Sentience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.^[1] Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as "qualia"). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that require respect and care. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal rights because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer, and thus is held to confer certain rights.

Philosophy and sentience

In the philosophy of consciousness, sentience can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".^[2] This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts about something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining consciousness, which otherwise commonly and collectively describes sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.

Some philosophers, notably Colin McGinn, believe that sentience will never be understood, a position known as "new mysterianism". They do not deny that most other aspects of consciousness are subject to scientific investigation but they argue that subjective experiences will never be explained; i.e., sentience is the only aspect of consciousness that can't be explained. Other philosophers (such as Daniel Dennett, who also argues that non-human animals are not sentient) disagree, arguing that all aspects of consciousness will eventually be explained by science.^[3]

Indian religions

Eastern religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism recognise non-humans as sentient beings. In Jainism and Hinduism, this is closely related to the concept of ahimsa, nonviolence toward other beings. In Jainism, all matter is endowed with sentience; there are five degrees of sentience, from one to five.^{[citation needed]} Water, for example, is a sentient being of the first order, as it is considered to possess only one sense, that of touch. Man is considered a sentient being of the fifth order. According to Buddhism, sentient beings made of pure consciousness are possible. In Mahayana Buddhism, which includes Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, the concept is related to the Bodhisattva, an enlightened being devoted to the liberation of others. The first vow of a Bodhisattva states: "Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to free them."
Sentience in Buddhism is the state of having senses (sat + ta in Pali, or sat + tva in Sanskrit). In Buddhism, there are six senses, the sixth being the subjective experience of the mind. Sentience is simply awareness prior to the arising of Skandha. Thus, an animal qualifies as a sentient being.

Animal welfare, rights, and sentience

In the philosophies of animal welfare and rights, sentience implies the ability to experience pleasure and pain. Additionally, it has been argued, as in the documentary Earthlings:

Granted, these animals do not have all the desires we humans have; granted, they do not comprehend everything we humans comprehend; nevertheless, we and they do have some of the same desires and do comprehend some of the same things. The desires for food and water, shelter and companionship, freedom of movement and avoidance of pain.^[4]

Animal-welfare advocates typically argue that any sentient being is entitled, at a minimum, to protection from unnecessary suffering, though animal-rights advocates may differ on what rights (e.g., the right to life) may be entailed by simple sentience. Sentiocentrism describes the theory that sentient individuals are the center of moral concern.

The 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham compiled enlightenment beliefs in Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and he included his own reasoning in a comparison between slavery and sadism toward animals:

The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor [see Louis XIV's Code Noir]... What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the [sic] question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?^[5]

In the 20th century, Princeton University professor Peter Singer argued that Bentham's conclusion is often dismissed by an appeal to a distinction that condemns human suffering but allows non-human suffering, typically "appeals" that are logical fallacies (unless the distinction is factual, in which case the appeal is just one logical fallacy, petitio principii). Because many of the suggested distinguishing features of humanity—extreme intelligence; highly complex language; etc.—are not present in marginal cases such as mute humans, young children, deaf humans, and mentally disabled humans, it appears that the only distinction is a prejudice based on species alone, which animal-rights supporters call speciesism—that is, differentiating humans from other animals purely on the grounds that they are human. His opponents accuse him of the same petitio principii.

Gary Francione also bases his abolitionist theory of animal rights, which differs significantly from Singer's, on sentience. He asserts that, "All sentient beings, humans or nonhuman, have one right: the basic right not to be treated as the property of others."^[6]

Andrew Linzey, founder of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in England, is known as a foremost international advocate for recognising animals as sentient beings in biblically based faith traditions. The Interfaith Association of Animal Chaplains encourages animal ministry groups to adopt a policy of recognising and valuing sentient beings.

In 1997 the concept of animal sentience was written into the basic law of the European Union. The legally binding protocol annexed to the Treaty of Amsterdam recognises that animals are "sentient beings", and requires the EU and its member states to "pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals".

The laws of several states include certain invertebrates such as cephalopods (octopuses, squids) and decapod crustaceans (lobsters, crabs) in the scope of animal protection laws, implying that these animals are also judged capable of experiencing pain and suffering.^[7]

Artificial intelligence

The term "sentience" is not used by major artificial intelligence textbooks and researchers.^[8] It is sometimes used in popular accounts of AI to describe "human level or higher intelligence" (or artificial general intelligence).

