INTRODUCTION.

In short, what follows can be interpreted as a pitch for a kind of metaphysical realism that allows for a re-conceptualization of real objects based on the preconceptions experience imposed on us as expressed in our adopted language. This is not a call to abandon the search for the structure/function of reality ‘in se’ for ultimately truth must ideally correspond to it. That search has to be a journey not a destination due to inexorable human species limitation in the resolution of sensory receptors and brain combinatorial capacity. It is not far fetched to imagine that the very first viable human zygote at conception coexisted with objects and processes in space time that were independent of a proto human experience or knowledge of them, i.e., their property attributes and relations in nature are sui generis and are independent of how we humans describe or explain our understanding of them. But, since man is, or should be, the measure of all things or events in real space-time existence, reality is ultimately in his self-conscious brain; no brain, no consciousness of self or reality.

We have dissected out -in numerous journal publications, 2 blogs and two published book volumes- the salient aspects of man’s inherited sense-phenomenal and brain combinatorial limitations in extracting ontological and epistemological meaning from his quotidian existential experiences to guarantee his survival as a biopsychosocial species. Now we focus on the relevant ontological aspects of that physical macroreality he interacts with, whether in its substantial physical embodiment or its observable manifestations. In so doing we hope to add another grain in the solution of the mind/brain conundrum that obscures our understanding of human brain dynamics.

What should an all encompassing, comprehensive synopsis of falsifiable macro-reality (in its broadest extended spectrum of inclusion) account for? Sense-phenomenal experience of human reality comes in only two flavors, macro objects and/or falsifiable events. This simply means a seemingly invariant, identifiable three dimensional physical entity located in time space with size, form, color and other attributes in relation -or not- to other surrounding objects and consistently producing -or not- (or being produced or not by) an observable event in a given moment in time before a detectable change in the object or event ensues. Ontologically speaking, what then is the predominant feature of existential reality as it impacts the historical man? Is it the macro-physical object man ignores whence it came into being or the macro-physical observable event man often cannot causally link directly to a substance that brought the event into sensory threshold for human detection as a process? If we accept that in the human sense-phenomenal existential world the macro-physical reality comes in only those two flavors, substance or process, then we need to establish which of these two terms of reference this self-evident reality is best ontologically described and epistemologically explained and understood.

A moment of unbiased reflection immediately puts into focus what may -at first sight- seem as a paradox:

1) the macro-physical objects or substances of our sense-phenomenal experience are determined by aggregates of invisible atomic micro-constituents, the structure/function of which seem to reasonably comply or fit into the physical laws of nature as described by science methodology whereas,

2) natural historical and cultural events/processes at the psycho-sociological level of organization seem to negentropically increase their structural complexity in defiance of blind evolutionary paradigms and thermodynamic laws.

Do we need to choose between a point of reference that gives prominence to a deterministic evolutionary substantialism governed by physical laws or choose the indeterministic approach that rather focuses on natural chaotic processes as experienced? Should the predicate nature of processes (best described with verbs) qualify them as an ontological category distinct from the object (best described with nouns) with direct responsibility for the process? Do processes have an unit coherent structure or are they mere emergent epiphenomenal manifestations of underlying -identified or not- substances? We believe there is room for both points of reference in a hybrid synthesis that incorporates the quasi-deterministic, probabilistic features of quantum theory that makes free will survive as discussed elsewhere (‘Epistemontology’) and below.

ARGUMENTATION.

Some time back, during the developing stages of our biopsychosocial (BPS) model of consciousness, when we groped for clues trying to explain whether language precedes thought or viceverse, we had to settle for a compromise where recursive cyclic co-generation of both were based on the practical consideration that it is much easier to root thought on a pre-existing wealth of information on linguistics than to explain thought as preceding language on the basis of such an elusive entity as ‘thought’. We are facing a similar situation when having to decide as to what should be the referential base on which to build a metaphysical model of existential reality that applies to and harmonizes with brain dynamics. At the sense-phenomenal level macro-physical objects can be identified and compared to others, can be measured, and attributes such as, e.g., shape, size, color inside a reasonable static time and space bracket, can be corroborated. Macro-physical events or processes are complex, moving sequences whose macro-physical reality is not always experienced as a structured coherent unit describing causally-linked sequences of invariant stages or phases, what we loosely call a ‘natural process’. It is a predicate entity not always revealing the attributes of a specific tridimensional ‘thing’ - not always clearly identified- as it unfolds into an observable space time reality. While we may recognize natural processes as the possible originator of whatever macro-physical object there is in real existence, the aggregation ‘process’ of micro particulate poetry that makes it possible for the invisible physical things coming into the sensory detection threshold is just as reliable an explanation as the resolution of sensory receptors when describing their macro attributes. In existential reality an ontological ‘description’ is always more reliable than an epistemological ‘explanation’. We want some real-time stability, why settle for the extreme points of view in the Aristotelian-Heraclitean static substantialism or the Parmenidian nomadic dynamism. Does this sound like neo-behaviorism?

Enter quantum theory to mediate the metaphysical controversy. Who ever thought of the ‘butterfly effect’ as a viable explanation of the Katrina hurricane disaster? Can we simulate a ‘butterfly effect’ inside a vacuum chamber? If not, then, of course, we can argue that the aggregation of physical (but invisible) air ‘particles’ were causally linked to their eventual destruction process of homes and buildings. Or the opposite, by insisting that sans the atmospheric processes previously present the particulate, but invisible air things, wouldn’t move to impact existing macro-structures. To say that whatever essence/being captured in existence by sense detectors in the macro-physical reality is originated and sustained by preceding invisible micro-processes is just as good a poetic verse as claiming that an aggregation of invisible particles originated and sustained the ontological macro processes we now measure according to one poem or the other. A third poem, the ‘butterfly effect’, at least tries to blend both claims.

Perhaps one of the most reliable dictums originated from the physical sciences, and corroborated daily in nature, is that all natural systems tend to stabilize in structural/functional configurations of least potential energy; another way of saying that systems won’t spontaneously assume configurations of a higher structure than their preceding state. A highly crafted Venus of Milo statue falls from a 4^th. floor balcony and is reduced to rubble, sand, stones, etc., whence it came. Contrariwise we can wait many decades before such rubble can spontaneously, if ever, be reassembled back into the statue. Is this also true about the evolutionary trajectory vector of particles in the micro or macro level of organization as explained in the physical sciences..? Yet, we witness daily many isolated examples of nature’s systems becoming stable by the operation of self engendering/perpetuating configurations in a seemingly spontaneous unfolding of emergent natural strategies. What is reliably invariant is the operation of ‘change’, the only truly independent variable that made it necessary for humans to invent/conceptualize time and space to ‘measure’ the vector space position, duration and direction of such perceptual changes as experienced. What is problematic for the physical sciences to explain is the ‘bottomsàup’, seemingly spontaneous aggregation of invisible micro particles into a more structured perceptible macro reality. To say that there has been a corresponding decrease in energy somewhere else in the universe is an accommodating wishful thinking. Is there a blind or a purposeful evolution? Perhaps in an infinite time scale particulate structuring by nature’s selection processes into more complex configurations can be explained as a shifting stage in nature’s blind evolutionary progression process, and that is a plus for good Darwinian abstract poetry. But the human species generations have a different and more limited time scale to survive in nature and a spontaneous Darwinian configuration into more complex structures of macro reality just won’t cut. This is especially the case for cultural evolution across generations where it is self-evident the progressive Bergsonian increase in creative structural/functional sophistication in our social and cultural institutions and quotidian activities that history so carefully records. Even Teilhard de Chardin may have opted for a cyclical recursive co-generation/co-existence of blind Darwinian and purposeful Bergsonian evolutionary processes at the existential level of macro reality. This hybrid syncretism can both accommodate the secularist, teleological or theological views of reality. Again, why do we have to choose between the blind, chance-driven random evolution option and the purpose-directed goal driven by an invisible biopsychosocial (BPS), value-driven force argument? There is room for both within the context of a hybrid ‘epistemontological’ model, as discussed elsewhere and sketched below.

On an infinite cosmological time scale it may not be so difficult to configure biological evolution for ALL species within a blind Darwinian abstraction. The claim that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis notwithstanding, it becomes more difficult to extrapolate such conclusions to the uterine-level ontogenetic and subsequent socio-cultural evolution of the human species whose biological and cultural time frames are so limited even inside a global scale. This distinction is vital if we are to admit that we humans double-up as third person objective internal and external observers and first person subjective actors, and more important, our human species should be the measure of all things, processes and poems as a first practical real-time priority. This is not to categorically deny that, on a negative or positive infinity time scale, in a Planckian or cosmological context, Darwinism guidelines may be useful to explain the inexorable changes experienced in the operation of natural selection; some species disappear, others appear anew as a function of time. It is not far fetched to wonder if a Darwinian rationale is a necessary and sufficient model to describe/explain the ontogenesis and cultural trajectories at the individual species level, especially if the environmental memetic influences impact the genetic pool differently. Humans did not choose what part of the biospheric geography they would be born into yet we would concede there are more interspecific similarities than differences to account for. These similarities are mostly the result of a genetic memory in the brain’s amygdaloidal complex biological survival kit, whether directly expressed or via archetypes responding adaptively to environmental inducers encountered.

To explain a human cultural evolution, so deliberately commandeered by rational decision-making processes and guided to select among purposeful alternatives just by invoking blind random mutations, is stretching Darwinism too far. Because in the human species free will survives biological determinism as we have argued elsewhere, we cannot always exclusively superimpose a rational aselection on a biological selection. Sometimes the inherited reflex trigger primacy in behalf of the preservation of the human biological integrity imperative trumps important survival psychosocial imperatives. Yet, we can safely say that a Bergsonian/Teilhardian creative psychosocial evolution cannot ever be explained by the blind evolution of Darwinian guidelines. History shows that psychosocial evolution defies natures’ physical laws as cultural institutions evolve negentropically in structure and function across generations. It is fair to say that for any invisible entity in existence beyond the resolution of the macro-physical domain of existential reality, their spatio-temporal course of (either subPlanckian or cosmic) evolution will necesarilly force our explanations of natural laws to be seen inevitably as processes. However, inside macro-physical existential reality both substantialism and process co-exist and co-evolve, sometimes obeying natural laws of growth and differential degeneration to their minimum potential energy values, some other times violating natural laws by integral aggregation in a negentropic evolution only to return back inside the control of nature after passing on the increases in structure/function as an inherited legacy to the next generation. What we are saying is that a random Darwinian evolution by a cosmic natural selection process may be producing -at the global biospheric level- an overall spontaneous creative dynamism of emergent, more sophisticated and productive forms of psychosocial existence in reality. It is clear to us that quantum theory has dematerialized physical matter’s sovereign control of both physical and metaphysical argumentation where the structure of macro-physical reality may even represent an aggregation of invisible micro-processes into the seemingly static statistical stability of macro-physical ontology. It thus becomes very tempting to dismiss substantialism as the modern North Star to guide our insecure steps in search for the fundamental substance (‘arche’) or process as the fundamental categories to guide metaphysical semantics. We continue in search for a viable metaphysics of existential reality on which to configure the brain’s observable ontology and inferred epistemology, micro and macro substantialism and process. To follow are some relevant arguments.

As we have amply discussed elsewhere, there is no ‘reason’ in the world to suspect the world was created exclusively for the first born ‘conscious’ man to witness and experience. Things and processes likely were always there, in an a-causal, a-symmetric, a-temporal millieu wherefrom novel, creative panoramas emerged with change and must have been experienced initially by humans as a Kantian ‘world of chaotic sensations’. Consequently, man had to eventually invent the concepts of time and space to measure duration and location of macro objects in his midst, all in harmony with his inherited linear, sequential way of language processing. This way meaning was extracted from man’s experience with objects and/or natural processes. Was that course of evolution based on nature’s random intelligence selection or based on a supernatural purposive directed design? Before we take sides we have to ask ourselves which position would be more reliable, one based on man’s observation of nature where macro physical systems naturally self-configure spontaneously into their least potential energy state or one based on man’s historical observations on the evolving complexity, sophistication and emergence of our social and cultural institutions? Which is more important in this apparent paradox? After Ortega y Gasset we don’t deny that the individual man is less important to history than his existential circumstance. We are less known by our physical appearance than by our traits, inclinations, talents, skills, etc. that identify us as such and such person, or such neighborhood, county, state, nation or ethnic group.

But, when bracketing from the social person to his macro physical brain, the truth value and reliability of psychic ‘processes’ depend almost exclusively on such questionable, unreliable strata as first person subjective accounts or indirect gross measurements such as fMRI, PET Scans, EEG, MEG, etc. Fissures, convolutions, horizontal layers or perpendicular columns in the macro physical brain cortex have very little to contribute even at autopsy. But we must plow with the oxen available. In the case of the brain invariant macro processes necessarily provide a more cogent and plausible account of its dynamics than the quasi-redundant neuronal unit structure of Ramón y Cajals. Let’s illustrate with a couple of examples..

As amply detailed elsewhere, who has not seen a sleepy toddler walk to the bathroom (holding mom’s hand) with a perfect, inherited reflex neuromuscular coordination of arms and legs? Or how, with a perfect hand aim, slap a walking fly on his left cheek while sound asleep? The biological imperative of self preservation operates at the unconscious levels of complex neuronal networks (spinal and supra-spinal) organization and may certainly be ‘explained’ as an abstract evolutionary process by natural selection. Even when we subconsciously increase the complexity and sophistication of such complex unconscious coordination by adding now acquired training as in the case of olympic gymnasts when, e.g., they somersault up in the air and land safely on the same horizontal pole above ground level. It is abundantly clear that such complex network marvel of neuromuscular coordination cannot be consciously willed at every individualized step of the linear sequential process; somehow acquired training and genetic processes joined forces. What is not so obvious is how unexpected small but dangerous variations in the gymnasium setting (e.g., inclination of the horizontal pole) often lead to consciously willed, instantaneous corrections (while still in the air, ready to land on the pole!) in the neuromuscular coordination default neuronal activation to preserve the biological integrity of the gymnast! How then does Darwinian evolution account for this causally efficient adjustment/control by a non-physical mind, conscious free will over such physical brain default complexity? Well it doesn’t..... Before the reader invokes the magic of biological self-preservation, we can also give examples of falsifiable observable behaviors where a gymnast had consciously willed an act ‘contra natura’ in a suicidal attempt. Conscious free will trumps nature and complexity!

We accept the temporal course, the asymmetric causality and the thermodynamic increase in entropy attending/describing the macro physical process as invariant (under defined circumstances) and try the best mathematical metaphysical poetry to logically represent (symbolically or sententially) and configure the inevitable macro process in the abstract. Why so? Because our species biological limitations in sensory and brain combinatorial resolution requires it and, perhaps more important because the predictive value it may temporarily provide save lives or increase the probability of perpetuation of the human species. This is a clear instance where the psychosocial conviviality of man with self and others is a different ball of wax than the inherited biological preservation imperative, yet they must co-exist. And, more important, we humans can exercise conscious control over both! How so?

Could there be two diametrically opposite brands of evolution co-operating as Teilhardt de Chardin suggested in his “The Phenomenon of Man.” and Henri Bergson in his “Creative Evolution.”? At a more fundamental level we may ask, what really is existential reality? Was there a first born ‘conscious’ man capable of elaborating poetic abstractions to extract existential meanings from the sense-phenomenal reality (experienced as a macro substance or process) he encountered or was he subconsciously overwhelmed by the Kantian “chaos of sensations” he found, awaiting for a subsequent ‘creative Bergsonian’ evolution into a self-conscious stage to make sense of it all after he was aware of such objects and/or events before him? What came first, a conscious but primitive creature mentally ordering his physical environment or a subconscious defenseless creature being driven by environmental circumstances beyond his control to evolve into a self-conscious creature? Piaget in his “Theory of Intellectual Development” suggests that the stage of self-consciousness emerges in the newborn stage.

In our BPS ‘epistemontological’ view of a hybrid reality both paradigms are explained as recursively co-generated and we suspect both the genetic and the acquired languages play a dominant role as explained elsewhere. To illustrate we will give a capsule summary of an experiment we conducted with dental students during my tenure as a professor at Georgetown Medical School and the state University of Puerto Rico Medical School at a time when the word ‘brain imaging’ was not even in the medical dictionary.

The dental school had prepared an elaborate facial musculature electromyographic (EMG) set up to measure electrical activity in the muscles of mastication (e.g., masseter) in suspected cases of ‘bruxism’. The undersigned asked for permission to add additional facial EMG electrodes to place over the facial dermatome distribution of the trigeminal nerve controlling the musculature for facial expresion while experimental subjects viewed projection slides that normally provoked in the viewer emotions of anger, sadness, euphoria and other modalities. We wanted to ‘read’ emotions. To our surprise, even in the absence of observable facial musculature contractions denoting emotional states, we could still register a typical waveform signature corresponding to each of various emotional states generated by the appropriate slide being projected into a screen. We always suspected that some kind of ‘inner language’ expressing a reaction to the emotional experience (or viceversa) evoked by the content of the slide was produced, just like an articulated vocal report is generated from Broca’s area using same facial musculature for verbal and non-verbal expression. At that time we were interested in an objective and reliable, falsifiable signature for emotions during a legal deposition, something better than a ‘truth serum test’.

We cannot over emphasize too much the importance of an emotional input, slides or otherwise, in the social interactive conviviality especially when expressed in a neuro-pathological context. We were interested in an objective diagnostic test for the various psychiatric disorders or at least a test for biased processing of emotional signals. Do emotions fuel and precede effector response behavior or are they the result of behavior? As it happens in every investigation, more questions arise than problems are solved. We wish not to revive that famous controversy that was not resolved when injected norepinephrine did not produce a measurable Cannon response! In case the reader did not notice, besides the theoretical aspects, we are making a pitch for a priority for research funding as it more directly solves human problems in existential reality.

To continuously wonder whether processes causally precede substances or viceversa, or whether ontology naturally precedes epistemology or viceversa, are the equivalents of wondering what came first, the hen or the egg? It would make sense, with Hume, to assume that knowledge starts with sense-phenomenal macro objects and their identifiable attributes and interactions. However, we can witness the physical realization of a process devoid of a physical embodiment and it makes as much sense to argue that for an observer to see a given macrophysical object, the corresponding underlying invisible and complex microprocesses must first aggregate until the resolution threshold for a macro object is reached to be recognizable within a spatiotemporal framework. But processes do not have an independent existence, they too have spatiotemporal coordinate position and duration markers. To make a long and complex story short and simple in real time existential reality, and since metaphysics is all about abstractions, we have to be careful about categories of thought. From a cognitive viewpoint, what is the most important characterization of, e.g., a green pea pod? Is it the materiality of the spatiotemporal green thing, the abstract attribute of being green, compartmentalized, elongated, edible, etc. or is it the conceptual thought-instrumentality idea of an abstract greenness that can be attributed to all things reflecting that component of the electromagnetic spectrum making them look green? In the human, real-time existential reality, it is silly to claim a hierarchy of categories in a metaphysical dispute. ALL doctrinal categories, the nominalist edible seed in a green pod, the conceptualist nutritional value of all green vegetables or the platonic abstraction of primitive life assignment for all seeds in the same pod, are conjunctively essential regardless of the variable relative temporality (if present) of each item.

