Part 18 (1/2)

A relevant attribute of this tension is that neuronal activity rates take place on a millisecond time scale while the hydrodynamic and diffusion changes that must support this activity take place on a multisecond time scale. Interestingly, because of the time it takes for morphodynamic activity to differentiate to a regular attractor stage, mental processes likely take place at rates that are commensurate with metabolic time scales; and in the case of highly complex and highly robust morphodynamic attractors, this may take longer-perhaps many seconds to reach a stage of full differentiation. These different temporal domains also contribute to the structure of experience.

The differential between the time that neuron to neuronal excitation can take place and the time it takes to mount a metabolic compensation for this change in activity means that there will be something a.n.a.logous to metabolic inertia involved. This delay will slightly impede the ability of heightened but short-lived morphodynamic activity in one region to spread its influence into connected regions, which are not already primed with increased metabolism. This sort of dynamical recruitment will consequently require stable and robust attractor formation and maintenance, and thus stably heightened metabolic support.

What controls local metabolic support? There appear to be both extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms able to up-regulate and down-regulate cerebral blood flow to local regions. Intrinsic mechanisms are becoming better understood because of the importance of in vivo imaging techniques that are based on hydrodynamic changes, such as fMRI. If, as I have argued, extrinsically regulated local increases and decreases of metabolic support can themselves induce significant changes in neuronal activity levels, with a.s.sociated alterations of signal dropout and random spontaneous activity, then such a regulatory mechanism could play a significant role in directing attention, differentiating mnemonic content, activating or inhibiting behaviors, and s.h.i.+fting modality specific processing. How might this be effected?

Extrinsic control of regional cerebral blood flow is less well understood than intrinsic effects, and my knowledge of these mechanisms is minimal, so what I will describe here is again highly speculative. But some such mechanism is strongly implicated when considering mind-brain relations.h.i.+ps dynamically. The answer, I believe, is something like this. Certain stimuli (or intrinsically generated representations) that have significant normative relevance (perhaps because they are a.s.sociated with powerful innate drives or with highly arousing past experiences) are predisposed to easily induce characteristic patterns of activity in forebrain limbic structures (such as the amygdala, nucleus acc.u.mbens, hypothalamus). These limbic activity patterns distinguish conditions for which a significant s.h.i.+ft of attention and mental effort is likely required, for example, because of danger or bodily need. These limbic structures in turn project to midbrain and brainstem structures that control regional differences in cerebral blood flow and regional levels of neuronal plasticity. These in turn project axons throughout the forebrain and serve to modulate regional levels of neuronal activity by adjusting blood flow and intrinsic neuronal variables, which make them more or less plastic to input patterns.

In this way, highly survival-relevant stimuli or powerful drives can be drivers of mental experience to the extent that they promote selected differentiation of local morphodynamic attractors. So, for example, life-threatening or reproductively important stimuli can regulate the differentiation of specific a.n.a.lytic, mnemonic, and behavioral capacities, and shut down other ongoing mental activities by simply modulating metabolic resource distribution. Because this is an extrinsic influence with respect to the formal constraints that are amplified to generate the resulting morphodynamic processes, and not the result of direct interactions between regionally distinct networks, there can be a relatively powerful inertial component in such transitions, especially if they need to be rapid, and the subsequent attractor process needs to be highly differentiated and robust (as is likely in life-threatening situations).

Rapidly shutting down an ongoing dynamic in one area and just as rapidly generating another requires considerable work, both thermodynamic (metabolic) and morphodynamic. But consider the a.n.a.logy to simple physical morphodynamic processes like whirlpools and Benard convection cells. These cannot be generated in an instant nor can they be dissipated in an instant, once stable. The same must be true of the mental experiences in such cases of highly aroused s.h.i.+fts of attention. Prior dynamics will resist dissolution and may require structural interference with their attractor patterns (morphodynamic work imposed from other brain regions) to shut them down rapidly. They will in this sense resist an imposed change. This tension between dynamical influences at these two levels-the homeodynamics of metabolic processes and the morphodynamics of network dynamics-is inevitable in any forced change of morphodynamic activity.

