Essay PART II
Experience: the cause
Copyright © Charles H. Carver; Eye and Mind Studio 2005; edited version of JCS submission (1/05).
Introduction
In the first part to this two-part paper, I spent considerable
time describing the tacit way a growing number of our current scientific
models often presuppose a causal impotency to the phenomenological domain
of our experiences. I focused also on the fact that even direct physical-experiences
of the body are regarded as non-physical processes at root– in fact,
in some models, every species of experience is considered a manifestation
of virtual processing similar to the language-like productions of cognition.
I spoke of some of the inherent inconsistencies to these models when they
are presented in the context of proclaiming a complete identity between
'objective' brain processes and 'subjective' phenomenal experiences. Inconsistencies
are also evident when guiding theories attempt to proclaim the function
of phenomenology to be a mediating and motivating domain for the organism
(or the organism’s genes), yet these very same theories cleave that
power from the phenomenological domain when they consider every experience
to lack a real causal efficacy in the realm of physical processes. In
contrast to these models, I described a few examples – naïve
perceptual-motor situations, and somatosensory experiences of the body
– to illustrate possible situations whereby phenomenological experiences
could be traced to a root source and functionality firmly embedded in
a real, causally effective set of physical processes; the very same set
of physical processes that constitute the experiences in their completion.
My discussion offered no empirically based model to present as a specific
viable candidate for the neuronal correlates of our sentient-experiences.
I sought instead, to make a case for a conceptual shift of emphasis in
the current dialogue of our ‘study’.
Based on that effort, I begin here by continuing to presuppose
a real physical set of processes to those phenomenon
we experience as our body and its perceptions and actions. Our objective
here, however, is to view this identity between some level of physics
and its manifest phenomenology– but now we invert the fundamental
relationship. In part one I described our somatosensory and perceptual-motor
experiences as being an intrinsic “burgeoning” product of
somatosensory and perceptual-motor processing in general (at some level).
In this part, we will consider the possibility whether the causal (physical)
‘correlate’ of that somatosensory or perceptual experience
can be equally viewed as the physical manifestation of the phenomenology
that we originally considered constituted from
these physical processes. This turns the identity around and places the
phenomenology as equally the primary organizing aspect of this
two-termed physical process. In
the view I aim to sketch, phenomenology -- or, said another way, sentient
experiences -- may sometimes be required to develop and thereby manifest
an elaborated physical context which in turn constitues the ongoing 'functioning'
that we have assigned to experience with regard to the organism's active
response to given environmental situations.
By no means does this deny the functional nature of sentient-experience.
In fact, it makes that primary functioning possible by granting to phenomenology
its fundamentally physical power to establish
and transform an ongoing situational relevance from the perspective of
our organism’s concerned ownership of itself. It is just such a
domain that I believe to be required to constitute what I have termed
a ‘concerned’ context to occur in the very same momentum and
duration, or, rather, as the very same physical happening
that is both its physical constitution and,
from another vantage: the physical implementation of experience-based
(phenomenological) initiatives in the matrix of the body and its world.
I explore these themes through a brief discussion of the re-entrant connections crucial to Gerald Edelman’s extendend theory of neuronal group selection – TNGS (G. Edelman, 2004). Edelman’s model is discussed for two reasons: Firstly, it provides a basis for us to investigate, at least conceptually, the possible relevance of reentrant processing to account for a richer model of phenomenology than many models in the literature describe. Secondly, Edelman’s own views on the non-causal nature of the phenomenal domain provide a good example of what I consider a fairly established view in the neurosciences with regard to the nature of causality in the context of the proposed relationship between the physics that is said to manifest our phenomenology, and the phenomenology itself. On the first point – reentrant connections (in general) are not put forth as the neural correlate to sentient phenomenology, nor is Gerald Edelman’s model understood to describe a possible candidate. The reference to this model is a recognition of the phenomenological richness it seeks to correlate with neuronal processing. In light of the descriptions above, reentrant processing are a type of processing one could correlate with a constant momentum in an ever transforming duration, as opposed to individual conscious ‘states’ requiring a binding principle. For my purposes, reentrant processing is also attractive in that it can provide a means whereby physical processing can perhaps be directly associated with phenomenological instantiations of experience – thereby providing a means for phenomenology to be causally associated with the effects of that processing, particularly when it establishes the organism’s necessary behaviors and actions in a real physical environment. Despite the attractiveness of the model for our investigations, we need also take note of the fact - (and indeed the reason the model has been included in our critique is) - that Gerald Edelman expressely forbids granting to the phenomenological realm of sentient-experience, any causal efficacy. To Edelman, causation is linear and physical, whereas phenomenal experiences, though direct effects of physical causation, are not in themselves capable of causation: they are pure effects. It is this very common notion of causality that I am challenging here and in the previous part to this paper.
