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. 

Does God have Free Will?

             If you are trying to engage someone in a productive discussion on some particular point of disagreement, it is often helpful (necessary?) to go back to a starting point where you both agree and then find out where the divergence of thinking actually occurs.  In doing this, you often find that the point of disagreement is not really what you thought it was.  In that vein, I was recently thinking about a particular line of argument in my head and I thought it would make sense to go back to a statement everyone would agree with.  So, working backwards in my mind, I eventually settled on the following question as a starting point for agreement: “Does God have free will?”  I considered it to be a rhetorical question.  I said to myself “Of course the answer has to be ‘yes.’”  Everyone would agree that God has free will.  It seemed like a great starting point for the line of discussion I had in my mind. 

             When I first considered this question, I considered it so obvious that I thought even people who don’t believe in God would agree with it.  Specifically, I thought everyone would agree with the following statement:

 

“If there is a God of any consequence, then the one fundamental characteristic he[1] must have is the characteristic of free will.”

 

             Well…I’ve come to realize that not everyone agrees with that statement.  At first I was incredulous.  I really was.  But the more I’ve considered the issue, the more I’ve come to realize that it’s a trickier question than I first imagined.  I’ve come to realize that it is not the obvious starting point at which everyone would agree.  But I’ve also come to realize that it might be a rather valuable starting point from which to consider the whole issue of free will and determinism.  That issue, when debated and discussed, is almost always focused around the human condition – i.e. do humans have free will?  But in all of my reading on the issue of free will (which, granted, is limited), I have not come across any serious in-depth discussion of free will as it might relate to God.[2]  I know, of course, that not everyone believes in God and so many might say “why argue about something that doesn’t exist?”  But, as I phrased the question above, I think it is a useful line of thinking for anyone, including those who do not believe there is a god of any kind.  The point is, our views about free will and determinism are really exposed if we start asking about free will for a being, hypothetical or not, that has characteristics of being all-powerful and all-knowing.  Can such a being have free will???

             Exploring this question has not changed my original view:  I still think the answer is a resounding “yes.”  I still think that God obviously has free will.  But I can see now that part of the reason I feel that way is based on the very fundamental views I have about reality.  Those views are not shared by everyone!

             An example of the pathway this question takes is to rephrase it to something like “Can God do what He wants?”  Again, my first reaction is “of course God can do what He wants.”  But, then, someone might say “If God knows the future, then is He is bound to act according to that future, so He is not free.”  That’s a common problem with an all-knowing God.  But I think most people would say that God is outside of time and space – i.e. is not constrained by time and space – and therefore it’s not at all clear what it would mean for God to “know His own future.”  God is not living through time, waiting for certain events to happen and then making a decision (free will decision?) about them.  But, then, you have to wonder if free will has the same meaning if you take time out of the equation.  For example, can cause and effect happen in a realm devoid of time?  I’m sure a few philosophers have wrestled with that question and written books on the topic.  But, as for me, I’ve never experienced life outside of time so I have no idea how timelessness works.

             OK, so fine, that’s plenty confusing.  Maybe a similar question would be that, if God is outside of time and space, what does it mean for God to “want” something?  The word “want” as we typically use it, has a basis in a universe constrained by time.  If you “want” something, it implies that you don’t have it now but you would like to have it in the future.  Thus, it quickly becomes clear that you would have to define “want” differently when it comes to God (or any being existing outside of time), and so the question gets messy.  So, then you have to ask “can God want anything?”  And down the philosophical rabbit hole we go!  As is often the case, philosophy becomes a task of carefully defining the terms, which can often prove rather difficult and never-ending.

             One question we often ask with respect to free will has to do with responsibility for one’s own actions.  So, what about the question “Is God responsible for His own actions?”  Here we might have a clear answer.  We could ask it another way: “Can anyone or anything else be responsible for the actions of God?”  If the answer is “yes”, then doesn’t that make the “anyone” or “anything” the real God?  And so we would be asking the same question of that “anyone” – are they responsible for their own actions?  The buck has to stop somewhere unless there is one big circle of causality, which seems illogical to me.  So, I would say “yes, certainly God is responsible for His own actions.”  Is there anyone who would disagree with that?

