Treatise on the Neurophilosophy of Consciousness: A Multidisciplinary Biopsychosocial (Bps) Model

By Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra

I would like to invite all those studious of the mind/brain interface puzzle to share our insights. What follows represents an ongoing series of reflections on the ontology of consciousness based on some intuitions on life, language acquisition and survival strategies to accommodate the biological, psychic and social imperatives of human life in its ecological niche, thus the BPS model. For the latest publication click on BPS Model. http://www.delaSierra-Sheffer.net/ID-Neurophilo-net/index.htm

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466948990

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra

After so many years of laboring within the confined university walls of academe, retirement becomes both a threat and a challenge. Never before did you have the time to follow up on the few occasions serendipitous enlightenments flashed across your path. Tenure and cost-efficient, pragmatic considerations always kept you away. But there is no excuse now. Is it worth it? I would like to invite all those studious of the mind/brain interface puzzle to share our insights. What follows represents an ongoing series of reflections on the ontology of consciousness based on some intuitions on life, language acquisition, and survival strategies to accommodate the biological, psychic, and social imperatives of human life in its ecological niche, thus the BPS model. For the latest publication, click on BPS Model. http://www.delaSierra-Sheffer.net/ID-Neurophilo-net/index.htm

Book preview

TREATISE ON THE

NEUROPHILOSOPHY OF

CONSCIOUSNESS

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL (BPS) MODEL

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Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq.

© Copyright 2012, 2014 Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4900-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-4899-0 (e)

Trafford rev. 08/29/2014

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MAIN TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME ONE

VOLUME TWO

VOLUME THREE

VOLUME FOUR

VOLUME FIVE

VOLUME SIX

VOLUME SEVEN

VOLUME

ONE

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Is There Insensible Life?

2 Man of the Millenium, Immanuel Kant

3 Thinking About My Thoughts

4 The Bridge Between the Transfinite and Infinity

5 Visceral Brain, Language and Thought

6 The Natural Life of Thoughts

7 The Two ‘Faces’ of the Brain

8 The Emotional Variable in the ‘Logic’ Equation

9 Working Language Memory & Emergence of Self

10 Subconscious Awareness in Language Development

11 Concatenation of Different Levels of Cognitive Processing

12 Regenerative Semantics & Generative Grammar in Proto-Linguistic Organ

13 Soliloquy with my Virtual Image

14 Qualitative Jump to Self-Consciousness

15 Loosening the Gordian Knot of Consciousness

16 Ruminations on the Essence and Existence of Consciousness

17 Phenomenal Consciousness as a Survival Strategy

18 Free Will as a Survival Strategy

19 Aesthetics, Choreography of Consciousness

20 Judeo-Chrislamic Theology, Strategy for Psycho-Social Survival

21 Conceptual Consciousness, as a Strategy For Survival

22 Sociology in the BPS Model Model of Consciousness

23 Ruminations on Post-Modern Law

24 Summary

Epilogue

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

We start this narrative by announcing that this work is ‘all about consciousness’. Most of the chapters have been published before in print or cyberspace by Telicom (Journal for the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry), Noesis-E (e-Journal for Mega Society International), Gift of Fire (Journal for Prometheus Society) and Perfection (French e-Journal for Pi Society), all high IQ publications whose fellow members / subscribers have generously provided peer reviews and comments. The content is multidisciplinary, covering a wide spectrum of subjects as can be surmised from the chapter titles. Accordingly we have tried to keep the technical nomenclature at a minimum and increase the level of complexity gradually, usually in relation with personal anecdotes to bring complex abstractions understandable to unfamiliar readers from other disciplines. Even among neuroscientists and philosophers one of the biggest problems in communicating is to agree as to what is meant by ‘mind and consciousness’. The global unit of consciousness contains many levels or states as will be evident. We find it useful to identify at the very outset the level of organization whence we speak, whether the quantum mechanical or the gross anatomical, being always careful to state whether the argument is from an ontological or epistemological perspective, e.g, are we talking about being conscious of this ontological dog in front of me barking now or an epistemological representation of that dog or all dogs?

With that caveat let’s see what we mean when we talk about the highest state of global consciousness as a unit or about a modular sub-unit constituent thereof. With that in mind we will see how this global unity may be structured based on experimental data, logical inferences and outright brainstorms.

