ã Alex Green 2003.

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Consciousness science is important because it affects a wide range of subjects from ethics to quantum physics. Numerous theories of consciousness have been proposed over the millennia but none of these seems to explain the phenomenon.

The most widely held theory of consciousness is Naive Realism. Naive Realists do not distinguish between their experience and the physical world and believe that their perception is identical to the physical objects that they sense. Most people are Naive Realists until they learn about the role of the sense organs. There are sophisticated forms of naive realism called Direct Realism - see Steve Lehar's(2003) review. Many scientific theories of the brain are forms of Naive or Direct Realism because they do not tackle the problem of how things are perceived as if they are 'out there' in the world.

Most quantum theories of consciousness are Naive Realist by default, being concerned with how the classical, conscious observation of the world can emerge from a quantum universe rather than how the conscious observer perceives and knows. Scientific information processing theories are also in this category. One set of these theories uses 'recursion' to attempt to explain how a conscious being knows itself. In recursion theories it is proposed that awareness springs from the cycling of things from one place to another in the brain (see for instance Jaynes' (1976) 'bicameral breakdown' and the discussion by Shallice(1988)).

Another type of theory, Cartesian Dualism (Descartes 1641, 1664), allows for indirect perception due to sense organs and proposes that there is an extended model of the sights and sounds of the world in the brain. This model of the world in the brain is then somehow condensed into a non-extended place where thoughts happen (the res cogitans). Cartesian dualism encompasses some ideas about biology but is very vague about what happens in the non-extended place or how such a place could occur. There is a set of modern, scientific, dualist theories in which the place where thoughts happen is a parallel universe of some type.

The problematic nature of the res cogitans has led some theorists to propose that the brain does indeed contain a representation of the world but that this is known by some physical process or phenomenon within it. These theories are known as Representationalism and have sub theories such as Indirect Realism, see Lehar (2003) for a discussion. Jacques Derrida's Post-structuralism is also Indirect Realist and rejects the possibility that there may be valuable truths that can be obtained from consciousness as a phenomenon rather than consciousness as a process. It incorrectly dismisses science as Naive Realist.

Yet another radical set of theories propose that the brain can operate without any need for a mind at all (cf: Huxley 1874). These theories are known as epiphenomenalism. The epiphenomenalists point out that there is little evidence of conscious involvement in any of the processes occurring in the body or brain. To emphasise this lack of involvement in the processes of life, the mind was described by Ryle(1949) as being a "ghost in the machine" of the brain that appears to have no function. Epiphenomenalism has been supported by experiments such as those performed by Libet (1993) which seem to show that we are conscious of events and decisions after they have happened.

 Theories such as Naive Realism, Cartesian Dualism and Direct Realism describe aspects of experience and contain some truth but they are incomplete as theories of consciousness. Any complete theory of consciousness must contain the truths embodied in these theories but must also include explanations of all aspects of consciousness including perception and knowledge.

Click here to view Philosophy of Consciousness: A Bibliographic Approach for Students.

Our present experience is the only thing we, personally, know for certain. Descartes (1641) pointed out that, although we cannot know for certain whether this experience is a dream, we do know for certain that it exists; experience simply 'is'. The various parts of our present experience also exist with certainty and these parts are related to each other (ie: people have arms, plants have leaves, cars accelerate from place to place etc.). The catalog of all these relationships constitutes what is sometimes called 'descriptive science' and the mathematical description of the way one thing in experience changes with another forms what might be called 'predictive science'. Early scientists such as Aristotle, Roger Bacon(1214-1294) and Galileo developed a formal structure called the 'scientific method' for testing the reality of hypotheses about these relationships and this method is still the foundation of science today. In the 'scientific method' hypotheses are tested by experiments in which experience is incorporated as 'observations', if the hypothesis is not contradicted by experiment it is called a 'theory'. This central role of observation ensures that hypotheses are tested by the personal experience of individuals. Science is empirical and is essentially different from theoretical physics, mathematics and philosophy. The success of modern theoretical physics has led to a widespread belief that science is scientific theory rather than a combination of scientific classification, scientific theory and the scientific method, this belief is mistaken and constitutes a type of monism - see the illustration below.

Science has confirmed everyone's hunch that there is a 'physical' world that exists independently of our personal observation. This 'physical world' has been inferred because the positions and properties of the things we experience can be predicted from one moment to another even in our absence. The scientific prediction of positions and properties ranges from the certainties of cartography, where a symbol on a map represents a hill that can be visited time after time, to the velocity of rockets and the progress of chemical reactions. These varied predictions are generated by 'theories' which are descriptions of events in terms of the inferred physical world. The word 'theory' may seem inappropriate when applied to maps but early maps were highly hypothetical.

