Unceasing Self

There is a tenet in Buddhism—a core principle, in fact—that is challenging for most Western minds to comprehend. It is the concept of “no self.” Many principles of Eastern religions and philosophy are difficult for us in the West to comprehend, because our cultures differ so much. For example, we in the West tend to view events in a linear fashion—we see history unfolding in a straight-line manner, from a point in the past and progressing upwards and outwards into the future. Those in the East view events more cyclically—history is a repetitive, periodic process that reoccurs again and again.

To the Western mind the concept of no self can even appear rather absurd, since we emphasize our individuality and our right to be a unique and autonomous being—while the Eastern mind is more likely to subsume itself into the common whole.

Maybe we could grasp the concept of no self better if we begin with a clear understanding of what the self is. Then we might be in a position to consider what it is not. A dictionary definition of the self is “a person's essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection; or a person's particular nature or personality.”

Now, the Buddha is not strictly saying that there is no self—as if it doesn't exist. That's what many Westerners think and rebel against. We ask, Am I not a specific being, who has a “particular nature or personality?” The Buddhist point is that what we think is our essential being—our feelings, perceptions, and consciousness—is really not what we believe it is.  Sure, you have a material body, but that deeper, innate self that we think of as me is not really what we think it is. Let me try to explain. 

There are, in fact, two aspects of what we Westerners think of as the self, which Buddhism says are mistaken. The first is that we tend to think of our self as being a constant, immutable entity over time. Am I not essentially the same person now—someone whose basic essence is “me”—as I was at 10 years old? Well, no. We are more a process than a thing. That's even true physically—our cells are constantly regenerating. We are constantly in the process of unfolding into a new being.

Our second belief about the self that Buddhism claims is mistaken is that we tend to believe there is an intrinsic self—what we might consider to be our conscious self—that is in control. We can think of it as the executive (or CEO) of our mind that is in charge of it all. We have that amazing prefrontal cortex that we think is in command of it all. Well, no. Modern psychology has repeatedly demonstrated that the unconscious part of our brain—the part that we not only do not control, but are not even aware of—makes decisions on its own, causing us to take actions that our conscious mind was oblivious to. Only after the fact does our executive mind see what we did, and then does its best to make up a plausible story for our behavior.

So neither Buddhism nor modern psychology claims that the self literally does not exist. It's more that what we believe to be the self is not the fixed, encased thing we consider it to be. No, it's not that self at all. No self. It's more a process, more like a verb, than a noun. It's a flux… a flowing. Open your mind up to you being something much more vast.

Bean Brains

I have written several times about how science is progressively breaking down what once were considered to be insurmountable barriers between humans and other species. From manual skills to cognition, we are increasingly recognizing that other critters have capabilities that we once claimed were exclusively ours. A few examples are (1) the creation and use of sophisticated tools, (2) the ability to show intention and to plan ahead, (3) the use of complex communication, and (4) the capacity to perceive what might be going on in the mind of another critter.

Many people want to grant some of these powers to only our fellow primates the great apes, but dogs, elephants, and porpoises—among others—also exhibit them. In fact, science is extending some of these capabilities down to insects... and even bacteria! But surely, some skeptics would say, we must stop short of plants. At best they might possess some rudimentary form of nervous system, but are they able to communicate, let alone display intent? Come on! Well, trees can communicate quite sophisticatedly and their roots even suggest some kind of simple cognition—as the tree acquires knowledge and uses it to its advantage.

OK, so some fascinating experiments have been done with noble trees, but surely everyday garden vegetables can't do any of this, right? Wrong. Recent experiments by Canadian and Italian researchers suggest that bean plants may exhibit signs of sentience... or even intent! Their test was to see if the tendrils of bean plants randomly sweep their vicinity and blindly latch on to a stake to crawl up, or instead may intently seek and locate stakes.

