as irreducible because of its limited observational power, not because additional entities are present. This paves the way for stating a formal definition of consciousness, our seventh major teaching: Major Teaching #7: The Definition of Consciousness Consciousness is the irreducible entity a computational machine perceives itself to be, as the result of (1) an ability to observe its own high-level workings, and (2) an inability to observe its own low-level workings.

The Tale of Big Head Bill This concise definition accounts for consciousness from the third-person view. That is, it provides purely physical reasons why humans claim to have inner experiences involving Elements-of-reality. But now our task is to examine this explanation from the first-person perspective. This places us face-to-face with the most difficult aspect of the mind, explaining the personal and private view we have of ourselves. In the end, each of us will look at the arguments presented and ask the questions: Does this explain what I feel, what I perceive, what I experience? Does this unify my objective knowledge of science with my subjective knowledge from introspection? And the most basic question: Is this really what I am? This leaves us with a difficult task, trying to touch one’s innermost thoughts and feelings using a grossly inadequate tool, language. How can we explain the feeling of pain, or what it is like to see blue, or what it means to freely make a decision?

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The arguments of science, rational as they may be, seem ineffective at doing this. They simply do not connect with our inner world in a way that makes us proclaim, Yes, this describes what I am. But if this can’t be done through the power of rational arguments, how can it be done at all? Fortunately, this is not as hopeless as it may sound; artists and poets make their living by invoking and controlling our introspective experiences. And this is the same course we must take to understand the mind from the first-person view. We must use words to invoke and control our introspective imagery, allowing us to experience the concepts, rather than just knowing them by formal logic and rational thought. Such is the strategy of the next chapter, The Tale of Big Head Bill. This is the story of a man being transformed from a normal human into a fully-aware being. In essence, this is a journey across the gap separating the first and third-person views of the mind. Our title character starts with the same introspective experiences as you and I, such indescribable things as free-will, mental unity, semantic thought and so on. But then an alien drug changes his brain structure, allowing him to perceive the mental processes that are blocked in normal humans. Step by step he comes to know the true nature of his introspective world, a hierarchy where thoughts, feelings, and judgements are built upon basic computational processes. As he reaches fullawareness, he perceives and understands his mind in the same way as one observing him from the outside. He has crossed the gap, unifying the first and third person views of the mind. Now let’s hear about the journey in his own words.

10

The Tale of Big Head Bill

The Alien Drug I once was like you, a mere human, common in every way. My thoughts were filled with events of the day, dinner plans, my wife in her new red dress, the faces of my children. I was a psychologist by trade. What a wonderful thing to happen to one who studies the mind. Even now it is hard for me to believe that the adventure only began a year ago, the day the alien probe reached earth, the first day of my unimaginable new life. My name is Bill, and I would like to tell you my story. We still do not know what race of beings sent the probe, or why it only contained a single vial of pills. They must have meant it as a gift. I certainly accept it as such, the most incredible gift ever received by a human. My colleagues were eventually able to analyze the drug, at least in part. They found it to be similar to DNA, but far more complex, and probably created by engineering rather than evolution. Our own DNA contains the blueprint to create a human brain in the developing fetus. As we soon found, the alien drug was capable of creating a better brain. Many volunteered to take the drug, but I was accorded the honor and accepted it gladly. The first changes were dramatic, but not necessarily outside the realm of common experience. I would describe it as a greatly heightened awareness, much like being under the influence of a strong stimulant. I was more awake that I have ever been in my life. It seemed I was conscious of everything I saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched. I understood and scrutinized every word that was spoken to me. I continually perceived details that others soon ignored, such as the drip of a 157