It is my hypothesis, then, that this resistance and work created by these dependencies between levels of dynamics of brain processes const.i.tutes the experience of emotion. In most moment-to-moment waking activities, s.h.i.+fts between large-scale attractor states are likely to be minimally forced, and so will engender minimal and relatively undifferentiated emotions. But there should be a gradation of both differentiation and intensity. The orthograde nature of morphodynamic differentiation does not in itself require morphodynamic work, and so there is not necessarily extrinsic ”mental effort” required for thoughts to evoke one another or to spontaneously ”rise” from unconsciousness. This emergent dynamic account thus effectively distinguishes the conscious from unconscious generation of thoughts and attentional foci in terms of work. The more work at more levels, the more sentient experience. And where work is most intense, we are most present and actively sentient. Self and other, including the otherness created by the inertia of our own neural dynamics, are thus brought into stark relief by the contragrade ”tensions” that arise because we are const.i.tuted dynamically.

There is, of course, still something central missing from this account. If the contents of mental experiences are instantiated by the attractor dynamics of the vast flows of signals coursing through a neural network, where in this process are these interpreted? What dynamical features of brain processes are these morphodynamic features juxtaposed with in order that they are information about something for something toward some end? The superficial answer is the same as that given for what const.i.tutes the locus of self in general: a teleodynamic process. But as we have already come to realize, the sort of teleodynamics that arises from brain process is at least a second-order form of teleodynamics when compared to that which const.i.tutes life. This convoluted and hierarchically tangled form of teleodynamics includes some distinct emergent differences.

WHENCE SUFFERING?.

The last chapter began by questioning whether there might be intrinsic moral implications to corrupting or shutting down a computation in process. I agree with William James' conclusion that only if this involves sentience do moral and ethical considerations come into play, but that if sentience is present, then indeed such values must be considered. This is because sentience inevitably has a valence. Things feel good and bad, they aren't merely good for or bad for the organism. Because of this, the world of sentience is a world of should and shouldn't, kindness and abuse, love and hate, joy and suffering. Is this really necessary? Could there be mental sentience without its being framed between wonderful and horrible?

As we have now seen, computation is ultimately just a descriptive gloss applied to a simple linear mechanistic process. So the intrinsic intentional status of the computation, apart from this mechanism, is entirely epiphenomenal. This beautifully exemplifies the patency of the nominalist critique of generals. Computation is in the mind of the beholder, not in the physical process. There is nothing additionally produced when a computation is completed, other than the physical rearrangement of matter and energy in the device that is performing this operation. A computer operation is therefore no more sentient than is the operation of an automobile engine. But, as we saw in the Self chapter, a teleodynamic process does in fact transform generals into particulars; and the constraints that const.i.tute and are in turn const.i.tuted by such a process do have ententional status, independent of the physical particulars that embody them. This self-creation of constraints is what const.i.tutes the dynamical locus of sentience, not merely some physical change of state.

In light of the hierarchic conception of sentience developed above, however, I think that this general a.s.sessment now needs to be further refined. There are emergent sentient properties produced by the teleodynamics of brains that are not produced by simpler, lower-order forms of sentience. Crucially, these are special normative properties made possible because the sentience generated by brain processes is, in effect, a second-order sentience: a sentience of sentience. And with this comes a sentience of the normative features of sentience. In colloquial terms, this sentience of normativity is the experience of pleasure and pain, joy and suffering. And it is with respect to these higher-order sentient properties that we enter into the ethical realm.

To understand how this higher-order tangle has created a sentience of the normative relations.h.i.+ps that create this sentience itself, and ultimately identify the self-dynamic that is the locus of subjective experience, we need to once more revisit how the logic of teleodynamics, at whatever level, creates an individuated locus of self-creation and a dynamic of self-differentiation from the world.

In chapter 9, teleodynamics was defined as a dynamical organization that exists because of the consequences of its continuance, and therefore can be described as being self-generating over time. But now consider what it would mean for a teleodynamic process to include within itself a representation of its own dynamical final causal tendencies. The component dynamics of a teleodynamic process have ententional properties precisely because they are critical to the creation of the whole dynamic, which in turn is critical to the continued creation of these component dynamics. Were the reciprocal synergy of the whole dynamic to break down, these component dynamics would also eventually disappear. The whole produces the parts and the parts produce the whole. But then a teleogenic process in which one critical dynamical component is a representational process that interprets its own teleodynamic tendency extends this convoluted causal circularity one level further.