They placed a bunch of baby bean pots—some with a nearby stake, and others with no available stakes. Those plants near a stake measurably sent out their tendrils—non-randomly—in quite a controlled and predictable manner, while their stakeless companions' tendrils floundered randomly around. It appeared to be, according to the scientists, as if it were an anticipatory, goal-directed process on the part of the tendrils.

These experiments certainly did not unambiguously demonstrate the existence of bean brains, but something fascinating was happening. Time to once again reconsider those mental barriers we erect between ourselves and the rest of life. Might a bean enjoy watching TV?

AI's Outlook—Part 2

Continuing the second of three concerns about artificial intelligence begun last post:

2. Super-intelligence becomes a concern when we develop robots who are far smarter than we are—not just in a narrow sense (such as in chess or Jeopardy!), but in a more general sense. To date, AI's intelligence is narrow—that is, computers exhibit super-intelligence in only one area. But we soon will be seeing machines that exhibit what is called artificial general intelligence (AGI). When that comes about, will AGI decide to control us? Would it even care about us?

Another huge question is what impact AGI will have on human employment. AI already has stepped into mundane jobs (think of assembly line robots), but will soon disemploy many more people. What will we do with the millions of people who will no longer have work, because they've been replaced with robots? Very soon we'll see even rather sophisticated human careers—doctors, lawyers—terminated. We aren't prepared to deal with that problem.

Not a lot of effort is currently being applied to the issue of super-intelligence. Most researchers are rushing into the future, unable or unwilling to deal with this concern. Government barely understands the basics, let alone is currently prepared to address this matter.

3. Consciousness brings up another big question for which we currently have no good responses. Today's AI machines are most likely not conscious. But when—as evermore complex computers are built—will computers become conscious, or even sentient? Will they ever do so? Scientists are still struggling to define consciousness in humans and other life forms, let alone machines.

Is consciousness a continuum or is there a line which consciousness does not cross? Is a newborn baby conscious? A monkey? A tree? A rock? These questions are impossible to answer as we don't even yet know how to measure consciousness.

If AI machines do become conscious—after they become complex enough—will they be able to subjectively experience something? Could they experience pleasure or pain? How would we know? And would robots deserve rights, if they become conscious?

There are many unanswered questions about the future of AI. These machines may be a threat, or they may offer humans some type of salvation. Nobody knows at this point. Unfortunately, too few people—especially those in the public policy arena—are seriously considering these issues. Like so many technological innovations of the past, we may soon be dealing with huge problems, without having looked at the issues before they became problems.

Consciousness Considerations—Part 3

This is the third of a trilogy on consciousness. This one takes a little deeper look at how consciousness may have emerged, here on earth, and where it might be going. (First, I wish to recognize that some people would argue that consciousness never “first appeared” at all. They would suggest that consciousness may have been present from the very beginning of the Universe, and that it's really been a process of life progressing to a point that consciousness is recognized or is fully manifested in some creatures, like humans. It's similar to the concept of panpsychism in part 1 of the trilogy. But that's a topic for another blog.)

One of the understandings that neuroscientists have come to is that intelligence and consciousness are not so much a function of the number of neurons in a “brain”, but of the complexity of their connections—that is, the number of synapses and the intricacy of their attachments. A simile for a computer is that it may contain in its memory billions or trillions of bits of information, but if they all are in isolation from one another, of what use is it all? Or consider a book: in its totality, it has meaning, but only because all those words are connected together by sentences, paragraphs, chapters. Cut the book up into individual words—and dump them into a huge pile on the floor—and it has no meaning, no message.

Is it possible that there were aspects of some kind of “pre-conscious presence,” floating around the Universe, before any “fully-developed” consciousness could be detected here on Earth? That notion fits the concept of emergence: all the elements were there and at some point consciousness popped out... became manifest in some critter.