When a theory involves changes such as the acceleration of a car or rocket etc, it is generally expressed as a mathematical equation. An equation is a condensed set of instructions for calculating the properties of the system under consideration. Equations usually have an input set of data derived from observation of measurements and provide an output set of data that is a prediction of what will be observed as measurements after the change. An equation is a description that accounts for change.

From the viewpoint of consciousness studies it is important to note that a scientific description or theory is a model of an inferred physical world that accounts for the observed properties of things and for the changes that occur from one moment of conscious observation to the next. Scientific theory is a description, not the physical world itself. As an example, the scientific theory that fully describes the colour red is no more 'red' than the three letters 'red'.

The possible misunderstanding of the relationship between a description of a thing and the actual thing is highlighted by Jackson's(1982) Knowledge Argument in which a super scientist called Mary has never experienced the colour red. Jackson asks if Mary could know red if she had access to unlimited scientific knowledge about red. The answer to this question is simple, a scientific theory is a set of descriptions, not the actual physical things or observations that it describes so scientific theory in itself could never be red. Mary cannot know red from reading descriptions. The belief that a description is the same as the thing being described is a category mistake akin to saying that the word 'car' on this page is an actual car. Mary would no more be able to experience red from reading a scientific description of the colour red than she would from reading an essay written in English about the colour red.

Jackson's Knowledge Argument is phrased in terms of scientific 'knowledge' but in the argument Mary's knowledge is artificially limited to the descriptions contained in scientific theory. If Mary were to perform the experiments described in the theory she would then know the 'experience called red' itself. There is however, a 'red' that Mary may never know except as a description. This is the actual physical 'red' that is an inferred energy difference between electron states in a particular physical object.

The scientific method overcomes the problems of abstract descriptions by incorporating direct experience as observations in experiments. This method can be applied to any observable, repeatable events which means it can be used to explore consciousness because we can all observe our own conscious experience and compare our observations. (See Note 2 about the use of personal pronouns in descriptions).

The popularity of computers means that many people believe in 'Strong AI', 'Machine Consciousness' etc. Please see "Are People Computers?" before proceeding if you have this belief. In the following sections the reader will be asked to adopt a scientific approach, using observation then explanation, rather than a technological approach in which pre-existing theories are used to model the world and observations that cannot be explained are discounted.

Any comments?

A good place to begin the exploration of consciousness is the investigation of the role of language. Many highly verbal people believe that language is essential for consciousness but is this true? The meditations described below demonstrate that language, in the form of words, is largely a non-conscious activity and is unnecessary for consciousness:

These simple meditations show that we can be conscious without verbal language and that we do not consciously initiate the words that we hear ourselves speaking. Language is necessary neither for consciousness nor, in the case of single, random words, controlled by consciousness. However, although language is unnecessary for consciousness it is very useful for increasing our awareness of consciousness. Without language we are conscious but if we tell ourselves we are conscious it emphasises the experience. (See Note 2 about the use of personal pronouns in descriptions).

Another popular ingredient of theories of consciousness is the idea that it is a set of processes. Processes occur in computers and these are the latest achievements of man-made technology. In the modern age we are supposed to be like computers and all that is required to bring the computer to life is some form of magical 'emergentism'. Computers rely on processes at every level from the processes that transfer keyboard input to the central processor, through the Turing Machine that is the program, to the electronic events that paint the screen. Are we like computers?

Processes consist of input, a transformation and an output. In the most general case the input can be an arrangement of any set of things from photons to planets and the output can also be an arrangement of any set of things. The transformation nearly always requires energy. Processes occur in abundance in the human body but do they account for conscious experience?

There can be little doubt that much of experience is the output of processes. When we hear the imaginary sounds of our own thoughts we experience a word as an output but do we experience the creation of the word? Our own words sound much like other people's words except that they come from our own heads. It seems that we are exercising very little conscious control during word generation. We are certainly unaware of constructing the phonemes of a word and putting them together with the right timing and have no inkling of chemicals being converted into the muscle movements of our larynx. This lack of awareness of the transformations also applies to most other actions and sensations from moving an eyelid to imagining an orange.

It seems that we experience things as the output of processes and are aware that these can become the input of further processes but we do not control or witness most of the transformations that intercede between the input and output. The transformations are done non-consciously and even when we consciously concentrate on a task to improve our skill it is as if our non-conscious faculties have co-opted the things in our conscious experience to do this.

