The rebirth of Cartesian philosophy 4

(The truth obtained by reconsidering René Descartes’ philosophy from a current perspective 4)

Part III

A Universe Of Consciousness How Matter become Imagination

	Contingency It means “chance,” “contingency,” “uncertainty,” “accident,” etc. It can also mean “It also means “to depend on.   “Contingency theory” is a Japanese term that translates to “environmental adaptation theory. This theory states that there are various environments in the world, and since there is no single best system, the system should change as the environment changes.	Double contingency This is equivalent to “double conditional dependence.”   To make a choice is a negation of the potential that could have been otherwise, and in that sense is a double negation. By experiencing the other as another self that is opaque to oneself, the potential denied in choice is preserved and stabilized as a mutually implied, but unrealized, possibility in both oneself and the other. Luhmann called this situation a double contingency.
1	ontology	epistemology
2	continue	change
3	design	optimization
4	relativity	symmetry
5	digital	analog
6	environment	system
7	cause and effect	cycle
8	finite (time)	infinity (space)
9	class	network
10	diversity	unique
11	death	resurrection
12	unification (harmony)	match
13	secular	sacred
14	body(substance)	soul(life)
15	experience	knowledge
16	object	word
17	value	meaning
18	phenomenon	cause
19	think	feel
20	until the end (until you finish)	as (much) as possible
21	theory of relativity	quantum mechanics
22	Particle (quantum mechanics)	Wave (quantum mechanics)
23	mass	energy
24	macro	micro
25	natural science (Approach from the nature side)	social science (approach from the human side)
26	luck	technology(probability)
27	(memory) self-awareness	(power of) imagination
28	evolution	creation
29	form	function
30	(past to present) ever	(from present to future) from now on

# An explanation of this table can be found in a previous post. If you would like to know more, please see that post.

Bibliography quoted in the Third Part.

A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (English Edition)

Gerald M. Edelman (Author), Giulio Tononi (Author)

Preface

Consciousness has long been considered both a mystery and the source of mysteries. It has been one of the main objects of philosophical inquiry, but only recently has it become a scientific object worthy of experimental study. This is because, although all scientific theories presuppose consciousness and its application requires conscious sensation and perception, the means to investigate consciousness itself scientifically have only recently become available.

We cannot directly observe consciousness in the same way that physicists observe objects. While introspection is not scientifically satisfactory and while people’s reports of their consciousness are informative, they do not reveal the underlying brain activity. And the study of the physical brain alone cannot tell us objectively what consciousness is like. These limitations show that a special approach is needed to incorporate consciousness into science.

Our answer is based on the assumption that consciousness arises within the material order of certain living organisms, because more advanced brain functions require interaction with the world and other people. We hope that by the time you finish reading this text, you will have a new perspective on how matter becomes imagination.

The Knots of the World

In the modern world, we recognize that the world of conscious experience is closely dependent on the delicate workings of the brain. Consciousness can be extinguished by even the slightest lesion or chemical imbalance in a certain part of the brain. In fact, our consciousness is extinguished every time our brain activity changes and we fall into a dreamless sleep.

Even the whole world exists only as a part of our consciousness. It disappears at the same time as our consciousness disappears. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) brilliantly called this mystery, which is shrouded in the mystery of how subjective experience is related to objectively describable events, “the knot of the world”.

Is consciousness a philosophical paradox or a scientific object?

The theme of consciousness used to be the exclusive domain of philosophers, but recently both psychologists and neuroscientists have begun to focus on it as a matter of mind and body, or, to borrow Schopenhauer’s thought-provoking phrase, as “the knot of the world.” Everyone knows what consciousness is, but it abandons you every night when you go to sleep, and then reappears when you wake up the next morning.

Since Descartes, no other theme has consistently troubled the minds of philosophers as much as the mystery of consciousness. For Descartes, consciousness was synonymous with “thinking”. In his “Meditations on First Philosophy”, Descartes proposed “I think, therefore I am” (cogito, ergo sum) as the foundation of philosophy, and this directly recognized the centrality of consciousness in both ontology (what is) and epistemology (what and how we know). In practical terms, this approach leads to an idealistic position that places more importance on the mind than on matter. However, idealistic philosophies that start from the mind struggle to explain matter.

