Emergence 2 – Mona Lisa

           I started exploring the idea of “emergence” in a previous entry <here>.  Emergence is the idea that something can have a property that doesn’t exist in its individual parts.  This could be the fluidity of water or the solidity of ice or even the color of ice.  But it could also be the properties of ant colonies that emerge when millions of ants work together and it could be the properties of societies when a large group of humans get together.  In fact, in some sense, anything that is not a fundamental principle could be considered an emergent property.  And, as I mentioned previously, probably the most interesting proposed example of an emergent property is consciousness.  “Consciousness as emergence” is the idea that when a complex network of neurons interact, consciousness emerges from that network even though it is not present in any one neuron. 

             In the first entry on this topic, I discussed the emergent property of meaning that arises from a collection of letters.  My contention was that the emergent property of meaning only exists in one place:  the conscious perception of an individual.  Thus, the “emergence” in this case can be boiled down to conscious perception and, in the end, the concept of emergence is exposed to be just another word for consciousness.  However, there is some disagreement about whether the meaning that emerges from letters is really the same as most commonly accepted examples of emergence, so it is necessary to dig deeper into this topic.

             Today I’d like to use what I think is a more commonly accepted example of emergence:  an image that emerges from a painting.  Let’s take the Mona Lisa painting by Leonardo da Vinci.  It is, at a molecular level, just a bunch of molecules spread over a canvas.  None of the molecules in the paint or even in the canvas have any resemblance to, or concept of, the image of Mona Lisa that we see when we look at the picture.  Thus, the image that we see can be said to be an emergent property of the painting or an emergent property of the molecules of paint that make up the image.  The sum of the paint molecules in the Mona Lisa is certainly greater than just the collection of paint molecules themselves.  There is something more there – something that emerges when the molecules are arranged carefully (by da Vinci) that could not have been predicted or expected by just examining the molecules of paint themselves.

             The question we want to consider is this:  where is the image of the Mona Lisa with respect to the painting?  Where does this emergent property exist?

             In order to explain the point I would like to make, I’m going to simplify the situation with some simplifying assumptions.  I don’t think any of these simplifications affect my conclusion, so please bear with the simplifications and then we can circle back and the end and consider whether the real complexity of the situation changes the conclusions I have drawn.

             First, I’m going to use a printed image of the Mona Lisa instead of the painting itself.  Specifically, a laser-printed image of the Mona Lisa.  Don’t worry – the image will be immediately recognizable when you look at the page.  But, if you were to greatly magnify the printed page, you would see that it is really just composed of a series of printed dots of different colors.  Each dot is a single color, based on the ink colors available in the printer.  We could go deeper in magnification and talk about the molecules that make up each dot, but that’s not necessary for the purposes of this thought experiment.  I think it will be obvious that the image of the Mona Lisa is not resident in the dots of different colored ink.  The dots themselves have no knowledge of what image they are a part of, obviously.  The printer itself was not given information about Mona Lisa – it was only given information about what color dots to print where.  But there is one thing for certain:  when we look at the page, we see Mona Lisa.

             Now I’m going to make a couple of major simplifying assumptions.  Let us imagine that there is a one-to-one match between the dots of colored ink on the paper and the photons of different color being reflected off of the page.  In this case, a single blue photon is reflected off of a single blue dot on the page and heads to your eye.  A single red photon is reflected off of a single red dot and heads to your eye.  At some given instant in time, all of the differently colored photons are reflected off of their respective dots and head to your eye.  If all of the photons were in sync with one another and timed just right, there would be a mass of colored photons heading toward your eye.  Each color and the location of each dot is preserved in that mass, or column, of photons.  Thus, in some way, you could slice that column of photons and get an image of the Mona Lisa.  But, of course, the photons, like the dots on the page, have no knowledge of the Mona Lisa.  They are just photons taking a specific color and existing in a specific point in space.  The emergent property of the image of the Mona Lisa is nowhere to be found in this collection of photons.