Being globally conscious means being able—at a given point in space / time—to simultaneously access all of the various relevant subsets of the present highest state of consciousness according to their content and immediate / mediate relevance based on their own internal and external variable relationships. Consciousness may be conveniently compartmentalized according to neuro-anatomico / physiological (‘connectivists’) structural models but, beyond that, it can also be conceived as a global unit whose various components can be functionally summoned to a brief center-stage appearance at ‘will’. This, according to an updated version of the Kantian organizational premise briefly developed in the first 2 chapters. We can find similarly undeveloped thoughts in Descartes, Leibniz, William James, Chalmers and others, all of which had to tentatively concede about the ‘sine qua non’ reality of ‘dualism’ and ‘epiphenomena’, a theme we will constantly be referring to when identifying the brain as the necessary but insufficient seat of mind and consciousness. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) remains to this date the best reference to capture the complexity of this issue that still baffles the best professional analytical philosophers three centuries later. In our opinion Kant’s greatest contribution to universal knowledge was linking the physical world of ‘chaotic sensations’ (objects / events) presented to our sense organs to our global ‘logical’ mind representation of them by mediation of his now famous ‘categorical imperatives’, a masterpiece of transcendental deduction. One may disagree today on the limitations inherent in his characterization of the ‘fundamental categories’ that must be satisfied by any object / event to ‘exist in experience’, including those parameters subject to quantitative measurement, qualitative description and their relationships thereof, but what we cannot disagree on is in his clear argument (‘modal concepts’) as to whether ‘objects’ such as mind, etc. or events such as extra-sensory phenomena, DO exist! These are the ‘things’ we cannot identify ontologically but nonetheless experience, an existence without defined ontological attributes or reality in se. The big problem that Kant had, and still exists today, was to explain how can we assign such ‘existence’ a causal efficiency over sense-phenomenal objects / events, e.g., how can the mind guide us to act or not? This theme is reiterated in chapter 18 and others when we discuss ‘free will’. For consciousness to become a global reality it requires a causal concatenation of all its atomic elements whether ontologically present or not. We suggest in chapter 11 and others the possible intermediates in the flow of information between sense objects and their thought representation (in their physical absence) according to a scheme presented in chapter 1. To better understand all of these causal relationships it becomes necessary to agree on the contribution and meaning (semantics) of each of the subset components of global consciousness. At the very outset we distinguish between sense—phenomenal ‘awareness’ (e.g., qualia) and conceptual ‘consciousness’ as we discuss more in detail in chapters 17 & 21 towards the end of the book. The realization of a ‘quale’ state paradoxically may not require more than an unconscious or subconscious level for an adaptive response, if any, to ensue as a result. Have you ever tried to mentally balance your bank account while driving downhill along that steep but familiar winding road? The global conscious state requires a higher order of awareness we call ‘self-consciousness’, a type of self-referential indexical ability as verified by special psychological tests as discussed in chapters 9 & 10. The lack of precision and consistency in the use of these terms still represents a big obstacle to communication among neuroscientists and neuro-philosophers alike as observed. Besides the ordinary ‘on-line’ phenomenal experience of wakefulness from normal sleep, coma or anesthesia we must be at all times aware of the level of organization and complexity under discussion, whether it be an online direct sense-phenomenal viewing of an object / event (e.g., the dog) or an off-line viewing of its mental representation in its absence (e.g., a dog). These ‘experiences’ may initially be passive and even unconscious unless they trigger a life-preserving reflex as discussed in chapters 5 & 8. At yet another higher level we start becoming conscious of a particular mental representation without being necessarily self-conscious as protagonists of an ongoing process of making choices among that and other relevant mental representations to assure biological, psychological and social preservation in that order, an even higher level of organizational complexity. Once availed of the alternatives at hand we reach what Block (1995) called the Access (A) state of consciousness where the global integration of pre-motor activity gets translated into motor adaptive control of thought and action. This illustrates the highest level of organization, the global and simultaneous integration of relevant on-line sense-phenomenal ontologies, off-line sense-phenomenal representations, conceptual representations and a command and control self-consciousness overview. This global unit reveals the functional unit it must be with its underlying causal concatenation whether a missing link has been ontologically defined or not. After giving much thought to this ‘intringulis’ we came to realize the un-surmountable hurdles that standard scientific methodology would face and also the dangers of returning back to an exclusive Aristotelian deductive methodology, especially when you have Wittgenstein and Popper watching you! Perhaps if we adopt the functional premise (based on empirical evidence and careful inferences) that the global integration of consciousness is predicated on the biopsychosocial (BPS) preservation of the human species; that most of which activity operates at unconscious and subconscious levels. The free will of choice is based on the release or inhibition of accumulated bps wisdom (where inherited features play a major role in deterministic ways). This way we could integrate the physical with the non-physical domains, the genetic past with the acquired present as we discuss in chapters 4, 15 and others ahead. This approach should be considered a natural extension of an equivalent earlier anlage we published earlier (Biopsicosociología, Ed. Limusa 1985).

To get a better perspective of the complexity of an integral global consciousness one must start with an orienting lower magnification optics in focus to distinguish between an overall global integration of the totality of levels of consciousness and then focus on a higher magnification view of a localized integration within the various overlapping subsets thereof as mentioned above. Each subset, whether sense-phenomenal consciousness or conceptual consciousness have to integrate their own subsets to achieve localized unity and be amenable to be accessed to become part of a higher level consciousness build-up call. To illustrate, one should be able to integrate with high fidelity all the attributes or categories pertaining a sensed object’s brain representation (e.g., the dogs color, shape, sounds, etc.) to conform a unit (quale) poised to be accessed by a higher level consciousness function in progress as part of a complex puzzle being assembled. An equivalent local subset integration can be invoked to apply to other modular subsets like e.g., ‘conceptual consciousness’ that requires several semantic / syntactic constitutive elements to achieve its local unit integration.

This model may not require necessarily a thalamic pointed reticular activation activity directed synchronically (simultaneously) at all the individual sub-units, it may just require a genetically pre-ordained sequential diachronical activation at almost the speed of light (via peritubular ordered-water clathrate structure?) giving the impression of simultaneity because of a ‘flicker-fusion-type’ resolution, like in cinema productions. One may even conceive of an ordered ‘chaos’ where a ‘consuetudinary’ mix of genetic / environmental codelet prerrogatives poise themselves as the best weighted synaptic bridge available to be recruited to become elements in a concerted response at that particular moment in time and space or hyperspace. The choice constituency of Edelman’s view as we discuss briefly in some chapters.

This introduction would be incomplete without a brief mention of the deterministic role our inner body homeostatic staus plays in shaping our ‘adaptive’ biopsychosocial (BPS) survival responses to life-threatening situations. We have included several chapters, 5, 6, 7 on the important role the autonomic nervous system unconscious, self-preserving servo controls play in the final global adaptive strategy of bps survival. We regret that the stochastic nature of the homeostatic servo controls has eluded our failed attempts to mathematically integrate that modus operandi into the classical sequential or paralell processing paradigms.

In maturing our BPS model of consciousness we also tried to integrate all of the real life elements that experientially play a role in determining our social behavior. All aspects of our model have been subordinated to the larger premise that man is the measure of all ‘things’, whether ontologically characterized or epistemologically inferred. That includes all factors bearing on successful adaptive strategies for BPS survival and focuses on the physical, emotional and spiritual integrity of self including the relative importance to BPS survival of beliefs, motives, intuitions, desires, goals, brain-controlled ‘perceptions’, etc. See chapters 19 & 20 for further development.

