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Toward a Science of Consciousness: The First Tucson Discussions and Debates
Scientists and philosophers are focusing more intensely than ever on the nature of our human experience, resulting in a newly coalescing field of Consciousness Studies that has become a worldwide and highly interdisciplinary phenomenon.
Toward a Science of Consciousness marks the first major gathering -- a landmark event -- devoted entirely to unlocking the mysteries of consciousness. It explores the whole spectrum of approaches from philosophy of mind and dream research, to neuropsychology, pharmacology, and molecular dynamics, to neural networks, phenomenological accounts, and even the physics of reality. The aim is to lay a sound scientific foundation for future research while also reaching consensus on many scattered areas of inquiry.
Following an overview, fifty-five chapters are divided into ten sections: philosophy, cognitive science, medicine/pathology, neurology, neural networks, subneural biology, quantum theory, non-locality in space and time, hierarchical organization, and phenomenology.
In addition to the editors, who are, respectively, an anesthesiologist, a psychologist, and an applied mathematician, contributors include such luminaries as David Chalmers, Michael Conrad, Avshalom Elitzur, Owen Flanagan, David Galin, John Kihlstrom, Christof Koch, Benjamin Libet, Roger Penrose, Karl Pribram, Gary Schwartz, Petra Stoerig, John Taylor, Andrew Weil, Fred Wolf, and many others.
Toward a Science of Consciousness marks the first major gathering -- a landmark event -- devoted entirely to unlocking the mysteries of consciousness. It explores the whole spectrum of approaches from philosophy of mind and dream research, to neuropsychology, pharmacology, and molecular dynamics, to neural networks, phenomenological accounts, and even the physics of reality. The aim is to lay a sound scientific foundation for future research while also reaching consensus on many scattered areas of inquiry.
Following an overview, fifty-five chapters are divided into ten sections: philosophy, cognitive science, medicine/pathology, neurology, neural networks, subneural biology, quantum theory, non-locality in space and time, hierarchical organization, and phenomenology.
In addition to the editors, who are, respectively, an anesthesiologist, a psychologist, and an applied mathematician, contributors include such luminaries as David Chalmers, Michael Conrad, Avshalom Elitzur, Owen Flanagan, David Galin, John Kihlstrom, Christof Koch, Benjamin Libet, Roger Penrose, Karl Pribram, Gary Schwartz, Petra Stoerig, John Taylor, Andrew Weil, Fred Wolf, and many others.
- GenresScienceNonfiction
832 pages, Hardcover
First published March 22, 1996
1 person is currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Stuart R. Hameroff
8 books37 followersDr. Stuart R. Hameroff, M.D. (Hahnemann Medical College, 1973?; B.S., Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, University of Pittsburgh), is Emeritus Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology and director for the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. He is also the lead organizer of the Science of Consciousness conference and, with Sir Roger Penrose, formulated the orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) model of consciousness.
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June 17, 2024
THE ORIGINAL CONFERENCE IN WHICH THE “HARD PROBLEM” WAS PROPOSED
The editors of this 1996 book explain in the Preface, “The role of consciousness in science has had its ups and downs over the past century… Even after the emergence of cognitive science and neuroscience in sixties and seventies… the C-word remained slightly off-color in polite scientific discourse… In the past few years much of this has changed… We take the view that the problem of consciousness transcends the traditional boundaries of scientific organization… old perspectives are changing and new concepts are emerging in this vast interdisciplinary area. This is the background that led us to organize an international conference entitled: ‘Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness’… in April of 1994. Our aim was… to provide a forum in which many opinions and approaches could interact… some three hundred and fifty participants converged from many lands… First of all---we must admit---the problem of consciousness was not solved. Nevertheless, several interesting lines of investigation were suggested… In preparing this book for publication… more than twice the number of papers were submitted than we had space to include… we tended to favor papers that reported the results of well-controlled experimental investigations over those proposing unsubstantiated theories. We also strove for balance…”
The first paper is by Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who states, “Consciousness poses the most baffling problem in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain… There is not just one problem of consciousness. ‘Consciousness’ is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena need to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, is it useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.” (Pg. 5)
He continues, “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… This subjective aspect is experience… 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… 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. If any problem qualifies as ‘the’ problem of consciousness, it is this one… [I suggest we] reserve the term ‘consciousness’ for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term ‘awareness’ for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about ‘consciousness’ are frequently talking past each other.” (Pg. 6-7)
He goes on, “If we show how a neural or computational mechanism does the job, we have explained learning. We can say the same for other cognitive phenomena, such a perception, memory, and language… When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions… even when we have explained the performance of all cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience… there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open… This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn’t all this information processing go on ‘in the dark,’ free of any inner feel?... We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery… To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice… When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.” (Pg. 9-10) Later, he adds, “The problem of consciousness is puzzling in an entirely different way… conscious experience is just not the kind of thing that a wholly reductive account could succeed in explaining.” (Pg. 16)
