Using Physics and Complexity Theory to 'Measure Consciousness'

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-use-...ssion=true

The study published yesterday in Physical Review Research describes how tools from physics and complexity theory were used to determine the level of consciousness in fruit flies.

“This is a major problem in neuroscience, where it is crucial to differentiate between unresponsive vegetative patients and those suffering from a condition in which a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally because of complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body,” said study author Dr. Kavan Modi, from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy.

The research team, which includes Dr. Modi, PhD candidate Roberto Muñoz also from the School of Physics and Astronomy, and Monash University Psychology Associate Professor Nao Tsuchiya, has found a way to measure the level of conscious arousal in fruit flies using the complex signals produced by the brain...

“The study is significant because it highlights an objective way to measure conscious arousal, based on well-established ideas from complexity theory,” he said.

“It is potentially applicable to humans — and it reflects a growing interest in new theories of consciousness that are experimentally testable.”

The research team studied the brain signals produced by 13 fruit flies both when they were awake and when they were anesthetized. They then analyzed the signals to see how complex they were.

“We found the statistical complexity to be larger when a fly is awake than when the same fly is anesthetized,” Dr. Modi said.“This is important because it suggests a reliable way to determine the level of conscious arousal by tapping into a small region of the brain, rather than many parts of the brain...It also suggests that there is a clear marker of conscious arousal that does not depend on specific external stimuli.”

The researchers concluded that applying a similar analysis to other datasets, in particular, human EEG data could lead to new discoveries regarding the relationship between consciousness and complexity.

I swear there's been a study like this done before, but I can't quite remember the details of it besides it also involving flies. 


The title of this article seems somewhat sensationalist. When most people, I imagine, think of 'the mystery of consciousness', they're probably thinking of the hard problem, the mind-brain relation and consciousness pertaining to 'the self'. This study once again is quite clear that it's dealing with conscious states...I think. The actual paper references Integrated Information Theory: 

One of the most successful techniques to date in distinguishing levels of conscious arousal is the [i]perturbational complexity index[/i] [8–10], which measures the neural activity patterns that follows a perturbation of the brain through magnetic stimulation. The evoked patterns are processed through a pipeline then finally summarized using Lempel-Ziv complexity [9]. This method is inspired by a theory of consciousness, called [i]integrated information theory[/i] (IIT) [11,12], which proposes that a high level of conscious arousal should be correlated with the amount of so-called [i]integrated information[/i], or the degree of differentiated integration in a neural system (see Ref. [13] for details). While there are various ways to capture this essential concept [14,15], one way to interpret integrated information is as the amount of loss of information a system has on its own future or past states based on its current state, when the system is minimally disconnected [16–18]. 

So I'm confused as to whether this is relevant to the mind-brain relationship and supports a materialist explanation of consciousness. Thoughts?

Disclaimer:
As noted here there's a good reason to reject this is proof materialism/physicalism is true, given these skeptical parties that continue to doubt the physicalist/materialist faith.


Additionally, whatever is shown by parapsychology or neuroscience, here are four good reasons to reject the religion of physicalism/materialism.

I hear you.  Until, or perhaps rather "if", we find a way to test conscious experience (e.g., the color red) I just don't know what we're going to practically take away from neuroscience that studies the black box around the core question (i.e., the hard problem).

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-use-...ssion=true


I swear there's been a study like this done before, but I can't quite remember the details of it besides it also involving flies. 


The title of this article seems somewhat sensationalist. When most people, I imagine, think of 'the mystery of consciousness', they're probably thinking of the hard problem, the mind-brain relation and consciousness pertaining to 'the self'. This study once again is quite clear that it's dealing with conscious states...I think. The actual paper references Integrated Information Theory: 


So I'm confused as to whether this is relevant to the mind-brain relationship and supports a materialist explanation of consciousness. Thoughts?

This science news article as usual has a lot of invalid hype as its operative wording. This research doesn't advance the real understanding of consciousness or of the Hard Problem. It's mainly advancing new very sophisticated ways of measuring neural correlates of consciousness, hoping for clinical hospital applications in areas like shut-in syndrome and anesthetic awareness.   

We have known for a long time that measurable, detectable brain states, whether global like electroencephalography and FMRI scans, or measurements of individual neural cell activity, correlate with various aspects of consciousness, willed motor activity, awareness of sensory stimulation, even the subjects of willed thoughts, etc. And it has been obvious for a long time that biochemically affecting brain cells affects consciousness in various ways, as with the effects of alcohol. 

All of these well observed phenomena basically amount to correlation not causation. The key is that causation is not logically entailed by any of these observations.  And there is a large body of empirical evidence from various paranormal phenomena that the mind is not a function of the physical brain, veridical NDEs being one of the most prominent areas. And it is a fact that materialist neuroscience is no closer to unlocking the mysteries of consciousness and the Hard Problem than it was 50 years ago, despite vast advancements in understanding of neural mechanisms. These factors sort of indicate that materialist neuroscience must be barking up the wrong tree.

The closest operative concepts are most likely the filter or transceiver theories as exemplified by the TV set analogy.

So I'm assuming this study really is being overhyped as solving some great mystery of the self, as the title may imply, when in reality it's just some research that may help with understanding states of conscious awareness? I'm still confused why they bother to bring up IIT, but then again I'm not really an expert. 

