Part 18 (2/2)

I believe that human subjectivity has turned out not to be the ultimate ”hard problem” of science. Or rather, it turns out to have been hard for unexpected reasons. It was not hard because we lacked sufficiently complex research instruments, nor because the details of the process were so many and so intricately entangled with one another that our a.n.a.lytic tools could not cope, nor because our brains were inadequate to the task for evolutionary reasons, nor even because the problem is inaccessible using the scientific method. It was hard because it was counterintuitive, and because we have stubbornly insisted on looking for it where it could not be, in the stuff of the world. When viewed through the perspective of the special circular logic of constraint generation that we have called teleodynamics, this problem simply dissolves. The complex and convoluted dynamical processes that are the defining features of self, at any given level, are not embodied in molecules, or neurons, or even neural signals, but in the teleodynamics of processes generated in the vast networks of brains. The molecular interactions, propagating neuronal signals, and incessant energy metabolism that provide the substrate for this higher-order dynamical process are necessary substrates; but it is because of what these do not actualize, because of how their interactions are constrained, that there is agency, sentience, and valuation implicit in their patterns of interaction. We are what we are not: continually, intrinsically, necessarily incomplete in our very nature. Our sense of self, our experience of being the originative locus of agency, our interior subjective isolation, and the sense of emerging out of nothing and being our own prime mover-all these core characteristics of conscious experience-are accurate reflections of the fact that self is literally sui generis, emerging each moment from what is not there.

There can be no simple and direct neural embodiment of subjective experience in this sense. This is not because subjectivity is somehow otherworldly or non-physical, but rather because neural activity patterns convey both the interpretation and the contents of experiences in the negative, so to speak; a bit like the way that the s.p.a.ce in a mold represents a potential statue. The subjectivity is not located in what is there, but emerges quite precisely from what is not there. Sentience is negatively ”embodied” in the constraints emerging from teleodynamic processes, irrespective of their physical embodiment, and therefore does not directly correlate with any of the material substrates const.i.tuting those processes. Intrinsically emergent constraints are neither material nor dynamical-they are something missing-and yet as we have seen, they are not mere descriptive attributions of material processes, either. The intentional properties that we attribute to conscious experience are generated by the emergence of these constraints-constraints that emerge from constraints, absences that arise from, and create, new absences. You are in this quite literal sense something coming out of nothing, and thus newly embodied at each instant.

But this negative existence, so to speak, of the conscious self doesn't mean that consciousness is in any way ineffable or non-empirical. Indeed, if the account given here is in any way correct, it suggests that consciousness may even be precisely quantifiable and comparable, for example, between states of awareness, between species, and even possibly in non-organic processes, as in social processes or in some future sentient artifact. This is because teleodynamic processes, which provide the locus for sentience in any of its forms, are precisely a.n.a.lyzable processes, with definite measurable properties, in whatever substrates they arise. Because a teleodynamic process is dynamically closed by virtue of its thoroughly reciprocal organization, it is clearly individuated from its surroundings, even if these are merely other neural dynamics. Because of this individuation, it should be possible to gain a quant.i.tative a.s.sessment of the thermodynamic and morphodynamic work generated moment by moment in maintaining its integrity. It should also be possible at any one moment to determine what physical and energetic substrates const.i.tute its current locus of embodiment.

These should not be surprising conjectures. As it is, we already use many crudely related intuitive rules of thumb to make such a.s.sessments when it comes to a.s.sessing a patient's state of anesthesia or level of awareness after brain damage, and even when comparing different animals. We generally a.s.sume that a metabolically active brain is essential, and that as metabolism and neuronal activity decrease below some threshold, so does consciousness. We a.s.sume that animals with very small brains (such as gnats) can have only the dimmest if any conscious experience, while large-brained mammals are quite capable of intense subjective experiences and likely suffer as much as would a person if injured. So some measure of dynamical work and substrate complexity already seems to provide us with an intuition about the relative degree of consciousness we are dealing with.