Science fiction

In science fiction, an alien, android, robot, hologram, or computer described as "sentient" is usually treated as a fully human character, with similar rights, qualities, and capabilities as any other character; it is not human, but in this work of fiction it has genuine "personhood". "Sentience", in this context, is a hypothetical essential human property that brings many other qualities associated with personhood with it, such as will, desire, intelligence, autonomy, humor, aesthetic appreciation and so on. Science fiction uses the words "intelligence", "sapience", "self-awareness", and "consciousness" in similar ways.

This unique definition permits usage that would not make sense outside of science fiction. For example, Commander Data describing his cat as "not sentient" in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, whereas the term was originally used (by philosopher Jeremy Bentham and others) to emphasize the sentience of animals (certainly including cats).

Science fiction has explored several forms of consciousness beside that of the individual human mind, and how such forms might perceive and function. These include group sentience, where a single mind is composed of multiple non-sentient members (sometimes capable of reintegration, where members can be gained or lost, resulting in gradually shifting mentalities); hive sentience, which is the extreme form of insect hives, with a single sentience extended over huge numbers of non-sentient bodies; and transient sentience, where a lifeform is sentient of that transience.

Sentience quotient

The sentience quotient concept was introduced by Robert A. Freitas Jr. in the late 1970s.^[9] It defines sentience as the relationship between the information processing rate of each individual processing unit (neuron), the weight/size of a single unit, and the total number of processing units (expressed as mass). It was proposed as a measure for the sentience of all living beings and computers from a single neuron up to a hypothetical being at the theoretical computational limit of the entire universe. On a logarithmic scale it runs from −70 up to +50.

Hard problem of consciousness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining how and why we have qualia or phenomenal experiences—how sensations acquire characteristics, such as colors and tastes.^[1] The philosopher David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem" of consciousness,^[2] contrasts this with the "easy problems" of explaining the ability to discriminate, integrate information, report mental states, focus attention, etc. Easy problems are easy because all that is required for their solution is to specify a mechanism that can perform the function. That is, their proposed solutions, regardless of how complex or poorly understood they may be, can be entirely consistent with the modern materialistic conception of natural phenomena. Chalmers claims that the problem of experience is distinct from this set, and he argues that the problem of experience will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained".^[3]

The existence of a "hard problem" is controversial and has been disputed by philosophers such as Daniel Dennett^[4] and cognitive neuroscientists such as Stanislas Dehaene.^[5] Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella refers to it as "the hard non-problem".^[6]

Formulation of the problem

Chalmers' formulation

In Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), Chalmers wrote:^[3]

It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

In the same paper, he also wrote:

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect.

The philosopher Raamy Majeed noted in 2016 that the hard problem is, in fact, associated with two "explanatory targets":^[7]

1. [PQ] Physical processing gives rise to experiences with a phenomenal character.
2. [Q] Our phenomenal qualities are thus-and-so.

The first fact concerns the relationship between the physical and the phenomenal, whereas the second concerns the very nature of the phenomenal itself. Most responses to the hard problem are aimed at explaining either one of these facts or both.

Easy problems

Chalmers contrasts the hard problem with a number of (relatively) easy problems that consciousness presents. He emphasizes that what the easy problems have in common is that they all represent some ability, or the performance of some function or behavior. Examples of easy problems include:^[8]

• the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;
• the integration of information by a cognitive system;
• the reportability of mental states;
• the ability of a system to access its own internal states;
• the focus of attention;
• the deliberate control of behavior;
• the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

Other formulations

Other formulations of the "hard problem" include:^{[citation needed]}

• "How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"
• "Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"
• "Why do qualia exist?"
• "Why is there a subjective component to experience?"
• "Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"

Historical predecessors

The hard problem has scholarly antecedents considerably earlier than Chalmers, as Chalmers himself has pointed out.^[9]

The physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton wrote in a 1672 letter to Henry Oldenburg:

to determine by what modes or actions light produceth in our minds the phantasm of colour is not so easie.^[10]

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), the philosopher and physician John Locke argued:

Divide matter into as minute parts as you will (which we are apt to imagine a sort of spiritualizing or making a thinking thing of it) vary the figure and motion of it as much as you please—a globe, cube, cone, prism, cylinder, etc., whose diameters are but 1,000,000th part of a gry, will operate not otherwise upon other bodies of proportionable bulk than those of an inch or foot diameter—and you may as rationally expect to produce sense, thought, and knowledge, by putting together, in a certain figure and motion, gross particles of matter, as by those that are the very minutest that do anywhere exist. They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do; and that is all they can do... [I]t is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally in and from itself sense, perception, and knowledge; as is evident from hence that then sense, perception, and knowledge must be a property eternally inseparable from matter and every particle of it.^[11]

