Damasio and the Self

Pop fears about the AI apocalypse often feature the machine suddenly and inexplicably "coming to life." The "lights go on," and all of a sudden, the machine supposedly feels like us, has a consciousness like us and (therefore) starts to exhibit all of our worst attributes. In particular, it "wants" to live and suddenly "sees" us as a threat.

All of this plays on thousands of years of confusion about what it is to be human in the first place. What is it to "feel alive"? What is consciousness? What is "self"?

I think that thousands of years of superstition and religious "theology" shed no light at all on this question. If you are one of those who are looking for a detailed treatment of the "soul" as distinct from the body, I wish you good luck. As for me, I see no reason to invent a separate realm of reality to house my mind - even as I admit that it is difficult to say just exactly how a slab of meat between my ears creates the feeling we all know as "being here." That said, there is a lot we can say about these matters. I tend to listen most carefully to actual brain scientists before the philosophers.

My favorite brain scientist is Antonio Damasio, and the best way to get into his way of thinking is his most recent book (at the time of writing): the "Strange Order of Things." I commend this book to the reader's attention. What follows is probably a garbled account of his ideas. He has a lot to say about the issue at hand:

• The "feeling" of "being here" is, at the very least, a feeling. What is a feeling? In short, to have a feeling the organism must have an internal model of itself, plus a model of the outside world. The organism need not be very complicated to meet this threshold. A feeling abstracts raw sensation and connects sensation to action in an indirect way. An organism that responds directly to sensation (say, sunlight) without any intermediation won't have feelings. For our purposes, we note that "feelings" are a very ancient attribute of our branch of the tree of life. It is conceivable that a machine may have a model of itself (although this is rarely the case in state of the art AI) but it is debatable whether this would produce "feelings" of any kind, let alone the feeling of "being here". The problem with machines is that they lack a billion years of evolutionary experience as organisms in the world. Can this be "taught"?
• A popular survival strategy of living this is to exist in nested hierarchies. Beehives, schools of fish and the multi-cellular organism are examples. The behavior of the organism tends to support the survival of the individual organism, but also the cells making up the organism's body and the survival of the "herd". In fact, many organisms, including humans, are rarely found in nature by themselves and are not equipped to live for long by their own wits alone. If we watch a flock of birds, a school of fish or a swarm of bees, we are struck by the sense that the flock itself is alive in some sense. Working from the bottom up, we are struck by our sense that we can look after the health of the billions of cells that make up our body by actions that make no sense at the cellular level. It would seem odd to think that this setup is somehow unique to humans. What we perceive as a "self" is a conglomerate that exists far below our awareness. In fact, one may think of our brains as presenting the most simplified version of our true nature unless some kind of emergency requires action at the "meta" level.
• For me, Damasio's ideas challenge the idea that our experience of the "self" is misleading. We communicate with the group in ways that show us only "our end" of the communication, missing the way that all these communications add up to very definite group behavior. 

Many philosophers seem to insist that the "self" is either a phenomenon of the body or something on another plane entirely. Neither is true. Our perception of self easily transfers from our own body to the social situation we find ourselves in. It is perhaps a linguistic accident that we regard "I" as more fundamental than "we." It is only when we are near death do we perceive that our organs and cells are shutting down on their own schedule. The current rule is, when your brain is dead, you are dead. We rarely consider the complex system of cells that keep us alive under "normal circumstances" by keeping themselves alive. My favorite "meditation" on this subject is to think of my brain cells (neurons) as not that much different from any single-celled animal, except that they have found a way to survive comfortably in my head, producing the ideas that I put on this page as a byproduct of their metabolism. What do these cells do to justify the expense of their upkeep? They have feelings. They respond to the stimulus by sending a signal. This is not mere "wiring". There is a complex, indirect model that specifies the details of this reaction. The model - the "program" - is written in the DNA of every cell.

To be a "self", I require a body. But I need more than a body. I need a body that fits into a specific environment which includes other "bodies". Thinking of "mind" as something that happens in my head is not wrong. It's just incomplete. I have a lot more to say on this subject in a previous blog.