Consciousness, if it were to come about as an emergent phenomenon, probably did not suddenly “pop out”, but gradually emanated. Nonetheless, the degree of consciousness embodied in creatures was once very low and has slowly risen over time. The level of human consciousness today is certainly greater than anything that may have been present 100 million years ago. You could argue that Earth was simply not ready for something as complex as human consciousness, at the time of the dinosaurs.

This raises an obvious question: If this emergent-and-growing consciousness hypothesis is approximately true, where might consciousness on this planet be headed? (Note: I'm not even considering consciousness existing elsewhere in this blog entry. Limiting it to Earth—where we know it exists—is knotty enough.) Consider people who are spiritual adepts. They possess a consciousness level well beyond the average person. Some are even considered to be enlightened, to have insights well beyond us common folk. And what does enlightenment mean? Is it a destination? Is there an end point? Is God the end of the line? I'm afraid I've begun this blog with a list of currently unanswerable questions and concluded it with even more, and also tougher ones. Better stop.

Consciousness Considerations—Part 2 of a Trilogy

I find consciousness a fascinating topic. I've blogged about it here several times. One aspect of its allure for me—besides the fact that it is utterly basic to who we humans are and how we behave—is that even academic experts disagree on a definition. The field of consciousness research is very dynamic and broad. Our ability to probe into the workings of the brain by technologies, such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) is rapidly expanding our knowledge base. Yet an agreed-upon definition or clarity of consciousness is still lacking among those authorities.

I think a core issue that is not often acknowledged in consciousness debates is that it's not so much whether or not some entity has consciousness, but what is its level of consciousness? It's not either/or; it's shades of gray. A bird is conscious, but certainly does not have the level of consciousness that most people do. Furthermore, we'll likely never penetrate the mind of a bird, in order to assess its level of consciousness. We have enough of a problem achieving this, human to human.

So how about a machine? Some artificial intelligence (AI) machines are becoming incredibly complex. Their software can be viewed as an aggregation of nodes interconnected by many pathways. That's very similar to our brain's nodes (neurons) and its pathways (axons, dendrites, and synapses). When will one of these AI machines possess enough nodes and interconnections to cross the threshold of consciousness? Would we even know? Could that type of consciousness be so alien that we'd not be able to recognize it?

Here's another way to look at it. Start with the human brain—something that we can confidently consider to be conscious. Cut it in half. Still conscious? Well, yes, some people's brains have been severed in half...they're still conscious. Keep cutting the brain in half. (Of course, this thought experiment assumes that the divided brain stays alive. So rather than cutting the brain apart, maybe imagine a critter whose brain has the same number of neurons as the repeatedly-cleaved human brain.) When do we reach a point when the brain fragment is no longer conscious? When the neurons are down from several hundred billion to a mere 100 million? A hundred thousand? 300? 75?

Or consider what happened on Earth, some time after life emerged. Were those first single-cell critters conscious? At what number of neurons and synapses did consciousness come into being? These are questions yet to be answered, if they ever can be. That's why I love science: just keep plugging away at the unknowns, and someday an answer will likely appear. Answers do exist—it's just that it's often very hard to locate them.

Completion of consciousness next time...

Panpsychist Possibilities—Part 1 in a Consciousness Trilogy

Panpsychism is the belief that mind (“psyche”) is found everywhere (“pan”). Most primitive and/or indigenous cultures view/viewed their world this way. The dictionary definition of panpsychism is “the belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.”

Those cultures that see the world as panpsychic look upon the nonhuman world through respectful eyes. If spirit or consciousness exists in everything, they conclude that everything deserves respect. This is a dramatically different perspective from Western belief—which often sees mind only in humans, a notion we got from René Descartes. Even if some of us in the West grant some degree of consciousness to a few animals (like a dog), we tend to draw the line at simpler critters such as insects. So how is it possible for all material objects to be conscious? Is the Earth conscious (which is what the Gaia hypothesis suggests)? A tree? A rock? Modern Westerners mostly scoff at such ideas.