The polymath and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz wrote in 1714, as an example also known as Leibniz's gap:

Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.^[12]

The philosopher and political economist J.S. Mill wrote in A System of Logic (1843), Book V, Chapter V, section 3:

Now I am far from pretending that it may not be capable of proof, or that it is not an important addition to our knowledge if proved, that certain motions in the particles of bodies are the conditions of the production of heat or light; that certain assignable physical modifications of the nerves may be the conditions not only of our sensations or emotions, but even of our thoughts; that certain mechanical and chemical conditions may, in the order of nature, be sufficient to determine to action the physiological laws of life. All I insist upon, in common with every thinker who entertains any clear idea of the logic of science, is, that it shall not be supposed that by proving these things one step would be made towards a real explanation of heat, light, or sensation; or that the generic peculiarity of those phenomena can be in the least degree evaded by any such discoveries, however well established. Let it be shown, for instance, that the most complex series of physical causes and effects succeed one another in the eye and in the brain to produce a sensation of colour; rays falling on the eye, refracted, converging, crossing one another, making an inverted image on the retina, and after this a motion—let it be a vibration, or a rush of nervous fluid, or whatever else you are pleased to suppose, along the optic nerve—a propagation of this motion to the brain itself, and as many more different motions as you choose; still, at the end of these motions, there is something which is not motion, there is a feeling or sensation of colour. Whatever number of motions we may be able to interpolate, and whether they be real or imaginary, we shall still find, at the end of the series, a motion antecedent and a colour consequent. The mode in which any one of the motions produces the next, may possibly be susceptible of explanation by some general law of motion: but the mode in which the last motion produces the sensation of colour, cannot be explained by any law of motion; it is the law of colour: which is, and must always remain, a peculiar thing. Where our consciousness recognises between two phenomena an inherent distinction; where we are sensible of a difference which is not merely of degree, and feel that no adding one of the phenomena to itself would produce the other; any theory which attempts to bring either under the laws of the other must be false; though a theory which merely treats the one as a cause or condition of the other, may possibly be true.

The biologist T.H. Huxley wrote in 1868:

But what consciousness is, we know not; and how it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as the result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djin when Aladdin rubbed his lamp in the story, or as any other ultimate fact of nature.^[13]

The philosopher Thomas Nagel argued in 1974:

If physicalism is to be defended, the phenomenological features must themselves be given a physical account. But when we examine their subjective character it seems that such a result is impossible. The reason is that every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.^[14]

Relationship to scientific frameworks

Neural correlates of consciousness

Since 1990, researchers including the molecular biologist Francis Crick and the neuroscientist Christof Koch have made significant progress toward identifying which neurobiological events occur concurrently to the experience of subjective consciousness.^[15] These postulated events are referred to as neural correlates of consciousness or NCCs. However, this research arguably addresses the question of which neurobiological mechanisms are linked to consciousness but not the question of why they should give rise to consciousness at all, the latter being the hard problem of consciousness as Chalmers formulated it. In "On the Search for the Neural Correlate of Consciousness", Chalmers said he is confident that, granting the principle that something such as what he terms global availability can be used as an indicator of consciousness, the neural correlates will be discovered "in a century or two".^[16] Nevertheless, he stated regarding their relationship to the hard problem of consciousness:

One can always ask why these processes of availability should give rise to consciousness in the first place. As yet we cannot explain why they do so, and it may well be that full details about the processes of availability will still fail to answer this question. Certainly, nothing in the standard methodology I have outlined answers the question; that methodology assumes a relation between availability and consciousness, and therefore does nothing to explain it. [...] So the hard problem remains. But who knows: Somewhere along the line we may be led to the relevant insights that show why the link is there, and the hard problem may then be solved.^[16]

The neuroscientist and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel wrote that locating the NCCs would not solve the hard problem, but rather one of the so-called easy problems to which the hard problem is contrasted.^[17] Kandel went on to note Crick and Koch's suggestion that once the binding problem—understanding what accounts for the unity of experience—is solved, it will be possible to solve the hard problem empirically.^[17] However, neuroscientist Anil Seth argued that emphasis on the so-called hard problem is a distraction from what he calls the "real problem": understanding the neurobiology underlying consciousness, namely the neural correlates of various conscious processes.^[18] This more modest goal is the focus of most scientists working on consciousness.^[17] Psychologist Susan Blackmore believes, by contrast, that the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is futile and itself predicated on an erroneous belief in the hard problem of consciousness.^[19]