We have also tried (in a very primitive way and with little success so far) to accommodate the reasonable claim of physicalists to be more specific and identify in the physical brain the loci where all this philosophical drama unfolds. In a nutshell, in the BPS model, the amygdaloid complex comes into play as a first line of defense to protect the human species when confronting potential life-threatening stimuli by first utilizing a fast multineuronal route to briefly inhibit first any reflex response while the hippocampus complex analyzes the context surrounding the stimuli based on past recorded memory. This double analysis starts with the amygdaloid classification of the environmental stimulus as potential life-threatening according to its genetic memory of the species. If there is an amigdaloid match and a reflex alert inhibition the hippocampus formation meanwhile evaluates the initial amygdaloid inherited data bank information in relation to the relevant contextual information in the hippocampal data base to get a more complete picture about the potential threat. If stimulus and context agree, the amygdala will release from inhibition the appropriate neuro-hormonal mechanisms in preparation for an adaptive Cannon response of fight or flight based on the double analysis integrating genetic past, acquired past with perceptual present. We can illustrate by observing newborn chicks in a cage calmly viewing a projector slide of a moving ‘genetically’ familiar ‘duck’ with its long neck and short tail. As soon as the motion vector of the same bird is inverted showing now a bird with a short neck and long tail moving forwards, chaos ensues inside the cage to escape from the ‘eagle’ predator! As it turns out, the global adaptive, coordinated response is itself predicated on the functional integrity of the participating modular subsets as illustrated by clinical data when this premise fails giving rise to pathological responses based on either a malfunction of the sensory organ input, a defective amygdaloid processing of original object / event sense input or a defective hippocampal formation context memory processing. These defects may be inherited or environmentally acquired and may provide a rational basis to develop strategies in the treatment of psychiatric cases. The invariant protocol is the hard wired maintennance of biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium at any cost as we have developed as our ‘lei motif’ in several chapters.

Fortunately, the clinical armamentarium of technological sophistication has been very useful in analyzing the complexities of both the sensory input and the adaptive motor response because we have developed technologies that dramatically increase the resolution of our sensory apparattus (fMRI, PET, etc.) and the resolution of our brain combinatorial capacities by the use of supercomputers. But we often ignore the fact that there still exist limits and in its consequence, and largely based on the dramatic successes of this technology, a new physicalist credo has been developed aimed at predicting by faith that ‘phenomena’ beyond this modern resolution will likewise be reduced to the formulas and equations of the natural sciences. No doubt this should be the goal of every neuroscientist or neurophilosopher to express findings in a language we all are conversant with, logic. The only problem with this approach is that it tragically narrows down the search to directly observable object / events that can be reliably measured and best fitted into known mathematical formulae that allows predictability, the ‘raison d’etre’ of science. The unarticulated premise in this approach is that anything outside the science ‘horse blinders’ does not exist, and if it does it will somehow—by an act of science faith—be conformed to the rules of scientific investigation for which it was not meant! The analytic philosophy tool of metaphysics provides a viable alternative to expands the horizons and reach of science like mathematics has done for science. This has been largely our approach in search for an understanding of mind and consciousness, the black box between the sensory input and the motor adaptive output.

After the publication of Darwin’s Blackbox by Dr. Behe where he describes the ‘irreducible complexity’ of some biological macromolecular assemblies, this novel event was followed by an equally unexpected result. A careful mathematical statistical analysis of this complexity by Dr. W. Dembski of our Mega Foundation, especially when the supercomplexity is specified for a particular function requiring simultaneous spatio-temporal structural and functional integrity. The verifiable results obtained would lead any honest, objective observer to conclude that a scientific model like Darwinian evolution is grossly inadequate (from a probabilistic point of view) to explain ‘specified irreducible complexity’ and that there is needed a ‘design’ to explain the fact of ‘irreducible complexity’ as we find in some macromolecular assemblies, let alone the brain or the fact of self-consciousness. The identity of the ‘intelligent designer’ has never been proposed by the Intelligent Design model but that won’t stop the religionists from the physicalist faith from dismissing these facts with a short-sighted reflex play back of pre-kinder theology: trying to bring God by the back door.

We feel that the proper reaction by the physicalist parishioners should be to try to identify the ‘designer’ using whatever methodology need be used, including a new logic, before claiming the reducibility of all of reality. We should, meanwhile, continue incorporating the results from the natural sciences into our metaphysical logic armamentarium to see how far that caboose mix will haul the train for us. One of the best sources of relevant information related to the possible ontology of mind and consciousness comes from the clinical pathology labs. We have incorporated those results in several chapters. One of the most dramatic discoveries comes from split-brain preparations (commissurotomies) isolating both cerebral hemispheres (cutting across corpus callosum interhemispheric nerve connections) to prevent epileptic electrical activity from spreading to a normal half. Does each half behave like a global distinct unit, two personalities dissociated? As we discuss in chapter 15?, in the normal person, there is only one personality where various modules of activity are globally interconnected by neural exchanges (codelets) of information as discussed elsewhere. But one may ask: how is the information getting to the other hemisphere side if not via lower subcortical levels of connectivities?, if so, does that low level operate for all degrees of complexity? Here is a test: one district attorney-patient is presented with the familiar word prosecute so that half of the word goes to one hemisphere and the rest to the other (e.g., prose is proyected to left side of retina and reaches the left ‘talking hemisphere’ and cute to the right side of retina and reaches the non-dominant right hemisphere) and then tested for comprehension (semantics). If the D.A. now has the choice of verbal or non-verbal explanation (e.g., choosing a related object with the hand) one finds that when asked to explain his viewing (with right retina shielded) he will talk about novelists, poetry, etc. write the word prose with right hand and may grab or point with same hand a book by Shakespeare. If now the left retina is shielded while viewing the same word he will not be able to verbally signify the meaning but he has understood by first writing cute and grabbing with left hand a picture of Jennifer Lopez when asked to choose among different not-so-cute profiles. When asked to explain his unshielded view he will say prose while oving his left hand to write cute, simultaneously! Imagine a district attorney not being able to understand the word prosecute when communicating via sub-cortical levels of inter-hemispheric connectivities still available? This patient can lead a pretty normal life because there still remains an asynchronous capacity for attaining a globalization unit of consciousness. There is a wealth of information that is provided when the two halves cannot act synchronously in similar repeatable experiments. We discuss a similar case of asynchronously mediated unit globalization in another chapter. In other less fortunate cases we find a diachronic dissociation of the patient’s identity while still maintaining a global unit of consciousness; each organized subset of consciousness appearing on stage at different times, the rest being held in check by an apparent selective hippocampal inhibition (amnesia), the case of multiple personalities. The global unit function is even maintained in cases of the poorly understood ‘hemi-neglect’ where the sensory arm of sensory perceptive and body propioceptive input into the central processing unit is intact but the processing goes haywire resulting in that information about the position and location of the affected part of the body is lost and neglected, usually affecting half of the body. As we discuss in another chapter the future strategy of psychotherapy should be aimed at restoring the dynamic interactive equilibrium between the modules participating. If this synchronization is achieved there is hope because the global unit is present from a connectivist view point but in need of a ‘reset’ for correct re-routings of information flow vectors.