             So here is where this line of thinking seems to help identify points of divergence.  I, personally, make a direct link between “responsibility for your actions” and “free will.”  I cannot conceive of any reality in which you can be responsible for your own actions if you are not free to decide those actions.  If God does anything, He is responsible for it.  And, if He is responsible, then He “chose” it.  And, if He chose a course of action, then He could have chosen otherwise.  If He could not choose otherwise, then who or what prevented Him from choosing otherwise?  If something can prevent God from choosing otherwise, then that person/thing becomes God in my opinion.  Here’s where the concept of God’s free will diverges from a concept of man’s free will.  The question of “could I (a human being) have chosen otherwise?” is harder to answer.  As a human being, I could be compelled by some other force or thing or being, and so the answer to the question is not as obvious.  But, when it comes to God, well, God, by definition, cannot be controlled by any outside force.  The answer to that question has to be “God is not compelled by any other force to make the decisions He makes” in order for God to be truly God.

             I suppose this line of thinking is a lot like asking if God is the “first cause.”  To me, that is part of the definition of God.  In fact, some would argue that it is the need for some “first cause” that is the best argument for the existence of God.  You can’t ask “who caused God?” or “who created God?”  God is not created and is not caused.  Personally, I do find the argument logically reasonable, but I don’t see it as the best argument for the existence of God – at least not the existence of a living God – as I discuss elsewhere <here>.

             In future entries, I am going to be building on the idea that God has free will.  But I acknowledge here that not everyone will accept that concept at face value.  I would certainly be interested in hearing the ideas of others on this topic.

---

[1] I know that a hypothetical “god” could be he/she/they/whatever, but writing that out every time is tiring to me and so I’m using the shortcut “he”.

[2] If you know of any such discussions, I would appreciate being sent a reference or link.

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 13: Heads or Tails

             I'd like to present an illustration that is going to be very foundational for future discussions of my theory of the soul.  I think it is a simple point - at least I hope it is.  The point has to do with the close relationship between a truly random event and a "willed" event.  I've discussed this elsewhere, and it's going to come up again, but I want to put forward an illustration that should offer some insight into why free will is difficult to discern experimentally.

             Imagine that I have given you a long list of my recorded coin flips.  It's just a list:  Heads. Tails. Tails. Heads. Heads. Heads. Tails. Heads. Tails. Etc.  The list contains 1000 entries.

             A couple of givens:  assume that the flip of a coin is truly random and assume that my coin is a fair coin, such that you expect a 50% distribution of heads and 50% distribution of tails. 

             As you look at the table, there is nothing unusual about it.  I ask you to convince yourself that this is a random table of flipping a fair coin.  So, you dutifully collect some statistical measurements on the data.  You find that 50.2% of the entries are heads.  Seems fine.  You even break things down a bit more and look at the distribution of each set of successive groups of 100 values.  Their distributions also seem fine.  As far as you can tell, this is a typical table of random coin flips.

 

             Then I provide you with the following information:  occasionally, at time points known only to me, instead of flipping the coin, I willfully placed the coin down with either a heads or a tails.  You don't know how often I did that, but for the sake of illustration I will let you know that it was less than a dozen times during the 1000 entries you have in front of you.  I tell you that the series of intentional heads or tails spell out a word using an ASCII table.  My contention is this:  you could not tell which of the 1000 flips is intentional (and therefore has some meaning) and which is random.  In fact, looking across the entire distribution, you could not tell whether my claim that some of the coin flips are intentional is true or not.  Since I am telling you that sometimes my intentional coin placements are heads and some are tails, you wouldn't necessarily see a change in the distribution.  And, really, with so few intentional coin placements in the midst of so many random events, how could you really know that the distribution was not totally random even if all of my intentional placements are heads?  Any variations from a 50:50 split would be well-within any expected variation. 