So how do we endow a machine with a "mind"? Simple. We find a way for existing human minds to participate in a structured, meaningful way to create a "higher" mind - a "supermind". This is nothing new and it has nothing to do with "technology". It's the way human society has always worked. In fact, it is the reason anything like human society exists.

Substrate of Consciousness

This post is fun to read once processed by Perplexity AI here.


Len writes: My thoughts on this matter have to do with the physical substrate of consciousness and its possible dependence on entanglement as a means of messaging.




Well ..

"The physical substrate of consciousness" ...

There are some metaphors and analogies in that idea that need to be made explicit (Hofstader's Surfaces and Essences is always looking over my shoulder).

The analogy at work here seems to be that "consciousness" is like a thing of some sort - a kind of physical substance. It would seem to be as easy to think of consciousness as a process - particularly a kind of "calculation". It does seem that calculations need a "substrate" - a physical medium to work. Hofstadter spent a lot of time on this idea in his famous "Goedel, Escher, Bach", which won him a Pulitzer. In fact, the idea underlies most of the Science Fiction ideas about consciousness, including the "Singularity", which takes it for granted that human consciousness doesn't depend on any specific "substrate" but would be perfectly OK if transferred to silicon.

This idea is itself an extended metaphor, depending as it does on an image of the mind as some kind of calculation "like" a computer. Indeed, this is a common theme among philosophers who claim to have "solved" the "hard problem" of consciousness. They begin by assuming that the metaphor is more than an analogy - it is fact and that the only problem is to describe how the mind arises (or "emerges") out of the substrate. Fame and fortune await anyone who "solves" the "hard problem".

For those who have fallen far down this rabbit hole, it is hard to spot how this could not be true. Isn't the only alternative "Descarte's Error" - the idea that there are two worlds - the universe of spirit and the universe of matter, somehow interacting through mysterious means? I believe they call this idea "Dualism", but don't quote me.

This is a common fallacy, especially prevalent in politics. If somebody else's idea is wrong, mine must be right.

As I pointed out in our breakfast conversation, total knowledge of the "substrate" of an iPhone doesn't tell us anything fundamental about what an iPhone does and what it is for. We are not lacking in information about the "substrate" of mental functions - presumably the brain. What philosophers always miss is that most of what we know about this "substrate" has been learned in the last 25 years and the "takeaway" is that we have centuries of work ahead of us to understand even this aspect of consciousness. Fans of "entanglement" are "jumping the queue", claiming victory over all the scientists hard at work making real discoveries about brain function, to claim what amounts to a theological connection between entanglement and consciousness. Is it too much to call it theological? Are we not substituting the nakedly theological reasoning of Descartes (where the spirit world is home to God) with the pseudo-scientific idea that "entanglement" is the door to a previously unsuspected realm of reality?

Before I go on, I must point out one issue I have with the idea of the "hard problem". Most people, when they see something referred to as a "problem", automatically assume that there is a "solution" out there. In this case, a Nobel Prize awaits anyone who "solves" the problem. But not all issues that can be framed as "problems" have solutions. As discussed at breakfast, this was something I learned (and actually used) in my thesis in 1969.

Let's go back to the "calculation" analogy. It's quite true a calculation seems to need a "substrate" but, mysteriously, the substrate seems to be irrelevant to the formal description or function of the calculation. Perhaps we should take some time to focus on that "mystery" before tossing out the awkward details to focus on the "substrate" idea, which, after all, seems to be irrelevant in the case of a calculation. What makes a calculation a calculation? I'd say it's quite like the observer in Quantum Mechanics or in Relativity. A calculation is in the eye of the beholder (ignoring for the moment Wolfram's claim that the whole universe is a big calculation). So, even in the case of an apparently "mechanical" calculation, you need a mind - a "programmer" - someone who has purposefully arranged material events to produce a meaningful result. It would seem to me that the analogy falls apart as soon as you include the programmer into the "other side" of the analogy.