Where the equilibrium parameters between the on-line perceptual environment reality, the internal homeostatic settings (visceral brain) and the conscious self become disintegrated there will be not just a functional split of consciousness like the other cases mentioned, there will also be a disconnection with existential reality because of a loss of the global integrity resulting in a further loss of the ability to respond adaptively even against stimuli duly registered as a threat to life. The etiology of schizophrenia is more than an imbalance in the availability of neurotransmitters as is often simplified to be by the physicalists. Intuitions are poor substitutes of raw experimental data but we are inclined to believe that in all other cases discussed above the subject was able to introspectively find his (first person) self in a relationship to the physical environment and his psychic state. But in cases of schizophrenia there is not a continuous introspective ability to connect and realize the existence of the self as the centerpiece in the drama of existence in that specious moment. In the absence of good objective laboratory or clinical experimental data we, and others, have resorted to metaphysical modeling to extend the valuable but limited data supplied by the science methodology. This represents the bulk of the late chapters of this work. This work is a natural extension of a previous published work which hoped to have had a solid neurophysiological foundation on which to speculate. Now we have updated the available research data and dared to embark on a metaphysical neurophilosophical journey that often seems one-way with no port of disembarking in sight. But our ‘flights of fancy’ are deeply rooted in empirical data as far as it will take us into an understanding the ontology of mind and consciousness, if there be such. All options are opened, including the possibility of an ‘intelligent design’ paradigm as we mentioned above. For the sake of a clear communication leading to a better understanding of our biopsychosocial (bps) model of consciousness we have opted for a sequence of presentation based on increasing levels of complexity (rather than a logical presentation) leaving the ‘hard’ question of self consciousness proper for the last chapters when a familiarity with basic philosophical concepts would have been developed along in previous chapters.

The angular stone of the BPS model is based on our systematic observation of a hierarchy of unavoidable human activities whether unconscious, subconscious or conscious, all aimed at the preservation of the structural / functional integrity of biological, psychic and social life, in that order. As we elaborate further in several chapters, our approach considers language (verbal or not) as central in linking genetic past, specious present with acquired past as modified by our psyche in trying to maintain a BPS ‘survival equilibrium’.

We have left no stone unturned having covered practically the entire spectrum of human endeavor, from physics to philosophy through mathematics, biomedicine and law, albeit admittedly biased and narrowed down by our premises. If successful we hope this model will be expanded into a theory of everything (TOE) by incorporating cosmological principles.

To give the reader an idea of the scope of our presentation we will briefly focus now on the neurophilosophical background on which the later chapters rest.

The very first chapter lays the foundation for a global understanding of life and consciousness. It starts with a partial adoption of Kant’s premises as a starting point, stressing, among other things, on the way the ‘chaos of sensations’ perceived by the senses gets unit integration at the sense organ level and then becomes digitally differentiated and distributively organized into brain categories for future parsing activity, especially when the object / event perceived is absent and we must remember its features for future recognition by a comparison analysis based on a selective integration of the different categories stored, the ‘phenomenal binding process’. This now becomes the new reality whether it coincides or not with the ontology ‘in se’ of the perceptual object out there in the environment. Reality is in our brains and, as modified by experience thereafter, will guide our behavior for the rest of our natural lives.

As the reader may have suspected, ‘free will’ is an obligatory theme in any discussions on consciousness, especially as it pertains to enforcing statutory criminal measures in individuals unable to control their acts, the ‘creatures of uncontrollable circumstances’. In our examination of this and related themes we find, un-expectedly, that a large proportion of our ordinary existence is carried on by unconscious and subconscious servo control mechanisms that formulate a plan of action (hopefully adaptive) in response to a novel situation when so encountered. We find that to be a reasonable expectation except that we humans still hold the conscious control of the relay mechanism releasing or inhibiting the flow of the plan’s strategic information to motor effectors. This control we choose to call the proximate ‘cause of action’ or free will. This is in our opinion, the only way to explain the exclusively human decisions contrary to self preservation interests as found in heroic or altruistic actions as elaborated in some chapters.

It is not unusual to find clinical investigators whose function is to find correlative disease patterns from the history, ‘review of systems’, and the results coming from different labs or clinical wards, from Nagel to Damasian. Very useful descriptions of ‘syndromes’ have been historically discovered by intelligent clinicians by just examining clinical records. Likewise very useful conclusions were found by arm-chair lab-coatless scientists examining the lab work of others as exemplified by Watson & Crick’s Nobel prize model of DNA structure as it relates to the ‘code of life’. Un-assailed by the known complexity of ‘consciousness’ studies, Crick launched into its investigation hoping to find an explanation of consciousness by first focusing on visual processing of sense-phenomenal data from receptor—> retina—> thalamus—> visual cortex—>—> visual representation of sense data. After a comprehensive evaluation of relevant data we find Crick’s model of the ‘binding problem’ a very important result but nonetheless restricted to visual sense phenomenal data, what Chalmers has called the easy problem as compared with the ‘explanatory gap’ there still exists when trying to explain ‘self-consciousness’, the real ‘hard problem’. His ‘binding problem’ solution may turn out to be useful when explaining the initial steps in the attainment of global unity, i.e., when explaining the unconscious formation of the integrated subset module representing the sense-phenomenal object / event encountered via recursive thalamo-cortical loops of activity involving the reticular activating system (RAS) as discussed in chapter 8?. This falls rather short of our goal but may prove to be a great start. How does that initial, unconscious sense-phenomenal visual representation codelet becomes poised to be accessed by an ongoing higher level processing and integrated as a necessary piece of a mosaic or into a comprehensive strategy plan of action for a motor adaptive response is discussed in chapters 6 & 7?. The big issue from this point on hinges on whether further unconscious processing involve underlying transformations of symbol coded representations of the classical cognitive scientists or the attractive leading edge phase space vector transformations of Llinas and Pellionisz. Nobelist Edelman and Dennet expand on the latter by suggesting the enlistment of one or more neuronal coalitions competing for dominance in the ongoing cognitive activity, each representing a conscious state yet to be explained. The relevant information code whether as symbols, sentential segments or neuronal firing pattern is the object of much current debate between cognitive scientists and the quantum mechanical persuasions. We find both formulas acceptable except that, at the present state of the art, a cognitive approach will be more manageable if it does not lose sight of the great possibilities of the hyper-dimensional macro-quantum mechanical approach, especially when we consider the great speed of signal transmission along structured water clathrate configurations of quantum mechanical fields perturbations as discussed in chapter 9?.