             Could you ever distinguish my proposed "willed" series of events from a truly "random" series of events?  I contend that you will never be able to distinguish these because of the nature of random and willed events in this illustration.  Even in the extreme case - the case where every coin flip was actually not a flip but was, instead, me placing it down according to my own will; and further the case where I was obsessed with heads so I placed the coin heads up 1000 times in a row - even in that case, you can't prove that it wasn't random since there is some finite chance that a truly random series would result in the same distribution.  In such an extreme case, though, I couldn't blame you if you concluded that this was just a determined series of coin placements, and neither random nor willed.  Sometimes I think that when scientists think of free will, they imagine it must happen in the brain in a manner that fits this latter example.  Specifically, that to exercise free will means that every neuron fires under the control of the will.  If there is any "mixing" of events, it is a mix of determined and willed events.  But in my theory, this is not so.  Willed events are rare and are mixed in with a lot of random events.  In this latter case, not only can you not prove that there are no willed events, you might never suspect that there are any willed events.  If I hadn't told you that I sometimes placed the coin down intentionally, you would never have suspected that I was doing that.

              Finally, the whole situation is further complicated by the fact that you can't repeat the experiment and get the same results.  One common experimental method to extract rare events from the midst of random (or assumed to be random) noise is to perform what is called "spike-triggered averaging."  This allows you to find a very weak signal (like I'm proposing free will is) in the midst of a lot of random noise.  But this approach only works if the signal is repeatable and deterministic based on some known trigger.  In the situation I've described, we have none of the necessary conditions.

             Why do I bring this up?  Because the random coin flip is directly analogous to the randomness in the synaptic junction of neurons.  Neurons either fire (heads) or they don't (tails) as a result of sufficient conditions of neurotransmitter release at the synaptic junction.  That process is fundamentally random (I'll have to dive into the evidence in a future entry).  Therefore, we have exactly the same situation as the table of coin flips, but instead we have a table of neuronal firing states.  It's obviously a very complicated table because there are lots of neurons (not just a single coin) and they are all experiencing their random changes again and again as time progresses.  Also, a coin flip has a uniform distribution, whereas the distribution of any neuron's firing states is related to its inputs, is more complicated, and can change over time.  So it is a very complex table!  My point is that if you can't identify willed events in a simple table of random-plus-willed coin flips, then you surely can't identify willed events in the midst of random neuronal firing.  Willed neuronal firing events could occur constantly in the midst of random neuronal firing, and you would never know.  I contend that that is exactly what happens in the brain and you could never prove me wrong.  It doesn't mean I'm right, of course, but you can't dismiss the idea out of hand.

             Can the idea that willed events are hidden in random neuronal firing ever be considered scientific?  If you consider true science as only encompassing concepts that are disprovable and can be subject to repeated observation, then no.  Of course, by that definition, any theory of the past, such as evolution, is also not science.  But with respect to my theory, you could disprove it by showing that every neuronal firing event is predictable with 100% accuracy.  Specifically, if you can show that there are no such things as random events anywhere in the universe, then, I think, there would be no room for free will.  But, ignoring how difficult that would be, it seems pretty clear that the direction physics (and biology) are going is to confidently assert that there are random events in the universe.  Thus, rather than disproving the idea of free will, science seems to be progressing towards demonstrating that the necessary substrate for free will does indeed exist. 

             Of course, demonstrating that true randomness exists does not prove that free will exists.  I think that's where "disprovable science" ends.  The point of this entry was to show that if randomness does exist, it can be the source for free will and, further, that it would be impossible to rule out the possibility of free will if randomness exists.  Thus, given randomness, it is impossible to disprove the existence of free will and therefore, the concept no longer fits into the disprovable science realm.  That may bother some, but it certainly doesn't bother me because I've already accepted that there is truth to be found outside of science (something I've discussed elsewhere).

             In summary, free will requires an apparent fundamental randomness to exist.  Free will can be buried undetectably in that randomness.  Since it seems that fundamental randomness really does exist in the physical world, then neuroscience, if it confines itself to scientific statements, cannot claim to have proven that free will does not exist.  This makes the debate about free will and determinism a philosophical debate rather than a scientific one.  Yet it seems that scientists are the ones fully confident about their deterministic views.  To such scientists I say: l let go of your biological determinism and come live in the free world.  It's an exciting place to be!

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 8: Noodles and Thorns

 [See here for introductory comments.]