 Why take matter as the starting point?

Descartes argued that there is an absolute distinction between mind and matter. The characteristic of matter is that it occupies space and can be extended in a way that allows for physical explanation. On the other hand, the characteristic of mind is to be aware of things or, in a broader sense, to think. Descartes proposed this kind of dualism. This is a way of thinking that is not scientifically convincing, but it seems to be an intuitively simple and attractive way of thinking when trying to explain the relationship between mind and body.

There is a fundamental limitation in philosophical efforts to determine the origin of consciousness. This is partly due to the assumption that the source of consciousness can be revealed by thinking alone. This assumption is clearly inadequate, just as it was in the old days when people tried to understand the universe, the fundamentals of life, and the fine structure of matter without scientific observation or experimentation.

Moreover, given how unique consciousness is as a scientific object, it is perhaps inevitable that such errors should occur. From now on, we will argue that consciousness is a process, not an object, and that this perspective means that consciousness is worthy of scientific study.

A Special Problem of Consciousness

Science has always tried to eliminate subjectivity from its descriptions of the world. But if subjectivity itself is the object, is it possible to eliminate subjectivity from descriptions?

We can describe water in ordinary language, but in principle we can also describe it in terms of the laws of atomic and quantum mechanics. What we are actually doing is combining two levels of description of the same external entity: a mundane description and a very powerful and predictable scientific description. Both levels of description refer to an entity that is assumed to exist and to exist independently of a conscious observer: liquid water or a particular arrangement of atoms that obey the laws of quantum mechanics.

We want to explain why we have consciousness and how subjective and experiential qualities arise. In other words, we want to explain “I think, therefore I am”, which Descartes took as the first obvious evidence that should be the basis of all philosophy. No matter how accurate a description, it may not be able to fully explain subjective experience. No matter how it is explained, it is very difficult to explain the occurrence of first-person phenomenological experience.

The Conscious Observer and Some Methodological Assumptions

What is so special about consciousness? What makes consciousness special is that, unlike the objects of other scientific descriptions, the neural processes we try to characterize when studying the neural basis of consciousness refer to ourselves. Therefore, we cannot implicitly exclude ourselves as observers of consciousness, as we do when studying other scientific domains.

The only physical processes that are used to satisfactorily explain consciousness are conventional physical processes. In particular, it is assumed that consciousness is a special physical process that occurs within a certain type of brain structure and dynamics. As a physical process, the experience of consciousness is characterized by two general or fundamental properties. One is that the experience of consciousness is integrated, and the conscious state cannot be subdivided into independent components. The other is that consciousness is highly differentiated, and that people can experience billions of different states of consciousness. The scientific challenge is to describe a specific physical process that can explain these properties at the same time.

It seems that selection principles similar to evolutionary theory have been applied to the actual workings of the human brain long before logical principles were applied. This idea is now called selectionism. To summarize our position, selectionism precedes logic. It is predicted that selectionist principles and logical principles are each at the root of a powerful mode of thought. It is essential to grasp that selectionist principles are applied to the physical brain, while logical principles are something that individuals with brains learn later.

Private Theatre for the Public: Progressive Unity, Infinite Diversity

Our strategy for explaining the neural basis of consciousness is to focus on the properties of consciousness that are common to all states of consciousness, or general. One of the most important of these properties is integration or unity. Integration means that a state of consciousness cannot be broken down into independent components at any time by its experiencer. This property is related to the fact that we cannot consciously do two or more things at the same time, for example, adding up a check while continuing a heated argument.

The scope and variety of conscious phenomenology extends as far as our experience and imagination can take us. It is our private theater. Books have been written to classify these areas of consciousness, and entire philosophical systems have been constructed based on attempts to decipher their structure. States of consciousness manifest as perceptions, images, thoughts, inner speech, emotions, will, self, familiarity, and so on. These states occur in every conceivable combination of subdivided categories: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, proprioception (sensation of one’s own body), kinesthesia (sensation of one’s body position), pleasure, pain, etc.