Part of the disagreement here is that there is a very wide-ranging view of what consciousness is. Many of those who dispute whether or not consciousness can exist in animals or plants are operating under different definitions of consciousness. Even within small camps of agreeing people, there's still contention.

So let's back up and consider the dictionary's definition of consciousness. There are three definitions given there: (1) “The state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings”; (2) “The awareness or perception of something by a person”; and (3) “The fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.” That's quite a range of meaning. Furthermore, those three definitions certainly lean toward anthropocentrism—viewing the issue strictly from human values. You'd have a tough time arguing that a tree is conscious, using those definitions.

Consider a specific non-human example: Is a bird aware of its surroundings? It has to be, in order to function. Is it aware of itself and the world? Yes, to some extent, just in order to survive. But how deeply can it perceive things? The answers to these questions are impossible to respond to, since we can't get inside the head of a bird. But I'm willing to give a definite degree of consciousness to a bird—not nearly as much as a human, but it's got to be there. 
 
So how about a worm? A nematode? An amoeba? A bacterium? An acorn? A rock? Does it make any sense to grant a rock a mind? Can it in any way be conscious? As an alternative way to view panpsychism for a rock, might one possibly conceive of the possibility that a rock exists within an ocean of greater consciousness, and thus somehow absorbs some of that consciousness?

These are questions that tend to defy answers—at least as far as human knowledge has currently grown. They are hotly debated. Panpsychism is certainly a concept worthy of open-minded consideration. Whether or not I am willing to grant consciousness to a chunk of granite, it sure is worth trying to extend my respect as far out there as I can. And that idea is neither primitive nor indigenous...in a way, it's pretty damned enlightened!

More on consciousness next time...

Oh, Wow!

            Despite many decades of study by both philosophers and scientists, a good description of consciousness remains an elusive thing. The dictionary defines it as “the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.” That can mean different things to different folks. Consciousness is typically considered to be something that is associated with—if not contained within—the brain. Consciousness, by definition, is a subjective thing—so it’s bound to fall into a zone claimed by both philosophers and scientists, and because they approach the study of the world so contrastingly, they are bound to disagree and argue about what it is.

            So consciousness is a slippery subject, and it will probably remain so for some time. Many articles and books have been written on the topic, but a consensus is still lacking. I recently purchased a book by Daniel Dennett, published a couple of decades ago, audaciously titled Consciousness Explained. It is a 500-page tome that I have yet to summon the courage to begin reading. Maybe soon. The fact that I have not read any science articles that point to Dennett’s book as the definitive explanation of consciousness suggests that it’s still not a closed subject.

            Every now and then a scientific study is published that adds a fascinating facet to consciousness—something that might not fully decode the mystery, but can shed a little more light on it. A recent study published by researchers at the University of Michigan brings us a novel aspect of consciousness. When the brains of lab rats were wired to measure their electrical activity and their deaths were then induced by cardiac arrest, the researchers measured a burst of electrical power in the gamma band. (Don’t try this experiment at home on people!) Gamma band brain oscillations have been considered to be an indication of consciousness in the human brain.

            Rats are used in laboratory tests because their physiology is similar to humans. So this study presents the tantalizing possibility that, at the moment of death, the human brain may experience an explosion of consciousness. There is as yet no real evidence that rats experience consciousness in the same way we do, but these experimental results are fascinating.

            Some researchers think that the strong psychic incidents reported by people who come close to death and survive (those having near-death experiences, or NDEs) may be related to this sudden burst of consciousness. Other researchers are beginning to shed light on the meaning of NDEs—that the commonly-experienced lights, tunnels, and out of body sensations, can be explained by the specific kinds of electrical brain activity that occur, as one’s body begins to shut down.

            This field of research is yielding some fascinating results. I like the idea that our brain engages one grand last hurrah—sending us out with a bang. And I’m wondering if something like this might have happened to Steve Jobs—the creative genius of Apple Computers—who, at the moment of death reportedly exclaimed, “Oh, wow!”