Same analytical argument can be made about the human brain. The consistent, reliable structural/functional dynamism of the brain is a brute fact of existential reality regardless of whether any aspect of it can be reduced to symbolic or sentential language. This shouldn’t be construed as a new call for an exclusive behavioral approach. For one thing, the brute facts of Darwinism, free will, negentropic cultural evolution, intelligent design, emergent reality, etc., are here to stay and intellectual honesty demands our objective attention to their presence. For instance, why should self-consciousness be considered as a logical impossibility requiring the human being to simultaneously play the role of subjective actor and objective observer of the drama of a life he is in conscious control of? Of course, as academicians we are committed to reduce such reality to the closest thing to a formulation for semantic purposes and there is no reason in the world to deny the concurrence of all that is vitally experienced but not macroscopically self evident. Thus the undersigned has tried to speculate on self consciousness as the possible result of the operation of ‘mirror neurons’ (known to imitate the behavior of, e.g., an observed -or thought of- frightened external face by activating the very same neurons when the subject feels same type of fright himself). And we ask, if he can ‘read the minds’ of people in his social millieu, why shouldn’t he also use the other side of the ‘mirror’ and read his own mind in a self–conscious effort using same neuronal network mechanisms? Cultural anthropologists are not trained in neurobiology but neither are neurobiologists trained in sociology to grasp the important implications and consequences of such marvel! If they did, they would understand that, at the psychosocial level, being informed of my neighbor’s intentions by following his gaze, we can promote or discourage social bonding, promote language development and overall learning, all so crucial for positive social conviviality. Once the inherited human unconscious brain takes care of life-threatening situations in the biospheric ecosystem and the subconscious component supplements by accessing acquired memory databases, self consciousness will do the rest in the elaboration of adaptive responses to significant novel situations. Our notion of free will in the BPS model is ‘freedom by conscious consent’ to an elaborate neocortical attractor complex concatenation of appropriate adaptive responses consistent with a qualia of emotional happiness. Subhuman species are not free because they cannot transcend the subconscious awareness stage and think outside the genetically and memetically programmed default box. The bridge across the dichotomy between the biological determinism of Darwinian natural law and the experienced indeterminism of social existence is provided by the quasi-determinism of an inherently probabilistic quantum theory where conscious free will survives, as detailed elsewhere.

Somehow, as we witness antagonistic paradigms of reality being so feverishly defended with good arguments, we seem driven to conceptualize a cyclic, self-configuring, recursive coexistence of:

1) a deterministic, blind neo-Darwinian, bottoms-up, nature-driven, micro aggregation of ‘naturally selected’ particles/processes into the physical macro reality of ‘adapted’ inorganic objects and molecular primordia of possible species, including man,

2) a concomitant nature-driven, entropic, top down degeneration of previous macro inorganic structures/functions in compliance also with thermodynamic laws and other physical laws. The controversy arises when, as we said above, the cycle of neo-Darwinian micro aggregation ßà macro object entropic decay by the operation of natural selection and natural laws on surviving species seems to apply in a cosmic and global scale, yet, and here is the difference:

3) the aggregated phenomena in the case of the selected human species primordium for survival is qualitatively different because at the stage of ontogenetic embryologic aggregation (notwithstanding its alleged recapitulation of philogenesis) all the way to the individual newborn stage and subsequent collective social aggregations, seems to follow a teleological or theologically-driven evolution which follows different rules in defiance or at the expense of natural laws.

4) It would seem as if the neo-Darwinian evolution described (giving rise to the macromolecular species primordia above) and its relevance to human life stops at the moment of zygote formation (present equivalent of human conception). What follows is either causally driven from the micro-level on up or driven by teleological or theological guidelines at the macro level (conception) on up as cultural anthropology and history has strongly suggested.

Same thing happens when we observe reality at a different level of organization. Are measured quantum phenomena based on physical particles or wave processes? Are they science or metaphysics…or both? The quantum view of reality is inherently probabilistic and not always in compliance with the natural laws we know, e.g., non locality, collapse of wave function, etc. Has quantum phenomenology dematerialized matter or simply kept it below threshold for human sensory receptor detection? Or is the macro-physical panorama in our sense-phenomenal reality an emergent statistical phenomena of ‘wavicle’ processes giving the illusion of an observable ‘thing’ with enduring temporal stability? Is quantum theory of existential reality ontology or epistemology? When man humbly accepts his sensory and brain combinatorial limitations as a brute fact of nature and incorporate both into his insatiable quest to identify his origins and destiny he will understand that existential reality is an epistemontological hybrid in an adaptive, progressive, evolutionary, recursive cycling ride into a future to be found in his own modified past!…. This position is in harmony with recorded history and “those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them..” This is especially so as we consider the role of teleology or theology in our historical lives..

When I grew up in Santurce, P.R. under the careful tutelage of that tall, handsome, controversial uncle Agustin Bobonis de la Sierra, catholic, spiritualist, mason, communist, community organizer, free thinker of the highest moral and ethical standards, I had no difficulty in conceiving his real presence even when he was physically absent! I could always account for his personhood in terms of the ongoing activities he influenced or generated at home or the community. He was present to guide my life after he died and the reader may consider this essay as a tribute to his memory. And this is the reason why there should be no reasoned, conceptual difficulty for the most hardened materialist diehard in conceiving a JudeoChrIslamic God as a ‘person’ based on His life, death and passions as recorded in history. What is more important, the ontological substantialism of, e.g., that Jewish citizen who died in the cross or his subsequent epistemological conceptualization as being the focal source of inspiration is there for all those able to creatively fashion, in His name, values, harmony, law, beauty and enduring meanings. Ergo, I fail to understand the difficulty many intellectuals experience in conceiving or processifying a God as one or three persons, etc. My uncle Agustin or God need not be physically present for me to know they are present in an active and reciprocal relationship with me and my circumstance and I correspond through prayers and/or spiritual communion.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We set out as a goal to market once more the idea of a new metaphysical realism as sustained by a quantum model of brain dynamics. This should not be interpreted as a mere neo-behavioral tautology according to which we humans can only know of reality that which can become knowledgeable to our human species. In our view there is room for nominalism, conceptualism and universals that can be argued as different aspects of the same human effort to deal with his inherited and acquired circumstance to stay safely alive, reach reproductive age, share a convivial social experience and be creative in the niche he did not choose to be born into. In a leisurely search for clues on which to base a coherent metaphysics of existential reality we sought to explore, ontologically speaking, some confusions about what is the predominant feature of existential reality as it impacts the historical man? What is that aspect of reality that impacts man in his quotidian experience of existence? If reality is in his brain, does that mean that anything outside its threshold of meaningful sensory or combinatorial resolution does not exist? Should we ignore the invisible frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, non-locality, electrons, magnetism, gravity, etc.? If they don’t impact us as observable objects or by the effects their presence accounts for, they may as well not be there, for man is the measure of all things in Heideggerian essence or existence. But we can always make poems, for they need not be sustained by falsifiable measurements of observable objects or events or mathematical explanations rooted on abstract axioms divorced from sensory experience. In our humble opinion quantum theory has put man back at the center of the universe, a “new Copernican revolution”! As it must have happened to the first human born or conceived into a pre-existent Kantian world of sensations, was he genetically endowed to extract meaningful information from his pre-existing macrophysical environment of things and ongoing processes to adapt or avoid? Or did he have to wait for specific environmental triggers to activate adaptive archetype genes? What evolved first, his epistemic model to accommodate and extract meaning from his sense reality or his sensory ontological acuity on which to base his subsequent epistemic model, i.e., what came first, ontology or epistemology? What is the best reference point on which to sustain a metaphysics of reality, substantialism or process? We have argued above how a quantum theory of brain dynamics can best accomodate the observable ontology and inferred epistemology into a hybrid unit where genetic and acquired language play a fundamental role in the survival of free will.

Since nobody was there to have witnessed either what the first human conceived or first newborn experienced, we have to rely on extrapolations, metaphysical logic and other epistemic tools. Thank God babies and planets are still being born for us to observe the observable macro and infer the invisible micro. The first thing we notice is the primacy of human biological integrity guaranteed by an amygdaloid genetic memory language and operating at unconscious levels. The second thing we notice is the primacy of human social stability guaranteed by a hippocampus/neocortex acquired language operating at self-conscious levels. The human species is not meant to live alone but in society. Like the unconscious protection against life threatening situations, conscious social conviviality is a sine qua non for human species survival. The functional coordinating interface between the inner neuro-humoral (body proper) and the external social environment, or between the inherited and the acquired is the subconscious brain, as argued elsewhere. The arguments that preceded may help to put together a coherent metaphysics of existential reality.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. In Deltona, Florida May 2009

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. Anderson, J.A. and Sutton, J.P.[1995]: A Network of Networks. In the proceedings of the ``World Congress on Neural Networks'', Washington,D.C.

2. Cohen, J. and Stewart, I. [1994]: The Collapse of Chaos. Viking Penguin 1994

3. de la Sierra, Angell O. [2008] An Epistemontological View of Reality. Lulu Press

4. de la Sierra, Angell O. [2000] Neurophilosophy of Consciousness. A Biopsychosocial Model. Lulu Press

5. Goertzel, B.[1996]: From Complexity to Creativity. Plenum Press 1996, online

6. Freeman, W. [1987]: How brains make chaos in order to make sense of the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10:161-195.

7. Werner, G.[2000]: Computation in Nervous Systems. Online

8. Edward R. Close, Can a Quantum Physics Description of Brain Dynamics Explain Consciousness? Telicom 22:1, 36-44, 2009.

9. David Chalmers,” Facing up to the Problems of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona, 1995

10. Edward R. Close, Transcendental Physics, Paradigm Press, 1997

11. Walter Freeman, Tutorial on neurobiology: From single neurons to brain chaos. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 2(3): 451-482, 1992. http://sulcus.

12. de la Sierra, Angell O. A fishing expedition inside Hilbert space. Telicom 21:3, 32-36, 2008.

13. 6. Efrastious Manousakis, Founding Quantum Theory on the Basis of Consciousness. Found Phys. (36)6, 795, 2006. (This paper is also available online at: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604100.)

End of Chapter 2

An ontology of consciousness,
a journey or a destination?

$fractal horseshoe, opened rt.$

Abstract

The experiential aspects of consciousness, qualia, thoughts, and self-awareness. have resisted all attempts of description or even explanations as the logical supervenience of mind on brain dynamics The ostensible futility of scientific methodology in describing or even adequately explaining the ‘physical’ reality of the mind is revisited. However, it may still be possible to market a quantum theoretical explanation of brain dynamics and self-consciousness in ‘boundary mathematics’ where the ‘boundary’ is the quantum interface skin separating the outer sense-phenomenal perceptual reality from their inner conceptual representations. We often have to balance rational convictions with others perhaps resulting from strong intuitions not compatible with classical or even modal rationality.

KEYWORDS:

agent, Boolean framework, boundary mathematics, brain dynamics, calculus of distinctions, consciousness, determinism, epistemology, experiential aspects, infinity, interface, law of form, mathematical approach, observer, ontology, ontology, quantum physics, random activity, reductionism, sense-phenomena, time, transcendental, , , , We often have to balance rational convictions with others perhaps resulting from strong intuitions not compatible with classical or even modal rationality

“Within the context of a complex quotidian existence, quantum probabilities are superior to abstract mathematical possibilities.” [2]

I was very pleased with both Dr. Ed. R. Close’s undeserved praise of my efforts to explain brain dynamics using quantum poetry and his erudite mathematical poetry in the definition/explanation of ‘experience’ consciousness 1, the ‘hard problem’ of Chalmers 2. Another creative model trying to explain the elusive, invisible ontology of ‘consciousness’ using epistemological mathematical tools as if they could be explained as identities using algebraic boundary arguments, like showing that the map and the territory are functional identities using Spencer-Brown’s mathematical logic. In his “Transcendental Physics”, Dr. Close points out that the primary and secondary functions of consciousness are: “..the drawing of distinction and the organizing of distinctions into meaningful patterns,…”. 3 As such, he addresses the possible ‘how’ explanatory function and not the ‘what’ descriptive structure of consciousness. Welcome to the club…being there, done that. Like in Newton’s workable mathematical conclusions, we have to do with the explanatory ‘how’ instead of the falsifiable descriptive ‘what’ of the invisible experience of gravity…. or consciousness. At first glance we agree on the futility of scientific methodology in describing or even adequately explaining the ‘physical’ reality of the mind, as will be briefly discussed below. We will also point out where we may differ, especially when it may still be possible to market a quantum theoretical explanation of brain dynamics and self-consciousness in ‘boundary mathematics’ where the ‘boundary’ is the quantum interface skin separating the outer sense-phenomenal perceptual reality (ontology) from their inner conceptual representations (epistemology).[3]

It should be clear that the experiential aspects of consciousness, qualia, thoughts, and self-awareness. have resisted all attempts of description or even explanations as the logical supervenience of mind on brain dynamics. All we and others have had to settle for is what Chalmers 2 described as a natural supervenience where the causal efficiency of the invisible mind on the physical brain, if any, remains reductively unfathomable. This will make it easier for the reader to categorize the mathematical approach 1 (‘Law of Form and the Calculus of Distinctions’) as just a variation on the ‘epistemontological’ theme.

I agree “..that there could be no physical universe without the organizing principle of consciousness.”, at least in the structure and function that we existentially experience in the biosphere. This would be equivalent to Kant’s description of sense reality as a ‘chaos of sensations’ that our mind structures to extract its meaning to our biopsychosocial existence. Our task was to harmonize the invisible micro- and the sensory macrophysical “chaos” with our known brain limitations in the perceptual and brain conceptual resolution.[4] Once we accept this self-evident fact to any student of biology we have to invest more on investigations of natural supervenience hypotheses, and less on physicalist/ materialistic approaches inspired exclusively on scientific methodologies.[5] This way the characterization of the ontology of consciousness studies becomes an asymptotic journey, not a goal destination. We tried originally to develop simultaneous equations for a biopsychosocial equilibrium algorithm incorporating experimental data from the neuro-humoral visceral brain, sensory cortex and ‘talking brain’ compartments with genetic and acquired memory data bases until we discovered the supercomplexity of chaotic, probabilistic behavior resisting being reduced to Newtonian formulations. Enter, quantum dynamic theory, a probabilistic calculus itself incorporating the falsifiable data of observations and the solid inferential tool of vector calculus which, after the seminal studies of Dr. Walter Freeman on the olfactory cortex 4, promised an ideal interface between the perceptual, ontological observation and the epistemological conceptual inferences derived therefrom, a veritable hybrid epistemontological creature.

Brain dynamics has three distinct levels of measurable activity, namely random noise, organized complex chaos and falsifiable activities at the macro level. We have detailed elsewhere how random brain activity acts as an amplifier of low intensity receptor input, the organized quantum/chaos organization in cortical attractor basins and the falsifiable fMRI, EEG, PET Scans, MEG, and other related neuro-anatomico-physiological measurements. All of this data is answering the ‘easy’ problem of consciousness. To tackle the ‘hard’ problem, to see how far along the ‘truth value’ asymptote we could travel in a fishing expedition in Hilbert’s space 5, we tried a reductionist approach again. We had to do it because we had strong intuitions about the role language linear processing played in the co-generation of thought and language, notwithstanding the non-linear, a-temporal and a-symmetric nature of physical reality.

How do you reconcile our inherited linear processing with such sensory input? Our task was formidable because we had to both “..force classical logic into a modal straight jacket and push quantum theory into a Boolean framework…” One can represent the complex variability of mental or brain state functions as vector spaces by applying the rigor of finite dimensional and orthogonal configuration. We had hoped to extend these probabilistic mathematical results to handle the macro level data obtained from the ‘easy problem’ measurements. Unfortunately, even at the micro level, the data became unwieldy even for a computer. We had harvested more questions than answers, a limited success. But I remain confident that someone else with better mathematical training can approximate a workable algorithm in the future.

To us, it was clear that receptors at the interface separating or making the distinction between the outer chaos and the inner order had to linearize the outer input to make sense of its original non-linear content. So I tried another approach to integrate the non-linear, asymmetric perceptual input with the linear language processing by assigning receptors the role of linearizing transducers. We knew that we had to somehow artificially introduce time to linearize a tenseless physical reality using quantum theoretical tools and coupling them with co-existing cyclic transitions of measurable periodicity. This way, by inventing time to measure nature’s changes, we could assign temporal durations to the linear events we experience. It was a good idea that Manousakis later developed as a concurrent operator. 6

I was baffled by the complexities of the task, the limited hardware resources and my limited self training in advanced mathematics, so I decided that, rather than integrating mathematically the perceptual and conceptual domains, why not have them work independently but synchronized? We would no longer have to worry much about their causality issues. Duality would persist and a conceptual time would become an emergent, analytically unfathomable concept but, using tensor spaces and a time reversal operator, we could cancel the atemporal asymmetry that nature imposes on our species. And finally, we could explain a linear ‘stream of consciousness’, so important in our development of the final conscious access to cortical attractors in the decision making process.

I do not know if I have succeeded in redefining time “..properly relating it to consciousness and the drawing of distinctions..” as suggested in Dr. Close’s book. 3 Transcendental Physics

It is not clear how time unifies consciousness and physical reality except in the way I suggested above. His mathematical approach should be expanded into a full exposition but, from the paucity of data in his critique of my model, I dare say he substitutes his Law of Forms and the Calculus of Distinction 1 for my quantum theoretical model as the proper interface between the external perceptual physical reality and the internal conceptually/mathematically-inferred explanations of that reality. They are both hybrid models integrating the ontology of sensory perceptions with the epistemology of conceptual inferences using the language of abstract mathematics. From the little I know about the Law of Form I can anticipate that, in straddling the boundary between the perceptual and the conceptual, Dr. Close would have to modify both Boolean logic and propositional calculus in formulating his primary boundary algebra, the same thing I tried when trying to modify classical QM and logic into a quasideterministic QM and modal logic respectively, both unfinished projects. Rather than predicting outcomes based on primary algebraic formulations whose truth value depends on further abstract demonstrations it would be more credible if direct/indirect, falsifiable measurements would be used instead. It is very dangerous to declare a representation as a Leibnitzean identity to the observable being represented symbolically or by a logic sentence. To illustrate how one may fall into the metalogic trap of logical equivalences where identities may become opposites, e.g., mind M = or < brain matter B is equivalent to both M < B and M = B! Can we conclude that observer I = observed environment E are identities or distinct entities, or both simultaneously? Mathematical communication should aim at a syntax structure that logically supervenes on falsifiable explanations (logical equivalents) if not descriptions.

To illustrate (or perhaps confuse more), suppose we have several equations representing self-evident options as instances/experiences of a human agent/observer (I):

1) I = B + M

2) I = D + E

3) I = O + E

4) Innominate a

5) “b”

6) “c”

where I (me) stands for observer, B for observed physical beings in sense reality (e.g., brain) and M for inferred invisible entity (mind). O stands for ontological description (D) and E for epistemological explanation (E). Nobody would challenge the options of a human agent/observer for ontologically describing those observable things within sensory resolution (e.g., brain shape) or epistemologically explaining those beyond that power (e.g., mind or consciousness). By allowing 3) & 4) to share at least one instance of 1) and replacing one or more instances of 1) in 3) by 2) then by substitution of equals we find that if 1)=2) i.e., B+M=D+E then 3)=5). If we now replace ALL instances of 1) in 3) & 4) with 2) then 3) becomes 5) and 4) becomes 6). This way if 3)=4) then 5)=6). It can be argued that the innominate logical processing takes place at subconscious levels and may represent the intuitions we often invoke. It should be noticed the fragility of the ‘conclusions’ when we accept the identity of a metalogic and the meta-language adopted. So much for the fuzzy logic sustaining the exclusively mathematical approach to brain dynamics. Within the context of a complex quotidian existence, quantum probabilities are superior to abstract mathematical possibilities.[6]

If we accept the premises that ontology refers more to descriptions of sense-phenomenal (physical observations) data whereas epistemology refers more to the inferential / conceptual explanations given to find operational meaningful knowledge to survive as a species then you can see why, given our perceptual and conceptual limitations, physical descriptions of observables is very limited unless the metaphysical (beyond the physical) explanations are combined as an indelible unit I call ‘epistemontology’. A descriptive knowledge of an invisible mind or consciousness is foolhardy but must be considered as an asymptotic goal with the help of metaphysical logic. Thus considered, an ontological description of mind and consciousness are virtual destinations we approach in a journey we know probably will never get there, but the natural imperative to search for our origins and destinations as a species will provide the drive to continue the journey.