Consciousness and the Brain

The fact that the entire philosophical system has been constructed based on the conscious experience of a single individual devoted to subjective phenomenology, or philosophy, may be a reflection of human arrogance. Such arrogance is partially justified, as Descartes recognized and used as a starting point, because our conscious experience is the only ontology we have direct evidence for.

In order to understand consciousness as a process, we must understand how the brain functions. This section focuses on the most important features of the brain, its anatomical organization, and the amazing dynamics it produces, and provides a useful, but by no means exhaustive, overview of the brain. Although it is written in broad strokes, this section is necessary for understanding how consciousness emerges.

The brain is undoubtedly one of the most complex objects in the universe and one of the most amazing structures to have emerged in the course of evolution. Even before the advent of modern neuroscience, it was well known that the brain was necessary for perception, emotion and thought. As an object and as a system, the human brain is unique. Its connectivity, dynamics, modes of functioning, and relationship to the body and the world are something that science has yet to encounter. We are far from grasping the whole picture, but even a partial grasp is better than none.

The brain is not a computer

A cursory review of neuroanatomy and neurodynamics reveals that the brain has special characteristics in terms of its organization and function. The brain is interconnected in a way that is not found in man-made devices. First, the billions and billions of connections that make up the brain’s connections are not precise. If you ask whether two brains of the same size are connected in the same way as computers of the same make, the answer is no. Even identical twins, when viewed on the most minute scale, still have brains that are not exactly the same. This observation fundamentally challenges models of the brain based on commands and calculations. This data provides strong support for the so-called “selective brain theory,” a theory that relies on actual variation to explain brain function.

Lessons from practice: conscious and automatic performance

Much of our cognitive life may be the product of highly automated routines. When it comes to speaking, listening, reading, writing and remembering, we are all like accomplished pianists. When we read, all kinds of neural processes are at work, recognizing letters regardless of font or size, parsing words, accessing vocabulary, and considering syntactic structure.

There was a time when we had to learn letters and words in a conscious, laborious way. How our brains perform this difficult task is still largely unknown. When we consciously add two numbers together, it seems as if we simply tell our brain what to do, and then it carries out the operation and gives us the answer. When we search for an item in our memory, we formulate a question in our consciousness. Without us realizing it, our brain carries out the search for a while, and then suddenly the response comes back to our consciousness again.

This kind of automation is widespread in our lives as adults, and it shows that conscious control is only exercised in important situations where we have to make clear choices or plans. By having unconscious routines continually activated and carried out, our consciousness is freed from all the details, and we can make grand plans and understand things. In both action and perception, consciousness is only available at the level of final control and analysis, and everything else appears to be proceeding automatically. Because of this characteristic, many people conclude that we are aware of the results of the “calculations” taking place in our brains, but not of the calculations themselves.

The Mechanism of Consciousness: Darwin’s Point of View

From now on, we will focus on the primary consciousness of the brain and explain the ability to construct an integrated mental scene in the present that does not require language or a true sense of self. The perceptual classification of sensory stimuli in this integrated mental scene is not limited to the “present”. We believe that it is also dependent on the interaction with categorized memories, or the “past”. In other words, this integrated mental scene is a “remembered present”.

In his later years, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was in fierce conflict with Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), who co-discovered natural selection. Wallace was a spiritualist who argued that the human brain and mind did not arise through evolutionary natural selection. Wallace argued that primitive people, who have brains almost the same size as those of civilized people, do not understand mathematics and are unable to fully engage in abstract thought, and he argued that it is difficult to believe that natural selection through evolution has caused the size of their brains to become the same.