He suggests, “a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These ‘psychophysical’ principles will not interfere with physical laws…. Rather, they will be a supplement to physical theory… This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is… entirely compatible with the scientific way of the world… If the position is to have a name, a good choice might be ‘naturalistic dualism.’ If this view is right, then in some ways a theory of consciousness will have more in common with a theory in physics than a theory in biology… The fundamental laws of nature are part of the basic furniture of the world… If a theory of consciousness also involves fundamental principles, then we should expect the same. The principles of simplicity, elegance, and even beauty that drive physicists’ search for a fundamental theory will also apply to a theory of consciousness.” (Pg. 17-18)
David Galin observes, “There are two big problems strangling research in consciousness Problem #1 is that there is very little agreement about what needs to be studied. Problem #2 is that there is almost no agreement about language with which to discuss Problem #1. Take Problem #2 first… terminology is a disaster zone: each of us is perfectly clear what we mean but nobody else uses the same words in the same way… But there is another more personal basis for deciding what to study---what is it that interests us? What is it that we want explained?... I assert that that is most interesting about mental life for most ordinary people is no mechanism, nor performance, not information processing; it is what it feels like! Subjective experience!... I believe that a relatively complete theory of consciousness will include accounts at the subjective level as well at the neurological and cognitive levels… in the rush to account for awareness in terms of information processing or neurophysiology, one may not sufficiently examine just what it is that needs to be explained.” (Pg. 121-122)
Petra Stoerig and Alan Covey state, “On evolutionary grounds the fact that consciousness… has developed at all indicates that it does have a function. Like all other functions of the brain and body it should help the organism to survive, to live well, to live better… As consciousness itself is a manifold, its various sections are likely to serve different functions. What function might phenomenality serve?... Could pain be the most efficient way to inform us of a wound in the back? … Is such efficiency necessary to avoid clogging up of the limited capacities of our consciousness … and which must be beyond the conscious grasp of an individual organism having to make a decision?... These functions… broaden the scope of observable and unobservable behaviors without being necessary for behaviors as such… This renders the organism less predictable…” (Pg. 273-274)
Mari Jibu, Scott Hagan, and Kunio Yasue note, “Consciousness must … keep track of the order and relation of elements but in a space distinct from physical spacetime, a mental space… the one in which we perceive, envisage, think, and so on. To avoid a Cartesian duality, this space must not maintain a preexisting structure. Rather relations must be determined and recorded by the processes of consciousness itself without recourse to a bulletin board. Consciousness cannot therefore be built up piecemeal but must occur all at once, each element cohering with every other to structure a unified whole devoid of scaffolding.” (Pg. 494)
Avshalom C. Elitzur points out, “Any statement like ‘time flows/passes/moves’ is bound to produce gross inconsistencies. For the very concept of movement is based upon that of time; saying that an object ‘moves’ amounts to saying that ‘it is in one position at one moment and in another position at the next.’ But how can such a statement be made about time itself? Time is the very parameter of any movement; to see the absurdity of granting it motion, just ask yourself what is this motion’s velocity?... If ‘change’ denotes different states at different moments, how can a movement in time, the measure of all changes, itself change its designation from future to past? Would such dynamics not require another time within which the passage or change of time itself occurs?” (Pg. 543-544)
Jeff Tollaksen suggests, “consciousness literally creates time. Thus, the rate of ticking of the consciousness is directly related to the rate of peeling, or the rate of creation of destiny states; it is an objective phenomenon. The time usually dealt with in physics is … the mathematical time evident in the mathematical equations governing the evolution of potentialities as opposed to the evolution of our world of classical events. The new time suggested above by the ticking of awareness corresponds to the dynamic psychological time that we experience in our conscious experience… So, in a sense, consciousness is the action of finding out the destiny state that is already there, but what is there in the past depends on what is searched for in the future.” (Pg. 562)
Erich Harth says, “I believe that in talking about brain dynamics, such elements as intentionality and consciousness become valid concepts, no more mystifying, or science-defying than laws or politics were when we talked about society… The complexity of thinking individuals forces us to select new sets of descriptors, and to seek relationships and laws connecting them… If a science of mind is to become part of the scientific edifice it must connect to the phenomenology at lower levels… We cannot overcome, however, the necessity of dealing with concepts and relationships not encountered at lower levels. In that sense we will have answered only the first, easy question posed by David Chalmers at the beginning of the symposium.” (Pg. 621)
Arthur J. Deikman observes, “Just as the mode of consciousness that asks the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is not the mode of consciousness that can hear the answer, the science that employs only instrumental consciousness is unlikely to develop an adequate theory of consciousness because of the way that mode shapes and limits perception. For this reason, we cannot develop an adequate understanding of consciousness using only the instrumental mode. We may need to turn our attention to the subtle, nonsensory perceptions with which the spiritual traditions have been concerned…” (Pg. 703)
This is a marvelous and very informative book; it (as well as the ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ books in this series, by the same editors) will be absolute “must reading” for anyone seriously studying consciousness, the philosophy of Mind, and related topics.