Integrated information theory

Integrated information theory (IIT), developed by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi in 2004 and more recently also advocated by Koch, is one of the most discussed models of consciousness in neuroscience and elsewhere.^[20][21] The theory proposes an identity between consciousness and integrated information, with the latter item (denoted as Φ) defined mathematically and thus in principle measurable.^[21][22] The hard problem of consciousness, write Tononi and Koch, may indeed be intractable when working from matter to consciousness.^[23] However, because IIT inverts this relationship and works from phenomenological axioms to matter, they say it could be able to solve the hard problem.^[23] In this vein, proponents have said the theory goes beyond identifying human neural correlates and can be extrapolated to all physical systems. Tononi wrote (along with two colleagues):

While identifying the “neural correlates of consciousness” is undoubtedly important, it is hard to see how it could ever lead to a satisfactory explanation of what consciousness is and how it comes about. As will be illustrated below, IIT offers a way to analyze systems of mechanisms to determine if they are properly structured to give rise to consciousness, how much of it, and of which kind.^[24]

As part of a broader critique of IIT, Michael Cerullo suggested that the theory's proposed explanation is in fact for what he dubs (following Scott Aaronson) the "Pretty Hard Problem" of methodically inferring which physical systems are conscious—but would not solve Chalmers' hard problem.^[21] "Even if IIT is correct," he argues, "it does not explain why integrated information generates (or is) consciousness."^[21]

Responses

Consciousness is fundamental or elusive

Some philosophers, including David Chalmers in the late 20th century and Alfred North Whitehead earlier in the 1900s, argued that conscious experience is a fundamental constituent of the universe, a form of panpsychism sometimes referred to as panexperientialism. Chalmers argued that a "rich inner life" is not logically reducible to the functional properties of physical processes. He states that consciousness must be described using nonphysical means. This description involves a fundamental ingredient capable of clarifying phenomena that have not been explained using physical means. Use of this fundamental property, Chalmers argues, is necessary to explain certain functions of the world, much like other fundamental features, such as mass and time, and to explain significant principles in nature.

The philosopher Thomas Nagel posited in 1974 that experiences are essentially subjective (accessible only to the individual undergoing them), while physical states are essentially objective (accessible to multiple individuals). So at this stage, he argued, we have no idea what it could even mean to claim that an essentially subjective state just is an essentially non-subjective state. In other words, we have no idea of what reductivism really amounts to.^[14]

New mysterianism, such as that of the philosopher Colin McGinn, proposes that the human mind, in its current form, will not be able to explain consciousness.^[25]

Deflationary accounts

Some philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett^[4] and Peter Hacker^[26] oppose the idea that there is a hard problem. These theorists have argued that once we really come to understand what consciousness is, we will realize that the hard problem is unreal. For instance, Dennett asserts that the so-called hard problem will be solved in the process of answering the "easy" ones (which, as he has clarified, he does not consider "easy" at all).^[4] In contrast with Chalmers, he argues that consciousness is not a fundamental feature of the universe and instead will eventually be fully explained by natural phenomena. Instead of involving the nonphysical, he says, consciousness merely plays tricks on people so that it appears nonphysical—in other words, it simply seems like it requires nonphysical features to account for its powers. In this way, Dennett compares consciousness to stage magic and its capability to create extraordinary illusions out of ordinary things.^[27]

To show how people might be commonly fooled into overstating the powers of consciousness, Dennett describes a normal phenomenon called change blindness, a visual process that involves failure to detect scenery changes in a series of alternating images.^[28] He uses this concept to argue that the overestimation of the brain's visual processing implies that the conception of our consciousness is likely not as pervasive as we make it out to be. He claims that this error of making consciousness more mysterious than it is could be a misstep in any developments toward an effective explanatory theory. Critics such as Galen Strawson reply that, in the case of consciousness, even a mistaken experience retains the essential face of experience that needs to be explained, contra Dennett.

To address the question of the hard problem, or how and why physical processes give rise to experience, Dennett states that the phenomenon of having experience is nothing more than the performance of functions or the production of behavior, which can also be referred to as the easy problems of consciousness.^[4] He states that consciousness itself is driven simply by these functions, and to strip them away would wipe out any ability to identify thoughts, feelings, and consciousness altogether. So, unlike Chalmers and other dualists, Dennett says that the easy problems and the hard problem cannot be separated from each other. To him, the hard problem of experience is included among—not separate from—the easy problems, and therefore they can only be explained together as a cohesive unit.^[27]

Like Dennett, Hacker argues that the hard problem is fundamentally incoherent and that "consciousness studies", as it exists today, is "literally a total waste of time":^[26]

The whole endeavour of the consciousness studies community is absurd—they are in pursuit of a chimera. They misunderstand the nature of consciousness. The conception of consciousness which they have is incoherent. The questions they are asking don't make sense. They have to go back to the drawing board and start all over again.