The principles of Darwin’s theory of evolution are also important in terms of our basic understanding of brain function. In particular, there are huge differences in the structure and function of the brains of vertebrates. No two human brains are exactly alike. Furthermore, each individual’s brain is constantly changing, and these changes occur at all levels, from the brain’s biochemistry to its external form, and the strength of the countless synapses is constantly changing with experience. This enormous degree of diversity is strong evidence against the notion that the brain is like a computer, made up of fixed program codes and registered information.

Values

Values, which are one of the elements that make up our consciousness, are something that is built into the basic mechanisms of the human body. It is important to emphasize that values are not the same as categories. Values are merely the preconditions for reaching perceptual and behavioral responses. Such categorical responses depend on whether or not a choice actually occurs. Perceptual categorization usually manifests as a result of a choice during actual behavior in the real world. Value may be necessary to get a baby to look at a light source, but it is not enough to recognize different objects.

From perception to memory: the remembered present

In order to understand the neural mechanisms of consciousness, it is useful to keep in mind the distinction between primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness. Primary consciousness is found in animals with brain structures similar to our own. These animals appear to be able to construct mental scenes, but they have limited semantic and symbolic abilities and do not have true language. It is only found in humans, and the higher-order consciousness that presupposes the coexistence of primary consciousness has self-consciousness and the ability to clearly construct scenes from the past and future in the waking state. This requires at least semantic ability, and in its most developed form, linguistic ability.

Two more elements are necessary for conscious experience. One is the emergence of categorical memory that responds to value, and the other is the activity of recursivity, which is a basic integration mechanism in the higher brain. We infer that primary consciousness emerged during the course of evolution when the posterior regions of the brain, which are involved in the categorization of perception, were dynamically linked to the prefrontal regions that are responsible for value-based memory through the emergence of new circuits that mediate recursivity. With such a circuit in place, animals can construct a remembered present. In other words, they can construct a situation in which they adaptively link the most recent event or imagined event to their past history of value-driven behavior.

The processes involved in these conscious experiences include perceptual categorization, concepts, values, memories, and, at the neural level, the special dynamic processes of the cortical thalamic organization. Without this understanding, the complex experiences of various sensations, moods, scenes, situations, thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which appear to occur simultaneously, would seem hopelessly irrelevant, even if they could be explained by brain-based mechanisms.

Prerequisites for a model of primary consciousness

When analyzing consciousness, we deliberately avoid tackling too many difficult problems at once or being distracted by its rich phenomenology. In accordance with this restraint, we emphasize the useful distinction between primary consciousness and higher-order consciousness. Primary consciousness is the ability to generate mental scenes that integrate large amounts of diverse information for the purpose of directing current or immediate action, and is found in animals with brain structures similar to our own.

Such animals seem to be able to construct scenes in their minds, but, unlike us, they have limited semantic or symbolic abilities and no true language ability. The rich, higher-order consciousness that we humans have is built on the foundation provided by primary consciousness, and is supported by self-consciousness and the ability to clearly construct and connect past and future scenes in the waking state. In its most developed form, it requires semantic and linguistic abilities.

For this reason, only humans with higher-order consciousness can report on their states of consciousness and talk about consciousness. They can be conscious of being conscious. In the following, we will mainly consider primary consciousness, but we will also discuss higher-order consciousness where experimental insights are available. Finally, we will discuss some of the more interesting aspects of higher-order consciousness, such as thought, language, self-concept, and self-reference.

Before considering a model of the mechanisms by which primary consciousness emerges during evolution, let’s briefly review some important neural processes. One such process is perceptual categorization, a trait shared by all animals, which is the ability to perceive and subdivide the world in ways that are useful to a particular species in an environment governed by physical laws.

The next process necessary for understanding primary consciousness is the formation of concepts. Here, the term “concept” refers to the ability to combine various perceptual categories related to a scene or object and construct a “universal” concept that reflects abstract features common to various perceptions. For example, although different faces have many different features, the brain is able to recognize general features that are common to them.

