Consciousness and Special Relativity?

[fdesilva]

The brain is an area of neurophysiology activity. Neurophysiology activity consists of electrochemical reaction. Thus at any given time, the brain state is defined by a subset of electrochemical reactions, derived from a large set of possible reactions.
Consider the phenomenon of a conscious thought. As at any given time the brain physical state consists of a collection of electrochemical reactions (events), it can be inferred that they are collectively responsible for the conscious thought. This means that at least in part, simultaneous events are responsible for thought. In other words, thought creates a connection between simultaneous events. This is in contradiction to the consequences of special relativity, which states that the fastest connection between events is the speed of light and thus excludes the possibility of connection between simultaneous events.
Consider the memorizing of, say, the value 5. This would necessarily involve more than I point in space as, say, if it is assumed a single electron records 5 by taking a particular potential. Then it by itself cannot define (or know) 5, as its magnitude would be defined only with respect to another datum or event defined as a unit potential, thus involving at least 2 simultaneous events.
Consider the experience of vision. While we focus our attention on an object of vision, we are still aware of a background and, thus, a whole collection of events. This would mean at least an equal collection of physical events in the brain are involved.
Consciousness is 4 Dimensional
Take the experience of listening to music. It would mean being aware of what went before. Like vision, it would probably mean that while our attention at any given time is focused at that point in time, it is aware of what went before and what is to follow. In other words, it spans the time axis. Many great composers have stated that they are able to hear their whole composition. Thus their acoustic experience is probably like the average person's visual experience. While focusing at a particular point in time of their composition, they are nevertheless aware of what went before and what is to come. The rest of the composition is like the background of a visual experience. Experiencing the composition in this way, they are able to traverse it in a similar fashion to which a painting is observed. In this sense, an average person in comparison can be seen as having tunnel hearing (like tunnel vision) when it comes to music, thus making it very difficult for him or her to reproduce or create new music. It can be seen that consciousness is a 4-D phenomenon.
Contradiction with Special relativity?
As stated previously Special relativity states that the fastest connection between events is the speed of light. This proposition excludes the possibility of connections between simultaneous events. Simultaneous events are also known as space-like separated events in special relativity. Yet from the description given above it can be seen that consciousness creates a connection between simultaneous events in the brain. The contradiction with special relativity will remain, independent of the rate of propagation of nerve impulses, provided that this rate is equal to or less than the speed of light.

 

[WaveJumper]

Consider the phenomenon of a conscious thought. As at any given time the brain physical state consists of a collection of electrochemical reactions (events), it can be inferred that they are collectively responsible for the conscious thought.

How does the above lead to:

This means that at least in part, simultaneous events are responsible for thought. In other words, thought creates a connection between simultaneous events.

 

[Dale]

The speed of light and the size of the brain are such that it would take less than a nanosecond for light to go from one side to the other. Do you really believe that a neural activation on one side of the brain can affect neural activity on the opposite side of the brain in less than a nanosecond? Given that a single neuron's action potential takes a few milliseconds (a few million nanoseconds) I find the suggestion of FTL communication within the brain to be completely absurd.

 

[fdesilva]

Consider the phenomenon of a conscious thought. As at any given time the brain physical state consists of a collection of electrochemical reactions (events), it can be inferred that they are collectively responsible for the conscious thought.

How does the above lead to:

This means that at least in part, simultaneous events are responsible for thought. In other words, thought creates a connection between simultaneous events.

We have subjective experience of a "Thought". Now the physical basis of this at any instant is physically space-like separated neural events. As such the "Thought" creates a connection between space-like separated events by its very existence. Please note neural events at any given time T0 will give rise to more neural event at a subsequent time. That is not the issue. The issue is that while giving rise to other events this simultaneous events are at that instant also fully responsible for the existing "Thought" at that instant.