             This group of photons now enters your eye where they activate the rod and cone receptors in your retina.  My second simplifying assumption is that each photon actives a single cone cell, which then generates an action potential that travels along a single nerve fiber in the optic nerve.  Thus, there is a one-to-one correlation between the whole set of photons and the action potentials on multiple fibers in the optic nerve.  If the nerve fibers in the optic nerve preserved the geometric relationship of the cones in the retina, you could slice the nerve at some point and recreate the “digital image” of the Mona Lisa (after converting the action potentials to their indicated colors).  Again, that is an oversimplification for the purpose of this analogy.  The point is that the light image of the Mona Lisa lands on the retina and activates the appropriate cones, which send their signals along the optic nerve to the occipital cortex of the brain.  The parallel arrangement of the signals in the optic nerve are preserved, since each cone cell has a direct “single line” connection to the brain (due to my simplifications).

             The parallel signals along the optic nerve now enter the occipital cortex, where they kick off a complex neural network that extends around the visual cortex.  Some of one side of the image is split off and mixes with the other side.  Edges are identified.  Colors are identified.  The network of neural signals keeps expanding to different areas of the brain.  Memory is activated and the image is compared to past knowledge and things we recognize from our past.  All of this happens pretty quickly because it doesn’t take us long to glance at the picture of Mona Lisa before we recognize it as being Mona Lisa.

             Some might think that eventually these neural signals end up activating some single neuron in the brain that only lights up when you look at a picture of Mona Lisa.  That is sometimes referred to as the “grandmother cell hypothesis” though I’m not sure that was ever a serious scientific idea.  But there is no such single neuron.  Instead, the collective activity of the neural networks across the brain give rise to the general awareness, and thus conscious perception, of Mona Lisa.

             My contention is that, until this final step of consciousness, there is no place for any emergence of the image of Mona Lisa.  In this whole process, from the dots on the page, through the light transmission, to the neural activity - all the way to the brain – there is no place where the information is brought together into a cohesive “image of Mona Lisa”.  It doesn’t happen until it happens in our brain and we have the conscious recognition of “oh – that’s the Mona Lisa.” 

             It is reasonable to wonder whether my simplifications resulted in my “factoring out” emergence from what really happens.  Of course the whole process is much more complex.  Lots of photons are bouncing off of each dot on the page and heading to the eye, not a single photon.  They are coming at different angles, different colors, etc.  But photons stay as photons – they don’t mix together to create a cohesive image – so I don’t think anyone would claim that the emergence of the image of Mona Lisa arises from the reflection or travelling of photons from the dots on the page.  However, once the photons get to the rods and cones in the retina, the processing is certainly a lot more complex than my simplification.  There are ganglion cells in the retina and some pretty complex processing happens even just between the cones/rods and the ganglion cells.  My argument here is that the processing in the eye is just an extension of the processing that is carried on in the visual cortex.  It can all be lumped under the category of neural processing in the “brain” and, in fact, the retina is considered part of the central nervous system.  Thus somewhere, somehow, the image of Mona Lisa arises from the neural processing in our brain (or central nervous system, if you prefer).  The emergent property of the image – the Mona Lisa - does not exist until we consciously perceive it.  My contention is that every example of emergence (at least every example of “weak emergence”) boils down to this same conclusion:  the “emergent property” only emerges in our conscious perception of it, and nowhere else.

 ~~

             I imagine a discussion with someone about how it is that consciousness just arises from the neural activity from the brain.  I would maintain that consciousness is non-material [see here], whereas they would maintain that consciousness is purely a physical thing that naturally arises from the action of neurons.

             “If consciousness is purely a physical process, what is the means by which it just arises from neural activity?” I would ask.

             “Consciousness is just an emergent property that naturally arises from the activity of neurons, just like many other emergent properties of material objects.”

             “An emergent property?  What does that mean???  Could you give me an example of an emergent property outside of consciousness itself?”