The Mechanism of Primary Consciousness

By understanding the concepts of the mechanisms of regression and perceptual categorization, concept formation, and memory of value categories, we can model how primary consciousness arose during the course of evolution. The short-term memory that forms the basis of primary consciousness reflects past categorized conceptual experiences. Perceptually new things are quickly incorporated into memories that arise from past categorization. The ability to construct a conscious scene is the ability to construct a remembered present in a short time of a few tenths of a second.

Even animals that do not have such a system can still act and react to specific stimuli, and can survive in certain environments. However, they cannot construct complex situations by linking events and external signals, and they cannot build relationships based on their own history of value-dependent reactions. They often cannot imagine situations or avoid complex dangers. The emergence of this ability is linked to consciousness and is the basis for the evolutionary selection advantage of consciousness.

With this kind of process in place, animals will be able to plan and connect contingent events constructively and adaptively based on their past history of value-based behavior, at least in the present that is remembered.

Coping with a Huge Amount of Information: The Dynamic Core Hypothesis

We have proposed that scientific analysis of consciousness should take into account the basic properties of conscious experience, that is, the properties that are common to all conscious states. These basic properties include the following two. First, consciousness is highly integrated or unified, and all conscious states constitute an integrated whole that cannot be effectively subdivided into independent components. Second, conversely, it is highly differentiated or informational, and there are an enormous number of different conscious states.

The distributed neural processes that underlie conscious experience are also highly integrated and highly differentiated at the same time. We believe that this coincidence between neurobiology and phenomenology is not a mere coincidence. We will further develop our ideas about the neural basis of conscious experience by explaining the unity and information content of conscious experience and providing a solid theoretical framework for the concepts of integration and differentiation. First, we must clarify what integration and differentiation mean. Next, we must deal more precisely with how integration and differentiation are actually realized in the brain. From the results of this analysis, we propose a hypothesis called the “dynamic core hypothesis,” which is a concise operational description of the special nature of the activity of the neuronal population that underlies conscious experience.

Integration and Regression

When we are driving a car, the visual scene contains various objects such as cars, pedestrians, trees, and the sky, which occupy specific positions within our field of vision. The objects may also be moving, and may emit specific sounds or smells. These objects may be related to each other in specific meaningful ways. Even in this amazingly rich and diverse world, what we experience moment by moment is a unified, conscious scene that only makes sense as a whole and cannot be divided into independent components while it is being experienced. That scene is constantly changing.

We aim to gain a more complete scientific understanding of the neural processes that explain the unity and integration of conscious experience. To this end, we will clearly define what integration means, how it can be measured, and how integrated neural processes can be identified. To this end, we will introduce a new concept, “functional clusters.”

Neuroimaging techniques such as PET and fMRI can examine the activity of millions of synapses and brain regions at once, but they cannot track the fate of individual neural signals due to their insufficient spatial and temporal resolution. To examine the behavior of such large populations of interacting cells, we must rely on neural modeling. Large-scale computer simulations have made it possible not only to track the activity of individual neurons in a complex system, but also to examine how the spatial and temporal patterns of firing in tens of thousands of neurons develop after a specific visual stimulus is presented, for example.

The most important point about the results obtained with this model is that the correct output is not obtained by the binding or integration of the appropriate attributes of objects in any one specific cortical area or any one specific group of neurons. Therefore, integration is not achieved in a specific location, but is achieved through a consistent process. In addition to the remarkable ability to integrate the activity of distributed neurons, this model had an unexpected feature that reminded us of a characteristic we encounter when we reflect on our own conscious experience: the limits of our ability.

In a more detailed model of the thalamocortical system, in which the thalamic regions were interconnected, we investigated the dynamics of the recursive interactions within the thalamocortical system in more detail. The results of these simulations show that recurrent signaling within the cortex and between the cortex and thalamus can be enhanced by rapid changes in synaptic transmission efficiency and spontaneous activity within the network, allowing transient global alignment processes to be rapidly established. In this way, a set of elements that are functionally distinct from other parts of the system and interact strongly with each other can be called a “functional cluster”. There is general agreement that clusters should be defined in terms of internal coherence and external isolation.