 

[fdesilva]

The speed of light and the size of the brain are such that it would take less than a nanosecond for light to go from one side to the other. Do you really believe that a neural activation on one side of the brain can affect neural activity on the opposite side of the brain in less than a nanosecond? Given that a single neuron's action potential takes a few milliseconds (a few million nanoseconds) I find the suggestion of FTL communication within the brain to be completely absurd.

Neural activity will give rise to more neural activity that is fine. But what this activity is doing in addition, is giving rise to consciousness at every instant. Consciousness for its existence needs a multitude of these neural events at every instant. It is this that is a contradiction

 

[Q_Goest]

Hi fdesilva,

This means that at least in part, simultaneous events are responsible for thought.

why do the events need to be simultaneous? Is there precedent for making this assumption? I think this is something akin to 'common sense' but not supported by any evidence.

 

[fdesilva]

Hi fdesilva,

why do the events need to be simultaneous? Is there precedent for making this assumption? I think this is something akin to 'common sense' but not supported by any evidence.

Hi
Q1. Do you agree that at any given time there are a multitude of neural events?
Q2. Do you agree that at any given time these events (or a subset of them) are responsible for "thought" or conscious experiance?

If you say yes to the above, you are saying simultaneous events give rise to "thought".
If not please explain the relation ship between 1 and 2 as you think can take place without involving simultanous events.

 

[glueball8]

It seems that anything that has the word "consciousness" is a pseudoscience(metaphysics). There's actually a LOT of people that "believes" in consciousness (they seems to end post with love&peace, light... some random stuff. (a lot on facebook physics groups)).

Also they think that "What the beep do we know" is a real science video, and your thought can effect water crystals... (of course, non of them has a physics degree.)

Have anyone read "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown? There's a lot of "noetic" science, consciousness and he talks about mysticism and physics as one. Its really frustrating to read, he states that its all "facts". General public might see it as true.

 

[fdesilva]

It seems that anything that has the word "consciousness" is a pseudoscience(metaphysics). There's actually a LOT of people that "believes" in consciousness (they seems to end post with love&peace, light... some random stuff. (a lot on facebook physics groups)).

Also they think that "What the beep do we know" is a real science video, and your thought can effect water crystals... (of course, non of them has a physics degree.)

Have anyone read "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown? There's a lot of "noetic" science, consciousness and he talks about mysticism and physics as one. Its really frustrating to read, he states that its all "facts". General public might see it as true.

Hi Bright Wang
My question to you is as follows?
1. Are you conscious? (Conscious as defined in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness)
2. If yes to 1 then in what component of your body does this consciousness take place?
3. If the answer to the above is the brain then what activity in the brain is responsible for it?
4. How is that activity distributed over space and time and what's its relationship to consciousness?

 

[madness]

This is a video of David Bohm talking about consciousness (actually perception) and special relativity. It's not exactly what you were talking about but it might be relevant.

 

[Dude_x]

I'll try to answer these questions here...

1. ... of?
2. Brain
3. A brain activity is not necessarily a thought so consciousness is not really linked with thoughts. Ok, thoughts help.

Now I ask you... What's a thought? Just a "brain activity"? Why is the language involved?
Lowering or even stopping that inner voice ( so no thoughts in there) makes no difference in being aware (conscious) of the world around you. You are bombarded 24/7 of external stimuli so you are conscious still.

4. "That activity" is distributed like this: A -> B. You have one thought (A), a trigger word in there that leads you do another thought (B). What's the relationship? They merely analyze and interpret the world you " see it" through your senses and this involves thinking and memory too. Is there any contradiction as you stated before? It's an ongoing process of producing and analyzing. Think of it like an equation... if you change smth in the left part of "=", smth is changing in the right side and vice versa.

Yaay! 1st post.. new here, btw..hello! :D

 

[Q_Goest]

The YouTube video by Madness above is a good primer for this.

Hi
Q1. Do you agree that at any given time there are a multitude of neural events?
Q2. Do you agree that at any given time these events (or a subset of them) are responsible for "thought" or conscious experiance?