It seems to me that "mind" does, indeed, require a substrate. Ultimately, there seems to be no reason to suspect that "mind" is a phenomenon outside the realm of physics. "Mind" obviously requires at least a brain and there is no mystery about this (a vast amount of experimental data verifies this). Since our brains are physical objects, we may assume that "deep down" they follow the rules of quantum mechanics. But we find these rules to be of limited explanatory value in our models of small molecules, let alone the huge molecules involved in life processes. We seem to be doing very well with "ordinary" chemistry and biology. See, for example, the Saporsky's wonderful "Behave", which delves deeply into the many-layered mystery of human behaviour in terms that range from synapse function to cultural pressures. Saporsky takes up perhaps the most relevant aspect of "mind" - namely, Why we do what we do? His answer draws on "bleeding edge" experimental science and provide a sense of where more information might come from. For the purpose of the current topic, "explanations" of behaviour whiz past chemistry rather quickly to include the organism's environment. It makes no sense to discuss behaviour without discussing the organism's actual or perceived environment, or, to put a fine point on it, what the mind is for.

Incidentally, when you learn the actual details of how behaviour arises, the analogy of a "calculation" seems remarkably unhelpful, but there is one idea that pops out. If we acknowledge that "mind" is somehow related to behaviour - and that behaviour is really the main clue that we have that mind is present, does it make sense to talk about the "substrate" of behaviour? Indeed it does - as Saporsky shows at length. In short, the "substrate" of behaviour is reality itself in all its staggering complexity.

Dawkins himself (the author of "Selfish Gene") was great at "substrate" questions. His "memes" required the substrate of the human brain (plus human society if you think of it). He also invented the idea of the "extended phenotype", which recognizes the behaviour and the environment of an organism as important as its physical form (phenotype). Our "extended phenotype" includes a mind. Damasio does an excellent job of tracing the emergence of "mind" in tiny steps all the way through evolution from, as puts it "From Bacteria to Bach".

In spite of all this great work, the "hard problem" of consciousness remains unsolved. Damasio comes closest when he gives the problem the respect it deserves. Why does it feel this way to be alive? Consciousness is a feeling. What, exactly, is a feeling?

Self, Mind and Supermind

Zen and its Western cousin, "Mindfulness" were a stop on my long journey to self-discovery. They introduced me to a line of investigation through subjective experience. In spite of the strong tradition against a philosophical interpretation in Taoism and Zen, all this came with a certain amount of "theory". To make a long story short, these disciplines challenge our idea of the "self" and, following ancient Buddhist tradition, regard the self (whatever that is) as impermanent**. Some would go as far as to claim that the self is an illusion. The Western "scientific" branch would claim that there is no "self" to be found in the brain. Sam Harris is a leading popularizer of this view and he claims extensive subjective experience (hundreds of hours of meditation) as his "evidence".

Antonio Damasio takes a different view, based on thousands of case studies (a more trustworthy kind of "evidence"). His view is that our feeling of "being there" has its physical home in brainstem structures that we share with all mammals (at least). Sub-cortical structures, such as the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the thalamus play an intermediate role, with the cerebral cortex "assisting" and informing the core brain stem function.

Damasio doesn't deny the conventional functional analysis of brain functions. The problem with such analysis is that it reveals what information is sent back and forth without saying anything about how this information becomes conscious. To whom or to what is all this information relevant?

Damasio draws a distinction between two types of information coming into the brain stem from massive neural systems. Broadly speaking: "inside" and "outside".

Let's talk about the "inside" system here. The sensation of the status of your own body. To me, it is no accident that "meditation" techniques primarily focus on inner sensation - usually through bringing attention back to the breath or other direct bodily perception. This amounts to an attempt (with varying success) to draw attention away from the "outside" - perceptions and the chattering distractions of the everyday world: the world of Samsara.