             “Well, for example, imagine you’re looking at the painting of the Mona Lisa…”

Emergence 1 – My Contention

             I want to explore the idea of “emergence” or “emergent properties”, as I understand the philosophical concept.  Emergence is probably more popularly summed up in the common phrase “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  Emergence is the idea that something can have a property that doesn’t exist in its individual parts.  I think the most common example typically put forth as an emergent property is the “wetness” or “fluidity” of water.  Water is just a collection of H2O molecules.  An H2O molecule has no property, by itself, that could be called wetness.  But when you put a bunch of them together (and the temperature and pressure are right), the property of wetness “emerges” out of the collection of molecules, and thus it is considered an emergent property.  An emergent property is also frequently defined as a property that you would not (or could not?) have predicted by just looking at the individual parts.  The idea of emergent properties is apparent in everything from molecules to societies.

             There are lots of examples of emergent properties, and I will explore some in future entries.  However, there is really only one so-called emergent property that I care about:  consciousness.  How consciousness is related to the actions of a bunch of neurons communicating with one another is of great interest to me.  There are many people who consider consciousness to be the quintessential example of an emergent property.  They say that consciousness is a property that naturally arises from the complex interaction of neural networks.  This allows them to consider consciousness to be a natural part of the material world – as natural as the wetness of water - and nothing more.  Importantly, this allows them to reject any idea that consciousness is non-material or immaterial.  I think that is a mistake (see here and here), and I hope to show why I say that over the course of a few thought experiments that I will initiate with this blog entry.  My contention is this:  calling consciousness an emergent property of the brain is tantamount to saying that “consciousness is the property of exhibiting consciousness” …which is no explanation at all.  Further, I want to make the contention that all “emergent properties” are conscious perceptions.  I contend that “emergence” and “consciousness” are the same things, and so you can’t use one to explain the other, because all you are saying is “consciousness is consciousness.” 

             This is a tricky argument for me to explain, so I’m going to unravel it slowly, hoping that what I say makes sense.  This is my first time trying to explain this concept, so it may be a bit rocky.  I would certainly be interested in people’s comments on the matter.

             I’m going to start my series of thought experiments about emergent properties by using an example that I have to admit is marginally “emergent”:  specifically, the meaning of words.  If we string together a couple of “A”s, a couple of “I”s and an “L”, “M” and “V” in the right order, we can create a meaning that emerges from those letters that is certainly not contained in any single letter and could not be predicted by examining the letters alone.  We could string those letters together to create the phrase “I AM ALIVE”, which has a very significant meaning that has nothing to do with the letters themselves.  The meaning of the phrase could be considered an emergent property of those letters.

             My question now is this:  where does the emergent property of those letters exist?  Does it exist on the page (or screen) where those letters appear?  Does the emergent property somehow float above the letters in some way?  This is obviously not the case.  If an ant crawls across the page, it doesn’t encounter the meaning of the phrase encompassed by the letters.  If a bird flies overhead and sees the entire phrase, it doesn’t encounter the emergent property of the meaning of the phrase.  In fact, if a non-English speaking person, or an illiterate person, looks at the entire phrase, they also will not experience the emergent property of these letters.  The only one who experiences it is an individual who knows the meaning of the phrase as it is written.  Thus, the emergent property exists only in the minds of human beings.  Further, it exists only in the minds of some human beings.  Thus, since not all seeing humans experience the meaning of the phrase, I think it should be clear that the emergent property does not exist in the visual perception of the words or even in the visual cortex.  Two different people can look at the phrase and see exactly the same image in their brains, but one experiences the meaning and the other, who doesn’t know English, experiences nothing.  In fact, it is not until the firing of various neurons in our brain are brought together into our conscious perception of the fact that the image we see on the page is actually a phrase, and the phrase means something, that we experience the emergent property of meaning.  Thus, in this example, the emergent property of the meaning of the phrase is our conscious perception of it.  The emergent property just is conscious perception, in this case.  If we then say that the meaning of letters is an emergent property, we have not found a new property at all.  All we are describing is our conscious perception of the meaning.  We initially ascribed the emergent property to the letters themselves, but that’s not where the emergent property exists.  It exists nowhere but in our consciousness.  It just is our consciousness.  There is no difference between the emergent property of “meaning” and the conscious perception of meaning.  I hope that makes sense.