If you say yes to the above, you are saying simultaneous events give rise to "thought".
If not please explain the relation ship between 1 and 2 as you think can take place without involving simultanous events.

Our perception of the world appears to be a unified one. For example, we may be aware of the phone ringing while we are eating and talking to a friend, and all the experiences (hearing, smelling, seeing, all feelings) that make up this apparently single, unified perception appear to coincide. How the brain manages this feat isn't understood, so we call it "the binding problem". That isn't to say that the single, unified experience we think we have is real, in fact there is much evidence that it isn't actually a unified one, it only appears to be.

One of the papers referenced by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_problem"[/URL] seems to be relavent to this.
[url]http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6921/abs/nature01285.html[/url]
There is a considerable amount of work done on the issue of how the brain creates this illusion of a unified experience, and as far as I know there is no evidence to suggest the perception is 'real' in the sense that we have a single, unified experience. And if we don't have a single, unified experience, then we don't need to theorize any kind of faster than light signals to explain this perception.

 

[Dale]

Consciousness for its existence needs a multitude of these neural events at every instant. It is this that is a contradiction

No, it is not a contradiction. There are many examples of FTL things which are perfectly compatible with SR, you can do a brief search of the SR/GR sub-forum. SR says only that if event A causes event B then B must be in or on the future light cone of A. It is perfectly compatible with SR to define the state of some system as an integral over some spacelike volume, as long as there are no events within the system that are causally connected in a spacelike manner. Also, note that it perfectly acceptable in SR for both A and B to cause C even if A and B are spacelike separated.

Here you are defining the consciousness as being the state of the brain's electrochemistry. There is nothing wrong with that nor is there anything incompatible with SR in that. The only way it would be incompatible with SR is if you were to identify some specific electrochemical event on one side of the brain which was the cause of some other specific electrochemical event on the other side of the brain less than a nanosecond later.

If you have such evidence then please cite it, otherwise your claim is ludicrous. Also, note that with your definition of consciousness different observers will disagree on the state of consciousness of any given subject.

 

[Dale]

Q1. Do you agree that at any given time there are a multitude of neural events?
Q2. Do you agree that at any given time these events (or a subset of them) are responsible for "thought" or conscious experiance?

If you say yes to the above, you are saying simultaneous events give rise to "thought".

I agree with both for the sake of argument. As long as the simultaneous events don't "give rise" to each other there is no violation of SR here.

 

[fdesilva]

I agree with both for the sake of argument. As long as the simultaneous events don't "give rise" to each other there is no violation of SR here.

They don't "give rise" to each other, they "give rise" to something bigger at the same time (not to the future or the past) which is the "Thought" or the whole conscious experiance. Now you need to keep in mind what exactly you mean by "Thought" or conscious experiance. You need to keep in mind your own subjective experience of consciousness. Now keeping in mind your subjective experiance, you need to ask your self "if this experiance, is caused by simultaneous events in the brain does it violate SR?"

 

[Dale]

They don't "give rise" to each other, they "give rise" to something bigger at the same time (not to the future or the past) which is the "Thought"

That is fine, that is not a violation of SR, particularly not the way that you have defined "thought".

Now keeping in mind your subjective experiance, you need to ask your self "if this experiance, is caused by simultaneous events in the brain does it violate SR?"

I cannot subjectively judge time anywhere near on the order of a nanosecond, so I certainly don't have any subjective experience that would even remotely suggest a violation of SR. In fact, I think it is safe to say that my subjective experience is around 6 orders of magnitude away from violating SR.

 

[Evolver]

I have a thread dealing with the same theme but approaching from a different perspective. It states that nothing actually exists except information (perhaps quantum information). Everything we experience is simply an interpretation of that information. Check out my thread for more info:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=368284

 

[fdesilva]

That is fine, that is not a violation of SR, particularly not the way that you have defined "thought".

I cannot subjectively judge time anywhere near on the order of a nanosecond, so I certainly don't have any subjective experience that would even remotely suggest a violation of SR. In fact, I think it is safe to say that my subjective experience is around 6 orders of magnitude away from violating SR.