Finally, the role natural language plays in the conformation and functioning of the all encompassing global consciousness, that we hoped would be our biggest contribution to the study of consciousness, has turned out to generate more questions and abstractions than we had hoped to answer and bargain for. As discussed in chapters 12, 21, 22 and many others, we had hoped to give a complete ambitious description of the amygdaloid complex as the natural candidate for the seat of consciousness based primarily on its well documented participation (with the hippocampal formation) in coordinating the avoidance reflex response. We called the peri-sylvian area connecting Heschl-Wernickes region to Broca’s area the ‘proto-linguistic organ’ (plo). We labored hard to weave together a metalinguistic distributed net headquartered at ‘plo’ and including nativist considerations on syntax, semantics, referentials, phonology, truth values, pragmatics, vector space network theory and DNA encoded language. We even thought we had found the 4-d coordinates for Chomsky’s generative grammar as the same locus for a regenerative semantics as embodied by the ‘plo’. There we could combine both elements (universal grammar & protosemantics) and bring to life a comprehensive theory of meaning linking figures, noises, marks and body movements as different manifestations reducible in principle to ‘propositional attitudes’ configured in syntax structure and semantics, the beginnings of a veritable truth-conditional theory of meaning of high coherence value. We laid the foundations based on a reinterpretation of Piaget’s theory on language acquisition by the newborn as discussed in chapter 5 and elsewhere.

In our opinion, the focus of any such investigation should be on analyzing the relative priority of verbal and non-verbal language and thought formation and / or transmission. Language is either causally efficient in producing thought or depends on it, they co-exist independently or are mutually dependent on each other. The first hurdle is clearly seen when considering causality relations between two different domains, the physical language (or its symbolic representation thereof) and the non-physical ‘thought’. The choice approach then narrows down to an epistemological argumentation where an ontological straight jacket for an ephemeral ‘thought entity’ is avoided. We can see that it is more reliable to analyze language as the basis of thought than the opposite approach requiring more speculative activity when analyzing what content of thought is causing language generation. Besides, the only way we can be sure about A’s thought content is by way of A’s first person account language narrative. Analytically speaking, the choices are clear: either we get more tangible results concentrating on analyzing linguistic syntacto-semantic structure as being causal to thought or get lost analyzing the elusive vagaries about the ‘intentionality’ content of thought or mental states as causal of the logic structure of language. The latter, besides being counter-intuitive, would have to depend more on self referential accounts of language users about the beliefs and intentional mental states allegedly preceding the corresponding language formulation on the basis of a questionable co-variation of thought and language, teleological wishful thinking or an unconscious self-serving functional scheme (the ‘Gricean approach’?). It was based on these possible outcomes that we put our stock on a language precursor especially after having tentatively established the proto-linguistic organ (plo) as the putative site for the ensemble of thoughts, an attractive connectionist view of how the mind operates. We also thought that it would give the clinician an additional logic tool to predict psychic etiologies of disease based on mental state narratives as an additional input. This places language development and ‘plo’ at center stage in our evolving ‘BPS’ model of consciousness. We reasoned that if a snake sound and a visual context of the scenery it came from can trigger adaptive behaviors by ‘plo’ then it can also be involved in more complex language elaboration by incorporating into its genetic memory the acquired memories of existence starting with the incorporation of mother’s ‘baby talk’ phonemes (via mirror neurons) in the newborn. Thus the inherited universal grammar links with a regenerative semantics clothed in phonology to produce the sentential logic structure (‘propositional attitudes’?). Species survival meanings coded in DNA and translated into proto-semantics nested circuitry gets shaped into a survival weapon first by reflex adaptive patterns as described and then modified into a syntacto-semantic architecture provided to the newborn by mothers ‘cooings’ and facial expressions and posterior environmental sense inputs. This view of language generation places primeval semantics at unconscious nativist levels ahead of syntactic modeling by ‘plo’. This leaves volition and free will at ‘the proximate cause’ level of control. A man can surely do what he wants to do. But he can not determine what he wants., Schopenhauer once said. It was at that point that we discovered Dr. Jerry Fodor and the ‘language of thought’ (LOT) hypothesis which has given impetus and corroboration to our model, save for minor disagreements.

Where we have hopelessly stumbled big time has been in providing a marketable account of how our ‘plo’ processing module mediates the transition from an on-line sense phenomenal (or conceptual off-line) codelet input (I) to a corresponding syntactically structured representational output (O) in a systematic one to one instantiation by this special basic input-output system (BIOS) of the ‘plo’ processor. We suspect that the original ‘machine language’ genetic code input translated from the newborn DNA gets incorporated (and modified?) into the acquired phonemic and facial expressions input from the lactating mother via mirror neurons as discussed briefly in various chapters. Meaning to the newborn (proto-semantics) gets somehow structured into a sequence (proto-syntax) in the ‘plo’ processor. The neuro-humoral reward-punishment system of Olds-Pribram (connecting ‘plo’ with forebrain executive area via Medial Forebrain Bundle) is intimately involved in the original and subsequent classification of inputs past the amygdaloid phase of release of inhibition discussed above. Somehow a systematic audio-visual (or other sensory inputs) facilitate the formation of ‘inferential’ codelet loops that, added to other relevant modular inputs (visceral brain, talking brain, non-dominant brain, etc) will configure the resultant of ‘all things considered’, a thought. Whether this final event precedes the motor adaptive response or not (see Libet’s timing data) is open to debate and should not necessarily put into question the existence of a ‘free will’ for the reasons already discussed above. The big problem still remaining was, of course, how to explain the kind of ‘sentential’ logic structure (if any at all) guiding the jazz pianist when improvising his music? We believe there is no conscious thought guiding his performance; we discuss this problem in some detail in chapter 19.