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leaky faucet or the smell of a stuffy room. My thoughts were clear and open to introspection. I liked it; it seemed to be my normal human mind operating at its fullest capacity. But soon I realized that more was going on than mere stimulation of my existing abilities; the boundaries of my awareness were expanding. I began to understand processes in my mind that were previously unknown to me; portions of my unconscious were gradually becoming conscious. It was as if a dense fog had always hidden the foundations of my mind. Dayby-day the mist dissipated, allowing me to perceive the vast and wondrous network that creates who I am. Decisions, Thoughts, and Emotions During the first few weeks I came to fully understand my thoughts and decision making. These are the most complex and abstract processes in my mental world, lying just outside of my original awareness. For instance, news reporters frequently ask me why I decided to take the alien drug. Before the changes I could only give them vague answers. I knew beyond doubt that it must be done, but how and why I came to this conclusion seemed unexplainable. My decisions came to me without basis or reason; they just appeared in my consciousness. But the alien drug provided total clarity. I now can see that my mind has been shaped by decades of human experience, from playing with the toys in my crib, to struggling with calculus in college. My thoughts originate and are shaped by the totality of this accumulated knowledge, and my expanded mind can perceive it all. I could now write a book on why I decided to take the drug, outlining my reasons in the finest detail, citing the influence of every experience in my life. It became so obvious, once the cloud obscuring the workings of my mind was finally lifted. Perhaps most enlightening of all, I learned that my emotions are nothing more than decisions. Let me relate an example from my life. I was walking home late one night in a rather bad part of the city, when a robber approached me and demanded

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money. My mind was overwhelmed with the threat, the robber’s gun, his large physical size, the threatened violence in his voice. I knew in the next few moments I could be injured or killed. The terrible injustice of the act also permeated my thoughts. I thought of the robber running free only to attack my wife or children on another day, and how I could rid society of this filth by overwhelming my enemy. Then my mind became filled with childhood memories of being beaten by the playground bully, and the fear and shame that remains with me to this day. The flood of thoughts seemed uncontrollable, an internal struggle between two courses of action, attack or flee, attack or flee, attack or flee. I decided to attack. And with that decision my mind and body prepared for the combat; adrenaline poured, my heart raced, and I became angry, very very angry. My thoughts were singular, destroy the threat; nothing else mattered. I lunged at the robber and was shot in the arm. Searing pain engulfed me, and my thoughts rushed in reevaluation. I was going to die if I didn’t do something quickly. I realized that I could not win; my death would be meaningless. My wife and children would be devastated. I did not want to die. And with that realization my mental state changed to terror. All I could think of was getting away. Fear controlled me; it overwhelmed my thoughts. Run; get away; don’t provoke; be submissive; escape at all costs. Fortunately, the robber was even more afraid than I, and ran quickly from the scene. The whole episode took only a few seconds. Any normal person, such as myself before the change, would have shown the same anger and fear that I experienced. But a normal person would have experienced them blindly, not understanding the logic or reasoning behind the emotions. They would not understand that the threat demanded a decision for survival, and that the decision had only two answers, fight or flight. The decision to fight resulting in the body and mind being prepared for combat, the mind set to overcome the obstacle by force or violence, the essence of anger. The

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decision for flight being manifest as fear, the overwhelming urge to escape or flee. But I am no longer a normal person. My experience of emotion is not limited to the result of the decision; I can examine the decision process itself. Emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and love had always puzzled me before the change. They seemed mysterious and unexplainable, as familiar as anything can be, yet seemingly defiant of scientific description. But the alien drug has allowed me to see that this mystery is one of concealment. The boundaries of my awareness have now expanded beyond the obscuring veil, and I perceive emotions no differently than conscious decisions. Bulging Eyes and Big Head The physical changes began a few months after I took the drug. My rapidly expanding consciousness was made possible by tremendous growth of my brain and other nervous system tissues. The simplest description is that all of my neural pathways doubled, forming two separate networks with each being able to monitor the other. As I was soon to experience, this allowed my mind to become aware of each and every operation being carried out by within my brain. Eventually this duplication extended to all parts of my nervous system, from my brain, through my spinal cord, to the very sensory cells in my skin. My eyes bulged from the duplication of the nerve cells in my retinas; my skin and tongue swelled to twice their normal size. Most disfiguring of all was the increased size of my head, needed to accommodate the doubling of my brain. Soon the press had given me a new name, fitting of my appearance and mental abilities. I became Big Head Bill. The Cup of Tea Day-by-day my awareness grew, expanding downward through the hierarchy of my mental functions. First came an understanding of the highest operations, as I have already described, such things as decision making, thoughts and