The present a.n.a.lysis not only supports these intuitions but provides further complexity and subtlety as well. It suggests that we can distinguish between the kind of brain dynamics that is a.s.sociated with consciousness and what kind is not. Indeed, this is implicit in the critique of computational theories. Computations and cybernetic processes are insentient because they are not teleodynamic in their organization. In fact, we intuitively also take this into account when we introspect about our own state of conscious awareness. For example, when acquiring a new skill-such as learning to play a piece of music on an instrument like the piano-the early stages are very demanding of constant attention to sensory and motor details. It takes effort and work of all kinds. But as learning progresses and you become skilled at this performance, these various details become less and less present to awareness. And by the time it is performed like an expert, you are able to almost ”do it in your sleep,” as the saying goes. Highly skilled behaviors are performed with a minimum of conscious awareness. It is as though they are being performed by an algorithmic process. Indeed, in vivo imaging studies demonstrate that as we become more and more skilled at almost any cognitive task, the differential level of metabolism and the extent of neural tissue involved decreases, until for highly automatic skills there is almost no metabolic differential. Computationlike processes can involve precise connections and specific signals. They need not depend on the statistics of ma.s.s-level homeodynamic and morphodynamic processes. So, if automated functions are those that have become more computationlike, we should expect that they will have a rather diminutive metabolic signature. Indeed, it makes sense that one of the functions of learning would be to minimize the neural resources that must be dedicated to a given task. Consciousness is in this respect in the business of eliminating itself by producing the equivalent of virtual neural computers.

Serendipitously, then, fMRI, PET, and other techniques for visualizing and measuring regional differentials and changes in neural metabolism may provide a useful preliminary tool for tracing the changing levels and loci of brain processes correlated with consciousness. If the three-level emergent dynamic accounts of the differentiation of mental content and emotion are on the right track, then the dynamical changes in this signature of changing brain metabolism are providing important clues about these mental states. Indeed, this intuition is provisionally a.s.sumed when studying brain function with in vivo imagery.

So, even though this is a theory which defends the thesis that intentional relations.h.i.+ps and sentient experiences are not material phenomena in the usual sense of that concept, it nonetheless provides us with a thoroughly empirical set of predictions and testable hypotheses about these enigmatic relations.h.i.+ps.

CONCLUSION OF THE BEGINNING.

Although much of my professional training has been in the neurosciences, in this book I have almost entirely avoided any attempt to translate the emergent dynamic approach to mental experience and agency into detailed neurobiological terms. This is not because I think it cannot be done. In fact, I've hinted that my purpose is in part to lay the groundwork for doing exactly that. I believe that an extended effort to articulate an emergent dynamical account of brain function is necessary to overcome the Cartesian no-man's-land separating the study of the brain from the study of the mind. But the conceptual problems that remain to be overcome are immense.

I have at most sketched the outlines here of an approach that might overcome them. Despite the number of pages that I felt were required to even frame the problem correctly, I don't claim to have accomplished much more than to have described a hitherto unexplored alternative framing of these enigmatic problems. I believe, however, that once this figure/background logic of a.n.a.lysis becomes a.s.similated into one's thinking about biological, psychological, and semiotics problems, the path toward solutions in each of these domains will become evident. These paths have not been followed previously simply because they were not even visible within current paradigms. Such alternatives didn't exist in the flat materialistic perspective that has dominated thinking for much of the last few centuries. It is my hope that this glimpse of another scientifically rigorous, but not simplistically materialistic, way to view these issues will inspire others to explore some of the many domains now made visible.

I believe that despite its counterintuitive negative framing, this figure/background reversal of the way we conceive of living and mental causality promises to reinstate subjective experience as a legitimate partic.i.p.ant in the web of physical causes and effects, and to ultimately reintroduce intentional phenomena back into the natural sciences. It also suggests that the subt.i.tle of this book is slightly misleading. Mind didn't exactly emerge from matter, but from constraints on matter.

EPILOGUE.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value . . .

-FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

NOTHING MATTERS.

Have we now arrived at where we started? Is this where we thought we were when we began? Let's take stock.