The way that the processes that create conscious experience are non-conscious has led some philosophers to suggest that consciousness itself is just a 'ghost in the machine' of the brain (Ryle 1949). This view is well supported by meditation. It is evident that when you move your arm you can say "move!" and then move it. But the thought "move!" is inserted into your experience by a non-conscious process, furthermore, although your arm moves as if it has been commanded to move you are not aware of the complex servo-control of the muscles in the arm - it just moves. If you dispense with the "move!" and just observe your arm it can move spontaneously although your non-conscious processes may insert a cue such as tension in some part of the body to give you the illusion that you consciously initiated the movement. Norretranders (1991) gives a full account of the way that we have an illusion of consciously controlling our speech and bodies even though consciousness seems to lag events. He calls this the "user illusion". The problem of the "user illusion" and 'free will' will be discussed later.

It seems that if consciousness does indeed affect the processes in the brain then this must be accomplished in such a subtle manner that we have no immediate insight into the mechanism or phenomenon involved. The way that conscious experience may control non-conscious processes is discussed below.

Simple Processing Theories of consciousness also fall foul of the Homunculus Argument. When we look out at a view the objects in the view seem separate from us. According to processing theories light is reflected from physical objects in the view, falls on the retina and forms a set of brain activity.

This is a reasonable description and consistent with experience and recordings from instruments such as light meters and micro-electrodes in the brain. Once the data from the view is in the brain all that simple processes can do is move it from place to place, combine it with other data and move the combination from place to place and so on. All that has happened is that one set of data represented by photons has been transformed into another set represented by nerve impulses (see illustration above). How do the nerve impulses become a view? How can 'we' experience the contents of our own brain as if 'we' are separate from them? Philosophers have long pointed out that if our knowledge of the world is the result of simple processes there would need to be a little man or 'homunculus' in our head to view the output of these processes.

To explain views it is necessary to consider space and time.

Any comments?

One of the most obvious aspects of conscious experience is the way that things are arranged in space and time. Just look around you and listen. Our experience is a flux of things that have definite positions. It will be shown below that space and time are essential for conscious experience and a crude scientific model of the mind will be developed that can be tested and integrated into the concept of the observer in physics.

When we look around it is evident that we experience many things simultaneously. Even things as simple as a short line of dots .... or the letter 'e' are several things seen at once. Simultaneity is not restricted to vision. We can also experience the sound of a computer, a car outside and the tapping of a keyboard all at once, furthermore, each of these sounds is positioned so that it overlays the visual position of the source of the sound. There is no doubt that conscious experience contains multiple things arranged in a space at any instant.

The arrangement of things in a space also applies to imagination and dreams. If you imagine an apple when your eyes are closed it may seem to hover in a dark space in front of your head or as an apple on a tree or in a fruit bowl. Similarly your dreams are enacted in a dream world that is similar to the real world and which contains things arranged in a space.

Is the space of the imagination different from the space of perception? If you imagine this page with your eyes closed then reach out to touch the imaginary page you may find yourself touching the 'real' page (perceived page). The space of visual imagination seems to overlap the space of visual perception. This is also the case for the space of imaginary and perceived sounds, if we imagine words, such as when we think verbally, the imagined words seem to come from almost the same place as spoken words. There seems to be a shared mental space that is used for the imagination and for sensation. This shared mental space also seems to be used by dreams as anyone who has believed themselves to be awake whilst still dreaming can testify.

Even emotions seem to be sensations from the body coupled with verbal thoughts and imaginings and all of these have locations, although some of these locations are imprecise such as hunger pangs in the vicinity of the stomach or the heat of anger in the skin of the head.

Non-conscious processes, such as those that give rise to conscious experiences, have no extent in mental space. This suggests that the principle discriminator between conscious experiences and inferred non-conscious processes is whether or not they are arranged in mental space.

Our experience is arranged as a 'view'; it is a set of things arranged around an observation point. This observation point seems to be at the centre of the mental space that contains experience. Descartes proposed that this point contains thought but thoughts are clearly extended in the space of the imagination, not at a point. If you try to observe what is inside the observation point it is obvious that there is nothing there. Nothing flows into the observation point, it is a geometric anomaly not a destination. Psychologists call this mental observation point, where the input from both eyes is combined, the 'Cyclopean Eye' or 'Cyclopean Vision'. The Cyclopean eye combines sensation from all the senses so is also a 'Cyclopean Ear' etc.

