Seminar UC Berkeley 27 June

Foundations of Mind
UC Berkeley
3105 Tolman June 27 2pm

2:00 pm Terry Deacon (UC Berkeley):

How information lost its meaning (and how to recover it).

Professor Terrence W. Deacon

Abstract:
   The technical concept of information developed after Shannon (1948)
and those who have followed has fueled advances in many fields, from
fundamental physics to bioinfomatics, but its quantitative precision
and its breadth of application have come at a cost. It has undermined
its usefulness in fields distinguished by the need to explain function
and reference, such as evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience,
and the social sciences. And it may even be relevant to interpretive

problems arising in quantum physics.

   The current technical version of the concept has been so successful
in part because it is consistent with a tacit metaphysical principle
assumed ubiquitously in the contemporary physical sciences: that any
and all mentalistic properties should be excluded from playing
explanatory roles. But in order to provide the foundation for a
scientific theory of information that is sufficiently precise and
formal to serve fields as diverse as molecular biology and cognitive
neuroscience it is necessary to expand and slightly reformulate the
technical concept of information in a way that accounts for these
attributes that are not intrinsic to the conveying medium.
   The key to formulating a more adequate concept of information that
includes these most distinctive properties is to be found, ironically,
in more carefully attending to the physicality of information media. A
hint that this is important is captured in two distinctively different
uses of the concept of entropy (informational and thermodynamic). I
will demonstrate how referential information is based upon the
constraints generated by physical work introduced by thermodynamic
openness of an information medium and its susceptibility to contextual
modification. Physical work is also the relevant measure when it comes
to assessing the usefulness of information. In general, I argue that
it is the amount of work “saved” as a result of access to information
that determines its significance or usefulness.
   In this way the previously set aside properties of reference and
significance can be re-incorporated into a rigorous analysis of
information suitable for use in both the physical (e.g. quantum
theory, cosmology, computation theory) and semiotic sciences (e.g.

biology, cognitive science, economics).

3:30 pm Len Talmy (State University of New York at Buffalo):

Aspects of language differ in their accessibility to consciousness

Dr. Talmy will discuss the observable phenomenon that different aspects or components of language have different degrees of availability in consciousness. For example, we are generally more conscious of the meaning of a lexical form than of a grammatical form, of the use of a word than of the conditions of its use, of the meaning of a word or discourse than of the form, and of asserted content than of implied content. The general principle seems to be that consciousness is more associated with that portion or granularity of linguistic phenomena that is more relevant to current goals and concerns. The same pattern of differential consciousness seems to hold for other cognitive systems, such as visual perception and motor control.

Next seminar Friday, June 20, 2014, 2:00 p.m., Beach Room, 3105 Tolman Hall UC Berkeley

The next seminar takes place:

Friday, June 20, 2014, 2:00 p.m., Beach Room, 3105 Tolman Hall

Jacob Needleman (San Francisco State University):

The metaphysics of consciousness A discussion of the primordial idea of man as microcosm: What is the relationship between the actual and potential levels of human consciousness and the vision of levels of consciousness and being in the universal world? What are the implications of this question concerning the idea of “state-specific” knowledge and the implied epistemological limitations of modern science vis-à-vis the fundamental questions of human life and understanding? The relationship between outer and inner knowledge of the mind will be explored.

Michael Ranney (UC Berkeley):

Boosting climate change wisdom, and maybe ethics, in a quasi-polarized era: www.HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org (now in Mandarin!) and empirical findings Prior work showed massive ignorance about global warming’s basic mechanism, yet a 400-word explanation (a) hugely improves readers’ understandings and (b) increases climate change concern and acceptance (Ranney et al., 2012; Clark, Ranney, & Felipe, 2013) — disconfirming “stasis theory,” which suggested futility in increasing public climate wisdom. Dr. Ranney now reports (1) replications/extensions of (a) and (b), (2) a study showing that seven apt statistics increase one’s global warming acceptance (Clark, 2013), and (3) the recently introduced www.HowGlobalWarmingWorks.org — a now-popular website including five short videos (0.9 to 4.7 min.). For Mandarin, see here. Dr. Ranney also analyzes public and non-public comments about the website/videos. Results will be situated with respect to various historical, societal, and perhaps even ethical dimensions.