For animals with brains, the organism and its distinctive teleodynamic characteristics will likely fail to persist (both in terms of resisting death and reproducing) if its higher-order teleodynamics of self-prediction fails in some respect. Failure is likely if the projected self-environment consequence of some action is significantly in error. For example, an animal whose innate predator-escape strategy fails to prevent capture will be unlikely to pa.s.s on this tendency to future generations. Such a tendency implicitly includes a projected virtual relations.h.i.+p between its teleodynamic basis and a projected self/other condition. Generation of a projected future self-in-context thus can become a critical source of constraints organizing the whole system. But generating these virtual selves requires both a means to model the causality of the environment and also a means for modeling the causality of the teleodynamic processes that generate these models and act with respect to them. This is a higher-order teleodynamical relations.h.i.+p because one critical dynamical component of the whole is its own projected future existence in context. This implicitly includes a normative a.s.sessment of this possible condition with respect to current teleodynamic tendencies, including the possibility of catastrophic failure.

The vegetative teleodynamics of single-celled organisms and organisms not including brains must be organized to produce contragrade reactions to any conditions that tend to disrupt teleodynamic integrity. The various component structures, mechanisms, and morphodynamic processes that const.i.tute this integrity must therefore be organized to collectively compensate for any component process that is impeded or otherwise compromised from without. There does not need to be any component that a.s.sesses the general state of overall integrity. But in an animal with a brain that was evolved to project alternative future selves-in-context, such an a.s.sessment becomes a relevant factor. A separate dynamical component of its teleodynamic organization must continually generate a model of both its overall vegetative integrity and the degree to which this is (or might be) compromised with respect to other contingent factors. A dynamical subprocess evolved to a.n.a.lyze whatever might impact persistence of the whole organism, and determine an appropriate organism level response, must play a primary role in structuring its overall teleodynamic organization.

In the previous section, we identified the experience of emotion with the tension and work a.s.sociated with employing metabolic means to modify neural morphodynamics. It was noted that particularly in cases of life-and-death contexts, morphodynamic change must be inst.i.tuted rapidly and extensively, and this requires extensive work at both the homeodynamic (metabolic) and morphodynamic (mental) levels. The extent of this work and the intensity of the tension created by the resistance of dynamical processes to rapid change is, I submit, experienced as the intensity of emotion. But such special needs for reliable rapid dynamical reorganization arise because the teleodynamics of organism persistence is easily disturbed and inevitably subject to catastrophic breakdown. Life and health are fragile. So the generation of certain defensive responses by organisms, whether immune response or predator-escape behaviors, must be able to usurp less critical ongoing activities whenever the relevant circ.u.mstances arise.

Teleodynamic processes have characteristic dynamical tendencies, and when these are impeded or interfered with, the entire integrated individual is at risk. But catastrophic breakdown is not just possible, it is essentially inevitable for any teleodynamically organized individual system, whether autogen or human being. The ephemeral nature of teleodynamics guarantees that it faces an incessant war against intrinsic and extrinsic influences that would tend to disrupt it-and the more disruptive of its self-similarity maintenance, the greater the work that must be performed to resist this influence.

Influences that are so disruptive that they will ultimately destroy the teleodynamic integrity of a single cell, or even a plant, will in the process induce the production of the most intense and elaborate contragrade processes possible within the repertoire of that organism's systems. But because there is no separate dynamical embodiment of the integrity of the whole, no locus of individuated-self representation, these dynamical extremes do not const.i.tute suffering. There is a self, but there is no one home reflecting back on this process at the same time as enduring it. This is not the case for most animals.

The capacity to suffer requires the higher-order teleodynamic loop that brain processes make possible. It requires a self that creates within itself a teleodynamic reproduction of itself. This emergent dynamical homunculus is const.i.tuted by a central, teleodynamically organized, global pattern of network activity. By definition, this must be const.i.tuted by reciprocally synergistic morphodynamic processes. The component morphodynamic processes are, as we have discussed above, generated by the self-organizing tendencies of the vast numbers of signals circulating around and incessantly being introduced into the neural networks of the various brain systems. However, not all morphodynamic attractors produced in a brain contribute to this teleodynamic core, though there is a continual a.s.similation of newly generated morphodynamic processes into the synergy that const.i.tutes this ultimate locus of mental self-continuity and self/non-self distinction.