If you cross your eyes you can see two images, the retinas of both eyes are apparently 'seen' from the one, inner, cyclopean eye. There is, of course, no actual inner eye but brain activity somehow generates a geometrical form of a view with an observation point. Notice in the diagram that there is no single point within either real eye that could be the place where light rays are all brought together, the point-eye is synthesised in our brains from cues in the retinal images to correspond to an idealised point roughly in the centre of the pupil in monocular vision or behind the eyes in binocular vision. Unfortunately we cannot use techniques such as ray tracing to find the location of the observation point because simple ray tracing will largely reflect the arrangement of things in the physical world that are observed by the actual eyes.

Our experience of time is perhaps the most peculiar aspect of consciousness. William James (1890) described our conscious experience of time as "the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible". Gombrich (1964) also pointed out that our experience must be extended in time: "If the experienced present were only a durationless instant, then we could not understand a spoken sentence, because what would be presented to the senses at any point would only be a meaningless phoneme - indeed not even that, since any sound necessarily takes up time". These authors are referring to our immediate experience of the way things change rather than our judgement of long intervals. The "short duration" is a period of about a second into the immediate past called the 'extended' or 'specious' present. James and Gombrich are pointing out that the present instant contains no time at all, it is zero seconds long, so we can know nothing at this instant. We can only know things by stretching through time in some manner.

The present is a boundary between the past and the future. Boundaries are conceptual marks on a scale, ideally they have no size at all. Intervals can be measured from one boundary to another boundary but the boundary itself is nothing but a concept. Curiously, most people, and a large number of philosophers are 'presentists' who believe that only the boundary we call the 'present' exists. If presentism is true then a set of things could only be known at a present instant if signals could travel instantaneously from one thing to another; a proposition that physicists will immediately recognise as the pre-twentieth century concept of time. Presentism contains a hidden proposal that at any durationless instant there are signals travelling back and forth as many times as required to create experience. (see Balashov & Janssen (2002) for a discussion of presentism)

The science of relativity deals with the problem of defining the present and this will be discussed in depth in chapter 2. According to relativity, and common sense, an interval of time is needed for a process to occur. At the instantaneous present there can be no processes, everything is frozen, it is only over a period of time that things happen. This means that if we experience whole thoughts or events that stretch through time our experience of events must also stretch through time.

There are other strange aspects to our experience of time. The most obvious is the directionality of time. As an example, the word "hello" is experienced as a single entity stretching through time that starts with an "h" and ends with an "o". This is the case even at the moment that the "o" occurs. Surely if 'we' are at the moment of the "o" the rest of the word must stretch away from that moment into the past, why do we not experience "hello" as "olleh"? The answer to this seems to lie in another aspect of our experience of time: events have positions in mental space.

When we see a dog bark the bark comes from the position of the dog's mouth in mental space and when our arms move the movement is at the arm in mental space. Our mental space has an observation point at the centre and things distributed around it, events occur on the things and not in the observation point. This means that mental time is a direction in which things can be ordered and this ordering occurs at the position of the things in mental space; it is another direction that does not overlay the three directions of normal space.

The 'extended present' appears paradoxical because at any instant we experience a whole set of events extended in time. How can we experience a length of time at an instant? This apparent paradox is resolved by noticing that things are extended in time 'out there' in mental space, not at the instant of the observation point. The apparent paradox of the 'extended present' in which things are extended in time at an instant is very closely related to the paradox of consciousness in which we appear to see ourselves seeing ourselves.

The idea that time exists so that the past is still available is shocking yet quite evident from our experience. Most people flatly refuse to believe the evidence of their own experience and are committed 'presentists', believing that they exist at some imaginary boundary of no duration between the past and the future. The illustration below summarises the various ideas of time extension.

The current contents of conscious experience are created by non-conscious processes and form the source for further non-conscious processes. This means that the content of conscious experience is not epiphenomenal. It forms an essential link in many of the paths from stimulus to response. The brain activity that is the content of conscious experience does indeed affect events but the conscious experience itself is not a process and cannot intervene. It seems to intervene because time extension allows conscious experience to contain all the steps between a mental cause and its effect even though conscious experience itself creates none of these steps. The non-conscious processes of the brain create the various steps, conscious experience is observation, not action (but see below for a brief discussion of conscious experience and quantum mechanics).