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emotions. But then I became aware of something even more incredible, the vast and complex network upon which these higher functions are built. As I gaze out over my mind I become breathless with astonishment, perceiving billions upon billions of neurons interconnected by trillions upon trillions of data paths. Over the weeks and months I gradually came to know that this was my mind, from the raw information passing through my spinal cord, to the subtlest thought in my cerebral cortex. Of course, you cannot know these things as I do; your mind is still within the fog. But let me try to explain what I have learned, what I now know from direct experience. As an example, this morning at breakfast I observed a tea cup resting on a table. Before I tell you how I perceived this situation, consider how you or any normal human would have reacted. Your immediate conscious impression would be one of recognizing the object and its environment. Within a second you would say to yourself, “Ah ha, this is a tea cup resting on a table.” This knowledge enters your thoughts without explanation; it seems to just appear. But that is your experience, not mine. My consciousness operates on a time scale of milliseconds, the interval required for individual nerve cells to fire. I am fully aware of the millions of operations taking place to develop the final conclusion, all compressed into the first second of observation. I perceive my eyes detecting light from the scene, and the image data passing along my optic nerves to my brain. I witness the extraction of features by my neural processing, the legs on the table, the handle of the cup, the smell of the tea. I then see it all come together, the neural activity combining and intertwining to provide me with the final conclusion, this is a tea cup resting on a table. There is nothing magical or sudden about the final recognition I perceive; I am conscious of each step, decision, and criterion upon which it is based.

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Intelligence and Memory Surprisingly, these magnificent changes to my brain and consciousness have not made me smarter, not even in the slightest. I play chess with my teenage son, and usually lose, just as a few years ago. Don’t bother asking me about politics, mathematics, or God; I don’t know anything more than you. What I do know in fine detail is the inner operation of my mind, from the firing of individual neurons in my toes, to my appreciation of the beauty of an ocean sunset. You may question how I can be aware of everything within my mind but not be any smarter than a normal person. For instance, how can I be conscious of every action needed to recognize the face of my child, but not be an expert in the science of facial identification? The answer lies in the neural network of my brain, the structure creating my mind. I perceive the raw neural signals passing from my senses to my brain, where they enter a network of billions of nerve cells. I watch the patterns unfold and congeal as the signals pass from layer to layer. I can focus my attention on each operation, from the firing of individual nerve cells, to the massive coordinated activity of my cerebral cortex. I can see it all, unfolding step by step, neuron by neuron, layer by layer. But this is far from a complete description of the process; a key ingredient is missing, the synaptic weights. As you probably know, this refers to the strength of the connections between neurons, the fundamental way that the brain remembers its experiences. I am fully aware of these weighting factors and can observe their effect on my mental operations. I can also perceive how each new experience slightly changes the synaptic weights, incorporating the new data into my accumulated knowledge. However, I have no idea whatsoever of why the weights that exist in my brain are as they are. They appear almost random to my inspection. Thus you see, I am aware of everything that occurs in my brain as it exists today. But since I don’t know how my synaptic weights came to be as they are, I can tell you little about the science of information processing.