A simple individual autogenic system embodies the constraints of this necessary synergy implicitly in the complementarities and symmetries of the constraints determining and generating the various morphodynamic processes that const.i.tute it. This is also true for an animal body, though more complex and hierarchically organized. But it is not true of the teleodynamics of brains. Brains have evolved to regulate whole organism relations.h.i.+ps with the world. Their teleodynamics is therefore necessarily parasitic on the teleodynamics of the body that they serve. Thus, for example, hypothalamic, midbrain, and brainstem circuits in vertebrate bodies play a critical role in regulating such global body functions as heart rate, digestion, metabolic rate, and the monitoring and maintenance of the levels of a wide variety of bloodborne chemical signals, such as hormones.

The local processes that maintain these systems are highly robust, and in many cases are quite nearly cybernetically organized processes.4 In this sense, they are least like higher-order morphodynamic neural processes, and thus their functioning does not directly enter mental experience. Nevertheless, the status of these functions is redundantly monitored by other forebrain brain systems, and these deep brain regulatory systems provide the forebrain systems with signals reflecting their operation. The result is that vegetative functions of the organism are multiply represented at various levels of remove from their direct regulation. The nearly mechanistically regular constraints of their operation are thus inherited by higher-order brain processes.

So what const.i.tutes the core teleodynamic locus of brain function? The answer is that it too is multiply hierarchically generated at different levels of functional differentiation. Even at the level of brainstem circuits, there is almost certainly a synergistic dynamic linking the separate regulatory systems for vegetative functions; but it is only as we ascend into forebrain systems that these processes become integrated with the variety of sensory and motor systems that const.i.tute regulation of whole organism function. The constraints const.i.tuting the synergy and stability of core vegetative systems provide a global organizing influence that more differentiated levels of the process must also maintain. At the level of brain function where sensory and motor functions must be integrated with these core functions, the differentiation of morphodynamic processes that involve these additional body systems is inevitably constrained to respect these essential core regularities. In this way, the many simultaneously developing morphodynamic processes produced within the various forebrain subsystems specialized for one or the other modality of function begin their differentiation processes already teleodynamically integrated with one another. The self-locus that is const.i.tuted by this synergy of component morphodynamic processes is thus also a dynamic that is subject to varying degrees of differentiation. It can be relatively amorphous and comprised of poorly differentiated morphodynamic processes, or highly differentiated and involve a large constellation of nested and interdependent morphodynamic processes. Subjective self is as differentiated and unified as the component morphodynamic processes developing in various subregions of the brain are differentiated and mutually reinforcing. And this level of self-differentiation is constantly s.h.i.+fting.

The teleodynamic synergy of this brain process is ultimately inherited from these more fundamental vegetative teleodynamic relations.h.i.+ps, which contribute core constraints influencing the differentiation of this self-locus. These core constraints provide what might be considered the envelope of variation within which diverse morphodynamic processes are differentiated in response to sensory information and the many internally generated influences. Since the locus of this self-perspective is dynamically determined with respect to the ”boundaries” of morphodynamic reciprocities, and these are changing and differentiating constantly, there can be no unambiguous anatomical correlate of this homunculus within the brain. Nevertheless, the teleodynamic loop of causality that integrates sensory and motor processes with the projected self-in-possible-context must at least involve the brain systems these processes depend upon, such as the thalamic, cerebral cortical, and basal ganglionic structures of the mammalian (and human) forebrain. But even this may be variable. Comparatively undifferentiated self-dynamics may only involve perilimbic cortical areas and their linked forebrain nuclei, whereas a self-dynamics involved in complex predictive behavior may involve significant fractions of the entire cerebral cortex and the forebrain nuclei these regions are coupled with.