The editors of this 1996 book explain in the Preface, “The role of consciousness in science has had its ups and downs over the past century… Even after the emergence of cognitive science and neuroscience in sixties and seventies… the C-word remained slightly off-color in polite scientific discourse… In the past few years much of this has changed… We take the view that the problem of consciousness transcends the traditional boundaries of scientific organization… old perspectives are changing and new concepts are emerging in this vast interdisciplinary area. This is the background that led us to organize an international conference entitled: ‘Toward a Scientific Basis for Consciousness’… in April of 1994. Our aim was… to provide a forum in which many opinions and approaches could interact… some three hundred and fifty participants converged from many lands… First of all---we must admit---the problem of consciousness was not solved. Nevertheless, several interesting lines of investigation were suggested… In preparing this book for publication… more than twice the number of papers were submitted than we had space to include… we tended to favor papers that reported the results of well-controlled experimental investigations over those proposing unsubstantiated theories. We also strove for balance…”
The first paper is by Australian philosopher David Chalmers, who states, “Consciousness poses the most baffling problem in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain… There is not just one problem of consciousness. ‘Consciousness’ is an ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these phenomena need to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others. At the start, is it useful to divide the associated problems of consciousness into ‘hard’ and ‘easy’ problems. The easy problems of consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to resist those methods.” (Pg. 5)
He continues, “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… This subjective aspect is experience… 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… 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. If any problem qualifies as ‘the’ problem of consciousness, it is this one… [I suggest we] reserve the term ‘consciousness’ for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term ‘awareness’ for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. If such a convention were widely adopted, communication would be much easier; as things stand, those who talk about ‘consciousness’ are frequently talking past each other.” (Pg. 6-7)
He goes on, “If we show how a neural or computational mechanism does the job, we have explained learning. We can say the same for other cognitive phenomena, such a perception, memory, and language… When it comes to conscious experience, this sort of explanation fails. What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions… even when we have explained the performance of all cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience… there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open… This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn’t all this information processing go on ‘in the dark,’ free of any inner feel?... We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery… To explain experience, we need a new approach. The usual explanatory methods of cognitive science and neuroscience do not suffice… When it comes to the hard problem, the standard approach has nothing to say.” (Pg. 9-10) Later, he adds, “The problem of consciousness is puzzling in an entirely different way… conscious experience is just not the kind of thing that a wholly reductive account could succeed in explaining.” (Pg. 16)
He suggests, “a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These ‘psychophysical’ principles will not interfere with physical laws…. Rather, they will be a supplement to physical theory… This position qualifies as a variety of dualism, as it postulates basic properties over and above the properties invoked by physics. But it is… entirely compatible with the scientific way of the world… If the position is to have a name, a good choice might be ‘naturalistic dualism.’ If this view is right, then in some ways a theory of consciousness will have more in common with a theory in physics than a theory in biology… The fundamental laws of nature are part of the basic furniture of the world… If a theory of consciousness also involves fundamental principles, then we should expect the same. The principles of simplicity, elegance, and even beauty that drive physicists’ search for a fundamental theory will also apply to a theory of consciousness.” (Pg. 17-18)
David Galin observes, “There are two big problems strangling research in consciousness Problem #1 is that there is very little agreement about what needs to be studied. Problem #2 is that there is almost no agreement about language with which to discuss Problem #1. Take Problem #2 first… terminology is a disaster zone: each of us is perfectly clear what we mean but nobody else uses the same words in the same way… But there is another more personal basis for deciding what to study---what is it that interests us? What is it that we want explained?... I assert that that is most interesting about mental life for most ordinary people is no mechanism, nor performance, not information processing; it is what it feels like! Subjective experience!... I believe that a relatively complete theory of consciousness will include accounts at the subjective level as well at the neurological and cognitive levels… in the rush to account for awareness in terms of information processing or neurophysiology, one may not sufficiently examine just what it is that needs to be explained.” (Pg. 121-122)