The laws of physics have remained unchallenged. The sense that I have of being a sentient and efficacious agent in the world, of being able to change things in ways that resemble my imagined ends, of recognizing beauty upon hearing a Chopin nocturne or sensing the tragedy of being part of a civilization unable to turn away from a lifestyle destroying its own future; all these have not changed. But something I now know about these experiences is different. I know something more and am something less as a result. At the very least, my experiences must be understood differently. This ”I” from which I start, and from the perspective of which the whole physical world often seems alien, now appears in a different light. I am not the same I. On the one hand, I have somehow lost the solidity that I once took for granted, me-the-physical-body is no longer so certain; and yet on the other hand my uncertainty about my place in the world, the place of meaning and value in the scheme of things, seems more a.s.sured with the realization that I may be more like the hole at the wheel's hub than the rim of the wheel itself.

We began this exploration with an a.n.a.logy between the challenges posed by the mathematics of zero and the challenges posed by the ententional properties of living and mental processes. We then explored the many ways that modern science has, like the mathematics of the Middle Ages, attempted to exclude a role for the mark of absence in the fabric of legitimate explanation. Then, accepting the challenge of explaining how it could be that absent phenomena might be causally relevant, we began to reconceptualize some of the most basic physical processes in terms of the concept of constraint: properties and degrees of freedom not actualized. This figure/background reversal didn't undermine any known physical principles, nor did it introduce novel, unprecedented physical principles or special fundamental forces into contemporary science. It didn't even require us to invoke any superficially strange and poorly understood quantum effects in our macroscopic explanations in order to account for what prior physical intuition seemed unable to explain about meaning, purpose, or consciousness. Rather, it merely required tracing the way that two levels of self-organizing, constraint-creating processes could become so entangled as to result in a dynamical unit-an autogen or teleogen-that enables specific constraints to create, preserve, and replicate themselves with respect to the given constraints in their physical context. But being able to trace in detail each step that is required to cross from the realm of simple mechanical processes into the realm of ententional relations.h.i.+ps changes everything. Even such basic concepts as work and information have taken on new meaning, and previously esoteric notions like self and sentience can be given fairly precise physical definitions.

When Western scholars finally understood how operations involving zero could be woven into the fabric of mathematics, they gained access to unprecedented and powerful new tools for modeling the structure and dynamics of the physical world. By a.n.a.logy, developing a scientific methodology that enables us to incorporate a fundamental role for possibilities not actualized-constraints-in explaining physical events could provide a powerful new tool for precisely a.n.a.lyzing a part of the world that has previously been shrouded in paradox and mystery. The mathematical revolution that followed an understanding of the null quant.i.ty in this way may presage a similarly radical expansion of the sciences that are most intimately a.s.sociated with human existence. It is time that we overcame our confused Zeno's paradox of mind, which makes it appear that represented purposes can never reach the finish line of causal consequences. It's time to recognize that there is room for meaning, purpose, and value in the fabric of physical explanations, because these phenomena effectively occupy the absences that differentiate and interrelate the world that is physically present.

THE CALCULUS OF INTENTIONALITY.

It is with teleodynamic organization, I have argued, that for the first time one physical system is capable of influencing other physical systems via something that is merely virtual-that which is specifically absent, missing, displaced, potential, or merely abstract. In the simple thought experiment that exemplifies the core architecture of this argument-the emergence of an autogenic process-it is the premature halting of the component morphodynamic processes, a tendency that is spontaneous and would otherwise run to self-extinction, that makes self, information, and life possible. This preserves the preconditions necessary to iterate this process again and again. These preconditions are self-reconst.i.tuting and thus self-referential constraints. This failure to continue makes possible the capture, preservation, and potential propagation of the constraints that are thereby created-a process that I have also called an entropy ratchet because it prevents the decay of secondary constraints generated as a side product of an otherwise entropy-increasing, constraint-destroying process. It is the possibility of briefly building up constraints by morphodynamic action, and then halting the process before there is any dissipation of those constraints, that is the secret of this distinctive form of causality. In principle, it allows the generation of constraints to continually reconst.i.tute this intrinsic potential endlessly. It also provides the capacity to remember and reproduce information, because self-rectifying constraint preservation is the defining criterion of referential information. This property is the foundation for all higher-order intentional processes.

