Why consciousness is unique to the animal kingdom

I’ve written a number of posts on consciousness over the last 7 years, or whenever it was I started blogging, so this is a refinement of what’s gone before, and possibly a more substantial argument. It arose from a discussion in New Scientist  24 May 2014 (Letters) concerning the evolution of consciousness and, in particular the question: ‘What need is there of actual consciousness?’ (Eric Kvaalen from France).

I’ve argued in a previous post that consciousness evolved early and it arose from emotions, not logic. In particular, early sentient creatures would have relied on fear, pain and desire, as these do pose an evolutionary advantage, especially if memory is also involved. In fact, I’ve argued that consciousness without memory is pretty useless, otherwise the organism (including humans) wouldn’t even know it was conscious (see my post on Afterlife, March 2014).

Many philosophers and scientists argue that AI (Artificial Intelligence) will become sentient. The interesting argument is that ‘we will know’ (referencing New Scientist Editorial, 2 April 2011) because we don’t know that anyone else is conscious either. In other words, the argument goes that if an AI behaves like it’s conscious or sentient, then it must be. However, I argue that AI entities don’t have emotions unless they are programmed artificially to behave like they do – i.e. simulated. And this is a major distinction, if one believes, as I do, that sentience arose from emotions (feelings) and not logic or reason.

But in answer to the question posed above, one only has to look at another very prevalent life form on this planet, which is not sentient, and the answer, I would suggest, becomes obvious. I’m talking about vegetation. And what is the fundamental difference? There is no evolutionary advantage to vegetation having sentience, or, more specifically, having feelings. If a plant was to feel pain or fear, how could it respond? Compared to members of the animal kingdom, it cannot escape the source, because it is literally rooted to the spot. And this is why I believe animals evolved consciousness (sentience by another name) and plants didn’t. Now, there may be degrees of consciousness in animals (we don’t know) but, if feelings were the progenitor of consciousness, we can understand why it is a unique attribute of the animal kingdom and not found in vegetation or machines.

How should I live?

This is the 'Question of the Month' in the latest issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 101, March/April 2014). Submissions need to be 400 words or less, so mine is 400 words exactly (refer below).

How should I live?

How I should live and how I do live are not necessarily the same, but having aspirations and trying to live up to them is a good starting point. So the following is how I aspire to live, which I don’t always achieve in practice.

The most important point is that no one lives in isolation. The fact that we all, not only speak in a language, but also think in a language, illustrates how significantly dependent we are on our milieu. What’s more, from our earliest cognitive experiences to the remainder of our lives, we interact with others, and the quality of our lives is largely dependent on that interaction.

Everyone seeks happiness and in modern Western societies this universal goal is taken for granted. But how to achieve it? A tendency to narcissism, tacitly encouraged by the relatively recent innovation of social media, can lead to self-obsession, which we are particularly prone to in our youth. Socrates famously said (or so we believe): ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ But a thoughtful analysis of that coda, when applied to one’s own life, reveals that we only examine our lives when we fail. The corollary to this is that a life without failure is a life not worth living. And this is how wisdom evolves over a life’s experiences: not through success or study but through dealing with life’s trials and tribulations. This is reflected in virtually every story that’s been told: how the protagonist deals with adversity, be it physical or psychological or both. And this is why storytelling is universally appealing.

So how should I live my life? By being the opposite to narcissistic and self-obsessed. By realising that every interaction in my life is an opportunity to make my life more rewarding by making someone else’s life more rewarding. In any relationship, familial, work-related, contractual or whatever, either both parties are satisfied or both are dissatisfied. It is very rare that someone achieves happiness at someone else’s expense, unless they are competing in a sporting event or partaking in a reality TV show.

There is an old Chinese saying, possibly Confucian in origin: If you want to know the true worth of a person, observe the effects they have on other people's lives. A true leader knows that their leadership is not about their personal achievements: it’s about enabling others to realise their own achievements.