As a parting comment, we often have to balance rational convictions with others perhaps resulting from strong intuitions not compatible with classical or even modal rationality, the schizophrenia of functional property or substance dualism. When we settle for process philosophy and epiphenomenal view of mind states we are subconsciously acting as believers unable to reach infinity but when you double up as an ex-academic, my case, you can’t avoid the urge to continue the reductionist journey to destination infinity along the sinuous asymptote, not knowing what to expect but, like Con-Edison said in New York, “Dig we must, for a growing New York”.

1. Edward R. Close, Can a Quantum Physics Description of Brain Dynamics Explain Consciousness? Telicom 22:1, 36-44, 2009.

2. David Chalmers, ” Facing up to the Problems of Consciousness,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona, 1995

3. Edward R. Close, Transcendental Physics, Paradigm Press, 1997

4. Walter Freeman, Tutorial on neurobiology: From single neurons to brain chaos. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, 2(3): 451-482, 1992. http://sulcus.

5. Angell de la Sierra, A fishing expedition inside Hilbert space.Telicom 21:3, 32-36, 2008.

6. Efrastious Manousakis, Founding Quantum Theory on the Basis of Consciousness. Found Phys. (36)6, 795, 2006. (This paper is also available online at: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604100.)

[1] Deltona, Florida, March 2009.

[2] “Mathematical equation describing mind dynamics during the vigil state.” However, you cannot describe the invisible: You won’t see anything on the page! I therefore call the graphic “Interface” and it is described as a ‘Numerical Representation of a Wave Guide”. A potential reader can see, e.g., the degree of certainty to be found when ‘measuring’ an invisible wave! Graphics, like good paintings, are intended to stimulate the observer in finding his own correlations with the text.

[3] See: “An Epistemontological View of Reality” in Telicom.

[4] “Task” here refers to my specific view of the reality of existence as fashioned and structured by our mind’s consciousness, my model of consciousness. Bees can detect ultraviolet frequencies, dogs can detect presence of sounds humans cannot, etc.: this is referred to as a limited perceptual resolution of the electromagnetic wide spectrum. Same limitation can be detected in the combinatorial capacity of our human brain to resolve combinations, permutations, etc. of input data, e.g., we have problems maintaining more than 7 digits in temporary memory long enough to use it in other combinations. The operations of symbolic and sentential logic are thereby limited. This we call a limitation in the conceptual resolution (solving power) of complex sensory data inputs.

[5] These ‘facts’ about the perceptual superiority of other species to detect colors, sounds, etc. we learned in elementary schools.

[6] This premise can be debated and it can be argued that both quantum and mathematical physics are required, that the one is not superior to the other and that each has its own advantages in exploring and proving the phenomenon we call “consciousness” as the reductionist approach will never find the answer alone.

End of Chapter 3

One observer, two reality choices.
Dynamics in attractor space

("..if you can’t describe the invisible, an explanation will do…for now.")

two spirals,x sect

Lorenz attractor

INTRODUCTION.

It has been very difficult to convince talented cognitive science researchers to accept many undeniable, self-evident facts about the reliability of our subjective evaluations (the internal reality) as observers vis a vis that of the idealized objective, external physical reality out there. Which one should I trust, the one described as perceived or the one explained as conceptualized? This has nothing to do with religious persuasion as much as the observer being an honest poet in explaining the same sensory reality we all seem to share and describe as experiences. First and foremost the observer (I) is the undeniable common denominator interface between both realities, ergo science is essentially subjective. Consequently, because (I) doubles-up as the 3^rd. person narrator and the 1^st. person protagonist of an ever-changing internal/external scenario, our conclusions and models of existential reality evolve at the same rate the common unfinished observer (I) evolves as a biological entity in his capacities to perceptualize/conceptualize. Man is back at the center of the universe, "a new Copernican revolution"! Unfortunately the rate of change in the higher (subatomic/micro) levels of non-observable structure/functional states of the infinite outer physical reality and that of the equivalent but finite inner (brain/body proper) macro states differ. As responsible members of the human species we have two ‘real time’ responsibilities: to reduce and explain observable/measurable objects/events of such inner/outer domains to intelligible symbolic/sentential formulations, within the observer’s natural limitations imposed by our sensory and brain combinatorial capacities. When I sit in my porch observing how the easterly winds coming from Lake Louise blow and push our metallic screen inwards I see or feel nothing but a structurally undefined invisibility pushing, a ‘nominal reality’ I call ‘wind’. Yet, I can measure its temperature, humidity, direction, force and dynamic flow pattern. Same thing can be argued about the "Phenomenon of Life." (see Teilhardt de Chardin) and consciousness. Other times, however reliable as to details, the mesoscopic structure is there (e.g., a cellular mitochondria) but the functional poetry (e.g., electron transport relay chains during photosynthesis or oxidative phosphorilations, etc.) is invisible to the human observer. Like, either we explain the position or the momentum of an invisible moving electron, but not both simultaneously. What is the knowledge about the element carbon that I should consider as the (relatively) invariant knowledge I feel I can trust, the one on the invariably messy black stainable substance the burns and glows when heated or the artistic tetrahedral beauty with four valences that reacts with predictable stoichometric precision with other four Chloride atoms to always give the detergent carbon tetrachloride CCl₄of known predictable characteristics according to quantum chemistry? Same substance, two realities.

There is nothing wrong with the poetic mathematical, reductionist explanations of invisible objects/events that impact our quotidian existence. The motto should be, "..if you can’t describe it, an explanation will do…for now." This we do when we experience the un-explainable (not to mention the un-describable!) wonders of cosmology, life and mind. It is within these nature-imposed constraints that at this moment, in our humble opinion, quantum theoretical approaches offer the best quasi reductionist, quasideterministic model to explain a narrow aspect of that wondrous invisible experience we call mind/brain or brain dynamics. We will briefly summarize below why it may eventually be developed further into a real time, operational theory of everything (TOE), well… most everything. The departure from abstract models explaining real-time human issues into abstract models based on counterintuitive abstractions from exclusively axiom-based premises trying to explain everything are valid exercises in sophisticated poetry so long as they carry a potential to be developed into solutions to real-time problems affecting our biopsychosocial health and welfare.

ARGUMENTS.

Likewise, there is nothing wrong with speculating that ALL isolated physical systems, the brain included, may evolve in time according to the Schródinger equation d/dt |ψi> = − i/h H |ψi> as Everett’s many worlds poetry (MW) or Schrodinger time evolution operator U = e^−iHτ/¯h explains when applied to the totality of cosmos. In his approach the U operator must clearly provide for ALL possible state configurations in as many world scenarios. Operationally we’d rather settle for a quasi deterministic probable world than many deterministic, but randomly varying possible independent worlds. This, however, should not exclude the possibility of getting definite, albeit probabilistic, outcomes in quantum measurements by including the ‘wave function collapse’ verse in the poem; practical, exigent circumstances justify it. Credible quantum poetry is operationally validated when sustained by falsifiable data and cannot rest exclusively on more poetry as would be a calculation of decoherence rates using Hamiltonian dynamics. Thus the importance of Dr. Walter Freeman’s experiments on the olfactory cortex. It may fancy mathematical theorists to play with abstract cosmological verses that hurt no one but, from an operational point of view, does it help to assume e.g., that a single atom can have simultaneously spin up AND spin down configurations in peaceful co-existence? We suspect by intuition that the many worlds scenario paradigm complexities will be resolved ultimately as the problem of the discrepancies between the brain-imposed real time world of sense perceptions and the spatiotemporal abstract world similarly imposed on our conceptualizations of an invisible atemporal reality in nature, whether the latter are expressed in logic symbols or acquired language. In the meantime, why not assume that the instrumental measurement (or the brain’s ‘free will’ equivalent) had the effect of isolating one of the alternate states in superposition (e.g., alternate configurations in neocortical attractor basins), a ‘wave function collapse’, and get on with creating more verses that solve real time earthly controversial issues? Nothing wrong with infinite mathematical abstract dreaming but in real time existence we have to "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition."

We need not choose exclusively between the assumption that conceptual explanations of physical reality correspond –one to one- to their absolute micro structure/function or the opposite view that conceptual explanations embellish sensory-based descriptions trying to make an explanation more credible. Either way, subjectively, our perceptual or conceptual linguistic descriptions of their macro structure/function are always rudimentary approximations. When assuming, au contraire, that our perceptual macro descriptions absolutely correspond unequivocally to a ‘functional’ physical reality ‘in se’, we realize that our ‘objective’, mathematically-inspired micro explanations are still only useful approximations. Why settle for the platitudes of the first or for the self-limiting constraints of the neobehavioristic approach of the second view? Do we need to choose between a sophisticated conceptual physico-mathematical poetry and crude perceptual falsifiable data when in fact both are indelibly fused in an ‘epistemontological hybrid’ as argued elsewhere? In real time existence we measure/observe macro objects/events as ONE of their probable eigenstates of a position or momentum operator and not as their added simultaneous perceptions conjoined with other Hermitian operators. In brain dynamics we have argued for such superpositional entanglements (stream of consciousness) prior to the measurement or free-will selection by collapsing the appropriate wave function as dictated by individualized biopsychosocial (BPS) circumstances at play. It is not necessary to invoke environmental decoherence of the superpositions in the many world view of Everret. Why should we have to choose between operational experimental predictions or abstract philosophical interpretations when they represent two different perspectives of the same reality. We cannot expect either the physicalist, lab coated experiliant mathematician sitting by his arm chair with no idea of what the brain looks-like or functions to advance our knowledge of consciousness. Thus, we bring our own brand of epistemontological syncretism to bear upon our view of brain dynamics as briefly encapsulated below. The practical macro operational aspects should be falsifiable, the microaspects should be programmable and hopefully transduced into symbolic/sentential logic leaving a minimum of speculative intuitions unaided by either observations or metaphysical logic analysis. We have to demonstrate, with the aid of process logic, how consciousness may be an emergent phenomenon resulting from the self-organizing activity of neocortical attractor networks. We warn the reader that any biological self organizing activity must ultimately be causally inspired by a previous designer, the programmer or an intelligent metaphysical entity capable of violating the laws of thermodynamics about spontaneous organization or negentropy. If there is a better physical reductionist explanation, we are all ears.

ARCHITECTONICS OF THE CORTICAL ATTRACTOR. The Spanish Ramón y Cajals anatomically described for us the histology of the human neocortex as a prominent thin outside layer of neurons organized as six structurally distinct layers parallel to the brain surface which are penetrated by vertical perpendicular columns. Subsequently neurophysiologists have described how they are organized functionally to provide a sensory input analysis to a large association interneuronal area converging into a motor area for thinking and decision-making. Just like we assign neuronal organelles (or body organs) specific functions within the cell (or whole body) economy, they represent subsystems of the neuronal (or body) system. In our case the neocortical surface of the brain where adaptive decision-making processes maintain biopsychosocial equilibrium take place -based on genetic and acquired inputs-, constitutes our system for analysis. The dynamics of the cell or whole human body is predicated upon the self organizing internal dynamics of their constitutive organelles or organs and their interactions, respectively. If we consider the brain as a system then the different named frontal, parietal, occipital subsystems and their interactions control the system dynamics of the brain. If we consider, at another level of organization, the neocortex subsystem, where sensory input neurons, associated interneurons and motoneuron output control the dynamics of the neocortex, as a system in itself, then we need to identify the subsystem structures whose internal dynamic interactivities drive the neocortex. These are the columns that penetrate the six layers. That part of a column in association with a given layer constitutes a subsystem of the neocortex in our BPS model. Each subunit constitutes a recursive cycling, self-organizing attractor neuronal network. Each sub-unit is expected to provide/become, under ideal conditions, the best optimal network solution to a sensory, genetic or acquired (memory) novel input to be executed via motoneuronal network pools controlled by neurohumoral activation/inhibitions and transmitting the results to glandular and/or muscle effectors.

We postulate that the neocortical mass of neurons systems are dynamically organized in cortical column subsystems either as:

1) anatomical networks (hardwired) to guarantee the biological integrity of the human species as an inherited first order priority in association with amygdaloidal complex, insula and visceral brain. It operates at feed forward (inputà output) unconscious levels. It includes the classification of sensory inputs from internal body proper and external environmental receptors or the organization of motoneuronal outputs to effector cells. While the biological survival imperative defaults the operation of the system it can consciously be inhibited contra natura or become pathologically biased. Ordinarily we would find no complex ‘point attractors’ between the input and output elements except when a novel stimulus is encountered at which time the output is temporarily inhibited (freeze response) pending the results of a hippocampus contextual analysis at subconscious levels.

2) structurally organized with variable Hebbian synaptic weights to guarantee the maintenance of constancy within the natural variations in the psycho-social equilibrium milieu as a second order priority in association with hippocampus complex, parietal association areas and Broca’s area. While influenced by first order biological defense strategies, it operates at subconscious levels until a positive novelty receptor input requires accessing higher level inferential assessment, e.g., language processor. At this point it operates as a ‘point attractor’ subsystem where the initial classification/corroboration of the novel input requires that it converges further from a finite number of states towards one of the several point attractors. This now becomes the output to the neighboring attractor in closer synaptic proximity. This step initiates the transition subconscious à conscious level where the former must access higher inferential levels of processing to extract the meaning of the novelty stimulus to the actor/agent within her individualized BPS parameters.

3) central command language processing unit to extract BPS meaning of novelty input as a third level integrator of relevant genetic, memetic and emotional data from all subsystems attractors before the transition from subconsciousness to the recursive cycling co-generation of language and thought at conscious levels. It also functions as a point attractor in that it converges into one of many probable alternative solutions based on their probabilities of adaptive success.

4) organized as an uncommitted, multipotential, undifferentiated group of neurons and glia with seemingly random connections ready to commit under the appropriate novelty input stimulation. They operate as a replacement reservoir for injured neuronal units and providing for plasticity variations relevant to individualized circumstances.

5) plasticity generators connecting networks correlating neighboring columnar subsystems. Important in the identification and subsequent isolation of cortical attractor with the best probability of an adaptive response to the new contingent novelty input. Provide for the display of the relevant attractor assemblies during the streaming flow of consciousness prior to the conscious collapse of the selected wave function.

We are not sure where would be the best cortical location for our postulated linearizing subsystem attractor charged with the transduction of atemporal, non linear, asymmetric receptor input into a temporal linear or recursive ‘periodic attractor’ in harmony with innate linear language processing, the asymmetry of our natural experience of causal processes and the functioning of natural internal biological clocks, all of which are essential to coordinate neurohumoral control subsystems. The convergence from a series of states into a ‘periodic attractor’ is more complex. But not more complex than subsystem 5) which in our opinion represents an unfathomable ‘strange attractor’ chaotic (not random!) subsystem, the result of transitions through large parts of the state space system before converging into a hypercomplex but predictable internal structure whose general function in brain dynamics we believe is to amplify feeble sense receptor inputs by resonant coupling to pre-existing specific waveforms, a labeling process to guide its destination into the appropriate cortical attractor.

It can be demonstrated that all of these five neocortical Hebbian cell modular subsystems can recursively recycle into one of several probable attractor states to maintain and update their content in active working memory (see Miyashita and others). Since all of the inherited genomic information content cannot account for the many neuronal Hebbian connectivities it makes sense to make room for the environmentally acquired memes (internal and external inputs) and their interactions in defense of the biological, psychic and social (BPS) wholeness of the individual subject. In the BPS model, while philogenetic and ontogenetic defaults control the neuronal network architecture and their geographic location in deep archi layers at unconscious reflex levels of instinctual perceptual activity, it must provide the substratum for the emergence of the paleo levels of subconscious activity that incorporates the acquired element (memes) when having to adapt to new un-anticipated environmental ecosystems in the biosphere, giving rise to the subconscious level of perceptual analysis, the only one capable of reciprocal access to and from higher consumer subsystem levels such as language processing that recursively co-generates thought and narrative inner language at self conscious levels as yet another stage in a bottoms-up emergent process in a brain dynamic system theory..

EMERGENT PROCESSES. To better understand brain dynamics we need a much simpler example to illustrate. We all have seen, e.g., a kidney at the macro level of organization and wonder how may such bean shaped structure makes urine by sorting out so many blood components by glomerular filtration (according to molecular size) and then selectively reabsorbing some back into circulation, letting other noxious components to be eliminated, such that the emergent characteristic of body detoxification can be executed. If we consider the kidney organ as a system decomposed into self-organizing subsystems at a lower level of tissue organization using the available tissue elements (epithelial, neural, muscular, connective, etc.) to organize the tubular structure most efficient to carry out the function of selective blood filtration. For an efficient filtration it needs the association with another vascular subsystem with a glomerular and peritubular proximity so that selective glomerular and tubular filtration/secretion and reabsorption properties emerge. If we consider the tissue level as a system then we need a cellular subsystem to guarantee the emergence of a selective filtration/secretion/reabsorption process. This selective cellular processing system would not be possible if intracellular organelle systems didn’t specialize in producing the macromolecular enzyme subsystems, etc. in place to guarantee either diffusion, active transport, rennin/erythropoietin production, etc. We can continue in a transfinite regression and identify the different atomic subsystems making possible the special activity of the macromolecular enzyme system and the subatomic orbital quantum organization that made it all possible until we find ourselves in the metaphysical domain of explanations. This way quantum theory controls the chemistry of atoms in the macromolecules forming the organelles of the cells in the tissues forming the organs that made the emergence of life possible. It should be noticed that the structural/functional details of emergent processes arise spontaneously via negentropic ordering we accept without being able to describe or explain it. We can say the same when instead we attend to the emergence of thought, language and consciousness from brain dynamics in the BPS model. This is probably true of the structural / functional organization anywhere super complex systems are discovered. This way mathematical inferences from observations emerges as quantum physics; the latter emerges as the atomic theory of chemistry that explains the macromolecular organization of organelles in an emerging biology of cells, tissue, organs and organ systems of the individual plant or animal. The spatiotemporal interaction of the species system form social ecosystems in our biosphere and so on in a transfinite progression to cosmos. The BPS submodel of cortical attractor dynamics will never simulate a brain, it only tries to cover what the important aspects of this dynamic negentropy should be like. It is not possible to experimentally determine the particularities of any column attractor isolated from the cortex other than to suggest what they should be like to generate background noise for amplification of weak receptor input, generate cycles used in measurements (clocks) or the most important point attractors which are driven by feature detector receptor inputs to destabilize and pass on the information to a neighbor attractor, etc. until eventually an output attractor will trigger an appropriate effector response. In the AI lab one can use Hopfield networks in the design of learning modules based on the assignment of Hebbian weights to synaptic connections, generate and direct attention to other attractors (like the reticular activating system RAS), etc. The most important feature of point attractors in a system is that they should be able to converge and settle into a finite number of stable states regardless of the initial state, the basis of information processing in complex system dynamics. These self-organizing Hopfield Networks (SOHN) are sandwiched between sense-phenomenal receptor inputs and executive action-output network channels.