Petra Stoerig and Alan Covey state, “On evolutionary grounds the fact that consciousness… has developed at all indicates that it does have a function. Like all other functions of the brain and body it should help the organism to survive, to live well, to live better… As consciousness itself is a manifold, its various sections are likely to serve different functions. What function might phenomenality serve?... Could pain be the most efficient way to inform us of a wound in the back? … Is such efficiency necessary to avoid clogging up of the limited capacities of our consciousness … and which must be beyond the conscious grasp of an individual organism having to make a decision?... These functions… broaden the scope of observable and unobservable behaviors without being necessary for behaviors as such… This renders the organism less predictable…” (Pg. 273-274)
Mari Jibu, Scott Hagan, and Kunio Yasue note, “Consciousness must … keep track of the order and relation of elements but in a space distinct from physical spacetime, a mental space… the one in which we perceive, envisage, think, and so on. To avoid a Cartesian duality, this space must not maintain a preexisting structure. Rather relations must be determined and recorded by the processes of consciousness itself without recourse to a bulletin board. Consciousness cannot therefore be built up piecemeal but must occur all at once, each element cohering with every other to structure a unified whole devoid of scaffolding.” (Pg. 494)
Avshalom C. Elitzur points out, “Any statement like ‘time flows/passes/moves’ is bound to produce gross inconsistencies. For the very concept of movement is based upon that of time; saying that an object ‘moves’ amounts to saying that ‘it is in one position at one moment and in another position at the next.’ But how can such a statement be made about time itself? Time is the very parameter of any movement; to see the absurdity of granting it motion, just ask yourself what is this motion’s velocity?... If ‘change’ denotes different states at different moments, how can a movement in time, the measure of all changes, itself change its designation from future to past? Would such dynamics not require another time within which the passage or change of time itself occurs?” (Pg. 543-544)
Jeff Tollaksen suggests, “consciousness literally creates time. Thus, the rate of ticking of the consciousness is directly related to the rate of peeling, or the rate of creation of destiny states; it is an objective phenomenon. The time usually dealt with in physics is … the mathematical time evident in the mathematical equations governing the evolution of potentialities as opposed to the evolution of our world of classical events. The new time suggested above by the ticking of awareness corresponds to the dynamic psychological time that we experience in our conscious experience… So, in a sense, consciousness is the action of finding out the destiny state that is already there, but what is there in the past depends on what is searched for in the future.” (Pg. 562)
Erich Harth says, “I believe that in talking about brain dynamics, such elements as intentionality and consciousness become valid concepts, no more mystifying, or science-defying than laws or politics were when we talked about society… The complexity of thinking individuals forces us to select new sets of descriptors, and to seek relationships and laws connecting them… If a science of mind is to become part of the scientific edifice it must connect to the phenomenology at lower levels… We cannot overcome, however, the necessity of dealing with concepts and relationships not encountered at lower levels. In that sense we will have answered only the first, easy question posed by David Chalmers at the beginning of the symposium.” (Pg. 621)
Arthur J. Deikman observes, “Just as the mode of consciousness that asks the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is not the mode of consciousness that can hear the answer, the science that employs only instrumental consciousness is unlikely to develop an adequate theory of consciousness because of the way that mode shapes and limits perception. For this reason, we cannot develop an adequate understanding of consciousness using only the instrumental mode. We may need to turn our attention to the subtle, nonsensory perceptions with which the spiritual traditions have been concerned…” (Pg. 703)
This is a marvelous and very informative book; it (as well as the ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ books in this series, by the same editors) will be absolute “must reading” for anyone seriously studying consciousness, the philosophy of Mind, and related topics.
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