             We've now introduced the basic components of the soul that comprise my theory of the soul (see:  input, output, processing), but there is one more general point I want to make before we dive into some specific applications of the theory, and I'm going to make this point by way of an analogy.  I want to make use of this analogy in future entries, so I want to present it now before we proceed any further.

             The purpose of this analogy is to provide an intuitive sense of the characteristics of the connection between the output component of the soul (will/self/agent of the soul - see here) and the physical brain.  The analogy is this:  imagine a jockey on a horse, where the horse represents our physical body (especially the brain) and the jockey represents our soul (especially the will)[1].  That's hardly much of an analogy, since jockeys are just humans with wills and horses are living, fully physical beings with physical brains.  It's kind of circular, I know.  But the key point of the analogy is this:  the jockey has soft spaghetti noodle for reins and, further, the reins have handles covered in razor sharp thorns.

             I know this analogy seems odd and almost goofy, but this is just meant to be a tool for conceptualizing the link between the spiritual and the physical.  Humor me for a moment and let me pull some thoughts out and see if this analogy is a useful tool for you.  First, note that the horse can go on its merry way without waiting for the jockey to do anything.  In the same way, our physical brain can function without the will.  This was the point of "A Dog's Life."  Second, note that the control the jockey has over the horse is via a tenuous, weak connection that I've illustrated as wet noodles.  The horse can overpower the jockey at any time.  It is a constant struggle for the jockey to exert control over the horse because of the condition of the reins.  It is not impossible, just difficult.  It is possible, with patient training, for the jockey to train the horse to respond to the wimpy reins, but it is always a tenuous situation.  There are frequent failures in which the horse goes off on its own and ignores the jockey.

             At least for me, this helps to understand the perplexing human condition that free will presents us with.  As I have stated elsewhere, I am convinced that humans have free will <here for example>.  I believe we can make decisions (we "could do otherwise") and we can be held responsible for our decisions.  But there is also this very odd thing that we all experience:  we don't always do what we "want" to do.  We make mistakes that we claim are "out of character".  We say things that we instantly regret.  We look back on our life and say "I should have made a better decision" in any number of situations.  We know we could have made a better decision.  We wanted to make a better decision.  But we didn't!  What kind of free will is that?  Well, I would submit to you that it is free will implemented via wet noodles!  We absolutely can make correct moral and ethical decisions, it's just really hard for us.

             This part of the analogy is also meant to illustrate the "slow response" and "training" aspects of our free will.  The noodles exert a wimpy influence, and therefore significant training is required to get the horse to respond to the reins.  Good luck if the jockey suddenly decides he wants to pull the horse up short.  It won't work.  Instead, the jockey has to anticipate the need of stopping and spend considerable time training the horse to respond to the wimpy pull of the reins and obediently come to a halt.  This has to be done in advance.  It's difficult to do, but possible with patient training.  The point is this:  when we are faced with a sudden major important moral decision, our actions are influenced by our past training and not so much by our soul's immediate influence at that moment.  Let's say I am suddenly faced with the time-limited opportunity where a "little white lie" will gain me $1000.  My "horsey self" will surely go for that - why not?  My "jockey self" must pull back on the reins if I am to do the right thing and speak the truth.  But if I have not already "decided", in the past, that I want to be a "truth-teller" and have, therefore, trained myself to refrain from lying, then my "jockey self" will have no chance to stop my "horsey self" and I will lie and get the money.  Later I might say "I shouldn't have done that."  That is the enigma of the human moral experience.  Our free will is a wonderful, powerful force implemented through a weak, wimpy, and decidedly un-wonderful pair of reins.  We humans are a conundrum in that way.

             The third component of the analogy is the sharp thorns on the handles.  I know that reins don't always have handles, but these do.  And the problem is that when the jockey uses them, it hurts.  The harder the jockey has to pull, the more it hurts.  There is a personal "cost" to pulling on the reins and trying to control the horse.  Thus, from the jockey's perspective, there is always a bias towards just letting the horse run free.  At every turn, every change in speed, every jump, the jockey has to decide "do I really need to try to change course, or can I just let it go?"  It hurts to control the horse, so the jockey only exerts control when necessary.