The concept of functional clustering has provided a measure of integration that can be applied to neurophysiological data to characterize the neural processes underlying consciousness. The fact that a neural process constitutes a functional cluster means that, at a given time, the process is functionally integrated, i.e., it cannot be decomposed into completely or nearly independent components.

Consciousness and Complexity

We experience specific states of consciousness that are chosen from among billions of possible states at any given time. If this is the case, then the neural processes underlying conscious experience must also be highly discriminative and informative. The information content of such a system can be expressed in terms of a statistical measure called “neural complexity”. This measure of complexity can be used to estimate the degree of differentiation of the integrated neural processes. The aim is to show that consciousness and complexity are closely related, and to explain how complexity is realized in the brain.

The fact that the state of one part of a system affects other parts means that the system is integrated. If the system were not integrated, the states of different parts of the system would be independent. Therefore, we reach the important conclusion that complexity corresponds to an optimal synthesis of functional specialization and functional integration within a system. This is clearly the case for systems like the brain, where different areas and groups of neurons do different things at the same time and interact with each other to produce a unified conscious scene and unified behavior. We conclude that the complexity of neural processes in the thalamocortical system is dynamically influenced by its neurophysiological structure as well as its neuroanatomical structure. This dynamic nature means that the same normal brain can be complex or simple depending on the level of arousal.

There are two aspects of brain complexity that all experts agree on. Firstly, in order to be complex, it must be made up of many parts that interact in different ways. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary defines complexity as “a whole made up of a number of parts joined or connected together”. Secondly, it is now generally accepted that something is not complex if it is completely random, and it is also not complex if it is completely regular. For example, it is thought that neither an ideal gas nor a perfect crystal is complex. Only those things that have both order and disorder, regularity and irregularity, diversity and universality, constancy and change, and stability and instability are worthy of being called complex. Biological systems, from cells to brains to organisms to societies, are prime examples of complex organizations. We can see that high complexity arises from the continuous interaction between the brain and the external environment, which has far greater potential complexity. According to simulations using simple linear systems, the complexity of systems with random connectivity is low. However, when the connectivity of these systems is changed by a selection procedure that increases their conformity with the statistical regularity of the external environment, their complexity increases significantly. Furthermore, all other things being equal, the more complex the environment, the greater the complexity of the system with a high degree of agreement. This is also clear from the fact that consciousness disappears when neural activity is uniformly or excessively synchronized, as in slow-wave sleep or generalized epileptic seizures.

The Dynamic Core Hypothesis

We call the assemblies of neurons that interact strongly with each other on a time scale of a few milliseconds and have clear functional boundaries with other parts of the brain “dynamic cores”, emphasizing their integrity and constantly changing composition. Dynamic cores are processes defined in terms of neural interactions. Therefore, the dynamic core is neither a thing nor a place, and it is not a specific neural location, connectivity, or activity. The dynamic core is spatially extended, but it is distributed and its composition changes, so it cannot be limited to a specific location in the brain. Furthermore, even if such functional clusters are identified, it is predicted that they will only be associated with conscious experience if the recursive interactions are sufficiently differentiated. It is very difficult to visually represent the characteristics of the dynamic core. In order to integrate a large amount of information in an instant, a highly integrated yet differentiated organization is required, and to the best of our knowledge, such an organization exists only in the human brain.

Higher Consciousness

We have not yet clearly addressed the relationship between consciousness and the limits of language, thought and knowledge. As we have shown, this relationship is based on higher consciousness, which makes possible the development of concepts of self, past and future. In order to untangle the knots of the world, or at least to re-tie them in a less tangled way, we believe it is appropriate to end with a reflection on these major issues. Higher consciousness is clearly necessary for the scientific exploration of the characteristics of the consciousness process. As long as we are conscious, we cannot completely eliminate higher consciousness, and it is quite strange to think that we are only driven and acted upon by the continuous emotions of primary consciousness.

Let us focus on a brief exploration of some of the subjects related to higher consciousness, such as the origins of language, the self, thought, information, and the origins and scope of perception. It is time to ask what we can expect from scientific observers who seek to understand the processes of consciousness and to report on them to themselves and to others.