So are you saying that you agree in that, at any given time t₀ a set of space-like separated events (nothing more nothing less) is responsible for or is one and the same as, your subjective experience of consciousness at that time t₀ , however you do not see that as violating what is possible in SR?

 

[Dale]

Yes. I would say "responsible for" rather than "ithe same as". Here is what I am saying precisely:

1) If you define "thought" the way you have here as "the state of all electrochemical reactions in the brain at a given time", then the fact that two spacelike separated electrochemical events each change the thought is clearly not a violation of SR as it does not imply any FTL communication (because the thought occupies the whole volume of the brain).

2) In order to demonstrate a FTL connection between the physical thought and the subjective experience you would need to show that the subjective experience changed less than a nanosecond after some change in the thought. My own personal subjective experience cannot discriminate time that precisely (milliseconds rather than nanoseconds). So there is no evidence of FTL communication there either.

 

[madness]

How can a signal travel between a "physical thought" (or physical brain activity as you defined it) and a subjective experience. A subjective experience isn't located at any point in space, so there isn't even a conceptual measure of the distance traveled here.

 

[fdesilva]

Yes. I would say "responsible for" rather than "ithe same as". Here is what I am saying precisely:

1) If you define "thought" the way you have here as "the state of all electrochemical reactions in the brain at a given time", then the fact that two space like separated electrochemical events each change the thought is clearly not a violation of SR as it does not imply any FTL communication (because the thought occupies the whole volume of the brain).

I agree fully on "the fact that two space like separated electrochemical events each change the thought is clearly not a violation of SR"

But that is not what I am going on about. What I am questioning is how come there is a "Thought" associated with these space-like separated events in the first place? Because this "Thought" thing is creating a connection between space-like separated events by it’s very existence. (You got to keep in mind that the electrochemical events of interest is surrounded by millions of other events (e.g water molecules etc ) that do not form a part of the "Thought" thing going on. )

2) In order to demonstrate a FTL connection between the physical thought and the subjective experience you would need to show that the subjective experience changed less than a nanosecond after some change in the thought. My own personal subjective experience cannot discriminate time that precisely (milliseconds rather than nanoseconds). So there is no evidence of FTL communication there either.

Firstly what I want to highlight is that from moment to moment it is always a set of space-like separated events that is responsible for the "experience". Now the set of space-like separated events may have to go through a million state changes before there is a single state change in the "experience" but that is not the issue. It is that there is an "experience" associated with these space-like separated events in the first place that is an issue to me.

 

[Dale]

How can a signal travel between a "physical thought" (or physical brain activity as you defined it) and a subjective experience. A subjective experience isn't located at any point in space, so there isn't even a conceptual measure of the distance traveled here.

Good point. Based on this it seems impossible, even in principle, to use a subjective experience to show FTL communication.

 

[Dale]

What I am questioning is how come there is a "Thought" associated with these space-like separated events in the first place?

That is simply due to how you have defined "Thought". You can define many things in a space-like way.

Because this "Thought" thing is creating a connection between space-like separated events by it’s very existence.

Sure, but it isn't a causal connection. SR doesn't forbid non-causal connections that are spacelike separated.

 

[fdesilva]

How can a signal travel between a "physical thought" (or physical brain activity as you defined it) and a subjective experience. A subjective experience isn't located at any point in space, so there isn't even a conceptual measure of the distance traveled here.

When we say that the total subjective experience is created by the neural activity in the brain then most definitely the subjective experience has a location, namely that of the neural activity.

 

[fdesilva]

That is simply due to how you have defined "Thought". You can define many things in a space-like way.

What do you mean by how I define it? It is not my definition. It is assumed that neural activity is the physical basis for "thought". Now all I am pointing out is that this neural activity is always a set of events, that are space-like saparated

Sure, but it isn't a causal connection. SR doesn't forbid non-causal connections that are spacelike separated.

What do you mean by "but it isn't a causal connection" ?