             What's the point of this part of the analogy?  I'm trying to use this to illustrate the fact that we generally pick and choose when to exert our true free will.  I have stated elsewhere that free will is primarily exerted in important moral decisions [here].  I don't believe it has to be that way.  I don't believe our free will is limited to only a few moral decisions.  We could decide to stand up right now.  We could decide to turn left instead of right.  But, in general, we don't exercise our free will in those situations because they are not worth the cost.  The jockey evaluates the importance of each choice and decides that squeezing yet again against the thorns is not necessary.  I'm not saying we don't make a decision in those cases.  Instead, I'm saying that the jockey lets the horse go where it will.  How does the horse decide?  Like any other physical, material system:  decisions are based on the inputs, past history, emotions, environment, etc.  I also think that there are decisions that get relegated to random selection within our brain.  If we are faced with a decision that really doesn't matter (as far as we know), then why spend the energy and effort to decide?  Flip a coin. 

             I have said elsewhere that designing a scientific experiment to demonstrate free will is very difficult and I hope this analogy helps you see why.  Particularly in relation to the "thorny handles", it is very hard to really put human beings into an experiment where they will, in fact, exercise their true free will.  Asking people to decide whether a number is high or low, or whether a color matches the word, or even whether a hypothetical moral decision is right or wrong, is just never going to be worth the cost of grabbing those thorny handles.  The human subject in those experiments is fully aware that the situation is not important.  Why engage free will?  Let the horse do what it will.  Let the horse react.  Maybe engage the random number generator.  Thus, free will is not exercised.  To design an experiment that really forces human beings to engage their free will would require, at the very least, significant deception regarding the fact that they are part of a scientific study.  Ethically, such experiments are generally not acceptable even if it were possible to design them.

             I hope you will find this analogy helpful as we go through a more detailed discussion of the soul.  Think about it in your own personal experience.  I'm sure you have freely chosen to do things that you didn't want to do.  That statement is such a total contradiction that it makes no sense, yet it is somehow true!  I hope the analogy helps you see how such a statement can be illogical yet true. 

             Finally, I think I should clarify that the "self " should be considered to be the entire horse, jockey, and reins conglomerate.  It is a mistake, I believe, to say that the "true me" is just the jockey.  It's also a mistake to say that the true me is just the horse.  In this analogy, "we" are the whole package.  We are responsible for the decisions made by the entire conglomerate.  And, therefore, the struggle is real!  I really like how the Apostle Paul expressed it:  "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-- this I keep on doing."   [Rom 7:15, 19]

---

[1] Note that this is not the same as Plato's Chariot Allegory, although that allegory also deals with how we make decisions and the difficulty in doing so.  This also is not the same as Freud's horse and rider analogy.  I might need to explain this further, but suffice it to say that, in my analogy, the horse has all the features of a real horse.  It responds to inputs and makes decisions.  In Plato, and then Freud, the analogies only use certain features of a horse (strength and power, for example).

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 6: Soul 101, Class #2

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             I theorized that the soul is composed of at least three major components that I referred to generally as Afferent System, Efferent System, and Processing & Memory [see here].  This entry is about the Efferent System of the soul. 

 

The Efferent System of the Soul:  The Will

             The efferent, or "motor system", of the soul is basically what we might generally refer to as "the will".  This is where free will is generated and implemented.   The efferent system is where the interaction between the spiritual "soul-world" and the physical "flesh-world" happens.  The efferent system is, at least in my view, the most mysterious component of the soul and probably the most mysterious thing in the entire universe.  To me, the entire mystery of the soul really comes down to this component.  

             There are at least two major parts to the Efferent System of the soul.  One part is the aspect that performs the mechanics of the "spiritual-physical link."  Somehow the decisions made by the soul have to produce an influence on our physical actions.  How in the world is it possible that some non-physical entity could impact what we do?  In fact, as I've discussed elsewhere [here], we can narrow it down much further:  at some point, this action has to affect one or more neurons in the brain.  How?  There will be a lot more on that in future entries.  The other part is the actual decision-making component.  This component is the entity that generates an uncaused cause [see here].  This is the entity that generates a decision that is unpredictable, but not random.  And, just like the unity feature of consciousness [here], there is nothing else in the universe (that we know of) that is like this.  There is no other force or condition or outcome that is not either "caused" or "random".  As a result, it is impossible to come up with an analogy without introducing human will into the analogy, thus creating some circular logic.  Some would say that the uniqueness and downright craziness of thinking there could be something that appears random (i.e. unpredictable) and yet is not random, should drive me to doubt the idea of free will.  But, as I have discussed elsewhere, for me, free will is a given - it is the starting point - because I experience it moment by moment.  I do not throw it out just because it is conceptually difficult, if not impossible, to fully describe.  I can't explain why bumblebees fly either, but I see them flying so I don't entertain the possibility that "since I can't make sense of it, they must not be flying."