Critics of Dennett's approach, such as Chalmers and Nagel, argue that Dennett's argument misses the point of the inquiry by merely re-defining consciousness as an external property and ignoring the subjective aspect completely. This has led detractors to refer to Dennett's book Consciousness Explained as Consciousness Ignored or Consciousness Explained Away.^[4] Dennett discussed this at the end of his book with a section entitled Consciousness Explained or Explained Away?^[28]

Though the most common arguments against deflationary accounts and eliminative materialism are the argument from qualia and the argument that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states—or that current popular definitions of "physical" are incomplete—the objection follows that the one and same reality can appear in different ways, and that the numerical difference of these ways is consistent with a unitary mode of existence of the reality.^{[citation needed]} Critics of the deflationary approach object that qualia are a case where a single reality cannot have multiple appearances. For example, the philosopher John Searle pointed out: "where consciousness is concerned, the existence of the appearance is the reality".^[29]

A notable deflationary account is the higher-order theories of consciousness.^[30] In 2005, the philosopher Peter Carruthers wrote about "recognitional concepts of experience", that is, "a capacity to recognize [a] type of experience when it occurs in one's own mental life", and suggested that such a capacity does not depend upon qualia.^[31]

The philosophers Glenn Carruthers and Elizabeth Schier said in 2012 that the main arguments for the existence of a hard problem—philosophical zombies, Mary's room, and Nagel's bats—are only persuasive if one already assumes that "consciousness must be independent of the structure and function of mental states, i.e. that there is a hard problem". Hence, the arguments beg the question. The authors suggest that "instead of letting our conclusions on the thought experiments guide our theories of consciousness, we should let our theories of consciousness guide our conclusions from the thought experiments".^[32]

In 2013, the philosopher Elizabeth Irvine pointed out that both science and folk psychology do not treat mental states as having phenomenal properties, and therefore "the hard problem of consciousness may not be a genuine problem for non-philosophers (despite its overwhelming obviousness to philosophers), and questions about consciousness may well 'shatter' into more specific questions about particular capacities".^[33]

The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci distances himself from eliminativism, but he said in 2013 that the hard problem is still misguided, resulting from a "category mistake":^[34]

Of course an explanation isn't the same as an experience, but that's because the two are completely independent categories, like colors and triangles. It is obvious that I cannot experience what it is like to be you, but I can potentially have a complete explanation of how and why it is possible to be you.

The source of illusion

A complete reductionistic or mechanistic theory of consciousness must include the description of a mechanism by which the subjective aspect of consciousness is perceived and reported by people. Philosophers such as Chalmers or Nagel have rejected reductionist theories of consciousness because they believe that the reports of subjective experience constitute a vast and important body of empirical evidence which is ignored by modern reductionist theories of consciousness.^[9]

Dennett argued that solving the easy problem of consciousness, that is finding out how the brain works, will eventually lead to the solution of the hard problem of consciousness.^[4] In particular, the solution can be achieved by identifying the stimuli and neurological pathways whose operation generates evidence of subjective experience.

Neuroscientist Michael Graziano, in his book Consciousness and the Social Brain, advocates what he calls attention schema theory, in which our perception of being conscious is merely an error in perception, held by brains which evolved to hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own internal workings, just as they hold erroneous and incomplete models of their own bodies and of the external world.^[35][36]

Cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, in his 2014 book Consciousness and the Brain, summarized the previous decades of experimental consciousness research involving reports of subjective experience, and argued that Chalmers' "easy problems" of consciousness are actually the hard problems and the "hard problems" are based only upon ill-defined intuitions that, according to Dehaene, are continually shifting as understanding evolves:^[5]

Once our intuitions are educated by cognitive neuroscience and computer simulations, Chalmers' hard problem will evaporate. The hypothetical concept of qualia, pure mental experience, detached from any information-processing role, will be viewed as a peculiar idea of the prescientific era, much like vitalism... [Just as science dispatched vitalism] the science of consciousness will keep eating away at the hard problem of consciousness until it vanishes.

Will Europe's Human Brain Project simulate a human brain?