Friday, May 30, 2014, 2:00 p.m., Beach Room, 3105 Tolman Hall

Friday, May 30, 2014, 2:00 p.m., Beach Room, 3105 Tolman Hall

The first theme of the seminar is Quantum Cognition:  "The quantum cognition project is based on the observation that various cognitive phenomena are more adequately described by quantum information theory and quantum probability than by the corresponding classical theories." 2:10 pm Jose Acacio de Barros (San Francisco State University and Stanford): Rationality, Quantum Cognition, and Beyond In this talk Dr. de Barros will discuss, in a very informal way, the connection between rationality, quantum cognition, and neural models. He will introduce ideas from quantum cognition and then, based on them, put forth an extended theory of rational thinking. The model presented is based on robust neurophysiological evidence, and we hope it can bring to the surface some issues on conscious (and unconscious) decision making. 3:30 pm Tony Bell (UC Berkeley) Emergence, submergence and no noise: how brains probably work Tony Bell Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience UC Berkeley I explore the most likely correct idea that there is continuous information transfer from the micro to the macro and vice versa in living systems.  I describe the mechanisms the brain uses to gate these information flows (from field potentials to water and quantum) and discuss the implications for our field(s).

Workshop May 9 2pm Beach Room 3105 Tolman UC Berkeley

Workshop May 9 2pm Beach Room 3105 Tolman UC Berkeley

Neural dynamics at the microscopic level Seán O Nualláin UOI

Complementing Walter Freeman's exploration of neural dynamics at the mesoscopic level, his mentor Karl Pribram has long championed an approach at the level of individual neurons. With a new burgeoning interest in this level now apparent, this talk outlines for the first time how Pribram's schema plays out computationally. His work with David Bohm on quantum mechanics and the holographic nature of reality will be referenced.

3-30 pm Break

3-45 pm Carlos Montemayor SFSU

Dogmatic and skeptical arguments about the nature of consciousness

There are various ways to classify the extant views on the nature of consciousness. I analyze a classification that is based on the implications of different views with respect to subjectivity and time, and show that it has the advantage of highlighting different aspects of the hard problem. I focus on three aspects: a) the problem of agency and free will, which is crucial for the von Neumann interpretation of QM, b) the problem of the unity of consciousness, which is important to understand the nature of qualia, and c) the problem of the psychological now. This approach suggests that the impasse produced by the hard problem is based on either dogmatic or skeptical assumptions about these three aspects of consciousness, which may impede thinking more creatively about the nature of consciousness. A possible way of avoiding these assumptions is to further analyze these three aspects of conscious awareness.

Neurodynamics and consciousness workshop 2-30 pm May 2 2014 Beach room 3rd floor Tolman Hall UC Berkeley

Neurodynamics and consciousness workshop

2-30 pm May 2 2014 Beach room 3^rd floor Tolman Hall UC Berkeley

This workshop will have 2 parts; Walter Freeman will speak about the large and medium-scale (macro and mesoscopic) issues related to neural dynamics; Sean O Nuallain will speak about the microscale, individual neurons.

To familiarize attendees with the language used, an introduction to Walter's work is appended and papers summarizing the two approaches attached

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Introduction to Walter’s work

Over the past half-century, the Freeman laboratory has accumulated a
large volume of data and a correspondingly extensive interpretive
framework centered around an alternative perspective on  brain
function, that of dynamical systems. The contents of consciousness, by
contrast, are seen as an inevitably sparse sample of events in the
perception-action cycle. The paper proceeds to an attempt to elucidate
the contents of this sparse  sample.

 Freeman (2005a ) established  that local dynamics in rabbit and human
neocortex are scale-free, and that every skilled action involves all
cortex and basal ganglia in varying degree. Self-similarity from the
microscopic to the macroscopic levels of the cortex allows the cortex
to change state very quickly. Freeman (2002)  introduces the notion of
a wave packet, amplitude modulation of which constitutes the
expression of knowledge, which is stored in synaptic modifications and
expressed by phase  transitions.  Freeman (op.cit., 517) also makes
the radical contention that we do not need independent access to the
external world for communication to occur; it is sufficient that the
internal meanings in speaker and hearer  come transiently into
harmony.