Language and the Self

We will examine some issues that have central meaning for human beings from a new perspective. We will consider the aspect of language evolution because it is thought that the emergence of higher consciousness is due to changes in the nerves connected to language. When higher consciousness begins to emerge, the self is constructed from social and emotional relationships. The self as a subject with self-consciousness becomes something far beyond the biological individuality of animals with primary consciousness. The emergence of the self refines our phenomenological experience and links together emotion, thought, culture and belief. It frees the imagination and opens our thinking to the vast realm of metaphor. It can even temporarily free us from the temporal constraints of the remembered present while maintaining consciousness. The three mysteries – the mystery of the present progressive consciousness, the mystery of one’s own consciousness, and the mystery of the construction of stories, plans, and fantasies – can be elucidated to some extent, if not completely, by considering primary consciousness and higher consciousness together.

Let’s consider the changes in the structure of the brain that lead to higher-order consciousness. Even animals that only have primary consciousness can generate “mental images”, or scenes based on the recursive integration activities of the Dynamic Core. These scenes are largely determined by the succession of actual events in the environment, and to some extent are also determined by the unconscious subcortical activities. Such animals have biological individuality, but they do not have a true self that is aware of itself. They have a “remembered present” maintained by the real-time activity of the dynamic core, but they have no concept of the past or the future.

These concepts emerged only after the ability to express emotions and refer to objects and events through symbolic means, or semantic ability, appeared in the evolution of hominids. Inevitably, higher consciousness is accompanied by social interaction. Syntactic and semantic systems provided new types of memory that mediated higher consciousness, becoming new means for symbolic construction. It became possible to be aware of awareness.

In the evolution of hominids and the emergence of language, a new recursive loop appeared, just as in the case of primary consciousness. The acquisition of semantic abilities and, in turn, a new kind of memory through language led to an explosive expansion of concepts. As a result, the concepts of self, past, and future became linked to primary consciousness, making self-consciousness possible.

At that point, the individual is freed to some extent from the constraints of the remembered present. If primary consciousness connects the individual to real time, higher consciousness allows at least a temporary detachment. It is now possible to experience and remember a whole new world of intentionality, classification, and identification. As a result, concepts and thought are promoted. Scenes are enriched by symbols. Values are connected to meaning and intentionality. By evolving the neural system to link individual learning to changes in the value system itself, it is possible to change itself in a richer and more adaptive way. When higher consciousness develops along with language, the self is constructed from social and emotional relationships.

Animals that only have primary consciousness do not have symbolic abilities, so there is no possibility for them to develop concepts of self, past, or future. However, for babies with language abilities, from an early age, external cues are influenced by emotional interactions with their mothers, and begin to take on movement and conceptual meaning. The foundations for phonological and semantic development are laid early on, and they are also able to understand the meaning of interactions with their mothers.

Thought

Here, we will ask the question, “What is happening in your head when you think of something?” William James (1842-1910) was probably the first person to seriously attempt this. If we repeat this exercise based on our current understanding of the neural basis of consciousness, it supports the conclusion that a great deal happens in the brain every time we think, and most of it happens in parallel, based on surprisingly complex and rich associations. A significant part of this information is far more complex than the capabilities of current computers.

Philosophical thought is not sufficient on its own and must be supplemented by analysis of brain function. We believe that epistemology should be based on biology, particularly neuroscience, when considering how information and consciousness arise in nature. From this perspective, three important philosophical conclusions can be drawn Namely, “existence precedes description”, “choice precedes logic”, and “action precedes understanding in the development of thought”.

We have primary consciousness, which is primary in the sense that it is essential for the development of higher-order consciousness. This is why we have focused so much on primary consciousness. However, it is higher-order consciousness that is central.