Most of us have been taught to think that reality is a succession of arrangements of things in space. At each instant the things around us and within us have fixed positions and one instant cannot communicate with any other except by the use of recorded information. Only the present instant is considered to be real. In the previous section this 'Presentism' was shown to be dubious as a description of our experience. According to Presentism we exist at an instant in a universe that consists of a succession of 3D instants; at each of these instants nothing moves so there can be no experience. At each instant there can be no view of the world, there is only a static set of things laid out in space. This is a very similar problem to Zeno of Elea's problem of "The Arrow". How can anything move and how can there be processes if at every instant everything has a fixed position? Kevin Brown, who produces the popular "MathPages" on the Internet, provides a clear insight into this problem; his analysis is presented in full below:

(See Albro Swift's MathPages at http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s3-07/3-07.htm, reproduced in full because of the transient nature of Internet documents)

Extension in time is experienced, it is part of modern physics and a universe that is not extended in time is probably impossible or absurd. Yet our school teachers and culture teaches that time is a succession of impossible instants and most of us prefer to believe this rather than examine our own observations and the discoveries of physics. Presentism is the modern equivalent of believing in a flat earth. The physics of space-time is introduced in chapter 3, "Physics for Consciousness Studies" (see Contents).

The previous sections have described experience without any emphasis on where this experience originates or resides. The conventional view of neuroscientists is that the experience is 'in the brain' whereas the conventional view of ordinary people is that the experience is direct experience of the world around them, a belief known as Naive Realism. Which of these alternatives is correct?

This problem is a question about the inferred physical world. It is asking where in the physical layout of the universe are the things that form our conscious experience. It should be possible to discover the answer to this problem by comparing the location of observed things with their inferred physical location.

As a first step it is evident that the experience of a barking dog appears to emanate from the dog, especially if we are looking at the dog at the same time as listening to it. Instruments such as microphones confirm this observation. However, if earplugs are worn the sound can disappear and if we wear stereo headphones that play the sound of a barking dog the sound appears to come from the dog even though instruments show that it comes from next to our ears. Further probing with instruments shows that we have sense organs such as the cochlea and the retina, which transform the sounds and sights of the physical world into electrical impulses that are transmitted into the brain. In fact there is no 'image' of the world 'out there'. A fog of photons going in all directions and criss-crossing sound waves surrounds a physical, barking dog. It is the optical instruments we call our eyes that first provide an ordered of image of the world. It is the brain that takes signals from this image and binds them together with sounds and other sense data to make experience. The location of the sights sounds and smells as sense data in the brain is confirmed by the way we can dream and imagine sensory things in the absence of sense data.

If you gently press the sides of your eyes through your eyelids the image of the world divides into two. This demonstrates that it is the position of things in the image on the retina that partly determines the position of things in experience. The positions of activity on the retina are transferred into the brain by the optic nerves and visual pathways, which further suggests that experience is within the brain. It is interesting that, unlike the retina these pathways are immune to mechanical distortion and if they are gently squeezed the positions of things in experience are not affected. This is not surprising because the pathways are channels for data and, provided the two ends of a channel are fixed, the positions of the intervening paths should have no effect on any final image. (This resilience in the face of distortion also happens with glass fibres; if an image is transmitted through a bundle of glass fibres that is fixed at both ends it will be found that the intervening fibres can be rearranged without affecting the output image).

It could be maintained that the inference that experience is a set of things in the brain is just an inference in a dream that is consciousness. This is a reasonable viewpoint despite being far-fetched. However, it cannot be denied that there is a consistent body of relationships between the things in this 'dream' that is called science and that it is valid to infer that experience occurs within an inferred physical brain.

Even though the things that we experience are based in some way on electrical impulses in our brain they still appear as if they are laid out in a spacious world. Sounds, smells, feelings etc. are laid out in this world in the same order as they occur when their physical analogues are probed with instruments. How can a spacious world be in the brain?

The key to this problem of fitting a spacious world into our brains is to notice that our experience is a 'view' of a spacious world. Things are separated by angles relative to an observation point. The separation of things by angles at a point means that we do not have a sense of depth that operates in the same way as our sense of things being separated in horizontal and vertical directions. Our sense of depth is based upon cues rather than an actual experience of the space between things. As an example, the stars in a planetarium appear incredibly distant even though they are on the ceiling of a room and would appear just as distant if viewed through virtual reality goggles. Visual depth in particular is a set of inferences, not an actual experience of the space between things in a radial direction outward from the observation point. This means that the things that are the spacious world of experience could be as small as just a few cubic millimetres of brain tissue!

If experience resides in a tiny area of brain this would be the end-point of all the pathways from the senses and should be sensitive to mechanical distortion (see chapter 3).

Any comments?