Of particular interest are the ‘feature detectors’, like the olfactory ganglia neuronal assemblies described by Walter Freeman able to capture a subtle chemical change in air composition and deliver the information to the particular attractor for further processing. In so far as the observer is able to consciously experience and report such change, such networks are self-referential. We may be able to design mirror neuron assemblies to ‘look’ inward, self-referentially, the simulation equivalent of self-consciousness as a receptor initiated feature-detection (objects/events) effort prior to extracting its semantic content. The significance of all this is that we already have computer programs for feature detection tasks, e.g., face recognition.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

When we study nature’s complex systems we normally choose from one of two strategies depending on our background studies and biases. We can observe nature directly or emulate its workings in the lab and analyze the data measurements to identify patterns of behavior and then force the data into geometrical or numerical models approximating that behavior, e.g., sinusoidal temporal variations, etc. We can also ignore such falsifiable observations of the ‘science methodology’ and model an universal mathematical poem that metaphysically describes ALL such behaviors, all based on abstract axioms, tautologies and rules of procedure. The physicalist approach is faith inspired by a certainty that all of the visible macro reality can be reduced to formulations, notwithstanding the human species serious limitations in the perceptual sense-phenomenal and the brain’s conceptual inferential resolution. His deterministic bias contrasts the indeterministic, open-ended stance of the transfinite view of the mathematician/philosopher.

We have consistently advocated a quasi-deterministic hybrid approach incorporating the ontological perceptual wonders of the sense-phenomenal and the epistemological beauty of the conceptual poems of the abstract counterpart, into an existential real time model of a reality that has intractable invisible components that resist descriptions and/or explanations. A quantum model shares both the ontological and the epistemological interfaces, the descriptions of the visible and the explanations of the invisible allowing our models of reality to evolve along the asymptotic sinuous path trying to reach neither the certainty of the scientific formulation nor the impossibility of metaphysical infinities but the quasi deterministic probabilities of an occurrence; a Schrodinger wave function representing a mind state may deterministically evolve as a function of time but my free will ‘collapse’ of a competing state function may frustrate such determinism. If QM can ‘explain’ non-locality and velocities of wave propagation exceeding the speed of light based on correlated observables, the same referential base can be argued in behalf of the causal efficiency of an invisible mind on a visible physical brain! The detailed Newtonian explanation/description of an invisible gravitational force acting on visible matter or the detailed explanation of the temperature, direction, humidity, flow pattern, etc. of an invisible nominal reality we call ‘wind’ based on falsifiable consequences is not different to the gymnast conscious control of what may have otherwise been the evolutionary reflex-driven conclusion of an unconscious act originating from strong, hard-wired genetic/acquired forces as discussed below.

Many of our mental states can be simulated in the dynamics labs as attractor space processing. At the unconscious level of operation we think that the genetically controlled feed –forward, inputà output reflexly controlled, avoidance reflex activity, to protect from nociceptive stimulation illustrates the workings at this ground level of organization. Experience tells us that conscious activity may even frustrate this stereotyped hard-wired reflex activity in pathological cases. It is intended to safeguard the biological viability of the species. Its programmed code cannot be consciously accessed (machine language) but its resulting effects may be frustrated.

At another level, when confronted with significant changes in the configuration of environment space, we may need to shift into subconscious state when we access acquired memory data bases trying to evaluate further the context in which the changing stimulus may affect or not the integrity of the species. If the context check is positive at the biological level we still reflexly respond by avoidance or a Cannon strategy. Like in the purely genetic memory response of the preceding example, it can be consciously but inadaptively inhibited. When a gymnast trains for the olympics Hebbian synaptic facilitation becomes almost hardwired in their respective attractor spaces but, e.g., a new visual input may activate an attentional subsystem and destabilize them throwing the ongoing subsystem into a new global state. This is more difficult to happen in the unconscious mode.

If, based on the context analysis, the potential threat exists at the psychosocial level we need to engage higher level consumer networks to extract the meaning content, we have arrived at the conceptual level of processing using our language processing capabilities. As an inner language is generated with the parsings in its attractor space so is the corresponding thought and qualia in their respective subsystem point attractor modules. As we provide the new inputs in more precise terms the dynamics converge towards one solution, not necessarilly the optimal, but the one most in harmony with our BPS individualized idiosyncrasies.

This way we can have a biopsychosocial BPS hierarchical structure where the higher level (‘peaceful conviviality’) network S is controlled by the dynamics of the lower systems B (biological integrity) where P (in an associative network) is simultaneously receiving and coordinating genetic and memetic, sensory perceptual and memory conceptual inputs and where B essentially defaults the subsystem. The general reticular activating (RAS) and the specific intra-laminar thalamic attention attractors would play a fundamental role in narrowing the scope of probable outcomes from relevant point attractor networks depending on the number and arrangement of SOHN networks participating in the generation of chain reaction brainwaves. This is obviously not the work for one dreamer or one institution alone and it generally outlines the possible arrangement a dynamic simulation of brain function may look like and then watch for the emergent phenomena it can ‘create’ in behalf a better understanding of the optimal biopsychosocial algorithm to ultimately guarantee the human species an affordable physical and mental health compatible with a peaceful and productive social conviviality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. Anderson, J.A. and Sutton, J.P.[1995]: A Network of Networks. In the proceedings of the ``World Congress on Neural Networks'', Washington,D.C.

2. Cohen, J. and Stewart, I. [1994]: The Collapse of Chaos. Viking Penguin 1994

3. de la Sierra, Angell O. [2008] An Epistemontological View of Reality. Lulu Press

4. de la Sierra, Angell O. [2000] Neurophilosophy of Consciousness. A Biopsychosocial Model.

5. Goertzel, B.[1996]: From Complexity to Creativity. Plenum Press 1996, online

6. Freeman, W. [1987]: How brains make chaos in order to make sense of the world. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10:161-195.

7. Werner, G.[2000]: Computation in Nervous Systems. Online

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra in Deltona, Florida Winter 2008

End of Chapter 4

Explaining the BPS model of brain dynamics

Adv.,ret. waves diag.

INTRODUCTION.

In a previous writing we tried to defend the arm-chair philosopher or mathematician’s view of reality in abstract: “There is nothing wrong with the poetic mathematical or reductionist explanations of invisible objects/events that impact our quotidian existence. The motto should be, “..if you can’t describe it, an explanation will do…for now.” This we do when we experience the un-explainable (not to mention the un-describable!) wonders of cosmology, life and mind. It is within these nature-imposed constraints that at this moment, in our humble opinion, quantum theoretical approaches offer the best quasi reductionist, quasi-deterministic model to explain a narrow aspect of that wondrous invisible experience we call mind/brain or brain dynamics.”

Life within the confines of our ecosystem is all about the real time experiences of our quotidian existential reality, some described as felt in our internal body, witnessed in the external environment or emulated in the lab as sense-phenomenal macro objects or events. Some can only be explained with relevant combinations or permutations of symbols or sentences used to represent and/or substitute for structural or functional attributes outside our un-aided perceptual sensory field resolution. These attributes may be revealed with instrumental extensions of our sensory perceptions at the ‘mesoscopic’ level of resolution e.g., subcellular organelles like mitochondria, plastids, etc. or, at the microscopic level, through the magic of mathematical or logic manipulations using the pencil or the computer. This way we create poetic models of invisible structures that conform to a measured or inferred functionality, e.g., the quantum theoretical ‘wavicle’ that combines the measured values of a waveform propagation in the oscilloscope and/or the inferred resonant recoil and energy transfer by an emitted particle during its absorption. So long as their predictive structure/functional feats are verified at the macro level of observations they are useful. We have briefly summarized elsewhere why those models may eventually evolve further into oblivion or a real time, operational theory of everything (TOE), well… most everything as we explained: “The departure from abstract models explaining real-time human issues into abstract models based on counterintuitive abstractions from exclusively axiom-based premises trying to explain everything are valid exercises in sophisticated poetry so long as they carry a potential to be developed into solutions to real-time problems affecting our human biopsychosocial health and welfare.”

However such models, as they apply to the human brain, should be consistent with existential reality and encompass the biological, psychic and social aspects of the human experience and be dynamically flexible to accommodate and adapt its internal organization to the evolving, ever-changing, cumulative nature of reality in an infinitely complex and probabilistic world. It all becomes a mind-boggling interactive balancing dynamics act where ontology, epistemology, stochastic and dynamic system theory come together into a self-organizing marvel of the lattice structures of both the inorganic world and the resulting autogenous motion / ‘animation’ of organic macromolecular proto-life at fertilization as analyzed in Vol. I, “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness.” (http://delaSierra-Sheffer.net).

As discussed below, a quantum-based subatomic model may, in theory, adequately explain a Darwinian poem of structure-function evolution at the micro and mesoscopic level postulating a random nature-driven selection of surviving organic macromolecules like DNA/RNA or other randomly structured polynucleotides. Beyond that, the Darwinian model must give way to admit another stage, the inexorable presence of life animation of macromolecular complexes of microreality into the mesoscopic world of organelles and their subsequent integration into life, as described by Dr. Behe in his book “Darwin’s Black Box”! The ‘emergence’ of life seems to be much more than an ‘animated’ macromolecular assembly, e.g., Rous Sarcoma virus. The qualitative transition from the nature-controlled Darwinian evolution of the seemingly blind, random, a-temporal, a-causal and symmetric micro-reality into an asymmetric, causally efficient design of a spatio-temporal negentropic macro reality processing, giving rise to a self-conscious human able to gain freedom from nature’s control by free willing his liberty, is what life is all about.

What follows below is an abstract, inferred, speculative synthesis on how it may have all happened at the transition from subatomic ‘wavicles’ à microscopic organic polymers à mesoscopic organelles à macroscopic brain neuronal level of organization based on experimental data obtained from EEG, MEG, fMRI and other electronic data recordings. We are all too familiar with the little value given, if any, by most brain scientists to these continuous crazy chaotic wave oscillations resisting their cognitive apprehension.

ARGUMENTATION.

At the macroscopic level the very first impression a neuro-philosophy student gets from observing the widespread distribution of the messy temporal recordings of oscillatory potentials in an EEG or MEG is that they seem to represent low level brain tissue epiphenomenal activity that needed prior instrumental amplification to be detected in the oscilloscope monitor or polygraph. When more carefully analyzed by computers of average transients (CATs), Fourier analysis, etc. they show peaks of activity at the typical alpha, theta, beta and gamma frequencies sprouting out from a waveform noise, as if the peaks represented the addition of resonant coincidental phase coupling of two or more wave peaks from a multiplicity of oscillatory background activity (thermal Brownian activity?). These time-stretched oscillations/wave forms may represent the converging activity of, among other things, information-laden non-linear chaotic attractor activity continuously undergoing modulations or temporal state transitions.

Minkowsky diag.

Minkowsky Diagram on Wheeler-Feynman Advanced Waves

This may be a big surprise to many classical neuroscientists whose ‘action potentials in neuronal networks’ security blankets blinds them to the reality of those infinitesimal continuous modifications as found in non-linear chaotic activity that when amplified by background noise come alive as peaks averaging 5 Hz theta, 10 Hz alpha, , 20 Hz beta and 60 Hz gamma. These are the hidden signatures for non random, complex but deterministic chaotic activity. This signals the beginning of the causal transition from chaos to order as we extend our observations until convinced that they represent the submicroscopic configuration of a modifiable, dynamic but stable attractor basin underlying the complex mesoscopic histological architecture of the brain’s cortical columns. We have detailed elsewhere: “..the histology of the human neo-cortex as a prominent thin outside layer of neurons organized as six structurally distinct layers parallel to the brain surface which are penetrated by vertical perpendicular columns. Subsequently neurophysiologists have described how they are organized functionally to provide a sensory input analysis to a large association inter-neuronal area converging into a motor area for thinking and decision-making.”

As we travel from the verifiable macrostructure of the brain to the mesoscopic neuron and into the invisible lipoproteic molecular disposition of the neuron membrane and tight synapses we are entering a new dimensional domain beyond Minkowsky 4d space-time considerations. We then try to explain how exocytosis, pre and post synaptic microscopic active/passive transit of charged ‘particles’ across membrane channels may generate the subatomic, non-local emission/transmission of radiant energy to appropriate absorbers in participating attractors at speeds faster than light to generate a demonstrable (EEG) waveform dynamics associated with quantum physics. This way ontology yields to epistemology, descriptions to explanations, determinism to probabilistic quasi-determinism and the perceptual sensory phenomena to the conceptual invisible abstraction. However, two things still resist efforts to be explained within the constraints of a rational, logical mind set, i.e., intelligent design and the causal efficacy of a non-physical conscious free will interacting with a physical brain.

It is very easy to demonstrate in a physics lab how a tuning fork vibrating at increasing measured frequencies is able to transmit a signal through air to another tuning fork placed several yards away when a certain critical frequency is reached that is resonant with the distant fork vibrating potential at which time it starts to vibrate also. Not so easy is to demonstrate/describe the frequency of transmission of a radiation wave from an external object emitter to a sensory receptor organ absorber like e.g., visual rhodopsin, especially when it is required that such wave emission is significant to the subject. This means we may ignore many things in our visual field until one object (emitter) catches our attention and we lock in (entangle). At that time the absorber molecules radiate back an advanced signal ‘accepting’ the emitter’s ‘offer’ followed by a retarded signal completing the transaction. This transmission pattern is counterintuitive to say the least, especially when the radiation offer from the emitter may have originated not several yards away, a second ago but a million miles away, many light years ago in a distant galaxy! The retarded signal can be registered in the physics lab by the pattern of transmission and the energy absorption spectra resulting but the presence of an ‘advanced’ wave component that preceded the ‘retarded’ component registered in the lab can only be mathematically inferred. Feynman, Wheeler and others have described this exchange between an emitter and an absorber which we adopt by reference and suggest that the receptor molecule locks (entangles) on emitter upon receiving its advance wave and, upon absorbing the delayed particle traveling in the emitter wave, the absorber then itself radiates back an advance notification of ‘acceptance’ followed by a retarded notification.

Just like all other physical systems evolve in time according to the Schr¨odinger equation d/dt |ψi> = − i/h H |ψi> as Everett’s many worlds poetry (MW) or Schr¨odinger time evolution operator U = e^−iHτ/¯h explains we can also represent with mathematically symbols the vector states (dimension, direction, location, etc) of both emitter and absorber where the advance component wave, travelling in negative time faster than the speed of light stands for the complex conjugate of the vector representing the retarded wave transmission. The sub-threshold half waves of the retarded component waves of both emitter and absorber, travelling in opposite directions reinforce each other by an increase in phase resonance amplitude and can now be detected (measured). The advanced waveform components, traveling in negative and opposite directions cancel each other and their presence before extinction can only be mathematically inferred. The mathematical demonstration is beyond the scope of this brief writing. This way all the relevant attributes or particularities of the emitter object get transmitted to the sensory receptor in this modified transactional model between emitter’s ‘offer’ and absorber’s ‘acceptance’, a “handshake” across space. In this model, the advance wave components lock emitter and absorber into each other (entangle) recursively and the particle component of the wave effects the energy transfer from emitter to absorber in the sensory receptor site iff the latter has been previously activated by the RAS-induced lower threshold attention state of receptor (based on BPS significance of external environmental input). The details on the processing of internal body- proper sensory inputs are not discussed here. A state of conscious cognitive attention to external stimulus is not necessary unless the preceding unconscious and subconscious context analysis required accessing the language processor to extract the conceptual meaning of the novel external stimulus from the emitter.

Following the transmission of information from environmental objects/events to sensory receptors, its amplification by background waveform noise and transmission/distribution to appropriate attractor basins has been detailed in a previous writing by the undersigned at the mesoscopic level. We need to remember that we are dealing with various different time frames of information conveyance. From the advance and retarded waves of emitter/absorber à the graded depolarization of the sensory receptor cell membrane à the classical action potential of the afferent sensory neuron depolarization à presynaptic vesicle à the slow molecular diffusion of liberated neurotransmitter from synaptic vesicles à post synaptic membrane of effector/motor (neuronal, muscular and hormonal synaptic sites). The flow of information along such paths with so many stop signs, whether electrical synapses, membrane tunnel transit, exocytosis or reverse endocytosis is compensated with arguably feeble, subthreshold ‘non-local’ quantum transmission. This way the biological complexity of brain dynamics originates with the role of background ‘noise’ as studied in the electronic communications labs.

We need to explain clearly how the dreaded electronic broad spectrum ‘noise’ from conventional radiation transmission now becomes an essential component in sustaining the relative dynamic stability of brain processing of converging, oscillating, non-linear, non-local inputs at different time scales into individualized modifiable/adaptable (i.e., in transitory phases) attractors in a common neocortical basin as expressed in EEG or MEG monitors of experimental neocortical activity. The neuronal trans membrane transit of charged particles becomes the emitter with an ‘offer’ to appropriate neocortical attractors whose neuronal absorbers recognize and become entangled as explained above, giving rise to subsequent depolarizations and transmission (feed-forward, cyclic feedback, etc., as needed) as detailed above. We discussed the role of ‘cortical attractors’ in another article: “That part of a column in association with a given layer constitutes a subsystem of the neocortex in our BPS model. Each subunit constitutes a recursive cycling, self-organizing attractor neuronal network. Each sub-unit is expected to provide/become, under ideal conditions, part of the best adaptive and optimal network solution to a novel sensory, genetic or acquired (memory) input challenging the BPS equilibrium. The resulting output strategy is executed via motoneuronal network pools controlled by neurohumoral activators/inhibitors and transmitted to glandular and/or muscle effectors.”An important aspect of the postulated cortical brain dynamics are the neuronal “.. plasticity generators connecting networks correlating neighboring columnar subsystems. Important in the identification and subsequent isolation of cortical attractor with the best probability of an adaptive response to the new contingent novelty input. Provide for the display of the relevant attractor assemblies during the streaming flow of consciousness prior to the conscious collapse of the selected wave function.”

The details on the subatomic complexity in the generation, amplification, transmission of emitter ‘wavicle’ and entanglement with targeted absorber are still far from being completed after the progressive evolution of quantum thought following the seminal contributions of Einstein, Heisenberg, Lorentz-Dirac electrodynamics, Feynman, Wheeler absorber theory, Schrodinger’s time arrow and Wigner’s time-reversal operators, Freeman’s model, Cramer’s transactional model and others. The continued development of these ideas is essential withing the broader context of our BPS model which encompasses an integration of all levels of organization from the sub-Planckian, atomic, mesoscopic, macro-biological and sociological domains. No doubt that Dr. Walter Freeman’s observations on the olfactory system got everyone moving from classical to quantum theory focus. Dr. Cramer’s challenge of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics made it easier for us to explain how information/energy transfer can flow from environmental objects/events inside our own bodies or a distant galaxy to sensory receptors to cortical attractors and back credible! Now we are on our way to get asymptotically closer to an understanding of self-consciousness, free will and life itself.

Meanwhile we still need to demonstrate how the faster-than-light quantum non-local transmission from neuron membrane, inter-neuronal connectivity couples with the much slower electrochemical action potential, not to mention Ficks inter-synaptic diffusion times. It has been demonstrated how phase transitions can be induced by resonant phase coupling of noise with subthreshold external periodic signals to produce synchronized wave peaks of high signal to noise ratios. (Sinha 1998). A chaotic environment is inherent to neuron networks when each member receives thousands of synaptic dendritic arborization inputs from thousands of other members and produces thousand synaptic outputs within the axonal radius. This random environment of self-sustained background noise fuels the emergence of order at the macro biological brain level as recorded in the EEG. This structural complexity explains its capacity for sudden transitions in organization triggered by minimal perturbations as would be expected from the plasticity of behavior in a normal brain as external environmental and internal thought processes continuously change with time. The description at the mesoscopic level of excitatory/inhibitory coupling, spatial integration/divergence of reciprocal signaling (feed-forward, feedback, lateral) between neocortical layers and columns for a brain volume conductor with electrically insulated (by cholesterol) neuron participants is outside the scope of this brief synopsis. For the olfactory system see Freeman 1992.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSSIONS.