To put this in somewhat enigmatic terms, teleodynamics enables the potentially indefinite to enable something intrinsically incomplete to bring itself into existence. Consider again the a.n.a.logy between ententional phenomena, on the one hand, and zero and infinity in mathematics, on the other. Purposes and functions have what amount to infinitesimal vectors. If, as the philosopher Ruth Millikan asks us to imagine, a lion suddenly and miraculously came into existence due to some amazing quantum accident, with all the living physiological detail of any living lion, its heart could still be said to function to pump its blood, its eyes could still be described as functioning to guide its movements, and its s.e.xual urges could still be described as existing for the purpose of reproducing.2 Even though none of these phenomena arose by natural selection, at the very moment this lion popped into existence, before even one beat of its heart, at that instant these tendencies were present and the entention was present as well, if these processes are poised to begin and proceed in a way that preserves the whole lion.

Similarly, though my fingers never evolved for linguistic communication, the moment I began to use them to type words on a keyboard, they came to function for this end. This is because the function was not implicit in fingers or computer keys but in how the constraints of linguistic communication by computer fit with the constraints of finger movement control. The potential of my fingers to a.s.sume this function was simply not excluded by the constraints they acquired due to natural selection. In this respect, even their grasping function can't be attributed to natural selection. Any acquired constraints that were valuable to grasping were simply maintained preferentially down the generations. It didn't require work to bring this function into existence for the simple reason that this convergence of constraints wasn't excluded, though in the course of evolution many other possibilities were. In this respect, function is effectively a geometric or formal relations.h.i.+p, not a material efficient one, a dynamical alignment or symmetry of some structure or process with respect to the teleodynamic system of which it is a part. Because of this, functionality can arise the instant that this potential becomes an actualized tendency, and even if in its implementation it is impeded from achieving this end.

This is the a.n.a.logue to an infinitesimal velocity. Being able to ascribe a velocity to a projectile at a specific point along its trajectory, even though actual velocities are defined by finite distances and durations, was one of the powerful capabilities provided by the invention of calculus. So being able to specify an a.n.a.logous basis for the a.s.sessment of ententional properties provides a way to solve the Zeno's paradox of the mind that has held up our understanding of these phenomena for millennia. Specifying a function or representation is, in this respect, like the operation of differentiation in calculus: specifying an intrinsic (instantaneous) telos.

Similarly, the value of these physical attributes to the overall teleodynamics of the accidental lion can also be estimated, as can the value to it of objects in his surroundings. Food, water, appropriate levels of oxygen in the air, ambient temperature-all can be a.s.signed some potential value with respect to their ability to support the ends served by the tendencies of this teleodynamics. Each behavioral option with respect to each environmental attribute can now be a.s.signed some relative value in terms of its correspondence or not with physiological requirements for this incipient persistent tendency. And means to estimate these qualities will be recapitulated cognitively, translated into tendencies to mobilize neural work to obtain or avoid them with respect to this evaluation. This valuation, likely weighted with respect to many interdependent functional factors, is the a.n.a.logue of the operation of integration in calculus.

So, by a.n.a.logy, one might be justified in claiming that it is with the emergence of teleodynamics that nature finally discovered how to operate with the dynamical equivalent of zero. None of the dynamical properties a.s.sociated with life and mind-such as function, purpose, representation, and value-existed until the universe had matured sufficiently to include complex molecules capable of forming into autogenic configurations. The explosive growth in dynamical complexity and causal possibility that arose with the emergence of teleodynamic processes on Earth, beginning with the origin of life, was a revolution of physical processes far more extravagant than the revolution of mathematics that followed the taming of zero. But these teleodynamic properties, whether embodied in the constraints affecting molecular dynamics or the constraints organizing neuronal signal dynamics, are the a.n.a.logues of zero in what might be called the formal operations of matter-the dynamics of physical change. Life and mind are in this sense the embodied calculus of these physical processes; and with each leap from one teleodynamic level to another-from life to brain processes to the symbolic integration of millions of human minds extending over millennia-that physical calculus has now expanded in expressive power to the point it is able to fully represent itself.