Pitfalls of a Democracy

The latest issue of Philosophy Now has as its theme, ‘Democracy’, with a number of articles on the subject covering Plato to contemporary politics. In particular relevance to this post, Anja Steinbauer ‘explains why Plato had problems with democracy.’ I won’t discuss her article at length, but early on she points out that ‘…it all comes to a head with Socrates: Athenian democracy didn’t like Socrates, which is why the troublesome thinker was democratically put to death.’ The reason I paraphrase this is because it has dramatic relevance to current political events in Australia.

On a recent issue of 4 Corners, whistleblowers and video footage tell us what the government was unwilling to reveal regarding not so recent events at a detention centre for refugees on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, where an asylum-seeker was killed during a riot. The programme reveals the deeply flawed inhumanity of this particular government policy which was originally introduced by the previous (Labor) government and is now being brutally pursued by the incumbent (Liberal) government. Both sides of politics endorse this policy because it’s a vote-winner and, in fact, the last election campaign was dominated by who could be more successful in ‘stopping the boats’ (containing asylum-seekers) as if we are suffering from a wartime invasion.

The relevance to Steinbauer’s insightful commentary on Plato and Socrates is that, with the explicit support of the general public, a government can execute policies that directly contravene the human rights of people who have no political representation in that country. In essence, we are guilty of inflicting both physical and emotional trauma on people; an action we would condemn if it was being done somewhere else. In short, a democratic process does not necessarily provide the most ethical and moral resolution to a dilemma.

The other side to this, is the airing of the programme itself. Only a healthy democratic society can foster a journalistic culture that can openly criticise government policies without fear of retribution.

The physics of driving

This is quite a departure, I know, but one of my hobby-horses is how little people know about the physics of driving. Unlike our man-made road rules, the laws of nature are unbreakable, so a rudimentary knowledge can be useful.

But what prompted me to write this post was a road test I read of the new, upmarket Infiniti Q50 in EVO Australia (March 2014). The big-selling feature of the Infiniti Q50 is its so-called ‘direct adaptive steering’; a world first, apparently for a production car (as opposed to a prototype or research vehicle). It’s a totally ‘fly-by-wire’ steering system, so there is no mechanical connection between the helm and the front wheels. Personally, I think this is a dangerous idea, and I was originally going to title this post, rather provocatively, “A dangerous idea”. Not surprisingly, at least to me, the road-tester found the system more than a little disconcerting when he used it in the real world. It was okay until he wanted to push the car a little, when the lack of feedback through the wheel made him feel somewhat insecure.

There are gyroscopic forces on the front wheels, which naturally increase with cornering force and can be felt through the  steering wheel. The wheel weights up in direct proportion to this force (and not the amount of lock applied as some might think). In other words, it’s a linear relationship, and it’s one of the major sources of determining the cornering force being generated.

I should point out that the main source of determining cornering force is your inner ear, which we all use subconsciously, and is why we all lean our heads when cornering, even though we are unaware of it. It’s the muscle strain on our necks, arising from maintaining our inner ear balance, that tells us how much lateral g-force we have generated. On a motorcycle, we do the opposite, keeping our heads straight while we lean our bodies, so the muscle strain is reversed, but the effect is exactly the same.

Therefore, you may think, we don’t need the steering wheel’s feedback, but there is more. The turn-in to a corner is the most critical part of cornering. This was pointed out to me decades ago, when I was a novice, but experience has confirmed it many times over. Yes, the corner can change radius or camber or both and you might strike something mid-corner, like loose gravel, but, generally, if the front wheels grip on entry then you know they will grip throughout the rest of the corner. This is the case whether you’re under brakes or not, wet or dry surface. It’s possible to loosen traction with a heavy right foot, but most cars have traction control these days, so even that is not an issue for most of us. The point is that, if the front wheels grip on turn-in, we ‘feel’ it through the steering wheel, because of the gyroscopic relationship between cornering force and the weight of the wheel. And cornering force is directly proportional to the amount of grip. The point is that without this critical feedback at turn-in, drivers will be dependent on visual cues to work out if the car is gripping or not. What’s more, the transition from grip to non-grip and back won’t be felt through the wheel. If this system becomes the engineering norm it will make bad drivers out of all of us.