Posted May 09, 2017 

by Joel Frohlich

Original link:  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/consciousness-self-organization-and-neuroscience/201705/reverse-engineering-the-brain

Source: Wikimedia Commons user Wolfgangbeyer

Can we learn everything about the brain by studying individual brain cells? 

It started with a simple equation. In 1980, a mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot working for IBM plotted the behavior of points on a plane using a computer. When the plane was colored by the results, a whimsical world emerged: infinitely branching scepters and spirals, never ending chasms, endless tentacles growing from heart-shaped bulbs. It appears as something from the final trippy minutes of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, only much stranger, like a tie-dye painted by insane space aliens.

The Mandelbrot set shows complexity no matter how far we zoom in. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Almost none of the complexity of the eponymous Mandelbrot set is readily obvious from the equation Benoit Mandelbrot plotted. Pick a pair of numbers, one real and one imaginary. Now multiply this pair by itself, many many times, and count the number of iterations it takes to exceed a certain magnitude, or distance from zero. Color each coordinate pair on the plane according to the number of iterations that point took to grow above the threshold. And viola! Complexity is born.

The shocking depth of complexity found in the Mandelbrot set may teach neuroscientists a lesson about emergent properties. Emergent properties are crucial to understanding complexity and the brain. Unlike simple phenomena, like the swinging of a pendulum, emergent properties such as intelligence and consciousness cannot be understood by merely studying simple parts of a system. Even holding the rulebook, in the case of Mandelbrot, may not readily show how the rules result in complexity. Why does squaring each number and adding back the result create such a beautifully complex pattern? Why does a particular pattern of neural connections allow for language and intelligence? To be sure, mapping cells and their synaptic connections to other cells in the brain has value. If nothing else, such maps outline which communication routes are possible. But this alone is not enough.

Closely related to emergent properties is the concept of self-organization. This is the idea that new phenomena can result from interactions between parts, with no one part leading or controlling the system. Consider the tiny worm C. elegans. Mapping all 302 neurons and synapses in the adult hermaphrodite worm should, by the opposing logic of reductionism, turn the scientist into a prescient wizard who can foresee how the worm responds to every possible stimulus. And yet, such knowledge has lead to only modest insights into C. elegans' behavior. Does this suggest that we still don't fully know the rules for how these neurons interact? Or is the simulation still not detailed enough?

The roundworm C. elegans. Adult hermaphrodites have exactly 302 neurons. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Dan Dickinson, Goldstein lab, UNC Chapel Hill

Sometimes we need more firepower. If we have enough powerful computers, this reasoning goes, a simulation will show us how every wiggle and breath results from each poke and prod. Such is the justification for the Human Brain Project (HBP), an undertaking co-funded by the European Union that has inherited goals from Switzerland's Blue Brain project. Lead by neuroscientist Henry Markham at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, HBP aspires to run a massive simulation of a human brain using the vast firepower of supercomputers across Europe. Not the least of these is an IBM blue gene supercomputer performing nearly six quadrillion floating point operations per second!

In the case of the Mandelbrot set, computers were the key to unlocking complexity—without their laborious firepower, it is likely that no human would ever see the haunting patterns that emerge from a simple equation. But for an emergent property to be simulated by a computer, the complete rulebook must be known. As we discover new molecules and developmental trends in the brain, our humility grows with our knowledge. Are we actually ready to build a computer model of the human brain when, as recently as several years ago, a widely accepted model of neural connections in the adult brain known as the tripartite synapse was found to be wrong? And there is still some disagreement among neuroscientists on questions as basic as how and where memories are stored in the brain. Other gaps in our knowledge—such "orphan" receptors whose neurotransmitter parents have not yet been discovered—underscore the possible hubris of such a moonshot level undertaking.

It’s important to emphasize that even small discoveries of this sort matter. Small causes may have big effects. This concept, known as nonlinearity, underlies complex systems. In Mandelbrot's case, changing the position of a point on the plane by a hair may completely alter its color or magnitude. In the brain's case, slightly adjusting the resting voltage of neurons may completely alter their collective activity. Nonlinear interaction between parts is central to self-organization.

In the Mandelbrot set, patterns on all scales exists, even if the observer zooms in for infinity. While the brain does not exhibit a truly infinite range of complexity, it does exhibit structure and activity over a vast range of different scales of space and time. Complex connectivity patterns are observed from microscopic synapses to the whole-brain scale. This facet of brain complexity urges us not to build our understanding of the brain only on cells, but all relevant scales. Indeed, the "functional unit" of the nervous system is sometimes identified as the neuron, but also as larger structures known as cell assemblies and neocortical columns.