So why is there a ”what it feels like” a.s.sociated with this neural teleodynamics? And why does this ”being here” have an intrinsic good and bad feel about it? The answer is that this self-similarity-maintaining dynamic provides a constant invariant reference with respect to which all other dynamical regularities and disturbances are organized. Like the teleodynamics of autogenic self, it is what organizes all local dynamics around an invariant telos: the self-creating constraints that make the work of this self-creation possible. In a brain, this teleodynamic core set of constraints serves as both a center of dynamical inertia that other neural activates cannot displace and a locus of dynamical self-sufficiency that is a constant platform from which distributed neural dynamics must begin their differentiation. But the teleodynamic integrity of this core neurological self is a direct reflection of the vegetative teleodynamics that is critical to its own persistence. To the extent that the vegetative teleodynamics is compromised, so too will neurological self be compromised. But vegetative teleodynamic integrity and neurological teleodynamical integrity are only linked; they are not identical.

As the possibility of anesthesia makes obvious, the mental representation of bodily damage can be decoupled from the experiential self. Under these circ.u.mstances, thankfully, sensory information from the body is not registered centrally and cannot thereby alter neural teleodynamics. Mental processes can therefore continue, oblivious to even significant physiological damage. So pain is not ”out there” in the world. It is how neural teleodynamics reorganizes in response to its sensory a.s.sessment of vegetative damage. Its effect is to interrupt less critical neural dynamics and activate specific processes to stop this sensory signal. To do this, it must block the differentiation of most morphodynamic processes that are inessential to this end, and rapidly recruit significant metabolic and neural resources to generate action to avoid continuation of this stimulus. So, whereas any non-spontaneous s.h.i.+ft of neural dynamics requires metabolic work to accomplish, the reaction to pain is preset to maximize this mobilization.

In many respects, pain is a special form of minimal perception, which helps to exemplify the relations.h.i.+p between what might be described as the a.n.a.lytic and emotional aspects of sentience. Perception is not merely the registration of extrinsically imposed changes of neural signals. It involves the generation of local morphodynamic processes that remain integrated into the larger teleodynamic integrity and yet are at the same time modulated by these extrinsically imposed constraints. Any slight dissonance that results initiates neural work to further differentiate the core teleodynamic organization to minimize this deviation. This drives progressive differentiation of the relevant morphodynamic processes in directions that at the same time are adapted to these imposed constraints and minimally dissonant with global teleodynamics. So perception is, in effect, the differentiation of self to better fit extrinsically imposed regularities. This can be looked upon as a sort of principle of work minimization that is always a.s.sessed with respect to this core teleodynamics.

In contrast to other sensory experiences, pain requires minimal morphodynamic differentiation to be a.s.sessed: only what's necessary to localize it in the body and determine what kind of pain (with only a very few modalities to sample). Unlike other percepts, however, there is no differentiation of morphodynamic perceptual processes that is able to increase pain's integration with core teleodynamics. Instead, pain blocks the differentiation of other modes of sensory a.n.a.lysis and rapidly deploys resources to possible motor responses to stop this sensation (such as the rapid withdrawal of one's finger from contact with a hot stove). This simple non-a.s.similable stimulus continues to drive the differentiation of actual and potential motor responses until the painful stimulus ceases. Of course, once damage is done, the pain stimulus will often continue despite actions to limit it. In these cases, a continual ”demand” for recruitment of a motor response, and a correlated mobilization of metabolism to achieve it, will persist despite the ineffectiveness of any action. One consequence is that further damage may be averted. Another is that the continual maintenance of this heightened need to act to end the pain is experienced as suffering. Pain that can't be relieved is thus continually perturbing the core teleodynamics; contorting self-dynamics to necessarily include this extrinsic influence and the representation of a goal state that remains unachieved; and constantly mobilizing and focusing metabolic resources for processes that fail to achieve adaptation.

The capacity to suffer is therefore an inseparable aspect of the deep coupling between the neurally represented and viscerally instantiated teleodynamics of the body. Specifically, it is a consequence of the evolution of means for mobility and rapid behavior able to alter extrinsic conditions. Organisms that have not evolved a capacity to act in this way have no need for pain, and no need to represent their whole bodily relations.h.i.+p to extrinsic conditions. Their teleodynamic integrity is maintained by distributed processes without the need for an independent instantiation as experience. Pain is the extreme epitome of the general phenomenology we call emotion because of the way it radically utilizes the mobilization of metabolic resources to powerfully constrain signal differentiation processes, and thereby extrinsically drive and inhibit specific spontaneous morphodynamic tendencies. More than anything else, it exemplifies the essence of neurological sentience.