Now, the ancient sages had no idea that "inside" and "outside" amounted to two quite distinct perceptual systems. For the most part, they were unaware of the role of the brain in any of this. So, the experience afforded by directing attention to the "inside" mind - often for hours or days at a time - felt very different. At least calming or even mystical. My theory is that the "experts" like Sam Harris have succeeded in suppressing "outside" brain functions enough so that they experience or remember experiencing (not quite the same thing) "loss of self".*

Such an experience would involve almost entirely suppressing functions of the cerebral cortex. The mysterious memory function of the hippocampus (subcortical) would continue to "tick over", explaining why Sam remembers losing himself. Of course, Sam avoids giving a straight answer to "who" is remembering having no self. Zen loves paradox.

For many years, I have pictured my brain stem when I talked about my "lizard brain" - the source of my animal instincts that often got me into trouble. Damasio has allowed me to change this image slightly to think of the "lizard" as me. It's a part of me shared by mammals. It's just a shared structure bequeathed through common descent from a distant ancestor. The lizard brain in a dog is no more "primitive" than my own.  (I hate the word "primitive" since it tends to sprinkle evolutionary fairy dust over ideas).

What is different is this massive "cap" of cortex that filters perception of the outside world. In particular, I have a "forebrain" (prefrontal cortex) that is, compared to other mammals, rather large., along with "speech centers" that seem to be unique to humans. What are these structures doing?

Obviously, the answer that question would fill a library, full of books I would probably not understand. At my current humble non-professional level of understanding, here are some things I imagine the prefrontal cortex is doing:

• It's the part of the brain most like a computer. It calculates. It "reasons".
• An important function is to suppress and override impulses to action coming from my "lizard" subcortical structures like the amygdala (flight or fight). It's the forum for "sober second thought".
• It performs two distinct kinds of "calculation". One involves abstract questions and the outside world. The other involves social calculations. The latter is far more complex and equally important to survival. Who can I trust? What behavior is socially acceptable? What is "right" and "wrong" to do? What is the "moral" thing to do? What can I get away with?

So I wind up with an image of myself as a lizard in my head, not much bigger than my thumb, trying to make sense of the world with a huge over-growth of evolutionary "new" equipment that allows me to regard both morality and the Big Bang as objectively "real". This new equipment doesn't add much to my ability to perceive the world more accurately than, say, my dog. What it adds is the ability to connect my humble powers to those of other human beings. In fact, my "world" - "umwelt" - is shared. It is the supermind.

Anyone who has seen a video of a wolf pack running down a caribou will see that the wolves have a pretty good idea of what the other wolves are doing. Wolves have a shared umwelt. But it's nothing compared to the way humans coordinate attention, intention, perception, resources, and behavior to do things like putting one of their members on the moon for "all mankind".

That's what makes us special. That's what makes us dangerous.

----------

* I tend to distrust "data" gathered by introspection since my own mind has quite often provided compelling evidence for factually wrong ideas. My lizard is easily fooled. For me, meditation techniques help to calm my chattering brain - nothing more. The scientific supermind is where I go for the facts and theories.
**  I don't attempt to decipher the muddle of what became of some branches of Buddhism, which eventually came to include ancestor worship, heaven and hell, gods and reincarnation of "something", when the Buddha explicitly (seems to have) built his whole teaching on the impermanence of everything, including the "mind".  At home, "On the ground", Buddhism seems to be as crazy and superstitious as medieval Christianity.

Interlude March, 2017

Back in 1969, I appeared in Grenoble, France, eager to start on my Ph. D. in Computer Science at what was then the leading IBM research center in Europe. It did not go well.

At the time, the idea of "Time Sharing" on a computer was in its infancy. Very few people had access to the big mainframes using slow text-only terminals. Yet, I imagined a time when everyone would have access to the same computer system. All of human knowledge would be accessible. People could share their projects and extend that knowledge together, online. The group mind of humanity would be implemented in a vast computer network.

In short, I imagined the Internet. World Wide Web 3.0, a bit beyond what we have now. Artificial Intelligence (my field) played a big role in this vision. I called it the "Spirit System".

The idea quite literally blew my mind. Weakened by days without sleep and culture shock I had the first of my numerous "nervous breakdowns". My hopes of an academic career were over.