It has been some time since Einstein labeled quantum non-locality demonstrations as “spooky actions at a distance” and Heisenberg as merely a stage of mathematical “knowledge interpretation” unrelated to physical reality. If one represents electro-dynamic theory mathematically as time symmetric (Lorenz-Dirac) we are in essence, as Cramer argued, identifying in the orthogonal solution of the EM wave equation an imaginary, non-physical negative time component as the complex conjugate of the ordinary wave time-dependent, causally efficient component. We now call the complex conjugate the ‘advanced’ component and the ordinary slower wave the ‘retarded’ wave. We now consider convenient to identify the ‘advanced’ component as responsible for establishing the reciprocal dialogue between two or more interacting particles when they become entangled non-locally. This establishes the ensuing asymmetric transmission of information/energy between them akin to the relation between a radiation emitter and an appropriate absorber as explained by Wheeler and Feynman. Since only particles e.g., electrons, are known to be absorbed, a massless wave can constitute the faster ‘advanced’ wave (e^-iwt) followed by the ‘retarded’ (e^+iwt time dependence) particle arrival at the absorber. This is a variation of Cramer’s transactional model. The first order time-dependent, non-relativistic, limiting case evolution of the conventional Schrodinger equation (equation 1 below) is incomplete to the extent that it ignores the complex conjugate component (equation 2 below) that would have explained the advanced wave we posit as responsible for the non-local entanglement between emitter and absorber that co-exists with the energy/information transfer discussed above.

m = mass of the particle, h= Planck’s constant

For the alert reader, the orthogonal vector representation contains in its formulation the beginning of a most important qualitative transition from the atemporal, acausal, asymmetric reality of the subplanckian domain (reality in se?) as symbolized by the complex conjugate formulation to à time dependant, asymmetric, causally efficient macrophysical domain of existential reality. This is the transition from the conceptual epistemology to à the perceptual ontology domains. This is the role of the human brain, to make order out of a perceptual chaos of sensations as Kant described it.

It is not easy to visualize how an advanced component wave from an explosion originating in a distant emitter galaxy many years ago makes its presence felt to my eyes in the present whereupon I accept the ‘offer’ wave as soon as my visual rhodopsin absorbs the radiant energy transfer carried by the retarded wave and consequently acknowledge the offer by sending back an advanced absorber phase resonant wave that destructively cancels the emitter’s own while the absorber’s retarded wave enters into a constructive resonant phase coupling with the emitter that amplifies the original sub-threshold emitter signal bringing it to its threshold detection value by the retinal receptor absorber. Please notice that this destructive cancellation would explain the lack of energy transfer back to the emitter, an asymmetric, causally efficient energy transfer as in the conventional Schrodinger equation where the advanced component is ignored and non-relativistic invariance is back in play! What is even more difficult to visualize is that the resulting non-local cyclical recursive coupling signifies that the observer has been able to instantaneously communicate with an event that happened many years ago, millions of miles away! This is the magic of faster than light speed (not infinite speed!) non-local communication of information that fascinates us more when carrying simultaneous transcontinental long distance phone conversations than when our brain adaptively responds instantaneously to significant sensory perceptual or memory conceptual inputs, especially if the input carries biological life threatening, negative psychic content information or implies non-adaptive social information, in that BPS order of priority.

Where the Cramer and the BPS model differ more is where it matters most in explaining the role of the non-physical conscious free will (Cramer’s ‘measurement') in being causally efficient in producing the collapse/reduction of the state vector wave function in the physical, neocortical brain attractor. We need to part company with the inadequacy of Von Neumann quantum formulation. For Cramer the non-local collapse mechanism has no physical reality because he wants to strictly adhere to the conventional Copenhagen formalism and resists any possibility of a non-physical mind consciously freely choosing from available physical brain alternatives in neocortical loci. Magnetic and electrodynamic forces are outside our sense-phenomenal descriptive resolution capacities but that did not stop theoretical physicists from providing convenient conceptual representations thereof regardless of their real essence/existence status. In our case we provided instead examples from falsifiable real-life situations where the required speed to generate an adaptive responses to life threatening contingencies cannot be explained even with the neuronal classic action potential speed of propagation. The ‘collapse’ in our model is the equivalent of a conscious free will choosing from the various neocortical attractor adaptive solution alternatives to significant biopsychosocial contingencies, that particular one with the greatest probability of adaptive success within the context of an entire BPS emotional state spectrum background. It has been detailed in a previous publication. While free will invocations are beyond measurement or reduction to formulations it is possible that it may be consistent with other basic falsifiable experimental results as we hope is the case here.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq.

Deltona, Florida Midsummer 2009

References. See authors articles @: http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/VHN6HSYWK3LTKWCTZZFCKR2C3U

· Dynamics in Attractor Space.

· An Ontology of Consciousness?

· Epilogue to an epistemontological view of reality.

· From Chaos to Probable Outcome

· Dynamic Synthesis of Levels of Consciousness.

· More on Brain Dynamics

· Is probabilistic causation possible?

· Monotheistic Pluralism

· More on 'being and becoming' in the physical world.

· Perception of nature's temporal asymmetry.

[2] Feynman, R. P., 1967a, The Character of Physical Law, (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA), p.129.

[3] Bell, J. S., 1966, Reviews of Modern Physics 38, 447

[4] M. Born and A. Einstein, The Born-Einstein Letters, Walker, New York (1979).

[5] Dirac, P. A. M., 1930, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, (Oxford Univ. Press, London).

[6] M. Jammer, The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics, Wiley, New York, (1974).

[7] Feynman, R. P., 1967a,b The Character of Physical Law, (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA), p.129.

[8] Freedman, S. J., and J. F. Clauser, 1972, Phys. Rev. Letters 28, 938.

[9] J. von Neumann, Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanische, Springer, Berlin (1932).

[10] Schrödinger, E., 1935, Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 31, 555.

[11] Stapp, H. P., 1982, Physical Review Letters 49, 1470

[12] Wheeler, J. A., and R. P. Feynman, 1949, Reviews of Modern Physics 21, 425

[13] Wigner, E. P., 1962, in The Scientist Speculates, ed. I. J. Good, (Heinemann, London).

End of Chapter 5

Free will and human biopsychosocial
(bps) survival.

(Free willing is being in proximate control of present, ongoing causal influences at play, a balancing act between genetically-based unconscious inner compulsions, memetically-based subconscious external manipulations and conscious, logically based, critical, deliberative faculties, all in harmony with my past, natural law and my biopsychosocial future perspective.) Dr.d

Man-hamster wheel

Is there free will?

ABSTRACT.

The deterministic ‘incompatibilism’ claim that everything there is, seen or unseen, is determined by physical antecedent laws of nature begs the question on nature’s random, blind ‘intelligence’ to guide the self-evident negentropic biopsychosocial evolution history has recorded, thereby ruling out the existence of another self-evident experience of human freedom to consciously freely will their responses when facing existential quotidian contingencies..., not to mention the infinite regression ‘incompatibilism’ creates when trying to identify the ontology of that random, blind intelligent force, thing or process driving nature’s cycles. We posit that the arguable truth of unconscious genetic and subconscious memetic determinism does not preclude the existence of an ultimate proximate control by conscious consent to one of various probable alternatives available encompassing all relevant things considered in the individual biopsychosocial circumstance domain. We also briefly touch upon the down to earth normative ethical or moral responsibility of quotidian existence and its ultimate metaphysical aspects and deliberatively stay away from the underlying conundrums of mind/brain dualism and agent causation.

INTRODUCTION.

In a previous chapter (Towards a Coherent Metaphysics of Existential Reality) we suggested that: “Our notion of free will in the BPS model is ‘freedom by conscious consent’ to (one of) an elaborate cortical attractor complex concatenation of appropriate adaptive responses consistent with a qualia of emotional happiness. Subhuman species are not free because they cannot transcend the subconscious awareness stage and think outside the genetically and memetically programmed default box. The bridge across the dichotomy between the biological determinism of Darwinian natural law and the experienced indeterminism of social existence is provided by the quasideterminism of an inherently probabilistic quantum theory where conscious free will survives, as detailed elsewhere...” Now we expand on this assertion by dissecting and pointing out the various interplays between the most important components of what is understood as ‘free will’, e.g., the inherited, the acquired and the resulting qualia of emotional states thereby generated as we consciously zero on the best probable outcome to give our consent to.

From the very outset we need to distinguish between freedom to will and freedom to act on one’s willed response activity. When confronted with a contingent problem to solve, rather than having to rationally decide to choose from among various probable logical outcomes we prefer to view the process as giving an exclusively rational (or not) conscious consent to one probable alternative in harmony with the relevant biopsychosocial circumstance of the normal decision-maker subject. At a more primitive level of neuronal organization we experience this decision-making pattern every time we freely choose to execute a given complex movement, e.g., jumping over an obstacle on the ground, from various alternatives available as determined/controlled by initial body posture, health, time, body position or any other circumstance. Notice how, in the process, we can rationally come to an abstract rational conclusion, e.g., based on jump distance covered, which we nevertheless cannot execute because of constraining factors beyond our conscious control, whether physical (e.g., our weakened state of biological health), theological or psychic factors. However, willing an action that is onerous, disgusting or cannot be executed because of known health constraints is like willing to fly over a building by flapping our arms. But, what if the constraint is unknown to the subject? To the deterministic position that free will is a mental illusion we counter by the self-evident quotidian experience of being in conscious control of the decision-making process whether it can be actually realized or not or even executed against self-interest. Stay tuned.

We posit the reality of Darwinian determinism as being restricted to the unconscious and subconscious levels of decision control. We have argued that these two levels of control generate -by cyclic recursive parsing- both the response (probable best moto-neuronal execution sequence) and, with the instrument of the language processor, the best afferent conceptual input alternative to trigger that response. Co-processing of motor responses probable alternatives to match the afferent perceptual sensory or memory input alternative is mediated by the language processing faculty. We have no evidence yet to conclude if the mental qualia state generated by coetaneous neuro-humoral activity biases the conceptual input to moto-neuronal networks or just fuels the execution of the moto-neuronal output.

We don’t pretend to be exhaustive but will touch upon the issues of free will generating moral and/or legal responsibility for one’s actions (which we have discussed previously in another volume Neurophilosophy of Consciousness, Vol. I), the axiology of individual and collective social behavior as it relates to psychosocial equilibria and its expression as feelings of pride, dignity, love, compassion and other psychosocially relevant mental states. One thing is clear, free will is a multidimensional entity as will be evident below.

ARGUMENTATION.

The experience of free willing an exclusive, adaptive end result implies having previously consciously considered/compared the short and long term consequences of that choice vis a vis equivalent considerations with other probable alternatives available in the neocortical attractor basin. Notice how the choice is very much individually tailored and thus dictated by rational, circumstantial and affective components from experiential elements, what we have called the individualized BPS equilibrium. This requires the subject to engage in an introspective positioning as an active self observer of relevant past events, if any, as they relate to the present sensory/memory contingency input to adaptively achieve the future circumstantial stage willed. This complex processing (the I perspective), including the consequent moral implications of the chosen response, is denied to subhuman species at best operating at subconscious levels only.

Just, what is it that we consciously will, the rational general solution or the consequent result we personally may not even like? What effectively controls the process? Can we independently isolate the Platonic rational being pursuing the higher axiological common good from the underlying, ever present animal being more concerned with its own individual BPS survival? How do inherited animal desires may be in conflict with environmentally/culture acquired norms of social conviviality, important as they both are for the human species survival? What is the higher road, the Darwinian survival of the fittest individual or survival of the collective, mixed human species?

Any careful, objective student of nature and history will disagree with Rousseau’s contention (The Social Contract) that man is born pure and society corrupts him. Historically the opposite is true. Likewise, St. Thomas Aquino’s position that under nature’s guidance humans will spontaneously will those solutions most consistent with the abstract general goal of social goodness. The BPS model position is that, left in isolation from culturally acquired influences, man is driven to spontaneously and subconsciously ‘will’ whatever solution there is guaranteeing his individual biological integrity, a default imperative to be subsequently more finely controlled in its expression by the higher level imperative of human species survival, a collective goal. The individualized survival effort is gene controlled as modified by coded memory experiences acquired in the environment. Perhaps, even the meme-controlled data base can be argued on the basis of an environmental activation of inherited archetypes in a Jacques-Monod/Darwinian landscape. This is an important, ever present element of the human experience. But the human historical experience transcends Darwin, man was meant to live in society. As he evolved the mirror neuronal network capacity to anticipate the intentions of the other human in his ecological niche, he subsequently evolved the capacity for introspection by using the other face of the ‘mirror’ where he can see himself. It was then when he was able to distinguish the third person ‘that’ out there as being different from the first person ‘I’ inside self (see Piaget). The freedom to will one out of various existing alternatives is predicated on the ability for self consciousness, not mere subconscious awareness. Subhuman species and even complex industrial thermostats can exhibit complex programmed behavior in response to the environmental changes monitored.

Needless to say that, given man’s perceptual and conceptual limitations as a species, survival required from man an ability to make mental representations of sense reality to adequately extract the meaning of objects and events in his midst, within and without perceptual/conceptual ontological cognition. Enter the language processing faculty to control environmental resources and consciously will the appropriate adaptive strategies for his biopsychosocial survival as a species not as individuals. If what we will as individuals is of necessity for biological survival, it is not rationally dictated, it is not free. When we transcend the individual and match the conceptual, rational common good with the individualized affective desire by parsing among the various means available to both personal and social ends and commit ourselves to a given course of action, we have then willed freely. The genetic endowment and the socially acquired intellectual sophistication of the subject will determine the degree of adaptive success in solving a given external/internal new contingency. The point we are trying to stress is that the primitive unconscious drive to satisfy the requirements to preserve life are so strong that unconscious or subconscious neuro-humoral driven responses cannot be considered as freely willed especially when under stressful or drug-induced circumstances. In this case the reflective, rational deliberation faculty is not absent but is driven and thus biased by the primacy of the life preservation imperative. In other words, like in sophistry, rational deliberation is not neutral, dispassionate or free, it is controlled in susceptible individuals by external or internal psychological compulsive forces outside conscious control of the subject, whether they are hypnotic, religious, political, addictive or disease manipulations. Free willing is a balancing act between genetically based unconscious inner compulsions, memetically based subconscious external manipulations and conscious, logically based, critical, deliberative faculties. The theological God abstracted by man from JudeoChrIslamic mythopoetic scriptures, who must always trade in justice for compassionate solutions, cannot be free to be otherwise and is to be distinguished from the historical proto-gods or prophets who existentially had to engage in balancing acts to improvise adaptive, rightly-ordered responses to new contingencies. The balancing act is the equivalent of the biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium, a coherent metaphysical approach to existential reality. Man is he and his evolving BPS circumstance. The critical role of theologies in society is to partially satisfy man’s natural cravings to know more about his origins and destiny as much as it is to show the way to evoke spontaneous rightly-ordered responses to the quotidian challenges to his evolving BPS equation. In theory when the individual man acts freely in harmony with his BPS equation of life he generates an equivalent moral but not legal responsibility. In practice society has to generate coercive legislation to show the abstract way that individual equation should evolve into in behalf of social conviviality, an indirect strategy for species survival. Consequently, all that society requires from the individual is that he acts freely regardless of whether or not the action is the spontaneous result proceeding from a free will. We say that he acted freely because, when balancing out his desired actions with his reflectively identified rightly-ordered alternative, he had control over the causal influences at play in his choice to consider and further reflect on according to the level of individual sophistication achieved in his BPS evolution. The statement ‘control over the causal influences’ of course implies the non-physical mind controlling the physical brain, something physicalists viscerally reject ab initio.

Any experienced neurophysiologist is fully aware of the complexities in organizational sequences of unconscious sensorimotor reflex arcs, genetically wired-up in defense of our biological integrity as Sherrington, Eccles and others amply developed. As we have amply expanded elsewhere, we are conscious of the various response alternatives available even though we cannot describe or explain them adequately step by step, yet we can summon one of them into action at the speed of light when needed. We have exercised our free will by giving our conscious consent to a solution best adapted to our circumstance at the moment the stimulus triggered a response. Even Libet, when arguing that adaptive motor responses are already initiated before the subject consciously wills to do it, concedes that we still retain the ability to negate the progression of an action already initiated by the motoneuronal pool (his “unconscious psychological structures”). The causally efficient invisible forces in a non-physical mind controlling the motoneuronal network activity of the physical brain is just as mysterious as the equally efficient and invisible, magnetic field forces acting on matter across ‘empty’ space. We do not feel or experience any particular need or compulsion to identify the mind with either macrophysical matter, bosons or fermions outside our human sensory and combinatorial brain resolution capacities. We are more impressed with that invisible plan or design responsible for that wondrous macrophysical world we experience phenomenologically and psychologically. That self evident historical experience cannot be the exclusive result from the laws of nature or even the quasi-deterministic chaos of an underlying quantum theoretical underpinning. One could of course argue in abstract that, ultimately, when we trace back to the original source of our metaphysical freedom of choice, it resides in external factors that determined my genetic endowment, my memetic environment and my psychosocial circumstances, all determinants beyond my control. Yet, as argued, all things considered, our existential control of proximate causality resides in our ability to consciously consent or not to one of various probable alternatives of action.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

Existentially speaking, man is a creature of complex biological, psychic and sociological circumstances beyond his effective control to significantly change. Yet, he reserves the freedom to consciously control by consenting or not, at every moment of his existence, to one of several available solutions by exercising his proximate causation faculties as illustrated above. This way, man alone, all relevant unconscious, subconscious or conscious factors considered, can consciously initiate a course of action in harmony or in defiance of his best genetic, psychic or social interests.

Thus, those that conveniently recite after transubstantiation communion that God is a necessary and sufficient, wholly determining cause for everything that is seen, unseen or happens, are denying themselves the God-given freedom -and responsibility- of proximate causation by attributing to God alone the good and evil in the world, thereby impugning his theological abstract perfect goodness.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra Deltona, Florida Summer 2009

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

· Aquinas, Thomas (1945). Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (2 vol.). New York: Random House.

· ----- (1993). Selected Philosophical Writings, ed. T. McDermott. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

· Aristotle (1985). Nichomachean Ethics, translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

· Augustine (1993). On the Free Choice of the Will, tr. Thomas Williams. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

· Ayer, A.J. (1982). “Freedom and Necessity,” in Watson (1982b), ed., 15-23.

· de la Sierra (2009) “Towards a Coherent Metaphysics of Existential Reality.” In press.

· de la Sierra, Angell O. (1987) “Biopsicosociología” Mexico, Editorial Limusa.

· de la Sierra, Angell O. (1998) JudeoChrIslamic Theology, a Strategy for Psychosocial Survival. In “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness, a Biopsychosocial Model.” Lulu, ed.

· de la Sierra, Angell O. (2009) Sociology in the BPS Model of Consciousness. in Telicom, Journal of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry.

· Erich Fromm (1968) “El Miedo a la Libertad.” Buenos Aires, Argentina, Editorial Paidos.

· Piaget, Jean (1977) “The Development of Thought.” in New York, The Viking Press.

· Oesterle, John (1957) Ethics, the Introduction to Moral Science. New Jersey; Prentice Hall, Inc.

End of Chapter 6

Caveats re: neurodynamic information transfer in the brain.

DNA double spiral

DNA

Abstract

Before embarking on an ambitious systematic search of the possible formulations most appropriate to represent the processing and transfer of mental state information across the brain’s neurodynamic phase space we decided to briefly go over the conceptual obstacles expected to be encountered during the transition from the macroscopic brain dynamics lab measurement data to the abstract model design desk, via the antiquated mesoscopic maps of neocortical layers and columns maps where cortical attractor basins hold the mental enigmatic treasures. If successful we should be able to account for the dynamic signature of the different brain states measured during human sleep or vigil, synchronized or desynchronized, stationary or dynamic, unconscious, subconscious or self-conscious.