The felt experience of consciousness is constrained by the fact that
the cortex operates discontinuously, with “shutter” states
interspersed with the generation of wave packets (Freeman 2007).
Moreover, while eschewing the technical apparatus of decoherence,
recent work has adopted quantum field theory (Freeman et al, 2006c) to
explain the phenomenon of anomalous dispersion in the brain. Just as
the vibration induced by a blow will reach the other side of a solid
object at a different time to the sound thereof, wave packets show
properties of transmission independent of neural impulse itself. In
fact, the brain behaves in ways not dissimilar to a boson.

Freeman (2005b) introduces several other  leitmotiven.  Globally
coherent brain activity may be an objective correlate of consciousness
through preafference. Preafference, in turn, enters once the more
veridical notion of circular causality is substituted for the
stimulus-response act.Briefly, once an action is lined up, the brain
prepares the system for the sensory consequences of this action in the
preafference process. The consequences for consciousness qua process
are enormous.

Essentially, Hume was right; there is no conscious will, but there
does exist a conscious “won't”. Agency as a concept needs to be
correspondingly attenuated; when the intending of an act presents
itself to consciousness, it is experienced as a cause; consciousness
of the consequences thereof are experienced as effects.

 What is  asserted, then,  is that conscious states comprise a sparse
sample of the wave packets that embody motor commands, corollary
discharges, and pre-perceptions that we conceive as unconscious. Wave
packets embodying motor commands are the substratum for mathematical
and other abstract thought. Furthermore, focal consciousness samples
at far too slow a rate to give veridical access to  the contents of
our cortices, and nature has gifted us various mechanisms to get
around this.

Specifics of this paper


Walter states three precepts;

1.        The only evidence for consciousness other than introspective is the
existence of group behavious and goal-directed such, particularly when
both attributes are combined in hunting;
2.        Thus, it is speculated consciousness emerges around the Cambrian,
perhaps 500 million years ago;
3.        Neuropil, generically considered, is the organ for consciousness

He summaries his viewpoint thus;
“Consciousness is a biological process that is sustained by
coordination of activity in many parts of the brain of a subject who
is engaged in an action of searching for information that it needs to
cope with its environment………My hypothesis is that the summary action
is expressed in a global field of synchronized oscillation, which will
shape the next action. My conjecture is that we experience this wave
packet as consciousness”


References


Freeman WJ [2000] Neurodynamics: An Exploration of Mesoscopic Brain
Dynamics, London UK: Springer
Freeman, W. (2002) “How and why brains create meaning from sensory
information” International journal of bifurcation and chaos, Vol 14,
No 2 (2004), 515-530
Freeman WJ [2005a] A field-theoretic approach to understanding scale-free
neocortical dynamics
        Biological Cybernetics 2005, 92/6: 350-359
Freeman WJ [2005b] William James on Consciousness, revisited. Chaos and
Complexity letters, 1 (1) : 17-43
Freeman WJ [2006a ] Origin, structure, and role of background EEG
activity. Part 4. Neural frame simulation. Clin. Neurophysiol. 117:
572-589.
Freeman WJ [2006b ] Scale-free neocortical dynamics. Encyc Comp Neurosci,
Izhikevich E [ed.].
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Scale-free_neocortical_dynamics
Freeman WJ [2007] Proposed cortical ‘shutter’ in cinematographic
perception. Ch. In: Neurodynamics of Cognition and Consciousness. Kozma R
and Perlovsky L [eds.]. New York: Soringer.
Freeman WJ, Vitiello G [2006c] Nonlinear brain dynamics as macroscopic
manifestation of underlying many-body field dynamics. Physics of Life
Reviews 3: 93-118.

Foundations of Mind Workshop series, UC Berkeley

Foundations of Mind Workshop series, UC Berkeley

The Foundations of Mind (FOM) project believes that it is possible that, far from showing incremental (let alone as is claimed, exponential) progress, modern neuroscience is a failed paradigm insofar as it focuses on the attempt to explain mentation in neural terms. Moreover, the reduction of cognitive science to neuroscience has worsened matters. Finally, even correcting these trends may leave a sphere of human action beyond the explanatory scope of science. On Mar 6-7 we ran a successful conference (see FoundationsofMind.org) which has begotten an active community of researchers who are now running a fortnightly seminar series, Fridays Beach room Tolman Hall UC Berkeley.