Even now, after a dozen or so of these episodes, I quibble with health care workers over what to call what happened. For years, I was "schizophrenic" and medicated as such. Eventually, I was re-classified into to the newly-fashionable category of "bipolar", even though I did not "check all the boxes" - specifically not being subject to the depressive side of the condition and therefore not swinging between two states, as the word "bipolar" and the definition of "Bipolar I" requires*. Nonetheless, treatments for "bipolar illness" were more or less successful (Lithium and Prozac). The problem was that, over the long term, they were destroying my kidneys. I switched to another medication, but that's another story.

So if I don't like the "bipolar" term, what is going on with me? It's pretty much textbook mania. When I'm sick, I score "off the charts" on the mania test. Normally, such as now, I'm "normal". So there is nothing strange about what's happening. There is something wrong and it has a name. I like the test I referred to because it hints at what mania feels like from the inside.

Mania is an affective disorder. Mania gives its sufferers a unique glimpse into the importance of affect - the way you feel about what you are experiencing.  I'm encouraged to write about this right now because I recently ran across the writings of Antonio Damasio. To make a very long story short, Damasio uses extensive research into the way the brain works to support his theory that feelings are the very root of human experience in the world. Everything we experience is "marked" by feelings. In the case of mania, the world is basically painted in technicolor feelings. It's just an amazing, exciting place. As an episode unfolds, feelings overwhelm "rational" perception and the sufferer slips into psychosis - the endpoint of quite a few mental disturbances, including the one that afflicts the current President of the United States (malignant narcissism).

There is a philosophical issue with the definition of psychosis since it involves the idea of "reality" and the failure to grasp it like the rest of us do (so-called "objective reality" which probably doesn't exist). But in practice, the condition is crystal clear.

Damasio is relevant to me and this blog in several ways. For one thing, his writings fit into a much wider set of ideas that support and extend the concept behind this blog - the "superorganism" or "dragon". For another, it's important that I watch out for the feeling of elation as the last few pieces of this theory snap into place. In the past, this kind of situation has lead to a "manic break" where great ideas drive me off the cliff into psychosis. Not this time. I'm feeling fine and I'm very aware that there is a ton of work that remains to flesh out these ideas, connect them, document them and explain them. There is nothing crazy or spooky here - just a lot of notable thinkers talking around the concept of the superorganism groping for words to describe it - the appropriate set of analogies.

To kick off a new phase in this project, I have changed the title of this blog slightly, from "programmable ape" to "supermind" (URL "emergentsupermind). Of course, this choice is limited by the titles available, but the shift also reflects the fact that the "programmability" of humans is just one way to see the emergence of the supermind.  Another key concept is the loss of individual identity, exhaustively documented in Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence", which provides not only an expert analysis of the phenomenon but also a harrowing account of the suffering caused by this loss. There is also a shift in metaphors from a "superorganism" to a "supermind". As organisms ourselves, we are attracted to thinking of something "superior" as like us, an organism. This thinking is behind the old idea of God: the old man in the sky. The supermind is not smart: primitive rage and cruelty are more common that the "wisdom of crowds". Sen provides an essential ingredient to my project: a reason to care. It's not just a new way of seeing things: it's a way of seeing a danger that poses an immediate threat us all, precisely by crushing the individual human being into "little boxes" of "identity".

I have not failed to notice the similarity between the 2017 "supermind" and 1969 "Spirit system", but there are many, many differences between the two ideas. I have not been thinking of this for 48 years for nothing.
-------------------------------
* "Old timers" with a hard-won experience with mental illness are constantly annoyed with the professionals are unaware of the history of their classifications - which often dance to the tune of  drug companies who have a pill that "treats" a previously un-classified condition. Prozac being the best-known example ("treating" mild depression). Valium and Viagra are another. There is some evidence that "treatment" for whatever it was that afflicted me in Grenoble actually caused the epidemic what was eventually called "bipolar illness". All that can't distract us from the fact that mental illness is real, serious and debilitating. But we are not very good at treating it, nor do we have a convincing explanation of what causes the majority of common problems. That said, we are a lot better off than we were even in 1950.