Markham has closed a TED talk by suggesting his model brain might one day speak to humans through a hologram. Herculean goals of simulating consciousness or otherwise biting off more than the project can chew have been criticisms of HBP. But if we cannot understand emergent properties through vast computer simulations like HBP, how can we understand the brain? Is reverse engineering the brain possible?

Henry Markram

Source: Flickr user cea+

A true reverse engineering approach requires understanding the brain on its most abstract level. Such holistic understanding transcends knowing that a gene or brain region is needed for memory or cognition—it explains how and why. A paper published in the journal Neuron in February calls for neuroscientists to consider how a circuit in the brain could or should work before dissecting it with a plethora of tools, just as one needs to understand such concepts as aerodynamics and lift before studying a bird’s wing. This idea, which originated with the late neuroscientist David Marr, implies that HBP first needs a theory for how language or consciousness could emerge from neurons and synapses before blindly simulating billions of them.

Until we know how and why a certain pattern of activity or piece of brain tissue is needed for behavior, we can't really claim that we understand the brain. In the meantime, there will always be room for theoreticians outside the lab to ponder our behaviors and ask what biological machinery could beget such complexity. The foundation of neuroscience need not be merely single cells, but also great ideas.

References

Bullmore, E., & Sporns, O. (2009). Complex brain networks: graph theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(3), 186-198.

Jabr, F. (2012). The connectome debate: is mapping the mind of a worm worth it. Scientific American,(October 2, 2012).

Jacbonson, R. (2015). Memories May Not Live in Neurons’ Synapses. Scientific American, (April 1, 2015).

Krakauer, J. W., Ghazanfar, A. A., Gomez-Marin, A., MacIver, M. A., & Poeppel, D. (2017). Neuroscience needs behavior: correcting a reductionist Bias. Neuron, 93(3), 480-490.

Theil, S. (2015). Why the Human Brain Project went wrong—and how to fix it. Scientific American, 313(4).

Freedom of information

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Free Speech flag, from the HD DVD AACS case.

Freedom of information is an extension of freedom of speech, a fundamental human right recognized in international law, which is today understood more generally as freedom of expression in any medium, be it orally, in writing, print, through the Internet or through art forms.^{[citation needed]} This means that the protection of freedom of speech as a right includes not only the content, but also the means of expression.^[1] Freedom of information also refers to the right to privacy in the content of the Internet and information technology. As with the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy is a recognised human right and freedom of information acts as an extension to this right.^[2] Lastly, freedom of information can include opposition to patents, opposition to copyrights or opposition to intellectual property in general.^[3] The international and United States Pirate Party have established political platforms based largely on freedom of information issues.^[4]

In law

In June 2006 nearly 70 countries had freedom of information legislations applying to information held by government bodies and in certain circumstances to private bodies. In 19 of these countries the freedom of information legislation also applied to private bodies.^[5] Access to information was increasingly recognised as a prerequisite for transparency and accountability of governments, as facilitating consumers' ability to make informed choices, and as safeguarding citizens against mismanagement and corruption. This has led an increasing number of countries to enact freedom of information legislation in the past 10 years.^[6] In recent years, private bodies have started to perform functions which were previously carried out by public bodies. Privatisation and de-regulation saw banks, telecommunications companies, hospitals and universities being run by private entities, leading to demands for the extension of freedom of information legislation to cover private bodies.^[7]

Government bodies

As of 2006, 70 countries had comprehensive freedom of information legislation for public bodies, nearly half of which had been enacted in the past 10 years. Such legislation was pending in a further 50 countries.^[6]

Private bodies

As of 2006, the following 19 countries had freedom of information legislation that extended to government bodies and private bodies: Antigua and Barbuda, Angola, Armenia, Colombia, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Panama, Poland, Peru, South Africa, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. The degree to which private bodies are covered under freedom of information legislation varies, in Angola, Armenia and Peru the legislation only applies to private companies that perform what are considered to be public functions. In the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Finland, Trinidad and Tobago, Slovakia, Poland and Iceland private bodies that receive public funding are subject to freedom of information legislation. Freedom of information legislation in Estonia, France and UK covers private bodies in certain sectors.^[8] In South Africa the access provisions of the Promotion of Access to Information Act have been used by individuals to establish why their loan application has been denied. The access provisions have also been used by minority shareholders in private companies and environmental groups, who were seeking information on the potential environmental damage caused by company projects.^[9]