BEING HERE.

In the last chapter, we began to explore the distinctive higher-order form of teleodynamics that emerges from a teleodynamic process that must include itself as a component: a teleodynamic circularity in which the very locus of teleodynamic closure becomes virtual. This is a tangle in the dynamical hierarchy that is superficially a.n.a.logous to the part/whole tangle that defines teleodynamics more generally. In a simple autogenic system, each part (itself a morphodynamic product) is involved in an ultimately closed set of reciprocal interaction relations.h.i.+ps with each other to create the whole, but it takes the whole reciprocally synergistic complex to generate each part. In logic, this would amount to a logical-type violation (in which a cla.s.s can also be a member of itself). By including the capacity to model itself in relation to extrinsic features of the world, a neurally generated teleodynamic system similarly introduces a higher-order tangle to this dynamical hierarchy.

In this chapter, we discovered a further tangle in the hierarchy of neural teleodynamics. Because neurons are themselves teleodynamic and thus sensitive to and adaptive to the changes in their local signal-processing Umwelt, the higher-order dynamics of the networks they inhabit can also be a source for changes in their internal teleodynamic tendencies. Thus neurons ”learn” by changing their relative responsivity to the patterns of activity that they are subject to. In the process, the biases in the network that are responsible for the various morphodynamic attractors that tend to form will also change. This can happen at various timescales. As neurons temporarily modify their immediate responsivity over the course of seconds or minutes, the relative lability of certain morphodynamic attractor options can change.

Finally, with the exploration of perception, and specifically the perception of pain, we have brought together these various threads, integrating all with the concept of emotion. Emotion in this generic sense is not some special feature of brain function that is opposed to cognition. It is the necessary expression of the complicated hierarchic dependence of morphodynamics on homeodynamics (specifically, the thermodynamics of metabolism), and the way that the second-order teleodynamics that integrates brain function is organized to use this dependence to regulate the self/other interface that its dynamical closure (and that of the body) creates.

Although each is discontinuous from the other by virtue of dynamical closure, neuronal-level sentience is nevertheless causally entangled with brain-level sentience, which is entangled in a virtual-self-level of sentience. And human symbolic abilities add a further, yet-higher-order variant on this logical type-violating entanglement. This latter involves the incorporation of an abstract representation of self into the teleodynamic loop of sentience. Thus we humans can even suffer from existential despair. No wonder the a.n.a.lysis of human consciousness tends to easily lead into a labyrinth of self-referential confusions.

There remains an immense task ahead to correlate these dynamical processes with specific brain structures and neural processes. But despite remaining quite vague about such details, I believe that the general principles outlined in these pages can offer some useful pointers, leading neuroscientists to pay attention to features of brain function that they might otherwise have overlooked as irrelevant. And they may bring attention to neural dynamics that have so far gone unnoticed and suggest ways to develop new tools for a.n.a.lyzing mental processes considered outside the purview of cognitive neuroscience. So, while I don't believe that neuroscience will be pursued differently as a result, or that this will lead to any revolutionary new discoveries about neurons, their signaling dynamics, or the overall anatomy of brains, it may prompt many researchers to rethink the a.s.sumptions they bring to these studies.

While we have only just begun to sketch the outlines of an emergent dynamics account of this one most enigmatic phenomenon-human consciousness-the results point us in very different directions than previously considered. With the autogenic creation of self as our model, we have broken the spell of dualism by focusing attention on the contributions of both what is present and what is absent. Surprisingly, this even points the way to a non-mystical account of the apparent non-materiality of consciousness. The apparent riddle of its non-materiality turns out not to be a riddle after all, but an accurate reflection of the fact that the locus of subjective sentience is not, in fact, a material substrate. The riddle was not the result of any problem with the concept of consciousness, but of our failure to understand the causal relevance of constraint. With the realization that specific absent tendencies-dynamical constraints-are critically relevant to the causal fabric of the world, and are the crucial mediators of non-spontaneous change, we are able to stop searching for consciousness ”in” the brain or ”made of” neural signals.