The Dynamic Core Model
Gerald Edelman has famously proposed a rich “process”
model of consciousness whereby re-entrant neuronal connections consist
of ongoing recursive signaling across massively parallel fibers connecting
a large number of specialized maps and regions in the brain. Recurrent
processing is not a directional or sequential ‘feedback’
loop to linear processing, but truly a “two-way” cycling that
pools information in a manner that is ever transforming, adjusting and
embellishing antecedent information into re-constituted outputs. These
outputs, in turn, are infused into ever-larger networks undergoing recurrent
processing, and the whole dynamically shifting system comprises what he
calls “the dynamic core” of the thalamacortical system. This
system consists of the mostly recurrent processing of massive intra-cortical
connections as well as the reentrant loops connected to and from the thalamus,
specifically the ‘gating’ effects it achieves via the reticular
nucleus as well as the ‘value-system’ weighting associated
with the intralaminar nuclei which help the system signal the “saliency”
of various internal body events and external perceptual events comprising,
in Edelman’s words, “the deep center of conscious experience”(G.M.
Edelman, 2004). We will inquire of this “value-category saliency”
later in our analysis, but for now we can roughly equate it to what will
be constituted by subsequent processing as the core affective
contribution to an organism poised to address its functions. In the language
I have been expressing descriptively, phenomenological ‘affects’
(i.e. body-emotional states invoking feelings and actions) would help
contribute to an emerging situation to be organized, stabilized and indeed
constituted. Because of the centrally organizing feature of affects in
my descriptions, I would perhaps add a potential anatomical emphasis to
augment what Edelman has proposed as his thalamicortical system. After
Damasio, I would stress equally the important nature of the cingulate
cortex in terms of its “weighting”, “gating” and
“selecting” of what will eventually be constituted as feeling-centered
phenomenologies (A. Damasio, 1999).
As stated in the previous section, I consider some level of the primary
somatosensory-perceptual ‘representations’ the brain invokes
to be phenomenologically instantiated physics perhaps requiring reentrant
architectures for a momentum stabilizing manner of processing. As discussed,
phenomenology is associated with a real physical duration in my view,
not a physical ‘state’ comprising isolated or static ‘qualia’.
This is an important consideration. Because I consider phenomenal experiences
to be physically based, I therefore consider phenomenological experiences
to be causally efficacious. It is a reentrant type architecture that I
consider important for experiences to transform and establish themselves
over time, and therefore equally to act in the physical matrix of the
body causally. In that regard let us consider a comprehensive and dynamic
process similar in scope to Gerald Edelman’s “dynamic thalamocoritical
core” in his extended theory of neuronal group selection –
extended TNGS (2004). For our purposes, however, we must not forget that
Edelman denies to his model a real causal efficacy associated with the
phenomenal experience he hopes to explain. He separates the causality
of the physics from what is, to him, a necessarily non-causal phenomenal
experience associated with it. However, I suggest that it is perhaps precisely
the dynamic processing of reentrant (reciprocal) connectivity that may
account for that level of causality I describe as a real volitional and
intentional capacity at work in our phenomenal experiences.