What we found from the brief perusal of the literature on event-related synchronization or desynchronization studies (ERS, ERD, respectively), EEG, MEG, fMRI or multiunit neuronal recordings, was very disappointing in that there is a lack of a comprehensive plan to bridge the structure/function gap between the macroscopic perceptual experimental data and the microscopic conceptual formulations poetry derived therefrom. At the macroscopic measurement level it remains unclear how best to account for the dynamic variations in the measurement baseline accompanying the different mental states. We cannot tell the significant difference there may be on the measured values of event-related synchronization/desynchronization baselines for e.g., between ongoing, unperturbed mental states or those following evoked thalamic reticular activation; all of which we consider central to an understanding of resonant phase coupling amplification of a sensory information signal before further processing and transmission ensues. We need to understand how, e.g., a sense-phenomenal (internal body proper or external) somatosensory stimulus (eg., beta 10 Hz or visual~40Hz) causes a stereotypic sequence of first an ERD and then an ensuing amplitude overshoot (event-related synchronization, ERS), which at a dynamical cortical state becomes evident only if the natural relaxation dynamics of unperturbed EEG rhythms is utilized as reference dynamics. Ditto for memory-based conceptual influence (upper alpha band of left hemisphere) for an ongoing language processing brain state. We outline the caveats to be avoided when analyzing the neurodynamic data.

INTRODUCTION.

Functional complexity in a physical system can only be explained by the consistent, falsifiable and measurable macro-effects it creates by its presence. These macro effects measurements are then forced to fit into customized mathematical straight-jackets to make their symbolic abstract representations familiar and intelligible to human understanding. The brain’s complex functional activity is no exception especially when explained at the meso and micro levels of organization. At best such abstract explanations must be based on relevant circumstantial evidence indirectly obtained by optical, electronic, and other forms of amplification of whatever invisible, subthreshold signal is consistently present and registered. It is also impossible to separate the measured probabilistic observation from the observer’s interpretation. But sometimes we must plow and till the soil with the oxen we have, in this case, the electroencephalogram (EEG) or the magneto-encephalogram (MEG), multiple unit recordings, fMRI, PET scans and evoked potentials.

Human species survival in his potentially hostile environmental ecosystem is predicated on the constant monitoring and analysis of endogenous and exogenous changes as they become manifest to external and internal sense phenomenal receptors. The subsequent processing of the sense data will depend on the species coetaneous mental state of passive/active vigil or sleep. The brain is never at rest, a passive vigil with eyes closed will always register prominent oscillations averaging a frequency rhythm of 10 Hz (alpha wave). This resting, passive synchronous background activity is interrupted as soon as subject, e.g., opens his eyes and allows even subthreshold light quanta to impact the retinal receptor surface. The visual event-related input will induce a desynchronization (ERD) producing an ‘alpha blockade’ by suppressing the reference base line ongoing activity and substituting it with a characteristic macroscopic visual oscillatory signal as monitored in the visual occipital lobe EEG monitoring electrode. The induced changes in the pattern of oscillatory dynamics, even for an identical input, will vary depending on various mental state factors (cortical attractors?) simultaneously present which we will need to examine before we even attempt to identify their underlying neural architecture. This is true in the processing of all sense-phenomenal input with a dynamically varying base line reference level of background activity.

Desynchronizations, as a reliable measure of ongoing information processing or transmission activity (sensory, associative or motor), are topologically distributed in the cortex. Thus it is to be expected that an ERD is “state-conditional”, i.e., it reflects the state it was in before the new event arrived and it is possible that the impact of rapidly fluctuating brain states whether based on endogenous or exogenous variables may escape detection. This makes the importance of identifying a reliably constant base reference line on which to assign measure values and minimize unavoidable variability. In any case we assume that the event related synchronization that follows represent the stabilization in an adaptable attractor state.

In the previous case of a passive vigil mental state above, characterized by synchronous background alpha oscillations, a subthreshold environmental stimulus was amplified to threshold values by a process of resonant phase coupling explained elsewhere as modifications of a ‘plane wave’ in the Schrodinger analysis that we find incomplete as briefly explained below. This amplification step resulted in a desynchronization (ERD) of the preceding background baseline synchrony seen in the EEG pattern. What is more difficult to swallow is the explanation for the visual event-related synchronization (ERS) that follows the alleged increase in amplitude to threshold levels by resonant phase coupling unless we are dealing with an experimental plane polarized photon.

To complicate matters further consider this. If the background base line of activity, where resonant phase coupling with sensory input amplifies the signal reaching its cortical attractor basin destination (where the ERS amplitude overshoot can only be detected), the result must be different for the various mind states possible (passive or active vigil, sleep, etc). It is not clear whether a stationary base rhythm, sleep or passive vigil is invariant and coexist with an ongoing mental state or substituted by the ongoing, online mental state as the exclusive source of input wave amplification. In other words, what is the reference dynamic baseline?

To simplify things, we prefer to speculate that the thalamic reticular activating system (RAS), by alerting the relevant cortical networks (place theory) to pay attention to incoming sensory signals, creates a unique uniform background of activity for selection and amplification of sensory mode signal by phase resonant coupling activity. More experiments on mode-specific measurements of evoked event-related potentials (ERP) are needed.

We realize the possible implications these speculations, if proven true, may have on the seminal studies on olfactory pathways by Dr. Walter Freeman, et al (where olfactory cell signals by pass the thalamic relay station on their way to cortical attractor basins) and subsequent quantum theoretical interpretations based on that genial model. We are specially concerned about the limitations of Schrodinger based formulations -based on plane wave analysis- as it may not reflect the real-time 4-d landscape situation of a stationary, non-propagated background oscillation better represented as travelling 3-d spheres than a plane wave. Similar reasoning may apply for a 4-d time dependant wave transfer of information best represented by a spiral displacement to minimize brain matter frictional resistance. This aspect will be expanded on in a later writing.

ARGUMENTATION.

Theoretical neuroscientists sometimes get so mesmerized by the beauty of their abstract mathematical formulations that they often forget they barely represent an idealized structure or function of the material object/event they should be familiar with to obtain the highest possible correspondence with the measured variables their instruments are able to register. To study mental function one needs to know the brain substrate and the dynamics of its spatiotemporal disposition at both the neuronal unit and collective network level of organization.

In our own effort to elaborate further the BPS model of consciousness we find it necessary to investigate further the pattern of information transfer to and from sense receptors via neurohumoral effectors that is consistent with the data available from measurable spontaneous and evoked activity at its various mental states of vigil and sleep. We need to know how the brain processes and transfer information across synaptic or non-synaptic pathways before we can ascertain the role played by the self-sustained chaotic background activity in bringing order to what deceptively seems like an atemporal, acausal and symmetric Kantian world of sensations out there. A self-sustained, emergent, spontaneous negentropic causal step indeed, all in behalf of the biological viability of the human species.

We assume the reader’s familiarity with the basic tenets of signal propagation in excitable and non-excitable cells as controlled by the ionic composition of the extracellular and intracellular millieu and their active/passive movements across the bare cell membrane or its special ion channels.

The brain never sleeps, every ubiquitous neuron displaying a mesoscopic, spontaneous, self-generated averaged oscillatory 10 Hz signal as a function of equivalent rates of change in their membrane selective Na/K ion permeability as predicted by the Nernst, Hodgkins-Huxley equation. It is very tempting to suspect that the negentropic transition from chaos to order, which was initiated by the special sense receptor selection of environmental input, may continue when the signal arrives at the specific cortical site previously alerted by thalamic RAS (Place theory) where the resonant phase coupling amplification may result. This brings in two complications, one that wave transmission from receptor to sensory cortex was faster than synaptic mode of transmission (electrical or diffusive types) would allow. The next complication is explaining the phase coupling between the arriving sensory 3-d spherical wave signal and the background oscillatory frequency of the cortical neuron. The Schrodinger-based formulations we use in analyzing these events are based on plane waves, contrary to what is expected in the absence of a plane polarizing intermediate step. It may be easier to assign the receptor cells as mediating the resonant phase coupling.

The next step in the route to order is predicated on existing loci of spatially distributed, simultaneous, equivalent clusters of cortical activity and their subsequent spatial propagation (by random, chaotic, parallel, distributed or cascading modes) resulting in aggregations from interacting neurons to eventually form coherent cortical attractor clusters with varying probabilities of enactment to be eventually chosen from by free will ultimately based on existential particularities of subject. It remains a mystery the underlying common denominator responsible for the association between relevant clusters in the formation of complementary/supplementary coherent attractors, whether based on mesoscopic, macroscopic or microscopic parameters. However, meanwhile, multi-electrode electrophysiological, EEG and MEG recordings, fMRI imaging and evoked potentials continue to provide valuable evidence of such specific locations of structured, dynamic collective activity of neural circuits.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

The living functional brain is probably the most complex physical system in existence. We suspect that its emergent dynamic complexity cannot be accounted for by the sum total of all the participating constitutive parts. The integration of the collective network dynamics of participating cortical circuits just won’t cut. Yet, for pedagogical reasons, we have to build it up from that unit neuronal oscillator onwards, from the computational unit of these neuronal networks -the excitable neuron- on to cortical attractor basins. At the microscopic level we have to explain how that unit cell receives and transforms a large set of spatial and temporal information inputs from different neuronal regions into a dynamically coded spatiotemporal pattern, an information-laden signal output delivered to the next neuron or network station node. This is important to consider for many reasons, first because the unit output content is fashioned and controlled by what happens before a voltage threshold propagating value is reached when the computing unit will reset again, making the process highly non-linear. Secondly because there may be significant and distinctive variations in the regional cluster of neuronal membrane capacitance (C)/resistance (R) to ionic current flow and these distinctive values may control membrane conductance (and/or selective permeability) and their excitatory or inhibitory presynaptic potentials and consequently the voltage threshold values for information transfer to next station to occur. Are these distinctive variations relevant to resonant phase coupling to subthreshold, non-synaptic incoming signals from wave packets? Quare. The subthreshold resting membrane potential Vt fluctuates as a function of a time constant t given by the product t = RC; this is the signature (state) of each unit oscillator. It would be naive to think that information processing and transfer can be exclusively explained by membrane and synaptic transfer especially when each oscillatory unit receives 10K excitatory/inhibitory inputs plus the influence of membrane receptor agonists/antagonists and other neurotransmitters. When we imagine this integrated output signal being transmitted to cortical columns, each populated by 10 million other neurons, computations become intractable and meaningless; we have no choice but moving into what we hope is creative abstract speculation based on inferential poetry and wishful thinking.

As one poem would have it, it is still possible to track the subthreshold internal state dynamics of each individual neuron, as outlined, and then you consider the network dynamics of the collective, the population density approach. We have to remember that the emergent features of a dynamical living brain is NOT the sum of all the individual unit neurons participating but rather they emerge from the dynamic flow and dispersion of states over phase space in a population as represented in the Fokker-Planck formulation because inputs from individual units are deemed as uncorrelated, the contributions of those sharing same state (Vt) are merged. Subsequent information processing and transfer depends on adding the number of unit neurons that a given time t share same membrane potential Vt during a given interval dV as evidence of the temporal evolution of the probability density function (see the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation in integral and differential form) under specified probability conditions [those which infinitesimally change Vt (dVt) during the infinitesimal interval dt.

As expressed in a previous communication, the brain’s structural/functional goal is to channel the sensory information from receptors and memory data bases into stationary and stable neocortical attractor basins which represent coherent global representations of conflictive/alternate ways of dealing with a significant novelty change in the critical environment, all encoded in the resulting dynamic interactivity representations of the oscillatory units..

But first we have to identify the initial conditions and the relevant equations of motion responsible for the flow of information (Vt) in the phase space regardless of how it was encoded in each state of the evolving population. One would normally use eigen vector representations whose bio-orthogonality reveals the uncoupled dynamics and how the probability coefficients progress following an environmental change. In general, while the unit oscillator exhibits non-linear stochastic dynamics, the target population’s average values are linearly stable to these inputs during the build up of the stimulus current and subsequent large amplitude oscillations that wane as stimulus ceases. Analytically speaking, it is all about the characterization of neuronal and quantum connectivities conceptually conceived at the microscale, functionally inferred at the cortical column mesoscale level and perceptually ‘corroborated’ at the cortical surface regions of the macroscopic level. In moving across these spatial scales uncertainty creeps in as we try to obtain manageable information, e.g., it should be clear to the alert reader that analytically, the unit stochastic oscillatory input is a 4-d chaotic dynamics phenomenon being forced to integrate with planar 2-d representations of population dynamics. For those poems describing how mental states can be represented as probability densities evolving across the brain phase space, by reducing the available data to approximations of neural mass or field locations to generate evolving, spreading spatiotemporal Schrodinger-like wave equations, all we can say at present is that not all that shines is gold.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. In Deltona, Florida Winter 2009.

Bibliography.

1 Freeman WJ, Barrie JM (2000) Analysis of spatial patterns of phase in neocortical gamma EEGs in rabbit. J Neurophysiol 84: 1266–1278.

2 Freeman WJ (2003) A neurobiological theory of meaning in perception. Part 2: Spatial patterns of phase in gamma EEGs from primary sensory cortices reveal the dynamics of mesoscopic wave packets. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 13: 2513–2535.

3 Hopfield JJ (1982) Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 79: 2554–2558.

4 Kelso JAS (1995) Dynamical patterns: The self-organization of brain and behavior. Cambridge: MIT press.

5 Tuckwell H (1988) Introduction to theoretical neurobiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

6 Dayan P, Abbott L (2002) Theoretical neuroscience: computational and mathematical modeling of neural systems. Boston: MIT Press.

7 Jirsa VK, McIntosh AR (2007) Handbook of brain connectivity. Berlin: Springer.

8 De Groff D, Neelakanta P, Sudhakar R, Aalo V (1993) Stochastical aspects of neuronal dynamics: Fokker-Planck approach. Biol Cybern 69: 155–164.

End of Chapter 7

How may ‘other’ mind reading and ‘self’ metacognition share a common introspective meta-representational processing. .

The Two Reflecting Surfaces of the Same Mirror (Neurons).

Mirror (neurons)

Abstract

Electrical activity from specific pre-motor cortical neurons has been recorded in the human brain when an agent observes an external (‘other’) subject’s ongoing overt behavioral activity, e.g., lifting left arm to wave. Same motor neurons would fire when the agent introspectively simulates similar (‘self’) behavior by virtually lifting his own left arm. This suggested that an agent may anticipate the behavioral intentions of the external subject by activating his own set of neurons, a sort of internal mind reading event in reverse. Mind reading other’s intentions are interpreted within the context of the agent’s own current existential circumstance covering all aspects of his biopsychosocial (BPS) reality and thus is prone to admit confabulatory events as being real. This result suggested to us in 1996 that turning the same introspective meta-representational faculty used in ‘other’ mind reading inward, toward the agent’s self, would provide introspective access to one’s own intentions, a possible mechanism for attaining the self-conscious state. We provide arguments in favor of such conclusion by analyzing the mechanisms that must be present to achieve such results. Upon careful analysis we conclude that the ‘other’ mind reading and the ‘inner self’ mind reading activities may share the same first order cognitive and second order meta-cognitive resources in processing their respective inputs of information. The analysis include making distinctions between processing the same or novel sensory input originating from all sources of relevant information, whether genetic / memetic memory data bases, internal / external perceptual and conceptual sources. The mechanisms playing out in the introspective access of Fodor’s propositional attitudes processing and our alleged consequent co-generation of inner language and thought, the hallmark evidence of being self-conscious needs further development. Opposing views from known introspective specialists in academia is discussed. How this model may change our understanding of autism and passive schizophrenia is briefly discussed.

Key words: Mind reading, mirror neurons, metacognition, metarepresentation, propositional attitudes, introspective analysis, inner language, autism.

INTRODUCTION.

Ever since Gallese and Rizzolati’s unexpected results on mirror neurons research were published in 1996¹, it was clear that an entirely new chapter on the neurophilosophy of consciousness was about to be started. I could see then how the outer mindreading ‘tool’ discovered could be turned inwards to fathom the inner aspects of self, like the two reflecting faces of same mirror! Finally, an open window to look into the elusive structure of the self-consciousness apparatus! But where to start, I mumbled in my Yahoo blog and a later article? Early on, for starters, we had to consider mindreading as the sensory arm and self-consciousness as the pre-motor arm (motoneuronal pool) of a supercomplex reflex arc where the substructure of the associated interneuronal interface joining them held the functional secrets we are looking for, an updated Sherringtonian neurophysiology layout, I thought. The sensory arm would code for ALL relevant input to include the ‘outer’ sense-phenomenal input from outer environmental sensory receptors, a first order level of processing. This later had to be modified to include sensory inputs from internal receptors monitoring the neuro-humoral equilibrium state of the internal milieu (visceral brain). We hesitated at that point to include also inputs from genetic (amygdaloidal) and memetic (hippocampus) memory data bases as participants in the elaboration of this first order cognitive representation for reasons to become clear as we go along. On the other motor end of the reflex arc we found it convenient to elaborate a motoneuronal plan to guide the execution of the adaptive response to maintain a biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium in the agent. This plan was conveniently located in the pre-motor cortical attractor space (where mirror neurons were recorded originally) to be made available as a probable response alternative to contingent psychosocial circumstances disrupting the current BPS equilibrium state, especially a plan to deal with novelty inputs, as discussed elsewhere. See “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness, a BPS Model.”, Vol. 1

It is to be noted that the adaptive motor execution of this plan, by necessity, requires previous cognition of the current neuro-humoral/neuro-muscular state as found coded in the first order account derived from the perceptual inputs. As such, the pre-motor plan qualifies as a second order network structure (meta-representation II, or met II) of the current mental state and part of the interneuronal mix containing the sensory end or met I. It is important to realize the importance for an agent to know his current self existential situation (physically, mentally, emotional, etc.) before responding to a novel contingency. Consequently, the agent needed an introspective excursion into met II and propositional attitude systems to establish his metacognitive BPS readiness to adaptively respond. Adaptive may not mean necessarily the most efficacious solution, it means an individualized response tailored to and in harmony with the agent’s current BPS (emotional, physical and mental) resources to respond. The novelty of the reflex sensory arm input required an interpretative function to provide meaning of the novel input and thus the need for accessing the language processing faculty (propositional attitudes) to co-generate the corresponding inner language and thought, welcome self-conscious state!

The careful reader may have noticed the fine distinction we are making between the sensory and motor arms of this reflex arc at both first order cognitive and second order metacognitive conscious state elements. Now, a second distinction, iff it were the case that the sensory arm input was experienced before then there is no need in a subsequent response to include the participation of met I or met II system nor any other metarepresentational or metacognitive introspection because the adaptive solution is already coded in a cortical attractor and all is needed is to trigger a brief conscious streaming review of existing probable alternatives and a free will consent to a particular solution in store. This essentially subconscious reflex activity presupposes a motor plan readiness to execute the stereotyped response in accordance to metarepresentation II previous motor resources availability. Both met I and met II are part of the same interneuronal networks in attractor space and ready to be the object of a ‘mindreading‘ activation process whether triggered by ‘other outer’ or ‘self inner’ events.

Now, If it were the fact that the neuro-humoral/neuromuscular motor resources have changed significantly since the last recorded experience, then the introspective conscious processing will be as described even when there is no novelty in the sensory aspect of the input, but only in the previous premotor plan to respond since the latter was partially based on circumstances no longer present affecting either perceptual input and/or motor readiness to respond. But suppose now that neither sensory nor motor aspects have substantially changed? Should the stereotyped response be triggered into action without any conscious control? We still can count on two ways to stop (inhibit) the reflex, subconscious discharge of this response.

The first inhibition is based on recorded changes in previous conceptual considerations (beliefs, attitudes, etc.) as it relates to same previous input in memory storage. This self evident source forced our hand into including memory data in out BPS model as a potential candidate for a mind reading input event.

