The Riddle of You & I

In an interview, Mark Edmundson, author and Professor of English at the University of Virginia, speaks about the writers and poets he loves to teach in his classes [1]. He mentions Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Jane Austen and Marcel Proust. Based on his high regard for those writers, I went ahead and bought collections of their work. I focused particularly on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emily Dickinson as I know the least about them. Once my copy of Emily Dickinson’s selected poems arrived, I began to read and have been astounded by some of her poetry. Here’s one I really like:

“How still the riddle lies!”. Ever since humanity began the quest to understand our origins, we have made considerable progress. We have found things out that ought to leave us in awe (and I think we take it for granted because there’s nothing immediate we can do about our way of existence). While the Pythagoreans were aware that the Earth is round (during a lunar eclipse, Earth casts a curved shadow on the surface of the Moon), they were the first to work out that the celestial “Spheres” move around the Sun. The Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus noticed that the planets Mercury and Mars dim in their brightness as they move across the night sky. He correctly deduced that this must mean Mercury and Mars move away from the Earth, so they cannot be going around the Earth in an even, circular orbit. They had discovered that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. In a related discovery, Aristarchus of Samos witnessed that the Mediterranean appears to move along an arc relative to the night sky, and so he also correctly deduced that, as the Earth moves around the Sun, it rotates around its own axis.

After a millenia long and dark silence in the sciences, the discoveries of the Ancient Greek astronomers were revived by Nicolas Copernicus beginning in the year 1513. Since then, we have discovered astonishing facts. For example, we know quantum objects behave differently to classical, macroscopic objects [2]; this has been determined by the various founding experiments. Young’s double split experiment demonstrated the wave nature of light, the Stern-Gerlach experiment proved particle spin is quantized, while Thomson discovered the electron through cathode ray tube experiments. We know that time is relative rather than absolute. During a solar eclipse, Eddington observed that the massive presence of the Sun bends light around it. Stars which are normally hidden from view behind the sun appeared to the side, due to the light bending effect known as gravitational lensing. In the biological sciences, Darwin discovered that we inhabit this blue marble like planet as thinking mammals, in which the forces of evolution have brought us to our current form. We know all life on this planet shares a common ancestor. We know so much, and yet the riddle of consciousness continues to elude us.

In the evening yesterday, as part of my 100 Papers Challenge, I read a very nice paper on the Integrated Information Theory [3], an outstanding new framework for understanding consciousness proposed by Tononi and Koch [4]. I won’t go into too much detail here, as I plan to write a separate, longer piece detailing the advantages and disadvantages of the theory. Their approach to tackling the riddle of consciousness is interesting, and is inspired by Schopenhauer’s claim that:

…Materialism is therefore the attempt to explain what is directly given to us [experience] from what is given indirectly [materialism].

Rather than try to “distill” consciousness out of matter and the brain, the idea behind Integrated Information Theory is to start from consciousness itself. By identifying its essential characteristics or properties, we can then try to figure out what kind of physical mechanisms explain those characteristics or properties of consciousness. What are the essential characteristics of consciousness? Tononi and Koch identify five properties.

(1) Intrisic existence. Consciousness exists intrinsically. For instance, I exist––my experience is intrinsically real, and it exists from my own intrinsic point of view. It is independent from any external observers. That is why my consciousness does not overlap or blend with yours.

(2) Composition. Consciousness has structure and is capable of “phenomenological distinctions” (the term “phenomenal” just refers to the quality of an experience). That is, within my own experience, I am able to distinguish a pencil, a red colour, a red pencil, and so on.

(3) Information. Consciousness is specific and each experience at a given point in time is the way it is. An experience where I see my white iPad, red pencil, brown desk is what it is because it is filled by what I experience. It is this way because it is not filled by a blue sky, or by a sunset. My experience right now is only a small subset of all possible experiences.

(4) Integration. Consciousness is integrated and unified. Experience is “irreducible to non-interdependent subsets of phenomenal distinctions”. Right now, I see a whole visual scene; I see the computer monitor infront of me and its bright coloured wallpaper. I hear my laptop fan, I feel my arms on the desk, and my weight on the chair. I don’t experience any of these qualities independently of each other; they are all stitched up into one coherent fabric of experience.

(5) Exclusion. Consciousness is definite in “content and spatio-temporal grain: each experience has the set of phenomenal distinctions it has”. Consciousness flows at the speed that it does, nor faster nor slower. Each experience encompasses a hundred milliseconds or so.

From these five characteristics of consciousness, they then expound on the physical postulates, the kind of properties physical mechanisms must have in order to support consciousness (see section 4 in their paper). Speculating on Schopenhauer’s claim, Tononi himself writes that “it is intriguing to consider to what extent the physical world has intrinsic existence…in addition to extrinsic existence”.

Some philosophers have basically flat out admitted that we will never solve the hard problem of consciousness (how it is that matter is accompanied by conscious experience). That brings me back to the beginning of this post, namely Emily Dickinson’s poem. The properties that Tononi and Koch have identified may further complicate our ability to solve the riddle of consciousness. Particularly their first axiom, that consciousness only exists intrinsically (which is self-evident). Ultimately, it may mean that you and I are matter––from the inside. That is, we just are intrinsic integrated information. It is difficult to see how we are going to solve the natural question surrounding the link between self and integrated information in a way that does justice to the hard problem. So the riddle may yet lie still!