Conscious experience is things arranged in space and time observed as if from an observation point. Look around, listen to some music, have a dream, this is what conscious experience is like. Although this description is what it is like to be conscious it seems to conflict with our knowledge of the world. Many things cannot be at a single point in the 'physical' world whilst preserving their separation in space. How can we possibly experience things as if we are experiencing them from a point? All the sounds, smells, textures and sights of experience seem to be 'out there' in the things in our experience, not inside a single observation point.

So what is the observation point? This is best explained by considering the 'sidedness' of experience. When you look at a thing or hear it or touch it the sensation seems to come from one side only. This is so familiar to us all that noone questions it. Our first impulse if asked to explain how things could have a particular 'sideness' is to propose that something like light flows from the thing we are experiencing to the place where it is being experienced. But what light flows inside dreams or emanates from our verbal thoughts? What light could form a clear image inside brain tissue? If something does flow then what sees it as having a 'sidedness' when it arrives? What we can say about the sidedness of experience is that it is a set of things that point in a particular direction and we describe the place where all these things point as an observation point.

If experience is a set of directed elements (known as vectors) that point at a single place then the problem of sidedness might be explained. Furthermore, if mental space consists of a set of vectors in the direction of an observation point it is possible that mental time might be arranged in the same way. It was shown above that events seem to be arranged along a time axis at the position at which they occur and viewed at a point and this is very similar to the way that things are arranged in mental space. Given this similarity between mental time and space it might be proposed that events are vectors in the direction of the observation point that stretch through both time and space. The whole set of vectors is a 'geometrical form' which is a time extended object. Notice that our experience is the vectors, not the place where they point.

The existence of a viewing point leads to our inherently relationalist concept of space in which the scale of things is judged by their relative sizes. This idea of space was championed by Leibnitz and has been thought to differ from Kant's substantivalist concept of space in which space is considered to be an absolute entity that exists even in the absence of objects. Both of these concepts are slightly simplistic because a substantivalist space could allow relationalist judgements of scale and a relationalist space contains objects that, by definition, have extent even if this extent cannot be given an absolute scale.

The difference between the substantivalist and relationist concepts is most evident in the definition of "handedness". A left hand and a right hand have the same internal measure relations but they can be distinguished from each other by observers. Kant suggested that the properties we call "left handed" and "right handed" reside in space itself, not in measure relations. Gardner's "Ozma" problem summarises the problem of using measure relations to distinguish between left and right:

"Is there any way to communicate the meaning of the word "left" by a language transmitted in the form of pulsating signals? By the terms of the problem we may say anything we please to our listeners, ask them to perform any experiment whatever, with one proviso: there is to be no asymmetric object or structure that we and they can observe in common." (Gardner 1990).

The Ozma problem is asking whether "handedness" is a property of the observer or a property that can emerge from all inferences about the physical world that do not involve handedness. The analysis of the observer given above suggests that handedness is a property of the observer rather than simply a property of an object. As an example, a piece of paper cut out in the shape of a hand is left-handed when viewed from one side and right handed when viewed from the opposite side. This suggests that whether something is labelled left or right is a result of our point of view being a point and of the representation of objects within our experience being two dimensional. Gardner (1990) pointed out that the equivalent exercise of rotating an object through another spatial dimension allows a left handed object to become a right handed object and this is equivalent to allowing the observer to walk around the object.

Perhaps William James should have the last word on handedness: "If we take a cube and label one side top, another bottom, a third front, and a fourth back, there remains no form of words by which we can describe to another person which of the remaining sides is right and which left. We can only point and say here is right and there is left, just as we should say this is red and that blue" (James 1890, pointed out by McManus 2002).

Our experience is a set of vectors arranged around a point in both space and time and the separation between the vectors depends on their angular separation at the point. The whole assembly of vectors in space and time is a geometric object. As experimental scientists we should now scour our mathematical knowledge for a mathematical form that matches this empirical description. As will be shown in "A Theory of Consciousness", such forms are already known in mathematics.

There are two forms of knowledge that are of immediate importance in consciousness studies. The first is the experience of the relations between things and the second is the knowledge of this experience. Other forms of knowledge exist but, as Russell(1912) pointed out:

"Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted." (ie: constituents that can be part of present experience).

The experience of the relations between things is a geometrical form of knowledge because it is about what contains what. We can say that we know bodies have arms because the form of a human body in our experience has arms, similarly cars have wheels and trees have leaves and, conversely, leaves in general have plants. The relations between things allow the classification of one thing as part of another thing. This form of knowledge is an integral part of our experience where things are overlaid and arranged next to each other. Experience contains classification knowledge so knowledge is an integral part of experience.