The second inhibition is more controversial and somewhat counterintuitive in some of its aspects because it requires the attribution to free will causal efficiency control of the physical brain activity by the non-physical mind. It is easier to explain how pathology (autism, passive schizophrenia, etc., as discussed below) may be the source of disruptions in the formation of parietal first order representations (imageries, etc.) or second order metarepresentations, introspective or interpretative difficulties (ADS, etc.). It is more difficult when the inhibition is triggered by acts of heroism or altruism where acts contra natura or self interest are freely willed into action by allegedly normal persons.

We hope that this brief dissertation may provide convincing arguments against claims that mind reading is restricted to events occurring exclusively in the external environment because in a quiet and motionless setting there will be no behavior available to the mind reading faculty to interpret. See Nichols and Stich (2003)² and Goldman (2006)³. Carruthers, a leading introspection theorist, does not accept memory data input as equivalent to external perceptual data and cannot conceive either that sensory accompaniments to mental state may constitute an unitary cortical attractor event. We believe, in partial agreement, that the mindreading system can receive as input ANY sense-phenomenal, conceptual or emotional information that gets “globally broadcast” to all judgment-forming, memory-forming, desire-forming, and decision-making systems. See: *Baars, 1997^4,5; Kreiman et al., 2003⁶ Keep tuned, more to come below.

ARGUMENTATION

When I, eyes closed, receive as input a visual representation of my dog Charlie, a virtual black dog in memory, barking and wagging his tail, I should be capable of forming the introspective judgment, “I am thinking of my black Labrador dog happily barking.” This should be possible provided that the memory state in question has been formed and stored as previously conceptualized by other mental faculties and coming to the metacognitive state with the linguistic concepts dog, barking and tail wagging already attached. This way we can introspect perceptual, conceptual, imagistic or memory based mental events. In so doing and by virtue of receiving globally broadcast mental states as input, the mindreading system should be capable of self-attributing those outer external / inner internal percepts and their phenomenal accompaniments as a unit meta-representational structure good for ‘outer other’ and ‘inner self’ monitoring. Since the subject’s own current behavior or existential circumstances need to be ascertained in the course of making these judgments, the upshot will qualify as a form of analytical introspection, in the broad sense being used here.

It should be stressed, however, that external perceptual states, like internal mental states in memory data bases, do NOT have an independent existence divorced from their existential conceptual circumstances, not just like an account of introspection for experiential or another for “phenomenal” consciousness as Carruthers would have it, All, arguably, are examples of a garden variety ‘access consciousness’. (see Block,1995)⁷ Contrary to the reasons given by Nichols and Stich’s (2003)², it is unnecessary to introduce a separate perception-monitoring mechanism for metacognitive processing since the latter would need to have access to the agent’s own conceptual/perceptual state inseparably linked as a unit in attractor space. No need for a distinct system to monitor for outer mindreading and inner metacognition, they both share the same, common meta-representational neuronal network structure.

It may not be in controversy that the mindreading system has access to sense-phenomenal perceptual states coded in memory. What needs to be remembered is that external, environmental facts find their meaning to the observer by first unconsciously comparing the input to data in the amygdaloidal genetic memory to guarantee the biological integrity of the observer. If the results of this first fast, life-preserving enquiry is negative and a second hippocampus contextual clearance is also negative as a biological threat, then a psychosocial enquiry network may be activated If stimulus and context are negative in their psycho-social consequences the subconscious event may not ever reach consciousness. If threatening or novel, a third stage of transition from sub-conscious awareness to self consciousness ensues.

This is initiated by accessing a higher consumer network to find the specific meaning of the input to the individualized observer and his existential circumstance, usually accessing a natural language processor to receive the outputs of the belief-forming and decision-making mechanisms that feed off those states. Hence, introspective self-attributions of propositional attitude events like judging and deciding are thus the result of a swift, subconscious process of language and symbolic/sentential logic parsing resulting in the simultaneous cogeneration of both the relevant inner language and thought self-interpretation. It is indeed the subject’s ongoing overt behavior and existential circumstances (mental, emotional and physical) that provide the basis for such circumscribed interpretation integrating data about ALL perceptions, visual and auditory imagery, “inner speech”, attention details, and emotional quale, as found and consciously experienced now as a streaming mental review (reverie) of viable alternatives of probable solutions in cortical attractors space. Notice that, since inner speech probably utilizes the same perceptual and language processing network systems that are involved in the hearing of speech (Paulescu et al., 1993⁸; Shergill et al., 2002⁹), this will be available as input to both the mindreading and metacognitive systems alike. Sense-phenomenal perceptual (of either the external environmental or internal milieu variety), emotional or memory states of all kinds are capable of their network representations being globally broadcasted when attended to, and will thus become available to the co-generation of language/thought or any conceptual system that depends on such broadcasts for its input.

The two-sided mirror neuron system we suggested before, one for mindreading and the other for metacognition, has available the same access to information data systems whether attributing mental states to external others or internal self. That possibility should not be construed as a guaranty that the perception and corresponding representation truth values correspond on a one to one basis since the mind-reading data will always be given meaning within the context of the agent’s existential reality not the unknown’s external overt actor. Likewise, we may have the same sense-phenomenal perceptual input and varying conceptualizations of the same falsifiable reality, depending on who is the mind-reader. I don’t need the external actor to report to me his experiential quale for it may be as reliable as my audiovisual interpretations of his overt behavior within a given environmental context, just like I will never have the sort of direct and reliable access that my metacognitive system has to my own brain-coded audio/visual images and bodily feelings stored as either genetic or memetic information. Unfortunately, the total picture is more than the sum of its constitutive parts.

Human choices, by en large, are characterized by assurances that biological integrity is preserved and psychosocial equilibrium is maintained, all of which can be translated as a self full-filling, natural confabulatory tendency for individuals, as Wilson in 2002¹⁰ suggested, that it is, all things considered, “…easier for subjects to engage in various kinds of adaptive self-deception, helping them to build and maintain a positive self-image.”.

It would be safe to assume that the basic capacities for both mindreading and metacognition are dependent of our linguistic finesse, our developed capacity for natural language communication, a sine qua non for an incisive inferential introspective, self-interpretative output because the external-other monitoring and the internal-self monitoring mechanisms fueled by metarepresentations feedback/feedforward cycling that will generate their output by effecting logical/linguistic computations on the data of both inputs fedback into the same meta-representational system.

Agents, as observers, have only two ways to access their own mental states, as interpreter of themselves (as in metacognition) or as having direct introspective access (as in mind-reading). In our opinion it is foolhardy to make distinctions between an interpretative and an introspective processing when it is self-evident that both need to make inferences within the context of the agent’s own, ongoing existential circumstances/reality, whether manifested as overt sense-phenomenal behavior or current mental state. Because an agent is sitting quiet and motionless, i.e., no external behavior is available for the mindreading system to interpret, should not be construed as proof that current, ongoing mental/memory input to a metacognitive system, is not interpretative and introspective.

It should be clear that agents have access to their own mental states in two different ways: either the mindreading system can represent agents as interpreters of themselves or it can picture them as having direct introspective access to their own mental states. Either way, we believe, is triggered by a nociceptive or novel change in either the perceptual or conceptual environment, as described.

Common sense would tell us that a nociceptive challenge precedes a solution to either avoid or eliminate it. Consequently, meta-cognitive development (embryological rather than evolutionary) will depend on prior mind-reading input. See Gopnik and Meltzhoff (1993,4,7)¹¹ data based on a parallelism between children’s matched performance in mindreading and metacognitive tasks. Thus, as we suggested before, mirror neurons are structured as a two-faced mirror, one looking at the ‘external other’ and the other facing the ‘internal self’.

There is a lot of confusion in the cognitive science literature regarding the transition from the first order cognitive à second order meta-cognitive state which in our BPS model means the stage at which mere subconscious, robotic awareness of a novel perceptual/conceptual input requires being interpreted at a higher mental level to extract its meaning to the psycho-social equilibrium of an agent. At this point access to a consumer system, e.g., language processor, is required. At this point we speculate that there exist various relevant cognitive states in the form of cortical attractors each with various degrees of adaptive probability which are modifiable to reflect the changing background attending individualized existential circumstances (physical, emotional, cognitive, etc.) of the agent. As the language processing generates the candidate propositional structures there is a concomitant co-generation of a new inner language and thought at conscious levels, at which time there will be a metarepresentational mental review of alternatives by deploying mental state types of the various attractor alternatives which makes it possible to freely choose the best probable adaptive solution (attractor) in harmony with the agent’s individualized BPS current reality/circumstance.

Sometimes human beings, before going to bed, engage in forms of conscious thinking and reasoning that are completely immersed in meta-cognitive analysis of imbued beliefs and judgments. There is no current ‘external other’ perceptual mindreading input yet we can be assured that either an inner-perceptual (body proper) or a novel but controversial inner-conceptual evidence appears to contrast a previous belief or judgment and is acting like a trigger. Furthermore what appears to initiate the transition from the subconscious à consciously accessible state is that they are simultaneously conducted in a new inner speech and possibly other kinds of relevant imagery. Eventually the resultant configuration becomes part of the cortical attractor space armamentarium in the subconscious cognitive domain and consequently a probable target to be subsequently analyzed during the elaboration of a new metacognitive state upon the arrival of a new novel perceptual/conceptual input. That is to say, cortical attractors were meta-cognitive states during their conscious elaboration but once coded and stored they become degraded to subconsciously accessed cortical attractors in cognitive space when necessary.

To complicate matters more, it seems like the agent is actively ‘mind reading’ his own deployment of relevant cortical attractor sceneries in which case this type of meta-cognitive review / analysis becomes consistent with a “mindreading is prior” in reverse, the equivalent of a “meta-cognition is prior” account. What is important to keep in mind is that, first, in either case the same meta-representational system is deployed and, second, it all is preceded by a previous novel perceptual or conceptual input. The computational effort in interpreting metarepresentational structures as stored cortical attractors is thereby considerably reduced. Perceptual and conceptual memory data bases are accessed during the elaboration of cortical attractors, as needed. Likewise, sense-phenomenal inputs from external-other or internal milieu-self can similarly participate in the mind reading effort by the elaboration of attractors, if needed. Consider also that previous perceptual/conceptual inputs and their associated ‘inner language’ / thought combo can be part and parcel of an attractor package. See also Nelson, 1992¹²; Metcalfe and Shimamura, 1994¹³.

After the recent experiments of Kornell et al., 2007¹⁵ and others, one may suspect that only human beings can either access cortical attractor’s space content or, if successful, as we will discuss, give a free consent to the one best adapted to solve a new contingency present. In the BPS model, subhuman species, like humans do in most of their vigil state, are more concerned with life preservation, i.e., maintaining their biological integrity; and this includes in subhumans social interspecies/intraspecies conviviality. Counterintuitive as it may sound, we humans live an essentially stereotyped subconscious awareness life (which many confuse with consciousness!), depending on the state of our external and internal monitors of change to adjust our biopsychosocial equilibrium. Arguably, the achievement of a self-conscious state, preceded by meta-representational and metacognitive processing, has only being ‘demonstrated’ in the human species. Consequently subhuman species have not evolved any known capacity for an introspective mindreading of propositional attitudes (as argued above), as evident from their limited symbolic/sentential language development, instead they have concentrated in the development of their external-other and internal-inner (limited to their neurohumoral internal milieu) ‘mind-reading’ capacities, mostly related to internal/external sense-phenomenal input associated with life preservation and species perpetuation. Ergo, there is no evidence or logical arguments to defend animal metacognition. If animals are able to store complex, life-preserving behavioral information in the equivalent of a human cortical attractor space, quare?

Meta-cognitive processing for animals has been defended in cognitive trials where animals behavioral hesitance or stress-in-response has been argued as a meta-cognitive equivalent of a humanoid ‘‘there is not enough data to form a judgment’’. It is easy to show anxiety when important input data is incomplete or confusing, at which time you give the monkey a peanut every time he presses the “there is not enough data….” key in the operant conditioning set-up. Pressing that key can be explained as based on first order mental activity (adding possible subconscious, primitive, introspective, non-interpretative Machiavellian and/or confabulatory activity?) and cannot be construed as proof that the chimp’s was consciously aware of being ‘uncertain’. We cannot label this processing as meta-cognitive introspection because there is no demonstrated ‘self’ to turn into. Has the Skinnerian-learned behavior prove meta-cognitive propositional attitudes processing? We think not. Even in a human newborn, with an evolving capacity for mind-reading, cognition and a functional meta-cognition, the lactating mother’s facial expressions and coos cannot engage as audio-visual input in an interpretative activity because this activity is then still functioning at the subconscious stage of sense-phenomenal processing of input and have not developed yet the ability to distinguish themselves from the surrounding environmental features, the crucial distinction between me and other. Arguably the distinction is dependent on the language-dependant concurrent development of the meta-representational faculty, the dawning of self-consciousness and human species chevrons! This is amply discussed by Paget in his “Development of Thought.” Viking Penguin Press 1977¹⁶.

It is usually accepted that the generation of propositional attitudes requires introspective activity by the agent whereas in their absence agents will self-interpret instead, as if there existed clear criteria to distinguish one from the other. Self attributions of beliefs and judgments in response to novel contingencies will require one or the other or both, depending on the novelty of the sense-phenomenal or conceptual origin of the input, within the context of the agent’s individualized circumstantial reality, as discussed above. In our opinion, much of the Wittgensteinian confusion results from linguistic semantics and not realizing that ALL important/relevant and novel contingencies require introspection into propositional attitudes to situate the agent (I) in respect to the psychosocial novelty. At this stage the language faculty has been accessed and the co-generation of the relevant inner language and thought ensues and self-consciousness has been achieved, a sine qua non for self interpretations and attributions. The latter event required a subsequent representation of the coded original perceptual/conceptual input, a meta-representation I. The meta-representation II that follows is an interpretation -all things physical, mental and emotional considered- and an elaboration/codification of an adaptive pre-motor response to be stored inside a cortical attractor space as one of several probable alternatives to be chosen from during a possible subsequent stage of self-interpretation. The latter processing coincides with the qualia of self attribution. Once such probable response can be retrieved from attractor space memory in response to a future contingency, no new introspection into propositional attitudes is then required, only a self-interpretation harmonizing the input with the current psychosocial/emotional status of the agent. The latter response may be then considered a transient subconscious awareness, something a computer main frame can easily perform with the information previously stored as indicated.

It should be noticed that if the introspective mechanism into propositional attitudes, in response to a novel contingency, is delivering the judgment “No judgment” or “No decision” when processing meta-representation I (based on a two way ‘other’ ß à ‘self’ cyclic mind-reading effort) then the information gets stored in attractor space for possible future use as an available probable alternative since self attributions preceding adaptive responses are not necessary because meta-representations II are usually associated with the premotor aspect of a response to an existing contingency.

Yet, another interesting result may follow when a “No judgment” (based on inputs fed into met I) is substituted by confabulated input, whether of the conscious, self-serving, Machiavelian variety or the subconscious type based on required causality considerations. Remember, genuine self-interpretations followed by self-attributions require the mental state of self-consciousness (an awareness that I am different from my circumstance) generated by the language faculty as discussed elsewhere. See Wegner and Wilson 2002¹⁷where they negate the existence of a conscious will to make decisions. In our BPS model it does exist in the form of a free willed consent to an existing attractor solution as amply discussed elsewhere.¹⁸

The ‘unconscious’ state processing involving genetic memory input, like the machine language in a computer, cannot be accessed. By exception, during exigent circumstances arising out of a sudden and unexpected change of events, pathology, heroic or altruistic behavior contra-natura, may allow unconscious processing to be accessed and transient modifications willed into action. We discussed elsewhere a case where a decision to act here-and-now would issue by changing a previously learned sequence of motor movements instructions by an Olympic gymnast about to land (and be killed) after a high bar sommersault jump when an unexpected change in the disposition of the high bar was suddenly detected, all without the intervention of any further practical reasoning. The fleeting, fast stream of consciousness (including inner speech and other forms of imagery) may be properly considered as a subconscious introspective state (except for the brief conscious interlude in novel situations awaiting solutions as explained above).

This is not different, in theory, from what happens when trying to decide on the best adaptive response from a relevant set of probable alternate responses available in cortical attractor space to a similar past or novel future contingency. If the input is essentially similar, ‘consciousness’ as such may be the execution of a reflex act or may be limited to the stream of consciousness preceding the free consent to one probable response (especially when met II has changed, see below); if input is novel, access to propositional attitudes is required as explained above. When that probable future comes into being the decision is then a free will consent to an existing attractor solution in harmony with the current biopsychosocial circumstance (existential reality) of the agent

There may be minor changes reflecting, e.g., the agent’s current capacity to physically execute the coded response or the emotional quale accompanying the response (met II has changed).

This mechanism tends to blur somewhat the distinction between a decision, to act now, and a judgment to act later. See Frankish, 2004¹⁹. It will not be an exaggeration to consider attractor space probable solutions as equivalent to a transient pre-motor cortex belief system adequate to a relevant, individualized set of perceptual/conceptual inputs as described above.

It should be kept in mind that in both set of circumstances, whether the relevant perceptual/conceptual input demands an immediate or delayed response, in both cases there needs to be present a free will choice (consent); to one among various set of adaptive responses causally efficient to mobilize the effector motor machinery (met II) into responding. For an opposing view on free will intervention see Carruthers.²² Ergo, there is no distinction as to the intervention of introspective, interpretative and/or propositional attitude events in the elaboration of the final action.

Theoretically, it is safer to settle for a co-generation of inner language and thought in the initial introspective, propositional attitude event-response to meta-represented I perceptual/conceptual inputs to be followed by the premotor elaboration of an adequate adaptive response taking into consideration the exigent or not circumstances present and the current biopsychosocial readiness reality of the agent, now based on facts present in another meta-representation II. In other words, one needs meta-cognitive access to the meta-representation II of the pre-motor response plan at the relevant cortical attractor basin. See Southgate, et al 2008²⁰

When the biological integrity of a normal human agent is about to be compromised, the genetically-coded response is fast, unconscious, non-introspective and controlled by amygdaloidal mechanisms. Otherwise, we repeat again, the response will depend on the novelty of the contingent occurrence input where the current psychosocial equilibrium status of the agent is challenged and, whether the required response is immediate (decision) or can be delayed in time (judgment), it will be deployed when needed. If access is denied to metarepresentation II neuronal networks (pre-motor intentions), as in passivity schizophrenia, a disorder of action and awareness of action may be the underpinning cause. This may come along with confabulatory attributions to others (including alien voices) as originating the occasional behavioral activities. It may also be expected that such patients (and autistics?) should also have problems with mindreading activities using either first order or meta-representation I level (processing of incoming perceptual data) circuits. We ignore if this differentiation has been tested but data on comparator circuits evaluating the sensory consequences of motor activity suggest anomalies in such patients. However if there is a single but differentiated (met I, met II) meta-representational system for mind reading in first (self) and third (other) person accounts, as we sustain, we cannot clearly explain the results in autism where met I is damaged but not met II? Do Asperger patients overdevelop their met II faculties at the expense of confabulating with their outer mind reading? Quare?. Yet, their memory can be rich and vivid. When we experience an outer/inner sense-phenomenal input it can only get registered in memory when it has or may have a current or delayed meaning for us, we can’t waste storage or rem brain memory with so many and varied neutral-valued events out there. If stored we may be assured that, however primitive, a meta-representation-based introspective process took place. Thus memory formation can arguably be considered a second order meta-representational process. See Blakemore 1998²¹ and Goldman 2006.²

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

The activity of the mind reading faculty may not be restricted to events occurring exclusively in the external environment. The brain receptors are continuously monitoring for changes in the external ‘other’ and internal ‘self’ representing a potential threat to the biopsychosocial equilibrium parameters even in a quiet and motionless vigil or sleep setting. The maintenance of this equilibrium is predicated on a continuous update of the perceptual, conceptual, memory and emotional states of the normal individual in relation to all internal and external aspects of his existential BPS reality. This is the responsibility nature assigned to the mind reading faculty to evaluate and update.