Our position is that higher-order consciousness, including the ability to be conscious of being conscious, depends on the emergence of meaning and, by extension, language. Along with these features, we also have a true self that emerges from social interaction, as well as concepts of past and future. Through primary consciousness and the remembered present, we are able to create stories, fiction and history through symbolic exchange and higher-order consciousness. We can ask ourselves how it is possible to know, and in doing so, lead ourselves to the threshold of philosophy.

 Perceiving consciousness as a physical process

I have argued that consciousness arises from a specific arrangement of material order in the brain. It is common to have the prejudice that to call something material is to deny its entry into the realm of the sublime, that is, the mind, spirit, and pure thought. The word material is used to refer to many things and states. This applies to the world of the senses or the measurable, the world that we generally call the real world, and the world that scientists study. That world is far more subtle than it appears at first glance. Stars are also matter, as are atoms and subatomic particles. They are made up of matter and energy.

The mind is completely dependent on and rooted in the physical processes that occur in ourselves and in other minds, and in the events that involve communication. There is no complete separation between the material and mental realms, and there is no basis for dualism. However, there is clearly a realm that is created by the physical order of the brain, body, and social world, and in which meaning is consciously created. This meaning is essential to our description and scientific understanding of the world. The incredibly complex material structure of the nervous system and the body gives rise to dynamic mental processes and meaning.

My opinion

When I asked Microsoft Copilot, “Did Descartes himself coin the term ‘mind-body dualism’?” the answer was, “Descartes himself did not use the term ‘mind-body dualism’, but his philosophy laid the foundations for this concept. Descartes saw the mind (the mind) and matter (the body) as independent entities, and called them “res cogitans” and “res extensa”. This time, I read several of Descartes’ works and commentaries on Descartes. I think that the term “mind-body dualism” was not coined by Descartes himself, but by philosophers of the time or later generations, who used it to comment on Descartes’ work. In my opinion, Descartes’ philosophy is not a mind-body dualism, but a dualism of consciousness between the “mind of the flesh” and the “mind born of the mind of the flesh”. Or, to put it another way, it could also be called ’emergent dualism’.

In the book ‘The Universe of Consciousness’ by Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi, primary consciousness corresponds to the ‘fleshly mind’, and higher-order consciousness corresponds to the ‘mind born of the fleshly mind’. The fleshly mind is a primitive existence. The fleshly mind is a mind that defends and maintains its own existence. The mind that is born from the mind of the flesh arises through an emergent process, but that mind expresses measures for maintaining that individual’s social adaptation to the real world for an even longer period of time. The table at the beginning of this chapter shows this.

In the physical world, if an individual wants to do something, it needs a functional structure made of matter. Without a structure, it cannot move or perform any functions. Just arranging matter will not make it move on its own. I think that the same is true in theory, and that a structure is necessary.

I think that it is not the case that something like a spirit inhabits human beings through emergent phenomena in the brain, but rather that the human brain is able to imagine something like a spirit. This is still just a hypothesis, but the higher-dimensional existence that arises through emergent phenomena may be derived from string theory. It is possible that matter has the ability to make humans imagine such a world, or to access such a world, implicitly. However, this is only true at subatomic particle level and below. In order to access these higher dimensional worlds, we need a level of complexity similar to that of the human brain. I think that the ability to access higher dimensions through emergent phenomena is a normal function of the brain, and not the creation of illusions or hallucinations.

However, I think that the sacred world can only be considered meaningful and valuable if it is juxtaposed with the secular world in which our brains exist. The sacred world is the goal of the secular world. From the perspective of the real world, the sacred world only exists because of the secular world. If the secular world were to disappear, we would lose all understanding of the meaning and value of the sacred world. In other words, the sacred world only has a role to play if the secular world in which we live continues forever. The role of the sacred world is to make humans continue to live in the secular world. If the secular world disappears, the sacred world will also disappear. I don’t think anyone would ever think about a world where only the sacred world exists. If the secular world in which human beings exist disappears, the sacred world alone will have no meaning or value for human beings. In other words, when the end of the earthly world comes and the world is devastated and human beings disappear, even if there is a sacred world, it will no longer be relevant to human beings.

The End