Classification can be extended beyond concrete experience because we can also conceptualise classifications of abstract things by imagining classification diagrams where one circle wholly or partially contains another. Scientists routinely extend classification into the way that things change over time and will say that a set of events is a 'linear' or exponential' process etc. Classification knowledge is of central importance to science and reason.

But what of our knowledge of classification knowledge? This overarching knowledge contains all of experience and hence all other classifications available during a particular extended present. The reason that most explanations of consciousness fail to convince everyone is that there is always someone who will say "but how do I know that?" or even "how do I know I know that?". When a person says they know something the word "know" can mean all sorts of different things but what does it mean in this context? The experience that is "knowing that you know" persists even when the mind is quite empty. If you contemplate an object without any clutter of verbal thoughts in your mind you "know" you are still conscious even though there are no words to describe this knowing. But where and when is this "knowing"?

Descartes solution to this problem was to suggest that somehow the "knowing" was within or through the observation point in an extensionless place, the Res Cogitans that is supposed to contain our thoughts. Contrary to Descartes' view however, although unobservable thoughts might occur in an extensionless place it is only when they enter the space and time of experience that they become known.

If everything that is known has a location in mental space and time, is the "knowing" itself also located in mental space and time? As an example, you know that the second hand on a clock is moving. The experience of the second hand has a definite position in mental space and the hand must move before you can know it is moving but is the generalised "knowing" at the position of the second hand?

If we suppress verbal thoughts the "knowing" still persists and even if we suppress all things except light or dark the "knowing" remains. The suppression of all things in experience except light or dark is a difficult 'knack' of meditation. It is most easily done in a quiet, dark room with the eyes shut then, when a verbal thought occurs it is listened to, when a visual imagination occurs it is observed, if there is discomfort in the body it is relaxed, observed and relaxed again. Eventually a state can be obtained where everything is observed into nothing. All that remains is an infinite darkness stretching outwards or, if the eyes are pointed together and downwards, an extensive whiteness that seems to originate from behind the eyes. What is interesting is that "knowing" still persists.

If our experience is a field of just one thing, for instance dark or light plus spatial extension, then what has happened to time extension? Is "knowing" the same as continuity of the whole field of experience through time? When our experience is stable and blank our conscious experience is simply a continuity of mental space, our non-conscious brain seems to call this continuity "knowing".

Cases of people who are recovering from blindness confirm that there is a 'knowledge' that is continuity of space, which exists even when the ability to model the environment is missing. This is revealed clearly in the following account of a man recovering from blindness in which there is space but no models:

Once the modelling is successful it is possible to have relational knowledge. It should be noted however that this relational knowledge is not like the "difference" of semiotics (see bibliography), "black" is known as a zone of the qualia black, not as a difference from "white". Experience provides a space-time where mental things exist, they do not need to be known by reference to other concepts, they are forms in themselves. A "head", as a mental image, is a form in itself even though it acquires its meaning from being above "body". "Head above body" is also a form in itself and gives the words "head" and "body" a geometrical meaning that is not derived from "difference". Notice also how the man observed from a point but had no depth perception, things were spread out but at a point.

Speech and thought are extremely important in the awareness of this experience of time extended nothingness. If we meditate to achieve a blank field it is very difficult to resist internal verbalisations that describe or respond to the experience. The non-conscious brain can insert pending questions such as "is time extension the same as knowing?" and then provide a verbal answer that increases the experience that is awareness.

The way that knowledge is linked to continuity is also clear from the earlier observations on space, time and the observation point. Everything we experience is arranged in mental space and at any instant we experience successions of things in this mental space as the 'extended present'. The experience at any instant is available at any later instant as part of this 'extended present' so we can experience ourselves experiencing ourselves and call this 'knowledge of experience'.

This leads to a further question, if conscious observation is epiphenomenal then how can the non-conscious brain respond to it. How does the non-conscious brain know what the conscious brain "knows"?

Any comments?

This section does not affect the truth or falsehood of the 'empirical description of conscious experience' given above. It describes a possible theory of how an apparently epiphenomenal mind might work. It is a theoretical addendum to show that something that does not appear to have a function in terms of information theory could possibly be explained by some other approach. This point is especially important for readers who have scanned down to this part of the text and who have an antipathy for quantum theories of mind - this section in no way affects the validity of the previous sections.

