Comments on Strawson's TLS review of Damasio. (TLS Oct 27, 2000) Galen Strawson reviewed in the (London) Times Literary Supplement Damasio's recent "The Feeling of What Happens". The review indicates some close connections between Damasio's theory and mine, and it may be useful to identify them. Strawson begins with the following comment: "Consciousness is an entirely private first-person phenomenon", and we must be grateful to Damasio for stating this obvious "Cartesian" truth so forthrightly at the beginning of *The Feeling of What Happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness*, if only because it has been so often denied in the twentieth century---the silliest of all centuries, philosophically speaking. I would not dispute Strawson's assessment of the philosophy of the twentieth century: it surely will be recogized, eventually, as a desperate last attempt to salvage the classical conception of Nature based on the Principle's postulated in Newton's Principia, supplemented by the classical ideas of Maxwell and Einstein. It will be a valuable lesson: a century-long effort attesting to the inadequacy of those concepts, and the extremes to which philosophers went in their attempt to hang onto those classical ideas. Of course, physicists discovered the inadequacy of the classical concepts, in the first quarter of the century. but the intense scrutiny by philosophers buttresses the earlier conclusion of the physicists. Strawson goes on to say: GS: The standard formulation of the "mind-body problem" rests on a huge and wholly unjustified assumption (this assumption is Descartes deepest error). ... The root cause of the mistake is the unsupported assumption that current physics---or indeed ordinary experience in its own modest but compelling way --- gives us a pretty good fix on the fundamental nature of matter, and shows it to be utterly qualitatively unlike consciousness. It is only relative to this assupmtion that the existence of consciousness in a material world seems in any way mystifying, for there is nothing particularly puzzling about consciousness as it is in itself. We know just what it is like--- or at least what certain forms of it are like. ...(some simple examples)... all this shows the inadequacy of our best [he should have said "classical"] picture of matter. Locke, Hume, Priestly, Kant and others were very clear about this, but few understand it today. GS: The first problem of consciousness, then, the mind-body problem, is just a vivid proof of our ignorance of the nature of matter. HPS: The primary revelation of quantum theory is that "matter" is made of "mind" [See below for an amendment to this misleading statement, which carries connotations contrary to my intent] : If one just examines how quantum theory works in actual practice this fact is plainly evident. The way quantum theory actually works in practice is that human experiences is transcribed by empirically developed rules into a mathematical structure that evolves in accordance with objective laws that are closely analogous to the objective laws of motion of classical physical theory, and this evolving mathematical structure determines propensities for later experiences to occur. Thus what "matter" directly *represents* is our knowledge, and propensities for future "knowings" to occur. And in the most straightforward formulation of what is happening this mathematical structure undergoes sudden "jumps" when new "knowings" occur, and these jumps are completely incompatible with the classical idea of matter, but totally compatible with the idea that the mathematical structure represents an objective sort of knowledge. Many physicist abhor this idea that consciousness is playing a real role, and that "matter" is somehow built out of mental stuff, and they thus search for ways to get the observer out of quantum theory. But no quantum physicist can deny that this is the way quantum theory works in actual practice, and that trying to go beyond this knowledge-based formulation leads to deep problems and puzzles that were not encountered in the case of classical physical theory. GS: The second problem of consciousness, according to Damasio, who makes a highly original contribution at this point, is the problem of the self ...how "the *appearance* of an owner and observer for the movie ...is generated *within* the movie." Damasio argues that all conscious experience involves some sort of sense of self in the act of knowing. HPS: I also stressed point that "This felt `self' is simply *part* of the experience." (MM&QM p. 160) GS: His pivotal terms --- "proto-self", "core consciousness" and "core self", "extented consciousness", and "autobiographical self". GS: "The proto-self is the continuously updated, many-faceted representation in the brain of the body." HPS: This is the body part of my body-world schema. MM&QM p. 150,151, 154, 156, 164. GS: "The core self is the `protagonist of consciousness' moment by moment. It is a `feeling-image' of the organism "caught in the act of representing its own changing state as it goes about representing something else." HPS: This seems to be my generalized body-word schema MM&QM p. 164, 156 elsewhere called body-world-mind schema. The `autobiographical self' seems to be my "historical" body-world schema. GS: "All actual experiences are had by core selves existing in rapid succession." HPS: This cements the close correspondence between Damasio's theory and mine, which describes how these selves come into existence in association with conscious experiences. HPS: I have not yet looked at Damasio's book itself, but the Strawson's description suggests that Damasio's work can begin to fill in the neurobiology of my theory, and that my theory may begin to fill in the physics behind Damasio's, and in particular how the conscious experiences are actually dynamically linked to the brain, and act efficaciously upon the brain. Strawson emphasizes this lacuna in Damasio's account: GS: "but an evolutionary explanation of this kind would not amount to any kind of explanation of how it is that consciousness can exist at all, given the nature of the brain as revealed by physics and neurophysiology, and Damasio has little to say about this. Rightly, I think, for there is nothing much to say, or that needs to be said," HPS: A lot *can* be said, if one goes over to quantum theory. And it *needs* to be said if one is to have a rationally coherent conception of how mind and brain can represent two linked dynamical processes, one of which is the local-causal brain process and the other of which contains the experiences that constitute our human acts of knowing and causing. -------------------------------------------------- From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Sat Nov 18 12:27:49 2000 Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 10:08:21 -0800 (PST) From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov To: Ken Augustyn , Subject: Re: Strawson/Damasio (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Subject: Re: Strawson/Damasio Dear Ken, This letter to Kathy and Pat applies equally to you. Thanks for your similar criticism. Henry On Tue, 14 Nov 2000, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote: > Henry, > > >The primary revelation of quantum theory is that "matter" > >is made > >of "mind"... ... > > You have said frequently that matter is made of mind. > You often seem > to equate collapses with consciousness: no consciousness, > no collapse. This is an aspect of your thinking that > sets the Pat > Hayeses and Aaron Slomans on edge. Dear Kathy and Pat, I accept your criticisms. My statement > >The primary revelation of quantum theory is that "matter" > >is made > >of "mind"... is misleading. Human consciousness, and the brains that support it, is, in my view, the consequence of a long evolution from simpler systems, and the theory will not be complete until some description of that evolutionary process is supplied. Indeed, the paper "The emergence of consciousness" that I am currently writing (and whose draft introduction I recently sent) is about this evolutionary process. The primitive systems will possess nothing that is very similar to human consciousness, but they are the physical substrate of quantum collapses. So the basic problem is to formulate a plausible scenario for what controls the collapses at the primitive level, such that this primitive process and system could be naturally expected to gradually evolve into human mind/brains. So the "mind" that I had in mind was not human consciousness. It was a much more general sort of stuff. My usual statement that the "matter" of classical physical theory is replaced by "active information" (in that the quantum state is a compendium of "bits" of information that specify the propensities for later bits to be added) is the more accurate formulation. But the dynamical behaviour of this structure, with its quantum jumps, is ontologically similar to "knowledge". That was the point that I was trying to make. But I agree that my statement was too strong. In the final analysis the full structure has both mind-like and matter-like aspects, and the dynamics must specify their connection. Thanks for the valid criticism. Henry