In closing we’d like to advise the mind specialists to skip the first two chapters which are primarily intended as yet another introduction to familiarize the reader with some of the questions and methods used in these investigations based on ramblings around personal personal experiences were brewing since my first publication of Biopsychosociology now and now found its way into words during my retirement from academia. The first two chapters recapitulate past human attempts to bring raw perceptions of nature into coherent operational models of practical predictive value and how this result was predicated on rational abstractions based on this author’s modifications on the general structure of Kant’s categorical imperatives in a virtual brain.

A controversial result of these ruminations is that, premised on the determination of the existence of autogenous purposeful motion at extra-sensory levels of organization constitutes a measure of the living in potency, before any classical criteria of life is possible to establish. Other than logically concluding from its results (e.g., negentropic increase in structure / function) or that life can’t be either spontaneous or possible under an evolutionary protocol, and that an intelligent design is mandated, the author needs not to make commitments as to causality.

End of Introduction.

Chapter 1

Is There Insensible Life?

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INTRODUCTION

To know something supposes an act of the understanding, i.e., when we experience an object or event and then are able to distinguish it, ‘gnoscere’. To understand it is to have a clear idea of it, when we assign a meaning to that perception as captured by our senses. When we have acted this way, we have formulated a conscious judgment, we have thought about it.

But this knowledge can be given at different organizational levels of our understanding according to the content therein, as manifested by our judgments. In this way a synthetic judgment ‘a-posteriori’ is a mere representation of an empiric intuition of an object (or event) of the experience where we do not worry about its origin but of that distinctive ontological materiality present in it. By means of this judgment something new may or may not be added to our previous experiences. A synthetic judgment ‘a-priori’, on the contrary, arises of the pure understanding and of the reason, a different level. In so far as it originated from an experience (empiric intuition) it is synthetic (as all the judgments based on experience are), and to the extent that I can do without the physical presence of the observed object (or event) to be able to find all the conditions that I need to formulate a higher level judgment (intellectual intuition)—, it is also ‘a-priori’. In this way, to what the mere experience teaches me about an observed object in nature now I can add another dimension based on that same experience, one that subsists independent of the physical presence of the object. When meditating on these levels of the understanding we discover, conceptually, by intellectual intuition, an ‘apparent’ contradiction: that the inert, inorganic objects that experience presents us to the senses (empiric intuitions) gather the same fundamental conditions that the objects experience normally associates with the living things.

Consequently we will have very little to say now about analytic judgments in themselves for they have nothing much to do with the experience as such insofar as the content is concerned, they are differential, explanatory and nothing is added to the given knowledge. That is to say, we don’t find in their predicates anything that was not already given or thought of already. It is important to clarify that synthetic judgments a-posteriori give us a content, a factual knowledge of the reality using non-logical procedures. To this most essential starting point the logical deduction adds another stratum without really saying anything new in the logical sense but can very well bring us to the discovery of something new in the psychological sense. In other words, the symbolic representation of an empiric intuition when subjected to a logical mathematical analysis cannot add new factual elements to it, nor give us a new intuition into its natural state, it is merely a simplification of the complex logical relationships that subsist among its concepts, an explanation of the relationships among its possible meanings. Given man’s deductive limitations to figure out all of the existing relationships beyond their common logical content, the use of the symbolic logic will allow an extension of the cognitive possibilities of its psychological content that represent the entirety of their associations. Any assertion made on a topic as complex and controversial as ‘insensitive life’ will always carry the pretense that it is believable. This implies the proponent’s necessity to communicate in an intelligible way, that is to say, that the proponent should try making symbolic representations of what he means by choosing the most precise and simple language so that the reader, in turn, can de-codify its content and make, in the process, the most objective representation possible to his intellect. This way when I say ‘dog’ to my neighbor he has the best possible correspondence between my verbalized thought and his memory of a dog. We say that a communication has taken place without worrying immediately about the degree of fidelity between our respective thoughts. This tacit reciprocal understanding forms the basis of a semiotic ‘theory of mind’, one involving the interactive relationship between the language sign ‘dog’ representation, the empirical dog object and the communicating minds. A brief introspection into the afore-mentioned shows immediately that the only possible correspondence is the one that now exists among our respective ideas on that object in nature that we once perceived by the senses as a dog. Immediately past that event both minds, independently, had presented to their intellect (internal intuition) for the first time, that real object of their empiric intuition in its essence and primary existence, independent of its secondary qualities as the color, coat, etc. At least, now we know that we want to talk about a dog and I will then make an effort to elaborate on the secondary qualities of the object as well as on its actions by accessing higher levels of understanding for the appropriate comparisons.

The most sophisticated reader may have noticed, to begin with, that the author has given little if any importance (at this point) to the influence of social considerations as they may have an impact in the communication, something that the linguists have called ‘pragmatics’ to distinguish it from two other aspects, ‘semantics’ and ‘syntax’. The present exclusion is more of a practical / economical character than it is conceptual, although one suspects that the communicant’s social perspective is more related with the ‘semantics’ than with the organization level that we seek to develop a little, including the molecular biology. Later on we will develop those other levels of organization.

In this way we hope the reader will realize that the natural ontological object, our linguistic coded representation thereof and our mental idea of it are autonomous entities, the latter one in a higher degree when it can affirm an object existence independent of its physical presence. The idea (mental representation) of the dog cannot ever take place without a previous sensory impression originating in nature from the object dog. The object dog is there, independent of what or who caused it to be, if anything did.

A first sensory impression of an inert physical object is instantaneous and immediate and has the form of an empiric intuitive knowledge. In analytical philosophy, by accessing higher levels of understanding, we may inferentially associate their behavior with those of living things according to those definitions we find in classic biology. Can we believe in the results?

Justification. Any exposition regarding the origin of such knowledge about ‘inert life’ gets complicated further as soon as we stray away from the orthodoxy of galileic dogma on the supremacy of the empirical observation as a necessary starting point in the scientific investigation of natural objects; the Augustinian orthodoxy of ‘seeing is believing’.