The brain is composed of billions of tiny neurons that communicate with each other. The interactions between these things are governed by electromagnetic fields operating over small distances. If we were seeking a place where quantum mechanics might apply the micro-scale components of the brain would be an obvious candidate. Donald (1990) points out that the functioning of the brain depends on tiny switches and he asks how "the brain can possibly function as an information processor under a global quantum mechanical dynamics. At this level, even the existence of definite information is problematical.". Stapp (1996) was clear about this problem of quantum mechanics in the micro-scale components of the brain:

"The effect of quantum theory is essentially the same as it was in the Einstein example described earlier: the evolution controlled by the Schroedinger equation will produce, instead of one single body-world scheme, rather a continuum, consisting of a superposition of all the possibilities, with no one possibility singled out as the one that is actually experienced. Thus, for example, for every possibility in which a `synaptic event' ---the release of a vesicle of neuro-transmitter--- occurs there will be other superposed possibilities in which this event does not occur; and for every situation in which an action potential spike exists at one place along an axon there will be other superposed possibilities in which the spike is a little earlier, or a little later, and still others in which it is much earlier, or much later. To extract the actually experienced reality from this amorphous conglomerate of superposed possibilities one needs, according to the Heisenberg ontology accepted here, a transition from `possible' to `actual'. This transition is called an actualization event: it selects and actualizes one of the alternative possibilities generated by the Schroedinger-equation-controlled evolution. "

Penrose(1989) and Nanopoulos (1995) also consider that the brain will be influenced by quantum uncertainty.

Despite this quantum uncertainty in the brain your view of this page is a view of things in quite precise locations that are not a blur of overlapping possibilities. Our experience is a classical, not a quantum experience. Even though the softness of a piece of material seen across a room or the feeling of recognition of a face could depend on the firing of one neuron that might be subject to quantum effects we experience softness or a definite face, not a superposition of probabilities. This should make us suspect that something odd is happening in the brain at the level of quantum physics.

If we accept the speculations of the quantum theorists that some neural activity is undefined at the classical level then the problem of why we do not experience a superposition of a soft cloth and a hard sheet or a familiar face and the face of a stranger requires an answer. Is it possible that the geometric form of experience selects only one particular state for the brain?

This idea that only one state of the brain will be consistent with the geometry of conscious observation satisfies the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. In the Copenhagen Interpretation it is proposed that events that can, in principle, be observed by a classical, conscious observer will have a state that is not described by an extended wavefunction. This classical observation is a particular geometric form which we know as a 'view' and this form is self evidently part of the form that is conscious observation. This would mean that any non-conscious brain activity that is not consistent with the conscious view will not only fail to be seen but for all practical purposes will not even continue to exist.

Continuity must be an important element in the phenomenon of experiencing only one state for the brain because at any moment our conscious experience is a continuation of what occurred before. Whatever causes the selection of a particular brain state is closely related to the form of the preceding conscious experience. It is as if conscious experience provides a template for succeeding states of the brain. The principle template for neural processing would be the form of the sensory world derived fairly directly from the senses.

The non-conscious processes in the brain depend on the view; without it they would become wholly dependent on the statistical state of the world as perceivable by some other conscious observer. This means that the form of our conscious experience may control the state of our brain, not through simple processes such as sending signals from place to place, but by selecting only that state of the brain that is consistent with the presence of the conscious experience. (cf: Dennett & Kinsbourne's (1992) Multiple Drafts Model).

There are some unpalatable truths that must be confronted before the conscious brain can be understood. Firstly the conscious brain has little or no control of processes - it is not about this sort of control. Secondly nothing flows into the centre of the conscious brain; the viewing point and the content of the conscious brain are related by geometry not lumps of stuff buzzing back and forward between them. The epiphenomenal nature of experience demands that we come to terms with a self that is half conscious and half non-conscious. The non-conscious part is a set of processes and the conscious part is a geometric form composed of the output of many of these processes.

2: NEUROSCIENCE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

3: PHYSICAL SCIENCE FOR CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES

4: A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Any comments?

ã. Copyright by Alex Green 2003, not to be reproduced without permission.

Note 1: The idea that the universe is laid out as a dynamic map with the scientist as just another process within it is inherent in mathematical platonism and Naive Realism. The idea that we cannot make this assumption is inherent in the scientific method developed by Roger Bacon(1214-1294)

Note 2: Observations of conscious experience will inevitably involve descriptions such as 'I' observe or 'we' experience. This implies someone within experience experiencing it and, of course, this is the case, each of us is contained within our own experience. Conscious experience is complicated so the use of the personal pronoun in our descriptions should not be taken to imply any primitive physical model such as things flowing from one sort of experience to another.

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