             I actually don't know if it is right to call the efferent component, "the will."  There are a lot of terms used for this concept, often poorly defined.  I think this component might also be analogous to what some refer to as human "agency".  Or, from a spiritual standpoint, it might be proper to call it the "spirit" of a person.  Or even "heart."  Whatever you call it, it is the seat of moral responsibility.  The existence of "the will" is why we can hold human beings responsible for their own actions in a manner different than a dog or a computer.  The general direction of our moral decision-making (what kind of a person we are), and the implementation of those moral decisions, is established in this component.    

             How is "the will" or "agency" established in each human?  Are we born with it?  Is it set by God or by random chance?  This line of thinking, which ends with the idea that you'd have to create your own self in order to have free will, is, in my opinion, a very tough argument for libertarians like me to counter.  It's a body blow that I have to absorb because I can't answer that question.  I take some solace in the fact that the concept of God has the same issue.  Did God create Himself?  If not, then how did He come into being and who decided what God's character was going to be like?  When it comes to God, of course, we simply say that God had no beginning - He always was.  There is no question that God has free will.  So did God freely choose His character?  There's no answer to that.  I have an idea about the infinitesimal "beginning" of our free will, but that will have to wait for some future entry.  But I don't reject the idea of God because of this argument because, in many ways, this whole mystery (how did God create Himself?)  is exactly what makes God, God.  In the same way, the conundrum of "creating yourself" is exactly what makes free will, free.  I like this mystery.  To me it is exciting.  More mysterious and exciting and even "spooky" than quantum entanglement!

             I will just say one thing with respect to the question "are we born with it?" in relation to our free will.  I think there are a lot of reasons to believe that this part of the soul grows and matures, roughly analogous to physical development.  I think that the maturing of the soul could provide an explanation for the "age of accountability" for humans.  This is a common difficulty in raising kids.  At what point are they responsible for their own actions and should be punished or praised accordingly?  There is certainly nothing that suddenly happens outwardly that indicates a sudden transition from "not accountable" to "fully accountable."  At some age, kids are "tried as adults."  We pick ages (5...12...18...etc.) for this "transition" because we have no other means of making a decision.  Some kids seem to mature quicker than others.  And what about kids with mental disabilities?  These are all good questions and a soul - specifically a "will" - that grows and matures over time provides a framework for understanding how to address these questions.

             Remember that in my theory of the soul, the efferent system is generally sparse, infrequent, and weak.  This is partly what I was trying to point out in "It's a Dog's Life."  The brain can run on its own without requiring input from the Efferent System of the Soul, and, I think most of our life operates "physically."  Thus, when we start digging into how the soul actually influences the brain, the mechanics of this influence have to take the "weak and infrequent" nature into account.  However, when we focus on character qualities that are uniquely human - say something like forgiveness or even altruism - we expect the soul is involved.  That's where we should expect to see the action of the soul on the brain.

             I'm going to stop here with this initial description because this takes me back to my purpose:  to present a theory of the soul that is consistent with neuroscience and scripture.  The key thing is that the Efferent System of the soul is the one concept where science could have real explanatory power.  Specifically, I claim the soul exists in each person and is influencing neurons (albeit infrequently).  That concept can theoretically be subjected to experiment.  It is a repeatable condition of every human being that is acting in the present day.  Neuroscience will have a lot to say about how and where this effect could or could not happen.  This is in contrast to many other aspects of Christian doctrine or even many other aspects of the soul.  Many of the other important Christian doctrines, such as miracles and/or history, are things that cannot be repeated and they happened in the past, which can't be "rerun."  I suppose the other Christian doctrine that relates to the present day (i.e. not history) is the ongoing existence of God, but that is very difficult to subject to experimentation!  (Though I have tried - see here!)