I am sick of articles like this though that try to trick readers, usually by the headline at first and sometimes the content, into thinking a study on consciousness is referring to the 'self/soul'. This reminds me of the sensationalism around that Thalamus study from several months ago. Science Direct had to clarify in their article that it was about conscious awareness. I do hope such clarifications are made for other misleading studies.

[Laird]

Yes, the title of the article is click-bait. As nbtruthman points out, this study does not try to understand the "mystery" of consciousness (the hard problem), i.e., why and how complex arrangements of (non-conscious) matter (could) result in subjective experience. Instead, it tries to understand which sorts and degrees of complex arrangements of matter are correlated with degrees of conscious arousal, which perhaps we might otherwise term "alertness".

As nbtruthman also points out, correlation (between complex physical states and mindful alertness) is not proof of causation (i.e., of consciousness itself owing its existence to physicality, however complex that physicality might be).

We might conceptualise it like this: the relationship between consciousness and the brain can be likened to that between a person connected by strings to a robot, where the person represents "consciousness" and the robot represents the "brain" associated with that consciousness.

In ordinary circumstances, the person can pull on the strings to influence the robot, and the robot can pull on the strings to influence the person. Through the strings, a cooperative relationship is established.

However, if the strings between the person and the robot are tightened by the robot, which resists every movement of the person, then the cooperative relationship becomes a dominant relationship: the person can no longer move away from the robot (that is, in terms of the metaphor: his/her consciousnessness becomes limited/reduced). If the tightening of the strings goes even further, and every inch the person gives to the strings gets permanently withheld by the robot, then s/he will only become further immobilised (in terms of the metaphor, this is the effect of an anaesthetic).

Now, does the correlation between the person's immobility and the robot's tightening of the strings indicate that the person is caused to exist by the robot? Of course not. They are simply in relationship to one another; an otherwise cooperative relationship which can in the right circumstances become dominant in one direction. In the same way, the dominating "tightening of the strings" by an anaesthetised brain does not indicate that consciousness is caused to exist by that (physical) brain. It simply indicates that the (physical) brain (robot) is in a close relationship (tied up to) consciousness (the strung-up person), and can dominate that consciousness (person).

I'm not sure how well that metaphor is going to hold up in the long term, as it is one I've conceived of ad-hoc for this post, but hopefully it is useful.

Bottom line: though I have only skimmed it, it seems that this paper in terms of the metaphor only describes in admittedly very clever and sophisticated terms how one can relate the degree to which the robot tightens the strings and resists the person's movement with the degree to which the person is free to move. It does not explain why the person exists in the first place, nor why (and how) s/he came to be tied up with a robot.

Thank you Laird for that correction, and your prior explanation nbtruthman. I suppose it's telling if the article itself, which is typically more sensationalist than the study, doesn't actually mention the self type of consciousness at all.

[Laird]

Thank you Laird for that correction, and your prior explanation nbtruthman. I suppose it's telling if the article itself, which is typically more sensationalist than the study, doesn't actually mention the self type of consciousness at all.

Right. If I understand what you're saying (which I might not), a key failure the article is that it doesn't (even attempt to) explain how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from the (hypothesised) objectivity of matter. All it does is put forward a proposal for how and why certain subjective (conscious) states are correlated with certain (hypothesised) objective states (of matter).

Right. If I understand what you're saying (which I might not), a key failure the article is that it doesn't (even attempt to) explain how the subjectivity of consciousness can arise from the (hypothesised) objectivity of matter. All it does is put forward a proposal for how and why certain subjective (conscious) states are correlated with certain (hypothesised) objective states (of matter).

I think that's what I meant yes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean this is another one of those 'awareness/wakefulness' studies that uses the term consciousness in a manner that is misleading? Forgive me if I'm repeating myself at all, I'm not the most inclined when it comes to this kind of terminology 

[Laird]

I think that's what I meant yes. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean this is another one of those 'awareness/wakefulness' studies that uses the term consciousness in a manner that is misleading? Forgive me if I'm repeating myself at all, I'm not the most inclined when it comes to this kind of terminology 

I'm no expert on terminology either, but yes, I think there's cause for a claim of misleading terminology. The sense of "consciousness" that applies to the hard problem - the true "mystery" - is that of the subjective self and its subjective experiences, which is a binary scale: either you have a conscious self or you do not. This study, on the other hand, takes "consciousness" to be a matter of degree (of, as you put it, "awareness/wakefulness"). Don't get me wrong: there is a place for degrees of consciousness... just not when it comes to the hard problem, which is, as far as I can tell, a binary matter - either you have a conscious self or there is no (conscious) you to talk about.

To go on a bit of a semi-related rant from that reply to your comment:

This study takes the subjective self and its subjective experiences for granted, and does not in any way attempt to explain them, but rather tries to explain what we might refer to as an "intensity of experience" of that self with respect to certain physical correlates. But for those of us who are not physicalists, that correlation has never been in dispute anyway (refer to the metaphor of my last post). We simply ask "How on Earth do (or even could) the self and its subjective experiences come into existence from (be caused by) that which is of a different category of being ("objective" matter)?