VALUE.

Perhaps the most tragic feature of our age is that just when we have developed a truly universal perspective from which to appreciate the vastness of the cosmos, the causal complexity of material processes, and the chemical machinery of life, we have at the same time conceived the realm of value as radically alienated from this seemingly complete understanding of the fabric of existence. In the natural sciences there appears to be no place for right/wrong, meaningful/meaningless, beauty/ugliness, good/evil, love/hate, and so forth. The success of contemporary science appears to have dethroned the G.o.ds and left no foundation upon which unimpeachable values can rest. Philosophers have further supported this nihilistic conception of scientific knowledge by proclaiming that no a.s.sessment of the way things are can provide a basis for a.s.sessing how things should be. This is the ultimate heritage of the Cartesian wound that severed mind from body at the birth of modern science. The removal of any approach to value from a scientific perspective is the ultimate expression of having accepted the presumed necessity of that elective surgery.

As I lamented in the opening chapter of this book, the cost of obtaining this dominance over material nature has had repercussions worldwide. Indeed, I don't think that it is too crazy to imagine that the current crisis of faith and the rise in fundamentalism that seems to be gripping the modern world is in large part a reaction to the unignorable pragmatic success of a vision of reality that has no place for subjectivity or value. The specter of nihilism is, to many, more threatening than death.

By rethinking the frame of the natural sciences in a way that has the metaphysical sophistication to integrate the realm of absential phenomena as we experience them, I believe that we can chart an alternative route out of the current existential crisis of the age-a route that neither requires believing in magic nor engaging in the subterfuge of ultimate self-doubt. The universe is larger than just that which we can see, and touch, or manipulate with our hands or our cyclotrons. There is more here than stuff. There is how this stuff is organized and related to other stuff. And there is more than what is actual. There is what could be, what should be, what can't be, what is possible, and what is impossible. If quantum physicists can learn to become comfortable with the material causal consequences of the superposition of alternate, as-yet-unrealized states of matter, it shouldn't be too great a leap to begin to get comfortable with the superposition of the present and the absent in our functions, meanings, experiences, and values.

In the t.i.tle to one of his recent books, Stuart Kauffman succinctly identifies what has been missing from our current blinkered metaphysical worldview. Despite the power and insights that we have gained from this powerful way of conceiving of the world, it has not helped us to feel ”at home in the universe.” Even as our scientific tools have given us mastery over so much of the physical world around and within us, they have at the same time alienated us from these same realms. It is time to find our way home.

GLOSSARY.