             And now on to the third major component of the soul:  processing and memory.

 

Conscious Crows???

             I came across the following headline that immediately caught my attention:  "Crows Are Capable of Conscious Thought, Scientists Demonstrate For The First Time."  This was an article by Michelle Starr (ScienceAlert.com, Sept 2020) and it starts out with the following paragraph:

 

"New research into the minds of crows has revealed a jaw-dropping[1] finding: the canny corvids aren't just clever - they also possess a form of consciousness, able to be consciously aware of the world around them in the present. In other words, they have subjective experiences."

 

             This was intriguing enough to force me to read the original paper referenced in the article:  "A neural correlate of sensory consciousness in a corvid bird" by Andreas Nieder, Lysann Wagener, and Paul Rinnert from the University of Tubingen, Germany; and published in Science in September 2020.

 

             This study is interesting not only due to the hype (or, really, in spite of the hype), but also due to the methods used and the fact that crows can be trained to do a task that is pretty complicated.  I learned something new about crows.  If you are interested in this topic, it is worth reading.  But I will also say that the paper is difficult to read and understand.  In my opinion, the methods and data could be presented in a more easily understandable way.  I will try, as succinctly as I can, to describe the experiment performed and highlight the key finding.

 

             The first thing to note is that the study was performed with two well-trained crows that were tested over many days.  They were trained to stick their heads into a darkened box where they could see a small screen where different symbols and colors were presented to the crow. The crow had to respond to what it saw according to some rules it had learned.  For example, one of the tests involved showing a white square on the screen and the crow had to indicate that it saw the square by first holding its head in place for a couple of seconds and then moving its head out of the box.  The crows were also outfitted with a device that recorded the neural activity from a specific region of the crow's brain - a region where the investigators hypothesized that "sensory consciousness" resides for the crow.  There are many more details to this experiment, but I think it is possible to gain a basic understanding of the key finding without going further into the experimental details.

 

             The crux of the test was this:  there is a low level of light intensity at which the crow sometimes perceives the light and sometimes does not.  This is called the "threshold of detection" and is something you are familiar with even if you aren't familiar with the term.  For example, there is a level of sound that, when presented to your ears, you would say you heard it about half the time.  The same is true when you are touched with a very fine wire. Sometimes the wire touches your skin and you don't feel it, and sometimes you do.  So, in the same way, sometimes the crow perceived the low level of light that was presented on the screen and indicated that it saw it, and sometimes the crow didn't perceive the light and therefore indicated that it didn't see it.  Thus, the exact same intensity of light is put on the screen and sometimes the crow perceives the light and sometimes it does not.  This kind of "unpredictable" behavior is a common characteristic of complex living things, but not generally a characteristic we ascribe to machines (although see next paragraph).  If you had an electronic light detector instead of a crow, presumably it would always read the same output based on the intensity of the light.  Machines don't have a "perception" where sometimes they see the light and sometimes they don't.  How can crows (or any living thing) exhibit "perception"?  The assumption of the investigators is that there must be somewhere in the crow's brain that decides whether it perceived the light or not.  Or - to use the word I would rather not use in this case - crows were sometimes "conscious" of the light and sometimes not. 

 

             In summary, what you have is an entity that, when presented with the same input, gives a different output.  By itself, this is not all that surprising.  The electronic circuit device called a "flip-flop" does the same thing.  A flip-flop is a circuit component that, when presented with an input, gives a different (alternating) output every time.  Kind of like clicking a ballpoint pen.  You click it once and the ballpoint is out.  You click it again and the ballpoint goes back in.  So, by itself, a changing output with the same input is interesting, but hardly represents consciousness (unless a flip-flop or ballpoint pen is conscious!). 