 

[madness]

"When we say that the total subjective experience is created by the neural activity in the brain then most definitely the subjective experience has a location, namely that of the neural activity"

I disagree. The neural activity has a location, but you are defining subjective experience as something separate which arises from this activity. If you accept the existence of this subjective experience as being conceptually distinct from the neural activity, then it cannot occupy and point in space. Either thoughts are neural activity and they occupy a point in space, or they are separate from neural activity and are not located in space.

 

[madness]

"What do you mean by how I define it? It is not my definition. It is assumed that neural activity is the physical basis for "thought". Now all I am pointing out is that this neural activity is always a set of events, that are space-like saparated"

Again, every known neural process obeys the laws of causality, and any subjective experience which you could separate from this neural activity would be non-physical and not located in space.

 

[Dale]

What do you mean by "but it isn't a causal connection" ?

I mean that one neural event does not cause another simultaneous neural event. We already agreed on this point.

I agree with both for the sake of argument. As long as the simultaneous events don't "give rise" to each other there is no violation of SR here.

They don't "give rise" to each other, they "give rise" to something bigger at the same time (not to the future or the past) which is the "Thought"

Since one neural event does not cause another simultaneous neural event then any connection between them is not causal. Such connections are not forbidden by SR in any way.

 

[fdesilva]

"When we say that the total subjective experience is created by the neural activity in the brain then most definitely the subjective experience has a location, namely that of the neural activity"

I disagree. The neural activity has a location, but you are defining subjective experience as something separate which arises from this activity. If you accept the existence of this subjective experience as being conceptually distinct from the neural activity, then it cannot occupy and point in space. Either thoughts are neural activity and they occupy a point in space, or they are separate from neural activity and are not located in space.

Take the creation of a image on a TV. Now it is a result of the activity (on or off) the pixels on the screen (pixel activity = neural activity) now has the image got a physical location? I say yes, its on the screen, so according to you does the TV image have a physical location?

 

[Q_Goest]

Let's say the pixels on a TV screen flashed on and off in rows, such that only 1 row at a time was updated. Say row 1 was updated, then row 2, then row 3, etc... till the entire screen was updated. But let's say it only takes 1/65'th of a second for all the rows to be updated such that the entire picture was updated once every 1/65'th of a second. Once the screen updated the last row, it went back to the first row and started over. Let's say a screen was updated like that 65 times per second. Do you think it would be possible to tell without a slow motion camera or something?

Similarly, our unified experience could easily be updated in bits that are too fast for us to recognize.

 

[madness]

"Take the creation of a image on a TV. Now it is a result of the activity (on or off) the pixels on the screen (pixel activity = neural activity) now has the image got a physical location? I say yes, its on the screen, so according to you does the TV image have a physical location?"

Yes, but the image is just defined here as the overall pixel activity. In the same way, if you define "experience" as overall neural activity, then there are no problems with causality. However, I do believe subjective experience is more than just neural activity, but as far as we know there are no physical laws relating physical activity to subjective experience, which appears to be non-physical.
To reiterate, yes the image has a location, in the same way that neural activity has a location. Working on this level, we find no problems with causality. If you want to start distinguishing between mental (subjective) and physical you can, but we have no well defined notion of causality in this case.

 

[Dale]

I agree completely with madness on this point. If you are saying that the "thought" is the total neural activity then the thought has a well-defined location. If you are saying that the "thought" is the subjective experience as something distinct from the neural activity then the thought does not have a well-defined location.

 

[fdesilva]

Let's say the pixels on a TV screen flashed on and off in rows, such that only 1 row at a time was updated. Say row 1 was updated, then row 2, then row 3, etc... till the entire screen was updated. But let's say it only takes 1/65'th of a second for all the rows to be updated such that the entire picture was updated once every 1/65'th of a second. Once the screen updated the last row, it went back to the first row and started over. Let's say a screen was updated like that 65 times per second. Do you think it would be possible to tell without a slow motion camera or something?