Consumer protection

In 1983 the United Nations Commission on Transnational Corporations adopted the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection stipulating eight consumer rights, including "consumer access to adequate information to enable making informed choices according to individual wishes and needs". Access to information became regarded as a basic consumer right, and preventive disclosure, i.e. the disclosure of information on threats to human lives, health and safety, began to be emphasized.^[10]

Investors

Secretive decision making by company directors and corporate scandal led to freedom of information legislation to be published for the benefits of investors. Such legislation was first adopted in Britain in the early 20th century, and later in North America and other countries.^[11] Disclosure regimes for the benefit of investors regained attention at the beginning of the 21st century as a number of corporate scandals were linked to accounting fraud and company director secrecy.^[12] Starting with Enron, the subsequent scandals involving Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia and Global Crossing prompted the US Congress to impose new information disclosure obligations on companies with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002.^[13]

Internet and information technology

Freedom of information (or information freedom) also refers to the protection of the right to freedom of expression with regard to the Internet and information technology. Freedom of information may also concern censorship in an information technology context, i.e. the ability to access Web content, without censorship or restrictions.

The Information Society and freedom of expression

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles adopted in 2003 reaffirms democracy and the universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Declaration also makes specific reference to the importance of the right to freedom of expression for the "Information Society" in stating:

We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information Society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Communication is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the benefits the Information Society offers.^[14]

The 2004 WSIS Declaration of Principles also acknowledged that "it is necessary to prevent the use of information resources and technologies for criminal and terrorist purposes, while respecting human rights".^[15] Wolfgang Benedek comments that the WSIS Declaration only contains a number of references to human rights and does not spell out any procedures or mechanism to assure that human rights are considered in practice.^[16]

Hacktivismo

The digital rights group Hacktivismo, founded in 1999, argues that access to information is a basic human right. The group's beliefs are described fully in the "Hacktivismo Declaration" which calls for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to be applied to the Internet. The Declaration recalls the duty of member states to the ICCPR to protect the right to freedom of expression with regard to the internet and in this context freedom of information.^[17] The Hacktivismo Declaration recognises "the importance to fight against human rights abuses with respect to reasonable access to information on the Internet" and calls upon the hacker community to "study ways and means of circumventing state sponsored censorship of the internet" and "implement technologies to challenge information rights violations". The Hacktivismo Declaration does, however, recognise that the right to freedom of expression is subject to limitations, stating "we recognised the right of governments to forbid the publication of properly categorized state secrets, child pornography, and matters related to personal privacy and privilege, among other accepted restrictions." However, the Hacktivismo Declaration states "but we oppose the use of state power to control access to the works of critics, intellectuals, artists, or religious figures."^[17]

Global Network Initiative

On October 29, 2008 the Global Network Initiative (GNI) was founded upon its "Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy". The Initiative was launched in the 60th Anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and is based on internationally recognized laws and standards for human rights on freedom of expression and privacy set out in the UDHR, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).^[18] Participants in the Initiative include the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, other major companies, human rights NGOs, investors, and academics.^[19][20]

According to reports Cisco Systems was invited to the initial discussions but didn't take part in the initiative. Harrington Investments, which proposed that Cisco establish a human rights board, has dismissed the GNI as a voluntary code of conduct not having any impact. Chief executive John Harrington called the GNI "meaningless noise" and instead calls for bylaws to be introduced that force boards of directors to accept human rights responsibilities.^[21]

Internet censorship

Jo Glanville, editor of the Index on Censorship, states that "the internet has been a revolution for censorship as much as for free speech".^[21] The concept of freedom of information has emerged in response to state sponsored censorship, monitoring and surveillance of the internet. Internet censorship includes the control or suppression of the publishing or accessing of information on the Internet.
According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) "internet enemy list" the following states engage in pervasive internet censorship: Cuba, Iran, Maldives, Myanmar/Burma, North Korea, Syria, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.^[22] A widely publicised example is the Great Firewall of China (in reference both to its role as a network firewall and to the ancient Great Wall of China). The system blocks content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at the Internet gateways. The system also selectively engages in DNS poisoning when particular sites are requested. The government does not appear to be systematically examining Internet content, as this appears to be technically impractical.^[23] Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. In accordance with these laws, more than sixty Internet regulations have been made by the People's Republic of China (PRC) government, and censorship systems are vigorously implemented by provincial branches of state-owned ISPs, business companies, and organizations.^[24][25]

In 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking on behalf of the United States, declared 'we stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas'. In her 'Remarks on Internet Freedom' she also draws attention to how 'even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable', while reporting President Barack Obama's pronouncement 'the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become'.^[26]