The Hard Problem of Consciousness:
Douglas Hofstadter asks the following:
How does a Brain, a mere lump of matter — “meat you can eat,” as Douglas Hofstadter puts it —
produce subjective experiences like those I have writing these words and you have reading them?
Our Answer is:
Whilst reading these words, My vision system was talking to my sub conscious subroutines that recognise straight lines,
curved lines, and combine them into letters, and then combining them into words,
that triggered the neural net definitions which triggered the neural context associations,
which triggered meanings, which triggered memories and bodily sensations,
which triggered bodily preparatory signals, and reported that I was feeling hungry…
Just because of recursion…
I have been doing my research in Isolation, without outside influences,
to try to come to an Independent Unbiased Understanding of the System.
I call it a feedback loop. There is nothing strange about it. It is a physical connectivity.
In computing terms, it is quite normal. (re-entrant code, parameterised functions etc.)
It actually creates a chaotic system. (and fractal)
It is Not Deterministic as it can change itself and contradict itself.
I am a problem solver.
So to aid that endeavour, I have done experiments, like training the visual system by visualisation,
and have a hook into the V1 area, so can actually ‘think’ in pictures.
It is a very fast (almost instant) way of thinking.
When I do it, I can’t see anything from my eyes, but ‘See’ nothing but the ‘picture’ answer to my enquiry.
The priority or weighting, switches to the recall rather than vision. It’s quite a strange feeling.
And doesn’t last long (sub second), returning to vision thereafter.
And because of the same strengthened connection to the visual area, whilst relaxing when I am about to go to sleep,
I can Also ‘See’ the brain (sub conscious…) processing faces
and have estimated the timing to be between 10 to 20 faces per second.
The brain is a very plastic adaptable system, and is capable of absolutely anything.
You just have to think of it to do it.
It is a self defining system. Again Chaotic.
Meaning, is the neural network feeding back on itself (via connections)
of what one idea, ‘means’ in terms of other ideas or other connections.
Meaning is actually Structural.
The other thing with the lump of meat example above is that there are lots of other parallel things going on:
Like the triggering of the associated syllable recognition and how the words sound,
which triggered the speech and hearing areas so that you experience them inside your own head as your read.
And the reason you have the subjective experience ‘that you are seeing’
is because the network has a direct mapping of the eyes (in V1) so the ‘network’ can ‘see’ as the eyes do….
I have trained a link that passes stored images or picture thoughts so that I ‘see them’ inside my own head
and Don’t see the incoming stream from the eyes. I effectively go blind for a fraction of a second…
The priority of V1 went to the recall not to the incoming.
Or we use V1 as we are Imagining things to visualise them.
As a teacher of martial arts in my younger days I used to visualise fight sequences and moves in my head.
As a software Systems Architect I could visualise the layout or structure of systems and relational data structures.
Significance:
It is the fact that when switching from outside (objective) to inside (subjective), the network can still ‘see’.
It Means that it was Always Subjective Anyway.
Lucid Dreaming is a clue — it’s still internal — it is the network that is ‘doing the seeing’
Think of it as a bitmap with rgb values
Or recursion of the mapping to visual processing.
If I were to sum up:
We Are the network.
There is No body mind hard problem.
It is one and the same thing.
Its Recursive…
So We Experience Ourselves…