Similarly, our unified experience could easily be updated in bits that are too fast for us to recognize.

Hi
The problem is this. It is the US “in the to fast for us” that is the biggest issue. Let me explain.
Let’s for a moment equate pixel activity to neural activity. The Image to “Thought or consciousness”
Problem 1
Now a given pixel will know only that it has been updated. It does not know what’s happening to the rest of the pixels. Do you agree?
Now let's say it was in the on (1 state) for 1/65th of a second, so before it goes to off( 0 state) all the other pixels have also got updated appropriately. Do you agree?
Now as far as knowing the whole image , we might say, at this point all the pixels together know or see the image. Not 1 pixel but the whole lot together simultaneously are needed to know (create) the image. Do you agree? This simultaneity makes the image a result of space-like separated events.
Now are we going to say the image is conscious? Obviously not ( Else we better not off the TV as the TV is watching itself) Yet the connectivity between neural events is no greater than that between pixels above.
I think we have a tendency to easily attribute or imagine anything and everything to be conscious, just like us, from our childhood, but imagining it to be conscious does not make it conscious.
What we need to have in mind is what exactly is the conscious experience? We need to look at each of out own consciousness and come up with a basic description. Once we have that basic description then we can see if some object has the properties to satisfy that description.
To this end I can give my basic “conscious experience” It is a follows.
There are 2 components to the conscious experience.
1. The observed ( “U“)
2. The Observer(“I“)

Thus if I am looking at a tree there is the tree (“U“) and Me (“I“) looking at it or experiencing the tree.
This is true even if I am dreaming of a tree. Thus in our brain activity, we would expect to see 2 components the “U” (tree) and the “I“.
The “U” components is straight forward. It is the “I” component that is hard. I am not sure if you have heard of the easy and hard problem of Consciousness. http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
The “U” corresponds to the easy and the “I” to the Hard.
What makes “I” even more harder in my opinion is that it has to be able to connect space-like separated events that make up U.

 

[fdesilva]

"Take the creation of a image on a TV. Now it is a result of the activity (on or off) the pixels on the screen (pixel activity = neural activity) now has the image got a physical location? I say yes, its on the screen, so according to you does the TV image have a physical location?"

Yes, but the image is just defined here as the overall pixel activity. In the same way, if you define "experience" as overall neural activity, then there are no problems with causality. However, I do believe subjective experience is more than just neural activity, but as far as we know there are no physical laws relating physical activity to subjective experience, which appears to be non-physical.
To reiterate, yes the image has a location, in the same way that neural activity has a location. Working on this level, we find no problems with causality. If you want to start distinguishing between mental (subjective) and physical you can, but we have no well defined notion of causality in this case.

In this parallel that we are making.

Pixel activity + location of pixels = neural activity + location.

Now we know that Pixel activity + location of pixels will create an image.

The created image can be fully explained by the Pixel activity + location.
Do you agree?

If on the other hand we needed some other light source (If there is a light in the room that is blurring the image) or something else in addition to the pixel activity we would not be able to say the image is totally due to pixel activity + location.
Do you agree?

So from the properties of the image we can infer if it is totally explained by the pixel activity + location or if you need something else. Do you agree?
So the important point to note is that, you need to take all of the properties of the image formed, in order to decide, if it’s a result of pixel activity + location alone or has something else as well.
Do you agree?

Now in the same way, when we say that the neural activity creates the “experience” we need to see the properties of the “experience” to see if the neural activity alone can account for it.

 

[Dale]

Now in the same way, when we say that the neural activity creates the “experience” we need to see the properties of the “experience” to see if the neural activity alone can account for it.

I have no problem with this. If the neural activity alone is sufficient then the position of the "experience" is well defined (in the way you have described) and there is clearly no FTL causal connection. If the neural activity is not sufficient then the position of the "experience" is not well defined and there is no measurement of speed even possible, so no FTL causal connection can be identified in that case even in principle. Either way, there is no evidence for a violation of SR.