While I’m on the topic, did you know that at twice the speed it takes four times the distance to pull up to a stop? Perhaps, you did, but I bet no one told you when you were learning to drive. The relationship between speed and braking distance is not linear – braking distance is proportional to the speed squared, so 3 times as fast takes 9 times the distance to stop. This is independent of road surface, tyres and make of car – it’s a natural law.

Another one to appreciate is that at twice the speed, changing direction is twice as slow. There is an inverse relationship between speed and rate of change of direction. This is important in the context of driving on multi-lane highways. A car travelling at half the speed of another – that’s overtaking it, say – can change direction twice as fast as the faster car. This is also a law of nature, so even allowing for superior tyres and dynamics of the faster car, the physics is overwhelmingly against it. This is why the safest speed to travel on multi-lane highways is the same speed as everyone else. An atypically slow car, in these circumstances, is just as dangerous (to other motorists and itself) as an atypically fast car.

Addendum: I also wrote a post on the physics of riding a motorcycle.

Afterlife belief – a unique human condition

Recently I’ve been dreaming about having philosophical discussions, which is very strange, to say the least. And one of these was on the topic of the afterlife. My particular insight, from my dream, was that humans have the unique capacity to imagine a life and a world beyond death. It’s hard to imagine that any other creature, no matter its cognitive capacity, would be able to make the same leap. This is not a new insight for me; it’s one my dream reminded me of rather than initiated. Nevertheless, it’s a good starting point for a discussion on the afterlife.

It’s also, I believe, the reason humans came up with religion – it’s hard to dissociate one from the other.  Humans are more than capable of imagining fictional worlds – I’ve created a few myself as a sometime sci-fi writer. But imagining a life after death is to project oneself into an eternal continuity, a form of immortality. Someone once pointed out that death is the ultimate letting go of the ego, and I believe this is a major reason we find it so difficult to confront. The Buddhists talk about the ‘no-self’ and ‘no attachments’, and I believe this is what they’re referring to. We all form attachments during life, be it material or ideological or aspirational or through personal relationships, and I think that this is natural, even psychologically necessary for the most part. But death requires us to give all these up. In some cases people make sacrifices, where an ideal or another’s life takes precedent over one’s own ego. In effect, we may substitute someone else’s ego for our own.

Do I believe in an afterlife? Actually, I’m agnostic on that point, but I have no expectation, and, from what we know, it seems unlikely. I have no problem with people believing in an afterlife – as I say, it’s part of the human condition – but I have a problem when people place more emphasis on it than the current life they’re actually living. There are numerous stories of people ostracizing their children, on religious grounds, because seeking eternal paradise is more important than familial relationships. I find this perverse, as I do the idea of killing people with the promise of reaching heaven as a reward.

Personally, I think it’s more healthy to have no expectation when one dies. It’s no different to going to sleep or any other form of losing consciousness, only one never regains it. No one knows when they fall asleep or when they lose consciousness, and the same applies when one dies. It leaves no memory, so we don’t know when it happens. There is an oft asked question: why is there something rather than nothing? Well, consciousness plays a big role in that question, because, without consciousness, there might as well be nothing. ‘Something’ only exists for ‘you’ while you are alive.

Consciousness exists in a continuous present, and, in fact, without consciousness, the concepts of past present and future would have no meaning. But more than that, without memory, you would not even know you have consciousness. In fact, it is possible to be conscious or act conscious, whilst believing, in retrospect, that you were unconscious. It can happen when you come out of anaesthetic (it’s happened to me) or when you’re extremely intoxicated with alcohol or when you’ve been knocked unconscious by a blow. In these admittedly rare and unusual circumstances, one can be conscious and behave consciously, yet create no memories, so effectively be unconscious. In other words, without memory (short term memory) we would all be subjectively unconscious.

So, even if there is the possibility that one’s consciousness can leave behind the body that created it, after corporeal death, it would also leave behind all the memories that give us our sense of self. It’s only our memories that give us our sense of continuity, and hence our sense of self.

Then there is the issue of afterlife and infinity. Only mathematicians and cosmologists truly appreciate what infinity means. The point is that if you have an infinite amount of time and space than anything that can happen once can happen an infinite number of times. This means that, with infinity, in this world or any other, there would be an infinite number of you and me. But, not only am I not interested in an infinite number of me, I don’t believe anyone would want to live for infinity if they really thought about it.