             If the meaning of words were a clear example of what people call an emergent property, then I might be able to rest my case with this one example.  But calling the meaning of words an emergent property is not particularly clear.  Most “true” emergent properties spontaneously arise from the collection of their parts.  The meaning of words does not naturally arise from their existence.  Meaning also requires a set of rules of language, rules that have to also be understood and agreed on by others who use the same language.  For the words to have the meaning they have, there are a lot of outside things that have to be brought to bear upon the series of vertical, horizontal, and slanted lines that make up the phrase “I AM ALIVE”.  Given that, I don’t think most people would consider “meaning” to be an emergent property in the same way that “wetness” is an emergent property.  I’m not sure I totally agree with that, since it seems to me that if you consider the parts of your system to be the letters plus the linguistic rules of English, then you can still say that meaning emerges from the sum of the parts, it’s just that the parts are a lot more complex.  But I’m not going to argue that here.

             In summary, to the extent that the property of “meaning” is an emergent property of letters, the concept of emergence is shown to simply be a restatement of the property of consciousness.  They are one and the same.  The idea of meaning itself cannot exist without consciousness.  My goal is to show that the same thought process can be applied to more standard examples of emergence and that the same conclusions can be drawn. 

The God who knocks???

             You might be strong enough to beat someone into submission, but even the strongest person in the world can’t beat someone into trust and love.

             In Christianity, God is described as the all-powerful creator.  As such, he could easily create humans as robots, who submit to his will without fail.  Alternatively, he could have created humans with free will but then cowed them into submission through fear and intimidation.  But that is not what God is described as doing.  Instead, he creates humans with free will and gives them the opportunity to run free – to turn their backs on him and escape.  He does not run after them.  He does not yell at them, demanding that they return and worship him.  He does not reach out his arm and grab them and pull them back in.  If they don’t want to be with him, he lets them have their choices (“…gave them over”).  He is described as calling out for them (“Adam, where are you?”) or as knocking at their door (“Behold, I stand at the door and knock…”).  How can it be that the all-powerful creator God waits for permission to come in?  He is described as being in the “still small voice” not in the “thunder and lightning.”  We can live our lives ignoring him.  We can even shake our fists at him and curse him.  He warns us of the consequences, but does not prevent us from walking away.  He lets us choose our path. 

             There are some who turn back, if ever so slightly, to say “here I am” or to open the door and let him in.  To those who cry out “help!” he is right there, ready and waiting to draw people back.  He says, as one point “…how often I wanted to gather you together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!”  But there are some who give him permission.  They voluntarily, freely submit.  We do not have the capacity to love God or even trust God – we need his help for that – but we can give him permission to transform us.

             This is how I understand the message of Christianity.  God does not beat us into submission.  He allows us to freely reject him.  But to those who turn and cry out for help, no matter how far away they are, he is right there, ready to do what they cannot do themselves.

Earworms 101

When I have a notion that some correlated event in my life is actually causal, I like to try to collect real data on the “notion” to see if it is true.  For example, I might have a sense that reading a book at night helps me to sleep better, or that every time I eat green peppers, I have heartburn at night.  But I wonder – are these vague notions actually true?  Does one cause the other?  Are they even actually correlated?  We all tend to get convinced of these kinds of connections based on just a few events that stick out in our minds.  We become so convinced of the correlation that we live our lives as if the notion were true without really pursuing any test of our assumption. I don’t like the idea of being misled in this way – even if it is something innocuous – so I try to design a way to test the notion and see if the data really supports it.  Over time, I’ll try to discuss a few of these attempts, but, in this entry, I’m going to start with an experience that is, I think, fairly universal:  earworms.

 

Earworms are those songs that play again and again in your head from time to time.  What causes them to happen?  There are a lot of notions about earworms, but I wondered if they were really true.  For example, I’ve heard people say a few times that the song you hear in your head is one that you heard but didn’t get to listen to all the way to the end. The notion is that your brain picks it up and tries to finish it.  Even Wikipedia thinks this notion is true.  But is that really true?