Wrt the first point, we do not have a single example of a sentence or other meaningful symbol being understood by an attested neural process and seem, if anything, to be going ever further from such a goal as the models get ever more primitive after the towering work of the 1980's in neural nets. Secondly, the assumption that mind can be described as a set of faculties, each with an anatomically distinct location, was regarded as risible phrenology until its 1990's comeback as fmri. Thirdly, fmri is a scalar formalism, famously prone to fraud, at a time when it is increasingly clear that the brain not only uses vectors, but that non-linearity is deep in its working ethos.

The reduction of cognitive science to neuroscience has combined with a mania for “Big data” to elide the contribution of linguists. The result has been machine translation systems that are dangerous in their inaccuracy and steadfast in their refusal to allow syntax, semantics and pragmatics to constrain the search space. Even if they did, it is unlikely that the hope for machines to “understand” language is anything but a negatively eschatological aspiration.

That brings us to our final point; in the classical Von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics, decision and observation is in the classical realm, outside the purview of the system. Can it be the case that modern neuroscience has been incorrect in failing to give this proper weight? Is it possible that, even after we as responsible scientists get our formalisms right, there will remain limitations in our simulation of behavior by machines?

All seminars are free and open to the public.

Workshop in Beach Room, 3^rd floor Tolman hall, UC Berkeley April 18 2014 2pm

2-10 pm Introductory remarks Seán O Nualláin

2-15pm Henry Stapp on “Quantum Mechanics and neuroscience ”

3-15 pm Stan Klein “Connecting visual qualia to their neural correlates”

How does simulation of a single neuron in ones visual system produce the richness of subjective color perception? This is the topic of connecting qualia to neural activity. The capability for achieving that connection has only become available in the past six months, because of a new instrument developed at UC Berkeley. But before getting to the recent experiments some context is appropriate in the context of this 20th anniversary of the Tucson "Toward a Science of Consciousness" (TSC) meetings. Who can forget Chalmer's presentation of the "Hard Problem" at TSCII in 1996. The 764 page book of papers from that meeting is a treasure and is unequaled in capturing the state of the field at that point. The challenge of connecting the hard problem of qualia to the neural correlates of the brain is still with us and I'll argue that advances in technology may enable substantial progress.  My article in the Vision and Consciousness section of the TSCII book was titled "Double Judgment Psychophysics for Research on Consciousness: Applications to Blindsight" (cornea.berkeley.edu/pubs/120.pdf). My present title could have been the same as the old title but replacing "Double" to "Triple", and "Blindsight" to "color" as I now discuss.
A new instrument that enables single neuron brain stimulation has been developed by Austin Roorda of UC Berkeley. The new technology that combines adaptive optics and super precise image stabilization enables one to do careful psychophysics on individual cones and ganglion cells. Retinal ganglion cells (RGC) are special since they are the bottleneck for vision, carrying information to the brain along the optic nerve. Roorda's lab is next to mine and we have been developing new approaches for single and double RGC stimulation.  One of the big surprises is that activation of single retinal neurons can produce a wide variety of color percepts. It had previously been thought that single RGC stimulation would produce limited color percepts (red, green, yellow, blue) based on the opponent color mechanisms found in RGCs and the brain's lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). But a much greater diversity of colors were found. In our experiments for every single RGC stimulation we make a triple judgment on the perceived hue, saturation and intensity of the stimulus. Several competing hypotheses regarding the mechanisms that produce the surprisingly diverse color percepts are now being tested and will be discussed. The new instrument opens up a great variety of experiments linking neural activity to perception. 

4pm Gautam Agarwal, et al.

“The emergence of information in mesoscopic measures of brain activity”

4-45 pm

Seán O Nualláin of the universityofireland.com

The great neuroscientist Karl Pribram and equally great physicist David Bohm collaborated a generation ago with, among others, Jiddah Krishnamrti to produce a completely new worldview. It provided a narrative, based on cutting-edge science on how the evolutionary process allowed nature to express itself as the “implicate” becoming “explicate” and presenting itself to consciousness manifest in us. This beautiful paradigm eventually failed to overcome resistance centering on the neurophysiological plausibility and lack of detail.