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My Senses When I was a normal human my awareness was bounded, limited to the short distance I could see through the fog that filled my mind. And as you know from your own experience, this boundary is not sharp, but a gradual transition from what one is aware of, to what one is not aware of. The boundary is an obscuring haze, not a rigid wall. You might say that normal consciousness has fuzzy edges. This was the nature of my mind a year ago, and your mind today. I tell you this so that you might better appreciate what I have become. Day by day the alien drug expanded the boundaries of my awareness, gradually encompassing more and more of the underpinnings of my mind. This process eventually became complete, and I gained an awareness of each and every event occurring within my brain and other nervous tissues. Today my awareness is also bounded, but the enclosed arena is immensely larger than anything your limited mind can imagine. The boundaries of my awareness now corresponding to each and every nerve cell in my body, no more and no less. Let me try to tell you what this is like. Imagine that you and I are on a tropical island, surrounded by palm trees and sandy beaches. We both sense exactly the same things, the sound of the surf, the warmth of the sun, the smell of bananas and the ocean. Your eyes and ears and other senses receive the same information as mine; we are equal in our ability to gather knowledge about our environment. Further, we process this data in exactly the same way, and come to the same conclusion, we are on a tropical island surrounded by palm trees and sandy beaches. This is what we know, based on the information gathered by our five senses. But here is where you and I differ; you know nothing but this conclusion; you have no awareness of how it was developed. The image of the palm tree and the sound of the surf simply appear in your mind without any apparent steps, procedures, or effort. You are astonished that objects from the external physical world can somehow exist within your mental

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reality. Of course, I have no such limitation; I can trace the content of my mind back to its very origin, the firing of individual nerve cells in my sensory organs. You see the sun as yellow, a single color that is inseparable and irreducible. I see the sun as simultaneously red and green, starting at the individual cones in the retinas of my eyes. You perceive the nearby trees as objects from the outside world, with beautiful green leaves and the distinctive smell of ripe oranges. I have these same perceptions, down to the last detail. But I can also see these things for what they truly are, constructs created by my mind, formed from the coordinated activity of billions of neurons. The greenness of the leaves and the smell of the oranges originate from within myself, not the outside world. I can trace their emergence through the sea of my neural activity, back to their birth at my senses. Full-Awareness Make no mistake, I have not lost anything in the transformation; I have only gained. I can still appreciate the beauty of a sunset, just as you. My anger flares in the face of injustice, and I love my wife even more than before. I still know what it is like to have ordinary consciousness, the way I once was; all I have to do is close my mind to the knowledge given me. But why would I want to? I am a blind man that has been given sight. Today I am aware of everything in my brain, down to the firing of each individual nerve cell. I can direct my attention to the raw signals coming from my eyes and ears, or examine the root of my emotions. I watch with awe as neural patterns emerge to recognize the face of my grandmother, the smell of popcorn, or the gentle pressure of my child’s touch. Each decision I make can be analyzed in the fullest detail, be it the primitive act of emotion, or the kind of food to eat for dinner. I understand it all, and can explain it to you in whatever detail you like; it is no mystery whatsoever. I am Big Head Bill, a fully-aware being.

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Epilogue

The Disturbing Part We ended Chapter 1 with the fundamental question: What is consciousness? Step by step we have developed the answer to this ancient riddle, as formalized in Chapter 9: Consciousness is the irreducible entity a computational machine perceives itself to be, as the result of (1) an ability to observe its own high level workings, and (2) an inability to observe its own low level workings. This is a far-reaching idea, capable of merging the many facets of the mystery into a unified framework. It defines what consciousness is from the third-person view, including how to classify nonhuman computational machines that we may encounter in the future. At the same time it describes the nature of the first-person experience, where we each see our own mind as a "thing" rather than mere computational activity. And most important, the Inner Light theory tells us why there should be a mind-body problem in the first place, why this paradox is an unavoidable result of the evolutionary process and the way that reality is experienced. However, this step forward also has a dark side, an aspect that many will find distasteful and disturbing. Man has always believed that he holds a special place in the universe. Science has often had the unpleasant task of showing that this belief is mistaken, thereby demoting us to a lower status in the scheme of things. For instance, 500 years ago Copernicus showed that the earth revolved around the sun, thereby displacing man from 165