What the reader observes in a sleeping dog or in frozen bacteria samples from the Arctic geological digs is also an inert object to the perception, its alleged vitality is obviously insensible to the naked eye. The new idea about vitality that can be formed will depend on the success of the credibility of the exposition, its success in reducing some theories of the scientific folklore on living things to another general theory of the living.

In this general theory, the generalizations to be adopted have to be first based on the underlying empiric data (sense phenomenology) and be, in addition, logically deducible from those same intuitions. In the jargon of logical empiricism, it means that the sensory impression or empiric intuition, when being eventually represented as nomologic generalizations, should be logically deducible from the corresponding nomologies of the most general theory one wishes to reduce it to. Simply stated, the meaning of any theoretical expression thus derived has to be related with an empiric fact. We will expand later on how Hans Popper’s logical empiricism limits the symbolic representation of the empiric fact to logical sentences. In any event, the folkloric theories on living things and the new general theory should be related in a special form, one with the other. This way alchemy is reduced to chemistry and then gets reduced to physical chemistry, much more compatible now to the operations of mathematical logic that will expand the horizon of possibilities of its knowledge. It is this way that biology, the study of living things, will join that unified group and coherent body of scientific knowledge.

Our position as to the possibilities of knowing insensitive life will also be an intermediate one between the extremes of psicologism (rationalistic or empirical) and idealism (where the contents of thoughts, the concepts, don’t have anything to do with the perceptions of the material objects of empiricism or the intuitions of ideal objects of rationalism). It is a position arguably similar to Kantian criticism except that the undersigned author doesn’t assume ‘in toto’, as Kant did, an imperious necessity to visualize the world of sensitive objects as one where it necessarily reigns the order, the regularity and the successive connectivity, unless we are willing to accept asymmetries as part of a superior order, as we do. In this way we avoid, on the one hand, the extreme situation where a type of knowledge, craving to escape the straightjacket limitations of interpretations based exclusively on empiric intuitions, is willing to transcend the spheres of contemporary or possible human knowledge, it would be sterile.

On the other hand we wish also to avoid the type of skeptical fatalism that limits our knowledge to the ‘phenomenological’ appearances or representations senses provide, a mere integration of perceptions.

Definition of the problem and analysis. We routinely make synthetic judgments a priori about living things based on the empiric intuitions that we have integrated from observing their macro / micro behavior. That allow us to formulate logical concepts on that which ‘animates’ the organic object in nature of a predicate that, ‘in arguendo’, also satisfies the conditions / criteria that we find in things we find no quarrel denominating as ‘living’. If we say, this dog is alive, I don’t need of additional experiences, external to my concept of a dog like a domesticated animal that wags the tail and barks to strangers, or that must always analyze for carbon, phosphorus, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfur, among other things or behaves metabolically according to certain known biochemical pathways. Nothing much additional is required outside of that concept to understand it. Starting from that concept a priori now we can return to nature and, based on the principle of subject identity, the predicate is alive is extracted. The formulation of the concept a priori precedes all of future similar experiences. This is nature’s way to store and retrieve cortical information from a database we may call a social memory (to distinguish it from a genetic memory, see Biopsicosociologia, Limusa 1987).

The metaphysical methodology can properly handle those synthetic a priori propositions that necessarily offers an additional dimension to the simple empiric intuition that begins in the senses. The ‘scientific’ value of this methodology resides in the apodictic certainty that reason is able to guarantee to its synthetic a priori judgments. In these unanimity exists as to the original sensory experience and at the same time, is independent of it.

For an a priori knowledge of a concept of life to be possibly formulated it would be necessary to begin with a search, in the reason, of necessary although insufficient sources, starting from the natural sciences. How can an observer conclude that living objects exist in nature?, i.e., how can he structure an a-priori concept of life? The analytic method allows us to presuppose that such a knowledge is real since, through the methodology of the natural sciences and mathematical logic we are able to harmonize the object ‘in concreto’ of the sensorial experience with the possible a-priori intuitions that we form internally of the same object. This way ‘a priori’ abstractions remain necessarily connected with the facts, from which they necessarily originated. The existence, in time and space, of the fact authenticates the reality of the concept abstracted there from. As such, the analysis doesn’t require to be deductible from other concepts in abstract, particularly in biology. To intuit an a-priori concept of life doesn’t have consequences for the materiality of the phenomenon observed because the concept thus formed refers exclusively to the form of the mental intuition in time and space. The same thing happens when we intuitively relate the geometry of a prism as we experience a sight of the pyramids of Egypt. The self-evident reality captured by our sensibility, gives us an appearance of the object (without caring about its reality in itself, something totally outside of my possible understanding) and this I relate comparatively with something unknown, its internal intuition. It may be argued whether there can be a correspondence between the ‘a priori’ intuition and the form in itself; this is a mere speculation worthy of a fiction, imagine an object’s pure form modified by the accidents of its predicates! But we should not forget that the abstract foundations of geometry need to be originated from sensory experiences!

Every biologist is familiar with the multitude of predicates that are attributed to a living cell. These predicates don’t belong to the cell in itself but to their appearances; outside of the cell they don’t have their own existence. We speak about their form, shape, their pigmentation, their locomotion, etc. If we meditate a little we discover that subjacent inside their appearances (secondary qualities) primary qualities coexist as are their materiality, extension, place, space, etc. against which an argument contrary to its essential reality could not be sustained because they don’t depend on the appearance of the cell to be validated. The real existence of these primary qualities is not cognized by denying the existence of the thing, like in the idealism, neither can we pretend having gained knowledge about the thing in itself. Instead its reach is limited to correlate the living cell of my perception with my intuition or synthetic judgment about it. In this form our understanding ponders on the phenomena, not its causes, aspiring to have reached certainty on that determination. Who could ask for anything more in the natural sciences?

ARGUMENT 1

Of all the observable secondary qualities in nature (using non-invasive technology) only one distinguishes the living cell from inorganic inert matter, the autogenous movement. It is not possible to attribute truthfulness or falsehood to this self-evident representation given to us by the limited sense of vision. Neither can phenomenology alone can tell us anything about the objective quality of the autogenous movement itself. It is to the understanding that we can exclusively empower to dictate an objective judgment about autogenous movements. But even the living cells could not even manifest that quality if they were handicapped, let us say by the subzero freezing temperature of the environment. Are they in that state to be considered inert matter to the empiric intuition, to the synthetic a priori judgment? If, after not being able to demonstrate either their reproductive capacity or their metabolic activity, can we make a statement about their inert materiality? It would be an absurdity that the experience of defrosting corroborates!