In 1999, after having met Seán O Nualláin at a conference on Gurdjieff organized by Seán’s close friend Jacob Needleman, Karl Pribram spent a week at the O Nualláin lab in Dublin. There, for the first time, a detailed computational implementation of the Pribram / Bohm work was done. Far from being merely a beautiful theoretical framework, it was found that the view of dendrodendritic connections between neurons as the critical computational operation in the brain explained many heretofore intractable problems about sense perception. Moreover, it was consistent with Stapp's work on quantum neural activity qua harmonic oscillators.

May 2 2-30 pm Walter Freeman on neural dynamics at the mesoscopic and macroscopic levels

4-30 pm The microscopic level Seán O Nualláin

“Resonate and fire; how non-spiking neurons process sensory data”

While it is universally accepted that several types of cells in the
retina, including rods, do not spike, little investigation has been
done to ask how sense-data can be processed without neural firing.
Moreover, the fact that timing of afferent impulses to a neuron shapes
its firing has not received enough attention. This talk argues that
firing is actually a limit case of a more general mode of neural
functioning in which subthreshold oscillations have a critical causal
role. A harmonic oscillator model of the neuron is sketched, beginning
from a compartmental Hodgkin-Huxley model, and it is shown how the
emergent principles operate equally for tactile, auditory, and visual
input.

The talk ends with speculation on the role of attention and consciousness.

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Welcome and summary

Thanks and welcome 

The theme of this year’s conference is “Foundations of Mind: Cognition & Consciousness”. There is a clear implication that these two can be distinguished, an implication that puts clear blue water between this conference and others apparently on the same theme.



This distinction can be found as far back as 200 AD with Alexander's interpretation of Aristotle's “common sense” as “that which perceives”, an interpretation echoed in Plotinus with his theory of the “inner sense”. While this move at first sight might seem to remove the magic from mental function, in fact it seems to me to be salutary. In particular, splitting the act of awareness from the contents presented to awareness allows a more detailed examination of these contents per se.



And so the panels we have examine this. We will learn in the first panel about the reconstruction of this distinction in thinkers such as Gurdjieff; we will also hear about the notion of “fine tuning” in modern cosmology, an area in many ways invented by the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Le Maitre. We then go on to examine which neuroscience methods can in fact characterize content in ways that are formally sufficient. This leads to the issue of whether there is not a propoer way to “reduce” one discipline to an other.



The dichotomy between content and perception continues in language, where clearly attention has a valuable information-processing role to play. At the ultimate metaphysical and indeed ontological level of analysis, we find that there is an as yet unresolved issue about how the act of observation can affect an apparently objective state of affairs.



Of course, decoherence theory has established that observation may not be necessary, and the epistemological interpretation of QM withholds belief in our ability cognitively to penetrate nature at this level. Yet that interpretation of QM is precisely the “weasel words” with which Osiander introduced “De Revoltionibis” by Copernicus.



Consequently, among the many fine submissions we got for review, we will include in the program here speculative interpretations of Q entanglement and the links with subjective experience.



We have an extremely diverse group of presenters, diverse not just in the range of subjects in which they are expert but in their ethnic and political affiliation. I am glad to say that we have Irish people from both sides of the main religious divide there.(1) In the old story, at the summit of the mountain we are all wearing the same kit, and we are all mountaineers as we scale the highest heights. I wish everybody here a great conference.

(1) The person from the unionist tradition was the only speaker who failed to show up; three of those who did are over 75 years of age

Conclusions

1.Neuroscience has fared at least as badly as philosophy in explaining
the mind. We have no credible account of any symbols emerging from
neural impulse; we have not developed tools to monitor electrical
junctions; indeed the current gargantuan Markram/Koch efforts are
doomed as they look at chemical synapses in the absence of theory
2.There is a way out here; dynamical systems theory, modulation of
carrier waves, the harmonic oscillator as central, honouring the
in-principle arguments that exist about tensors
3.Von Neumann's arguments in his "Grundlagen" still hold up.
4.Linguistics and other symbol systems need to be honoured
5.We need physicists!
6.Absent any input from extravagantly-funded Neuroscience, it is
intellectually responsible to attend to psychological and indeed
spiritual accounts that are rooted in best practise from other
sciences
7.The so-called "hard problem" (considered as linking neural event and
subjective experience a la John Locke) is simply nonsense and has
retarded the area
8.Finally, we must find a way of funding and organizing courses and
research away from the current PI model. As it happens, I paid for
this conference myself (and, given the reaction, do not regret doing
so). 

Sean O Nuallain