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the center of the cosmos. Only 150 years ago, Darwin discovered that humans have a common origin with the other life forms on earth, thereby denying our claim of special birth. In the last century, science has shown that the universe is a hundred billion trillion miles across, and 10 billion years old. The shear size of these numbers seems to reduce mankind to an insignificant speck. But through these disappointments we have been able to cling to a reassuring fact, we are conscious. While the universe is vast and ancient, it is unfeeling and unaware. This means that our minds entail something that is rare and remarkable, something that we do not see in the largest galaxy or the most brilliant supernova. We are conscious, and that makes us special. Now, the Inner Light theory does not deny that we are conscious. On the contrary, it provides a scientific explanation of the inner world that we each experience, showing how it is part of our physical universe. Likewise, the Inner Light theory does not question that consciousness is extraordinary; present day computer scientists are awestruck by the technical abilities of the human mind. But make no mistake, the Inner Light theory does dispatch many of our long held beliefs. Specifically, consciousness is not some mystical entity above and beyond the machine-like operations of the brain. Likewise, it does not require physical structures or properties that are unknown or unreachable by science, be they from Quantum Mechanics or an unseen spirit world. But perhaps most disconcerting, the Inner Light Theory tells us that many revered aspects of our mind are limitations, not positive attributes. Such things as semantic thought, mental unity, and free-will arise from systematic inaccuracies in our observations. It is ironic that the things we have come to cherish the most are, in fact, the inherent deficits of our mind. Herein lies the rub. If human consciousness is based on limitations, then we can imagine something greater than ourselves, a self-awareness that does not have these limitations.

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Even further, we have every reason to believe that manmade computers will one day achieve this superior status, as may extraterrestrial beings, or altered humans. Consciousness can no longer be viewed as a pinnacle or crowning achievement, but must be accepted as merely one level in an infinite progression of computational complexity. As with the work of Copernicus and Darwin in centuries past, the Inner Light theory displaces man from yet another special place in the universe. Science is often a cruel master, forcing us to accept that which we disdain. But the universe is what it is, and no amount of cursing at the round earth will cause it to become flat.

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Index

Action potential, 24-30, 42 Airy disk, 73-75 Ambiguous figures, 130-131 Aphasia, 37-38 Assembly instructions (defined), 7-12 Blind spot in eye, 106-109 Bohr, Niels, 73, 76 Boring figure, 131 Brain in the vat, 87-91, 96, 99, 100, 105 Broca’s area (brain), 33-34, 37 Candle flame example, 18-19, 71 Cerebellum (brain), 33-34 Cerebral cortex (brain), 32-34 Chalmers, David J., 69 Change blindness, 108-112 Chinese box, 64-65 Churchland, Patricia, 2, 62-63 Classical physics, 54 Collapse of the wave function, 75-79 Color perception, 115-122, 164 Communications channel, 12-14, 23, 57 Corpus callosum, 32, 35-37 Crick, Francis, 71 Death, 154 Dennett, Daniel, 67 Descartes, René, 35, 83-88

Deterministic, 54 Dreams, 1, 17, 68, 99-105, 112-114, 138-140 Drugs, 38, 40 Dualism, 67, 68-69, 80, 86 Edelman, Gerald M., 71 Einstein, Albert, 15, 52, 60-61, 76, 81-83 Elements-of-reality (defined), 11 Emergence, 7, 17-20, 42, 67, 71-72, 80 Emotions, 38, 40, 158-160 Empedocles, 15 Epileptic seizures, 36, 37 Epiphenomenalism, 67, 69-70, 80 Evil genius (Descartes’), 83-85, 88, 96, 99, 100 Evolution, 115, 166-167 Filtering (sensory analysis), 126-129 First-person (defined), 21, 45 Free-will, 2, 45, 53-55, 56, 59, 63 Frontal cortex (brain), 33-36 Fully-aware being, 150-151, 153-154, 156, 164 Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), 3 Functionalism, 43 Gage, Phineas, 34-36, 41 Galileo Galilei, 1, 54