At the start, I mentioned that I believe religion arose from a belief in the afterlife. Having said that, I think religion comes from a natural tendency to look for meaning beyond the life we live. I’ve made the point before, that if there is a purpose beyond the here and now, it’s not ours to know. And, if there is a purpose, we find it in the lives we live and not in an imagined reward beyond the grave.

Quantum mechanics without complex algebra

 

In my last post I made reference to a comment Noson Yanofsky made in his book, The Outer limits of Reason, whereby he responded to a student’s question on quantum mechanics: specifically, why does quantum mechanics require complex algebra (√-1) to render it mathematically meaningful?

Complex numbers always take the form a + ib, which I explain in detail elsewhere, but it is best understood graphically, whereby a exists on the Real number line and b lies on the ‘imaginary’ axis orthogonal to the Real axis. (i = √-1, in case you’re wondering.)

In last week’s New Scientist (25 January 2014, pp.32-5), freelance science journalist, Matthew Chalmers, discusses the work of theoretical physicist, Bill Wootters of Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, who has attempted to rid quantum mechanics of complex numbers.

Chalmers introduces his topic by explaining how i (√-1) is not a number as we normally understand it – a point I’ve made myself in previous posts. You can’t count an i quantity of anything, and, in fact, I’ve argued that i is best understood as a dimension not a number per se, which is how it is represented graphically. Chalmers also alludes to the idea that i can be perceived as a dimension, though he doesn’t belabour the point. Chalmers also gives a very brief history lesson, explaining how i has been around since the 16^th Century at least, where it allowed adventurous mathematicians to solve certain equations. In fact, in its early manifestation it tended to be a temporary device that disappeared before the final solution was reached. But later it became as ‘respectable’ as negative numbers and now it makes regular appearances in electrical engineering and analyses involving polar co-ordinates, as well as quantum mechanics where it seems to be a necessary mathematical ingredient. You must realise that there was a time when negative numbers and even zero were treated with suspicion by ancient scholars.

As I’ve explained in detail in another post, quantum mechanics has been rendered mathematically as a wave function, known as Schrodinger’s equation. Schrodinger’s equation would have been stillborn, as it explained nothing in the real world, were it not for Max Born’s ingenious insight to square the modulus (amplitude) of the wave function and use it to give a probability of finding a particle (including photons) in the real world. The point is that once someone takes a measurement or makes an observation of the particle, Schrodinger’s wave function becomes irrelevant. It’s only useful for making probabilistic predictions, albeit very accurate ones. But what’s mathematically significant, as pointed out by Chalmers, is that Born’s Rule (as it’s called) gets rid of the imaginary component of the complex number, and makes it relevant to the real world with Real numbers, albeit as a probability.

Wootters ambition to rid quantum mechanics of imaginary numbers started when he was a PhD student, but later became a definitive goal. Not surprisingly, Chalmers doesn’t go into the mathematical details, but he does explain the ramifications. Wootters has come up with something he calls the ‘u-bit’ and what it tells us is that if we want to give up complex algebra, everything is connected to everything else.

Wootters expertise is in quantum information theory, so he’s well placed to explore alternative methodologies. If the u-bit is a real entity, it must rotate very fast, though this is left unexplained. Needless to say, there is some scepticism as to its existence apart from a mathematical one. I’m not a theoretical physicist, more of an interested bystander, but my own view is that quantum mechanics is another level of reality – a substrate, if you like, to the world we interact with. According to Richard Ewles (MATHS 1001, pp.383-4): ‘…the wave function Ψ permeates all of space… [and when a measurement or observation is made] the original wave function Ψ is no longer a valid description of the state of the particle.’

Many physicists also believe that Schrodinger’s equation is merely a convenient mathematical device, and therefore the wave function doesn’t represent anything physical. Whether this is true or not, its practical usefulness suggests it can tells us something important about the quantum world. The fact that it ‘disappears’ or becomes irrelevant, once the particle becomes manifest in the physical world, suggests to me that there is a disjunct between the 2 physical realms. And the fact that the quantum world can only be understood with complex numbers simply underlines this disjunction.