 

You probably don’t care about earworms, but I find them fascinating.  Why do they happen?  I find anything that your mind/brain does to be fascinating.  One interesting thing about earworms is that the song that plays in your mind is sometimes a song you don’t even like.  Often, after some time, you really want to get it out of your mind.  But it seems like you can’t.  It’s my mind, isn’t it?  Why can’t I just say “stop thinking about that song” and my mind just obeys and stops thinking about a particular song?  If our mind can’t control our mind, who does???

 

So…I started trying to track what songs became earworms and the conditions under which I heard the song (if at all) a little over three years ago.  During that time, I have identified 21 earworm songs that lasted long enough for me to remember to write them down.  Unfortunately, I have a bad memory so I know that during the past few years, I’ve forgotten to record earworm songs many times, creating some inaccuracies in my data collection.  I’ve tried to remedy that in the past couple of months – I’ll talk about that near the end of this entry.  But, for what it’s worth, here are my observations:

 

1.  Earworms can be intense while they are occurring, but once they leave my mind, I have a hard time recalling what the song was the next day.  That’s why I found tracking earworms to be difficult.  If I didn’t write it down the day it occurred, I would forget.  I would remember that I had an earworm…but I couldn’t remember what the song was.

 

2.  For me, earworms almost always occur in the morning and tend to only last through the morning.  After that, they are forgotten.  There were only two occurrences over the past 3+ years where the same song lasted two successive days in my head.  For what it’s worth, those songs were “Trying to Get That Feeling Again” by Barry Manilow and “Nobody Does It Better” by Carly Simon.

 

3.  Where do earworms come from?  For me, the most common situation is this:  I listen to music on the way home from work (I typically bounce around about six or seven different stations) and then, two or three days later, the song pops into my mind as an earworm!  I can never tell what song is going to become an earworm and, also, I would have listened to plenty of other songs in the two or three days since I heard it.  This particular characteristic fascinates me.  What is going on in our brains that a song you hear can bounce around unconsciously for days, and then somehow bubble to the surface one random morning?  That’s just crazy.

 

4.  I’ve tried the “partial song” idea.  Sometimes, when I’m coming home from work, I’ll hear a song I like and so I’ll turn it off halfway through (anything for science!).  I can never remember what song it was, but I do remember doing it.  All I know is that none of those songs have ever become earworms. 

 

5.  Earworms aren’t always songs that I heard being played somewhere.  One time I saw a Facebook post listing One-hit Wonders and it included the song “Black Betty” by Spiderbait.  That’s a song I haven’t heard in decades probably.  Yet, a day or so after I randomly read the title on a list, it bubbled up as an earworm.  It’s not a song I particularly like and, in fact, I’d say that earworm songs can be either songs you like or dislike – I don’t think that matters.

 

6.  I’ve rarely had an earworm that was a new song.  In fact, most of my earworms are songs I would have heard many times when I was growing up (like, I mean, 60’s or 70’s music) but haven’t heard much, if at all, since then.  The one exception to this rule (that I’ve noted in the past 3+ years) is the “Wellie Wisher’s Song”, which is a song from a kids show that my grandkids were watching.  That song became a very intense earworm for about a 24-hour period one time while I was on vacation.

 

7.  I wondered if it is possible to “create” an earworm by listening to a song over and over again.  So, I tried listening to a worship song with a simple chorus over and over again on my way to work (typically I hate listening to the same song over and over again – hate it).  The next day was a stressful day at work but then the following morning, that song was an earworm.  So, I do think it is possible to create earworms.

 

8.  I think ongoing stress reduces earworms.  I base this on the fact that earworms tend to go away for me once I get to work and face the various pressures of the day.  Also, during some stressful periods in my life, I’ve had an absence of earworms for one to two weeks at a time.  However, the relationship to stress might be indirect.  For example, when I’m stressed I might be less likely to listen to the radio on the way home, and therefore less opportunity for an earworm to pop up.

 

9.  One thing that seems odd to me is that earworm songs are very rarely a song on my playlist.  I sometimes listen to songs at work with headphones in order to drown out the background noises.  I’m a pretty boring guy, so my playlist has consisted of pretty much the same songs for years.  Yet, as far as I can recall, none of those songs have become earworms.  You’d think that the more common songs would have a higher chance of becoming earworms, but it doesn’t seem to work out that way.

