A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious
By Brandon Keim, Wired Magazine
It’s a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves.
But how it arises from chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer.
According to Koch, consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system.
All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the internet could be. That’s just the way the universe works.
“The electric charge of an electron doesn’t arise out of more elemental properties. It simply has a charge,” says Koch. “Likewise, I argue that we live in a universe of space, time, mass, energy, and consciousness arising out of complex systems.”
What Koch proposes is a scientifically refined version of an ancient philosophical doctrine called panpsychism — and, coming from someone else, it might sound more like spirituality than science.
But Koch has devoted the last three decades to studying the neurological basis of consciousness. His work at the Allen Institute now puts him at the forefront of the BRAIN Initiative, the massive new effort to understand how brains work, which will begin next year.
KOCH'S IDEAS - Excerpts of interview with Wired Magazine
It's not that any physical system has consciousness. A black hole, a heap of sand, a bunch of isolated neurons in a dish, they're not integrated. They have no consciousness. But complex systems do. And how much consciousness they have depends on how many connections they have and how they’re wired up.
In the case of the brain, it’s the whole system that’s conscious, not the individual nerve cells. For any one ecosystem, it’s a question of how richly the individual components, such as the trees in a forest, are integrated within themselves as compared to causal interactions between trees.
The philosopher John Searle, in his review of Consciousness, asked, “Why isn’t America conscious?”
After all, there are 300 million Americans, interacting in very complicated ways. Why doesn’t consciousness extend to all of America? It’s because integrated information theory postulates that consciousness is a local maximum.
While you and I are conscious as individuals, there’s no conscious Übermind that unites us in a single entity. You and I are not collectively conscious.
It’s the same thing with ecosystems. In each case, it’s a question of the degree and extent of causal interactions among all components making up the system.
Is the internet more complex than the human brain? It depends on the degree of integration of the internet.
Our brains are connected all the time. On the internet, computers are packet-switching. They’re not connected permanently, but rapidly switch from one to another.
But according to my version of panpsychism, it feels like something to be the internet — and if the internet were down, it wouldn’t feel like anything anymore. And that is, in principle, not different from the way I feel when I’m in a deep, dreamless sleep.
(Koch does not kill insects, although he defends the use of animals in science labs.) They’re fellow travelers on the road, bookended by eternity on both sides.
The theory also says you can have simple systems that are conscious, and complex systems that are not. The cerebellum should not give rise to consciousness because of the simplicity of its connections.
Read full interview - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness/all/
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UNRELATED AND JUST FOR FUN
2008 science fiction book "WATERMIND" by M.M. Buckner
"From storm drains, illegal dumps, and flooded landfills, all in North America's most advanced technology flows doen the Mississippi River - microchips, nanodevices, pharmaceutials, genetically modified seed - and lodges in the Lousiana delta.
"Out of this mire emerges a self-organized neural net, drifting in the water: the Watermind. It can freeze, boil, consense, and move - seemingly at will."
A very intriguing central idea. I recommend it.
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