Absential: The paradoxical intrinsic property of existing with respect to something missing, separate, and possibly nonexistent. Although this property is irrelevant when it comes to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind; elsewhere (Deacon 2005) described as a const.i.tutive absence Attractor: An attractor is a ”region” within the range of possible states that a dynamical system is most likely to be found within. The behavior of a dynamical system is commonly modeled as a complex ”trajectory of states leading to states” within a phase s.p.a.ce (typically depicted as a complex curve in a multidimensional graph). The term is used here to describe one or more of the quasi-stable regions of dynamics that a dynamical system will asymmetrically tend toward. Dynamical attractors include state of equilibrium of a thermodynamic system, the self-organized global regularity converged upon by a morphodynamic process, or the metabolic maintenance and developmental trajectory of an organism (a teleodynamic system). An attractor does not ”attract” in the sense of a field of force; rather it is the expression of an asymmetric statistical tendency Autocatalysis: A set of chemical reactions can be said to be ”collectively autocatalytic” if a number of those reactions produce, as reaction products, catalysts for enough of the other reactions that the entire set of chemical reactions is self-sustaining, given an input of energy and substrate molecules. This has the effect of producing a runaway increase in the molecules of the autocatalytic set at the expense of other molecular forms, until all substrates are exhausted Autocell: A minimal molecular teleodynamic system (termed an autogen in this book), consisting of mutually reinforcing autocatalytic process and a molecular self-a.s.sembly process, first described in Deacon 2006a Autogen: A self-generating system at the phase transition between morphodynamics and teleodynamics; any form of self-generating, self-repairing, self-replicating system that is const.i.tuted by reciprocal morphodynamic processes Autogenic: Adjective describing any process involving reciprocally reinforcing morphodynamic processes that thereby has the potential to self-reconst.i.tute and/or reproduce Autogeneses: The combination of self-generation, self-repair, self-replication capacities that is made possible by teleodynamic organization; the process by which reciprocally reinforcing morphodynamic processes become a self-generating autogen Boltzmann entropy: A term used in this work to indicate the traditional entropy of thermodynamic processes. It is distiguished from ”entropy” as defined by Claude Shannon for use in information theory Casimir effect: When two metallic plates are placed facing each other a small distance apart in a vacuum, an extremely tiny attractive force can be measured between them. Quantum field theory interprets this as the effect of fluctuating electromagnetic waves that are present even in empty s.p.a.ce Chaos theory: A field of study in applied mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that tend to be highly sensitive to initial conditions; a popular phrase for this sensitivity is the ”b.u.t.terfly effect.” Although such systems can be completely deterministic, they become increasingly unpredictable over time. This is often described as deterministic chaos. Though unpredictable in detail, such systems may nevertheless exhibit considerable constraint in their trajectories of change. These constrained trajectories are often described as attractors Complexity theory: A field of study in applied mathematics concerned with systems of high-dimensionality in structure or dynamics, such as those generated by non-linear processes and recursive algorithms, and including systems exhibiting deterministic chaos. The intention is to find ways to model physical and biological systems that have otherwise been difficult to a.n.a.lyze and model Const.i.tutive absence: A particular and precise missing something that is a critical defining attribute of ”ententional” phenomena, such as functions, thoughts, adaptations, purposes, and subjective experiences.

Constraint: The state of being restricted or confined within prescribed bounds. Constraints are what is not there but could have been. The concept of constraint is, in effect, a complementary concept to order, habit, and organization because something that is ordered or organized is restricted in its range and/or dimensions of variation, and consequently tends to exhibit redundant features or regularities. A dynamical system is constrained to the extent that it is restricted in degrees of freedom to change and exhibits attractor tendencies. Constraints can originate intrinsic or extrinsic to the system that is thereby constrained Contragrade: Changes in the state of a system that must be extrinsically forced because they run counter to orthograde (aka spontaneous) tendencies Cybernetics: A discipline that studies circular causal systems, where part of the effect of a chain of causal events returns to influence causal processes further back up the chain. Typically, a cybernetic system moves from action, to sensing, to comparison with a desired goal, and again to action Eliminative materialism: The a.s.sumption that all reference to ententional phenomena can and must be eliminated from our scientific theories and replaced by accounts of material mechanisms Emergence: A term used to designate an apparently discontinuous transition from one mode of causal properties to another of a higher rank, typically a.s.sociated with an increase in scale in which lower-order component interactions contribute global properties that appear irreducible to the lower-order interactions. The term has a long and diverse history, but throughout this history it has been used to describe the way that living and mental processes depend upon chemical and physical processes, yet exhibit collective properties not exhibited by non-living and non-mental processes, and in many cases appear to violate the ubiquitous tendencies exhibited by these component interactions Emergent dynamics: A theory developed in this book which explains how homeodynamic (e.g., thermodynamic) processes can give rise to morphodynamic (e.g., self-organizing) processes, which can give rise to teleodynamic (e.g., living and mental) processes. Intended to legitimize scientific uses of ententional (intentional, purposeful, normative) concepts by demonstrating the way that processes at a higher level in this hierarchy emerge from, and are grounded in, simpler physical processes, but exhibit reversals of the otherwise ubiquitous tendencies of these lower-level processes Entelechy: A term Aristotle coined for a non-perceptible principle in organisms leading to full actualization of what was merely potential. It is responsible for the growth of the embryo into an adult of its species, and for the maintenance of the organism's species-specific activities as an adult Ententional: A generic adjective coined in this book for describing all phenomena that are intrinsically

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