169 Gestalt, 17 Godel, Kurt, 93 Godel Incompleteness Theorems, 93 Grandfather clock example, 7-8, 16-17 Gravity, 11, 82-83 Gray matter (brain), 32, 35 Hameroff, Stuart, 78 Herbert, Nick, 76 Heisenberg, Werner, 73, 76 H.M. (medical case), 36, 41 Heschl’s gyri (brain), 33-34 Hippocampus (brain), 35-36 Hourglass example, 12-14 Idealism, 67-68, 77, 80 Information (defined), 11-14 Information-Limited Subreality (defined), 91-94 Inner Light episode, 5, 94-97, 99, 100 Inner observer (defined), 91-92 Inner reality (defined), 92 Interference (sensory analysis), 126, 129 Introspection, 2, 21 Irreducible (defined), 11, 45 Jackson, Frank, 64 LaBerge, Stephen, 102 Language, 36, 37-38, 104 Life, the problem of, 58 Lucid dreams, 102-104 Magneto-Encephalography, 3 Major Teachings #1. How We Understand Reality, 20 #2. Definition of the Mind-body problem, 66 #3. The Principle of Relative Reduction, 98

#4. The Subreality Machine in the Brain, 102 #5. The Origin of our Conscious Experience, 114 #6. The Function of the Subreality Machine, 136 #7. Definition of Consciousness, 155 Mary, color blind scientist, 64 Matching (sensory analysis), 126-133 Materialism, 67, 80 Memory, 31-32, 40, 41, 104, 134-135, 136-138 Mental unity, 45, 50, 59, 63, 146 Mind-body problem (defined), 2, 62 Mona Lisa, 106-107 Motor cortex (brain), 32-33 Multiple sclerosis, 26 Myelin, 26, 32 Nagel, Thomas, 63 Neural correlates of consciousness, 3 Neural network, 30, 32, 40, 71, 162 Nerve cells (neurons), 24-30 Neurotransmitter, 28, 38 Nodes of Ranvier, 26 Noise, 127, 129 Observer (defined), 81-83, 92, 146-147 Occipital lobe (brain), 33, 35 Outer observer (defined), 91-92 Outer reality (defined), 92 Paradox vs. simple ignorance, 57-58 Parkinson’s disease, 35 Penrose, Roger, 78, 79 Phase lock loop, 128-130 Pineal gland (brain), 35, 86 Present tense, 45, 52-53, 56, 59

170


Principle of Relative Reduction, 5, 96-98, 153 Positron Emission Tomography (PET), 3 Principle of Relative Reduction, 96-98, 143-144 Quantum-gravity, 78 Quantum Mechanics, 5-6, 17, 54-55, 67, 72-79, 80 Quarks, 15 Qualia, 45, 47-49, 56, 59, 63, 146 Reality (defined), 11 Reduction, 7-22, 42 Relativity, 5-6, 17, 60-61, 81-83 Religion, 69 Rubin’s vase, 131 Sagan, Carl, 68 Scott, Alywn, 71 Searle, John R., 64-65 Self-awareness, 141 Semantic thought, 45, 50-52, 56, 59, 63, 65, 146 Sensory cortex (brain), 32-33

Special child, 148-149, 154 Split-brain patients, 36, 37, 41 Star Trek, 5, 94-97, 99, 100 Strings, 15 Subreality machine, 102, 105-106 Substantia nigra (brain), 35 Synapse, 24, 26-32 Synaptic weights, 30-32, 162 Synesthesia, 38-40 Taylor, John G., 71 Thalamus, 35 Third-person (defined), 21, 23 Time, 11, 52-53, 88 Twin paradox, 60-61 Unconscious, 100-101, 105 Ventricles (brain), 35 Vital force (of life), 58 Von Neumann, John, 77, 78 Wave function, 75 Wernicke’s area (brain), 33, 37-38, 41 White matter (brain), 32, 35

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