 

             The reason the flip-flop changes output each time is because each input causes it to change its state in preparation for the next input.  Thus, although you have the same input each time, you do not have the same "state" of the machine.  If you had some entity that stayed in the exact same state every time, yet still responded with a different output for the same input, then that would be more interesting.  Yet even that type of entity could hardly be described as "conscious."  For example, a true random number generator meets this latter description.  Assuming a random number generator has no memory of past events (it shouldn't), it will give a different output every time you make a request (i.e. the same input), yet presumably it is always in the same state.  And, like a ballpoint pen, random number generators are also not conscious.

 

             In the case of the crow experiment, there is no way to eliminate either of these two conditions and thus, in my opinion, the claim of "consciousness" in this case is very premature (i.e. wrong).  In fact, although I find the results of the paper interesting, I believe that the Discussion section of the paper devolves into baseless claims and hype.  If I had been a peer-reviewer of this paper, I would not have allowed the authors to make statements like: "Our finding provides evidence for the phylogenetic origins of consciousness.  It excludes the proposition that only primates...are endowed with sensory consciousness".  Let me explain why I say this.

 

             First, the crow's brain could simply be a "complex flip-flop."  By that I mean that there is no guarantee that the crow is in the same state every time the same low-level of light is presented to it.  In fact, given that crows have memory, this experiment could be simply demonstrating memory effects.  The decision as far as detection or non-detection of the low threshold light could be totally dependent on the previous trials or even the overall state of the crow.  The authors did not analyze this at all, which seems like a major oversight.  It could be that the presentation of the previous trial (or trials) is a better predictor of the crow's response than the neuronal output.  But even if that is not the case, the crow's response could clearly be a product of past responses and the crow's state of mind.  The authors claim that the crow makes a different choice when presented with the same stimulus.  But, in every trial, the "crow" is, in reality, a slightly different crow.  It is, at the very least, a few seconds older.  Further, other things are happening to the crow besides just getting older.  The most obvious is the presentation of the prior experimental stimuli, but there are any number of other inputs to the crow's system.  The crow is getting a reward after each trial, and surely the motivation with respect to the reward must change from trial to trial.  And who knows what other things affect crows?  None of these things were controlled for or ruled out.  And memory effects alone are not sufficient to demonstrate consciousness.  Ballpoint pens have memory.

 

             Second, the experimental outcome could be explained by a random process within the crow's brain.  By this I mean that even if you did a more careful experiment and could measure the "state of mind" of the crow at each moment, these results could still be explained by a random number generator.  I think it is unlikely that there is a true random number generator in the crow's brain, but I think it is very likely that the transmission of action potentials across a synapse at the transmission threshold has a small random component to it.  There is nothing in this experiment, as it was designed and presented, that precludes such an explanation of the data.  And random processes are also not conscious.

 

             To be fair to the authors, they did not design the experiment to demonstrate consciousness but rather to demonstrate what is called the "neural correlate of consciousness".  That means they were looking to show what part of the brain, if any, contained the "perception" effects that the crow demonstrates.  In that sense, the experiment is observational and is certainly not designed to explore the mechanism of action of consciousness.  What the experimenters observed is that some neurons in a specific area of the cortex of the crow's brain increase their firing when the crow perceives that it saw a low level of light, even if there was no light delivered.  So, you could claim that these neurons are responsible for the perception.  But the experiment is not designed to explain how it is that a neuron, or group of neurons, makes a decision that is in some way independent of its inputs.  In fact, that's way beyond the scope of any scientific experiment at present and strays into the difficulty with "free will" experiments that I have discussed elsewhere. 

 

             Finally, "sensory consciousness", as defined by neuroscientists and as used in this paper, is not real consciousness as you and I would think of consciousness.  I will deal with this issue in a future entry.  The authors of the paper are clear about this limitation and acknowledge this point in their paper.  But, of course, that minor little point gets lost when the reporter for ScienceAlert picks it up.  Suddenly, the outcome of the paper becomes "crows are conscious like humans."  So, we start off with a paper that doesn't even show "sensory consciousness" in any conclusive manner and end up with a claim that it shows real human consciousness.  That's called hype!  The paper is interesting, but it in no way shows that crows are conscious.  Don't believe the hype.

---

[1]Whenever I hear the word "jaw-dropping", I am immediately 99.9% skeptical of all words that follow.  It is the red flag of red flags that indicates what you are about to read is over-hyped to the extreme.