Because of the contingency (conditions external to the cell) that there exists in the demonstration of the autogenous movement, it can not become a pure form of the sensibility with an independent existence in time and space, outside of the cell under visual observation; unlike the inert pyramidal figure that subsists in my thought independent of the ‘similar’ object in the Egyptian desert, ergo, its existence and validity extends with regards to all the possible experience, it is an apodictic proposition.

Now then, the intuition of an autogenous movement in time and space, as an exclusive characteristic of living things (at least in the human biospheric ecosystem), represents a complexity level that we have called the seat of the aposteriori synthetic concepts [that could correspond to associate secondary cortical regions (parietal?) of the human brain, seat of the correlative sensory experience]. Notice that this intuition or post-iconic memory (primary sensory) neither corresponds necessarily (as an isomorph) to any physical object nor depends on it for its existence, without disputing for a moment its unquestionable validation in its origin from an object of the sensitive world. To classify these intuitions like mere appearances or phenomena of the senses, denying the truth of the object originating it, like the skeptic does, it is also unacceptable.

Regarding the capacity to generate the autogenous movement that we observe in the living cell, experience (technologically assisted or otherwise) teaches us what it is and what it is like, nothing more and nothing less, but never what it should necessarily be in itself. For that reason its validation in ‘experiences’ outside of the possible limit of resolution of my senses or instrumentation doesn’t have nor should have any importance to the scientist, except for those insatiable observers.

We are now in a position to formulate the proposition: ‘living things are capable of autogenous movements as a necessary but insufficient condition (for the contingency on the necessary external conditions for its demonstration)’. Now then, if we ponder a little on the nature of movement we discover that change underlies, like a primary quality, the concept of movement, which allows us to modify the original proposition: ‘the capacity to generate an autogenous change is a necessary and sufficient condition to demonstrate the existence of living things. How else, for example, could our predecessors in the observation of the nature have concluded that, e.g., a Sequoia tree is vegetable life? The concept of change in a natural object turns out to be an abstraction of the movement concept as soon as we notice that a change supposes the object (or some of its constitutive parts) being displaced in time and space as a necessary condition, i.e., a movement has been executed independent of my capacity to sense it empirically, in all cases, by direct or instrument observation. From Heraclitus to the present, did anyone ever doubt of change as a self evident primary quality?

But if living objects change, we would also have to allow the inclusion of inert objects for their shared capacity of change, although in many a verifiable demonstration of such capacity to generate autogenous movements is outside the resolution powers of our sensory endowment, extended or not by appropriate instrumentation. Like the daily changes plants experienced for our old botanists observers.

From the preceding argumentation it seems inescapable to conclude that all inert objects in nature may also have the capacity to change, that given favorable conditions, in theory, they could also make such change susceptible to empiric intuitions, like it has happened to the modern botanist when using the appropriate optic technology. This is true, from the neutrinos of subatomic physics, the DNA of brain cells, or the galaxies of our cosmos. Even a skeptic would accept without much trepidation that most structured natural objects are changing continually to others of lesser complexity, of greater entropy content. But the reverse may be true under special environmental conditions as we will discuss later on. This is the case for the specified super complexity attending the living state as we know it.

ARGUMENT 2

The reader may already wonder: Where is the author taking us? The answer may not be a simple one but it has to do with the credibility that we will deserve when we undertake an amplification of our demonstration of the reality of insensitive life, specially if we discard the classical scientific methodology as not being particularly useful in our intuition of the ideal objects, those that are presented to our understanding from the ideas we formed relative to those verifiable sensory impressions in a three-dimensional space in a time past.

We may be able to see the folded membranes of ‘grana’ inside plant chloroplasts but, can we see the flow of electrons during the process of photophosphorylation?

Can these conceptual, translational electron movements ever become possible objects of future scientific investigations? And we do ask, can the living ever be conceptually representable in a similar form? The dog, subject of my direct observation and the ‘grana’ of my indirect observation with instruments of superior resolution to the visual experience, can they both be considered as immediate intuitions? The idea that I am able to form about them and their inferred consequences, are mediated experiences where other elements of our reasoning intervene. However the existence of both ideas is demonstrable using the methodology of metaphysical logic, being their certainty more believable than that of the material object that was their original immediate cause. We could doubt the very existence of the specific dog that my senses perceived that particular time but we could never doubt of the idea of a general dog that now is alive in our thoughts, after all, is it not the Cartesian test that I exist myself!

Having warned the reader about the complexity of the subject being considered, we would like to commit ourselves with the premise of not admitting as truisms anything outside the empirical observation, always trying to deduce their relationships according to the necessary order in which they are intuitively presented to us. This way, some things will be considered in a particularized form, others we will try to understand them as a group. By way of justifying the heterodoxy of a methodology that we will briefly put to a test in this rather arcane exposition, we do not need to repeat what Euclid’s already said previously: My analysis will consist in admitting that very same thing I am trying to demonstrate, reducing the folkloric theories on the living and its consequences (when possible) to other more general propositions that the reader already accepts as valid. When it is not possible then we will join the well-known elements with the unknown of the same species until we are able to identify both their mutual dependence. After all, discovery is a method of invention!

Possible meaning for the biology of the future. A natural object, like the dog, exists for us because we can apprehend it’s being in an impression captured by our senses; but its existence doesn’t cease because now it disappeared in the foliage. A different thing is to wonder what is that object that now remains in our thoughts?

All observable and verifiable objects of our sensible environment have a being and are in existence for the observer and for all. But that doesn’t guarantee the same observer that his idea formed will bear a strict resemblance to the same material object in nature in subsequent encounters; is this the same dog he sensed and configured previously in his mind? At least one can say that it is of the same species of material object (in a classification category that my logical thought has established). If later on we identify the same physical object in different three-dimensional coordinates of physical space, we have to invent the concept of dimension, of position, the dog has moved, it has suffered an observable change. But if instead, all atoms of the same dog had occupied