 

10.  As I mentioned earlier, the one thing I couldn’t measure was how often I have earworms.  So, about two months ago I started trying to track earworms every morning.  Here is the data so far:  4 earworm mornings out of 64 total days tracked, or about 6%.  I would say that the last month has been more stressful than usual, and also I think I haven’t been listening to songs as much on my drive home.  Anyway, I’ll keep tracking this over time and see what happens.  I’ll have to give an update down the road.

 

If you feel so inclined, I think you would find it interesting to do your own tracking.  If you do, let me know the results and I’ll pool things together.  I suppose it would also be interesting to see if there are common songs that tend to be earworms…like “Baby Shark”, haha. 

 

One word of warning though.  Just the act of tracking your own earworms has some effect on their occurrence I believe.  For example, in the morning when I fill out my spreadsheet regarding earworms, just the act of thinking “did I have an earworm this morning?” can sometimes trigger an earworm.  In fact, I bet my mention of the song “Baby Shark” in the previous paragraph has triggered an earworm (unless you are one of the fortunate people in the world who has never heard that song).  I apologize for that!

 

If I think about this from a brain physiology perspective, I find the concept of earworms to be quite difficult to explain, and possibly quite useful in understanding some difficult concepts such as consciousness.  An earworm is absolutely a conscious event – that’s what makes it so annoying at times – it seems to be some unconscious meandering of our brain that somehow bubbles to the surface to become conscious.  But how in the world does that happen?  I am conscious of hearing a song on the radio, which then somehow begins bouncing around in my brain totally unconsciously…for days (!), before somehow becoming conscious again and again for a few hours, and then disappears from consciousness, never to be heard from again.  How in the world does that happen??? 

             I know that one thing neuroscientists search for are “neural correlates of consciousness”, which involves figuring out the minimum brain structure that is necessary for consciousness (e.g. humans can lose one whole half of their brain, and yet still be conscious).  But the existence of earworms seems to complicate that concept.  Presumably, songs are stored in memory in the brain in some manner by strengthening the connections between some whole set of neurons.  I don’t think anyone knows the details here, but let’s imagine that there is some way to trigger this series of neurons to “play back” the song in your mind.  By hearing the song once, it makes the “triggering” event to be more sensitive and easier to initiate.  Yet, for some reason it is not triggered for days?  I would suggest that it must get triggered over that period, but it just “plays” the song in the background – in our unconscious mind.  Then, somehow, one day, that same path yields a conscious result and, for whatever reason, now that hair trigger keeps getting tripped repeatedly for a while.  Or maybe it fires spontaneously for a while?

             My point here is that it is the same set of neurons in both the unconscious and conscious case.  The same set of neurons encode the earworm.  So what makes them unconscious for some period and then conscious for another period?  This would mean that the seat of consciousness, or at least some aspect of it, changes over time.  To me, this highly complicates the idea of finding a neural correlate for consciousness because it would seem to indicate that consciousness can “take up residence” in different areas of the brain at different times.  I find this fascinating.

             I suppose it is also possible that the pattern of neuronal firing gets copied from some kind of deep memory into some kind of “conscious memory”, which then gets played over and over.  There is, certainly, a “working memory” or “short-term memory” in the brain.  But one would still have to wonder how it is that such a transfer of a whole set of neuronal firings can get transferred and why does it take days for that to happen?  It’s not like we hear the earworm song again and again between the time that we hear it and the time that it becomes an earworm.  On the contrary, we never hear it again until it pops, often unwanted, into our conscious minds. 

             The existence of earworms does seem to clearly indicate one fun thing about our brains:  our brains must contain some kind of “playlist” of a huge group of songs that we have heard throughout our lifetimes.  I know that some of my earworms occurred with songs that I had not heard for twenty or thirty years.  Yet, somehow, that song has been stored in my brain for all that time – just waiting to be released.  That seems really crazy!!!