We have provided arguments in support of a unit mind reading faculty entrusted with the capacity to provide instant and reliable information on the current sensorimotor readiness of the human economy to adaptively respond to internal/external changes that may threaten the integrity of his biopsychosocial stability. We have argued how the mind reading faculty ontogenetically developed and philogenetically evolved in support of the cogeneration of the all important language faculty and thought, the hallmark of a self-conscious capacity to freely will. We have also argued in favor of a model that structurally and functionally links the inner/outer mind reading faculty with the information content in a unit cortical attractor capable of receiving as input ANY sense-phenomenal, conceptual or emotional information that gets “globally broadcast” to all judgment-forming, memory-forming, desire-forming, and decision-making systems.

REFERENCES.

1) Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, p.593

2) Nichols, S. and Stich, S. (2003). Mindreading: an integrated account of pretence, selfawareness, and understanding other minds. Oxford University Press.

3) Goldman, A. (2006). Simulating Minds: the philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford University Press.

4) Baars, B. (1997). In the Theatre of Consciousness. Oxford University Press.

5) Baars, B. (2002). The conscious access hypothesis: origins and recent evidence. Trends in Cognitive Science, 6, p.47

6) Kreiman, G., Fried, I., and Koch, C. (2003). Single neuron correlates of subjective vision in the human medial temporal lobe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99, p.8378.

7) Block, N. (1995). A confusion about the function of consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18, p.227.

8) Paulescu, E., Frith, D., and Frackowiak, R. (1993). The neural correlates of the verbal component of working memory. Nature, 362, p.342.

9) Shergill, S., Brammer, M., Fukuda, R., Bullmore, E., Amaro, E., Murray, R., and McGuire, P.(2002). Modulation of activity in temporal cortex during generation of inner speech. Human Brain Mapping, 16, p.219.

10) Wilson, T. (2002). Strangers to Ourselves. Harvard University Press.

11) )Gopnik, A. (1993). The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, p.1.

12) Nelson, T. ed. (1992). Metacognition: core readings. Allyn and Bacon.

13) Metcalfe, J. and Shimamura, A. eds. (1994). Metacognition: knowing about knowing. MIT Press.

14) Metcalfe, J. and Shimamura, A. eds. (1994). Metacognition: knowing about knowing. MIT Press.

15) Kornell, N., Son, L., and Terrace, H. (2007). Transfer of metacognitive skills and hint seeking in monkeys. Psychological Science, 18, p.64.

16) Paget, J. (1977). “Development of Thought.” Viking Penguin Press.

17) Wegner, D. (2002). The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press.

18) de la Sierra, A “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness.”, Volume 3 (In Progress)

19) Frankish, K. (2004). Mind and Supermind. Cambridge University Press.

20) Southgate, V. Gergely, G., and Csibra, G. (2008). Does the mirror neuron system and its impairment explain human imitation and autism? In J. Pineda (ed.), The Role of Mirroring Processes in Social Cognition, Humana Press.

21) Blakemore, S., Wolpert, D., and Frith, C. (1998). Central cancellation of self-produced tickle sensation. Nature Neuroscience, 1, p.635.

22) Carruthers, P. (2007). The illusion of conscious will. Synthese, 96, p.197.

In Deltona, Florida Xmas 2009

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq.

End of Chapter 8

The epistemontological conundrum
of knowing self and others.

Introspection pic.

Introspection

INTRODUCTION..

When we empathize with others our ‘self’ transiently assumes –then and there- the affective and cognitive identity of the external ‘other’ by cognitively processing the perceptual input of the other’s facial expressions, body language and speech and then inferring the corresponding affective state –emotions- and readiness for a goal-directed activity it probably corresponds to. This strategy can be identified also in higher animals when recognizing his species or joining the pack. This first order approach is knowledge poor and may require additional interspecies transfer of information as we discuss below.

In the human species we transcend this level by implementing a more complex second order strategy. This an observer does through an internal passive rehearsal or imitation of one out of various available probable responses to the situation we have inferred as being similar to the one faced by the external other, all in search for the one solution with the highest probability of adaptive success corresponding to the observed and hopefully in harmony with the concurrent emotional state of the external other (except as discussed below). The neuronal networks involved in the observer are probably the same mirror neurons activated in the external other and located inside pre-motor cortical attractor space among other places (like the insula, prefrontal, cingulum and fronto-parietal cortex). We are suggesting that the same neurons in ‘self’ and external ‘other’ also communicate interspecies/intersubjects (extra-perceptually) by resonant phase coupling as they can do at the intraspecies/intrasubject level in both self and other. The transfer of interspecies information brings again the question of what is first cognizable, the object (neuronal activity) or its body language manifestation (event)?

Furthermore, in applying the theory of mind, we ask, how can we be sure that a given inferred thought by the observer can be attributed exclusively to self and not to the other? How can we distinguish ‘self’ from the ‘other’ at both the first order cognition or second order metacognition? In addition, some related old questions need to be revisited again, e.g., Cannon’s¹ “do we get angry because we fight or do we fight because we are angry”? Last but not least, we need to explain why we are able to recall dreams generated during an unconscious state; to posit that language processing and thought are recursively cogenerated is not enough….. unless the unconscious REM sleep content is temporarily stored in working memory to be accessed during the conscious recall.

ARGUMENTATION..

As argued in a previous publication² we seem to be existentially trapped between the invisibilities of both the micro sub-Planckian and the macro cosmic manifolds. Yet we feel the need to get a hold on an operational metaphysics of existential reality. Should we base it on the epistemological dynamics of sub-Planckian substantive wavicles or the ontological processes of sense-phenomenal whereby they become accessible to conscious cognition? Should we decide between substance or process, perceptual ontology or conceptual epistemology, essence or existence?

At another level of organization, we may ask, what is first cognizable, the unconscious micro object profile (neuron dynamics) or the conscious macro behavioral event observed? The EEG or the body language profile? How are ‘things’ and processes causally related…, if at all? We have discussed in a previous publication³ the details of how the central nervous system (CNS) electrical background ‘noise’ activity, especially the brain tissue in a subject (either ‘self’ or ‘other’) enhances/amplifies the sub-threshold sense-phenomenal (or memory data base) information input being received by a process of stochastic resonance (SR) coupling. This time we are suggesting the possibility that an observer’s focused attention to the ‘other’ activates an additional inter-subject quantum level broadcasting exchange that complements the associated body language information. This set-up needs to be tested in the laboratory.

This experiment, where low amplitude, spontaneous, random, electrical activity from neurons in the observer (‘self’) become resonant-coupled to quantum wavicle (wave/particle) broadcast input from the ‘other’ (i.e., an intersubject extra sensory perception), remains to be designed. The background excitation energy (stochastic, random or determinist) is both amplitude and frequency based. This would be in addition to the associated perceptual sense-phenomenal body language input.

In what follows we will try to provide the logical basis on which to rest the premise that second order meta-cognition of ‘self’ and first order cognition of ‘others’ may utilize similar neuronal networks. In so doing we will be closer to an explanation of consciousness and the survival of free will in the human species. Meanwhile we will paying close attention to Wittgenstein’s⁴ caveat about an observer experiencing other’s mental states that would depend on both observer and other sharing the same account of mental concepts, Cartesian or otherwise, because only this way an inference from analogy is possible; i.e., it depends on how both observer and observed experience environmental reality as a second order event. This may not be a problem with knowledge-poor first order where conceptual interference is absent, like in higher animals. This means, “I can understand from his demeanor and background car wreck that he intends to hit the traffic cop, but I may never know he was speeding to the emergency room or running away from the cops.” Consequently I cannot meta-cognitively conceive in my inferred mental state a situation (he is speeding to the emergency hospital) which I cannot experience (e.g., he was running away from the cops!). See below examples of self denial/deception, or, e.g., autistics are deemed to have a poor or distorted knowledge of self.

But it still makes sense (at the first order level or if additional information transfer is available, as argued) to assume that if my (self) mental state M_S is causally efficient in producing my observable behavior B_Sthen when I observe similar behavior in the ‘other’ B_Oone may infer that it was the result of a similar mental state causation M_O, i.e., iff B_O= B_S,then the unknown mental state of the other M_O = M_Swhich is my known knowledge of my own mental state which I assume is a reliable cognition –by analogy- if we are both normal persons in the relevant circumstantial aspects.

But, e.g., how do I know I am ‘me’ and not ‘other’, i.e., under an hypnotic/other influence? Piaget, in his book “The Development of Thought.”⁵, attributes that instant in the continuing ontological evolution of the child’s brain, when he can distinguish self as being different from his crib, mother, dog, etc., as the emergence of self-consciousness. But, the discovery of self is one more step removed from the self attribution of a particular mental state, my own or that ‘other’ one I am trying to simulate. Self attribution is a first person, reflexive reference to myself, “It is I who feels sad over the loss of my own mother.” as opposed to “It is I who feels sad (and cry) empathizing X loss of his mother.” The first case receives input from self, the second case from others. Do both affective end results utilize similar neuronal pathways? It is important to notice this subtle difference because, e.g., self attributions in schizophrenics with two or more personalities cannot claim immunity to error through misidentification because the affective and cognitive feelings experienced may be delusional, i.e., not his own except at that fleeting moment. Arguably, one may suggest that the young child recognizes self directly, possibly based on associations with previous pleasurable states experienced whereas a command of language may be necessary for objectively/logically analyzing the indirect and dispassionate basis of my choice in a decision-making process requiring identifying information like in an implied spatiotemporal indexical. See Castañeda, 1966⁶. As we pointed out before, most likely self awareness/reference is operationally within the context of what (event) is now and here. Yet, we still cannot precise the perceptual ontological from the conceptual epistemological components in the inextricable hybrid self being identified, not to mention the affective semantic component inexorably present. Emotions are neutral and find their valence value within the context of the associated circumstance in which they play out. Biopsychosocial (BPS) survival in the ecological niche is premised on the probable adaptive success of our chosen alternative to respond and this requires that we become reliable self identifiers when facing a menacing new contingency when the clear understanding of my minimal BPS (‘now’ and ‘here’) 5-dimensional (me and my spatiotemporal circumstance) existence is necessary to exercise an effective free will, as argued above and elsewhere. We may safely suspect that we humans are species limited to reliably conclude that the self is either ontologically physical (measurable sense-phenomenal object/event)) or epistemologically non-physical (created exclusively by symbolic or sentential logical inferences), thus we may have to reluctantly accept the pragmatic reality of an epistemontological monster.

A related elusive issue of importance is to ponder on the influential/causal role played by the external sense-phenomenal perceptual environment in the evolution of the self, i.e., other à self. The opposing argument being that the reality of human existence is in the eyes of the human beholder, implying that the human mind creates the structure and function of external reality. Both arguments have credible elements we either consistently experience individually or make logical sense to us, all within the well established limitations of our sensory and brain-combinatorial capacities to measure or logically infer their very existence as objects in se or manifestations thereof. We, as a human species, are destined to habit inside an existential trap in the middle of two invisible entities whose perceptual or conceptual presence we cannot either precise nor deny, the micro sub-Planckian and the macro cosmological manifolds. This reality creates natural skeptics, emboldened physicalists or mystical extremists out of the curious creative few. But it may also give rise to the elaboration of hybrid models encompassing the best of both approaches to deal with the elusive description of the ‘in se’ structure and function of existential reality as perceived and/or conceptualized. The relationship between ontological descriptions and epistemological conceptualizations/explanations that we should keep in mind is that neither alone can be conclusive about the structure/function of absolute reality because of species limitation in the perceptual and conceptual resolution capacity. Whereas an ontological conclusion/description should never be sustained on exclusively epistemological premises, more often than not epistemological conceptualizations/explanations, e.g., electron particle transfer in mitochondria or plastids, are exclusively sustained on direct or indirect ontological measurements, e.g., electron microscopical structure of mitochondria or plastids. Ditto for quantum theoretical energy transfer ‘measurements’. See Arnauld (1641/1984)⁷. The BPS model is a compromise epistemontological hybrid model of conscious reality. It is within that perspective that we try to answer the previous questions on the causal influences guiding the interactive evolution of our knowledge about the inner self and the external other.

It shouldn’t be considered far-fetched to assume, with Hume, that for the first human species or a growing child for that matter, external environmental reality was always there to causally guide the evolution of the growing child sensory brain to eventually perceive all of the environmental details within his resolution capacities. The opposing explanation would have it that, as the brain sensorium evolved in a growing child, it caused his external reality to perceptually change accordingly.

The introspective self knowledge has been argued as being an event, direct or indirect, requiring the mediation of a self identification process. Self knowledge, in our opinion, has been wrongly equated in the literature to the way we acquire propioceptive knowledge about the position of our limbs in space. However, like other interoceptors, the information input originates internally from sensory receptors monitoring induced changes in their structure/function in their location, in our case the tension generated by a muscle tendon when stretched by a contracting skeletal muscle. That information is channeled to the cerebellum which tries to restore any induced displacement in the functional settings that maintains an erect human bipedestation in relation to our center of gravity. This is all genetically programmed to unconsciously provide stereotypically/reflex adjustments to maintain the biological integrity of the organism; as such we cannot consciously access these settings to gain knowledge about my body states and introduce changes. As such, proprioception may not qualify as an example of direct non-perceptual awareness state. For sure propioceptors belong to the set of interoceptors that, like those exteroceptors externally situated, provide perceptual input about internal and external displacement changes in the spatial 3d environment and properly should belong to the ontologic domain of discourse contra Brewer’s defense of its epistemological status. See Brewer (1995)⁸. Furthermore, introspective metacognition has a memetic memory component absent from proprioception. The claim of direct knowledge of body position by proprioceptors is not warranted. The false ‘introspective experience’ of sensations in non-existing ‘phantom limbs’ in amputees argues further against its claim of direct/non-inferential access to knowledge interpretation. It is like claiming for the lingual taste chemoreceptors direct epistemological knowledge of body’s glucose level state. It is neither immune to error through misidentification of glycemic body state nor - being unconscious in its operation- can it properly be classified as non-inferential knowledge. This situation may be considered as a failed argument about the physical nature of the ‘self’…, Cartesian dualism, thus far, fares better than the strict physicalist approach in that if there exists a substantial/physical self but beyond the human perceptual resolution limits, it can only be indirectly understood through its manifestation of properties. While Descartes leaves open the possibility of a physical/substantive ontological characterization of the self, Hume would go a step further in negating a substantive self and describing it as a ‘non-physical perception’ instead of leaving its absolute characterization open-ended. See Hume 1739/1978⁹. Locke takes the other extreme in his epistemological characterization of ‘self’ as a conceptual entity (self attribution) that results from a self-reflecting effort. See Locke, 1975¹⁰. The only reliable conclusion we can ascertain from Descartes, Hume, Locke and Kant is that for the human species a direct and absolute apprehension of the nature of the self, whether ontologically or epistemologically based, is denied.

Thus we settle for an epistemontological metaphysics of existential reality where, when experiencing new -internal or external- environmental changes/contingencies -potential threats to our species biopsychosocial integrity/equilibrium- we switch gears into self conscious mode to appraise the potential damage –there and then- and elaborate an adaptive response we can affectively live with…. and then switch back to subconscious, robotic mode -like other animal species-, leaving security issues to intero, extero and proprio receptor monitoring for internal or external significant changes. Existence becomes the integration of all such adjustments to an ever changing, probabilistic reality giving the impression of continuity to our lives. Accumulated wisdom provides an arsenal of dynamic prefab solutions to not-so-new contingencies in the form of cortical attractors we can choose from… or ignore. Free will, by consent (or not) to previous solutions in cortical attractor storage, survives.

But, can we claim free agency when elaborating new solutions to problems not anticipated in our genetic and memetic reservoir of memory solutions? The most important aspect is that the preservation of the adaptive BPS equilibrium is causally efficient in generating the intention to act and search for solutions. Every unit access to self gives man an opportunity to introspectively and rationally revisit himself and his circumstance, a second order revaluation of which desires, beliefs, goals to have or act upon in relation to the contingency being experienced now and here. See Frankfurt, 1971-7¹¹. It is precisely this kind of self interpretation that is characteristically human, a sine qua non for an effective free agency to choose by consent to the best prefab probable alternatives or elaborate a new one. But, how reliable are these conclusions about my self and my existential biopsychosocial circumstance when having to make a decision about the new contingency? Are they truly rational or can they be influenced by other than rational considerations?

There are many complex factors that enter into the structural elements sustaining the edifice of the self. A belief system inspired on absolute values based on the tables of the law, the ten commandments or their equivalent JudeoChrIslamic traditions has historically provided the most stable psychosocial environment for interspecies and intraspecies conviviality. At the individual level, however, the formation of stable beliefs may be an unfinished process because of psychological immaturity, incomplete or distorted information, disease, etc., all of which may generate false beliefs about self. Perhaps more difficult to accept as a causal agent affecting the structure of the self is the unavoidable species hierarchical primacy of biological integrity in self preservation and its associated psychic states. Decisions should not only be rational they must also be palatable to those who must live with them… unless you are an angel without wings. The rational/affective content ratio is influenced by many environmental variables. After a reflexive introspection one may decide that the rational thing to do is to let your wife go in due respect to her constitutional rights of intimacy and free association. But because you still love her you may decide to accept in practice what you reject in principle according to your belief system. You have thus created a self deception paradox.

In reality, you may not suspect that your decision may be unconsciously based on the primacy of reflex biological considerations as may be reflected in the increased blood levels of depressive neurotransmitters or an increase in immunosuppressive activity leading to a lowering of your protective defenses against disease, etc. Freud (1923)¹²may have explained this fact by postulating a partition of the self into an unconscious protective compartment actively misleading the conscious compartment to shield the subject from experiencing the painful facts of reality, what we refer to as ‘being in denial’. This way both compartments are internally consistent while creating two contrasting views of reality for the same subject, the genesis of schizophrenia? Curiously this brings forth an old controversy as to whether emotions lead into action or are the results of an ongoing action in the Cannon response. From the results coming from research with mirror neurons activation in the cortical premotor areas one is inclined to favor a cogeneration of the affective concomitant during the elaboration of the best adaptive response plan. In our BPS model we give priority to the unconscious preservation of the biological integrity of the human species which, by the exercise of free will, may over-ride that genetic program response in favor of either an individualized emotionally-based response or a rational one as we witness in cases of heroism, altruism or other responses ‘contra natura’.

Finally, it is impossible to think about the complexity in the understanding of self and other without wondering where dreams stand in respect to the content of self. What kind of logical processing underlies the generation of such illogical verbal narrative accounts of REM dreams where characteristically the cortical motor area 4 is inhibited from executing such crazy distortions of pre-motor plans in cortical attractor basins. The experience of a dreamer’s virtual reality in action must be stored in working memory to be subsequently accessed by the language faculty during the co-generation of inner language preceding verbal report and the associated thought.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

The preceding discussion has outlined some of the traditional and current philosophical debate on the characterization of the self within the context of an emerging neuroscientific perspective involving mirror neurons. Our interdisciplinary approach brings in many conceptual misunderstandings that had to be clarified to reveal the cognitive and affective components involved in the characterization of the self. Empathy in the affective sense allows an observer to experience the emotions associated with the intentional act the external other is about to execute because similar neurons are activated in the observer and the external other. The claims of a theory of mind are based on our ‘self’ being able to directly apprehend the specific mental states of an external ‘other’ because these are characteristically expressed as sense-phenomenal behavioral states of the human body; in facial expressions, in gestures, in the tone of voice, and so on. See Zahavi 2007¹³. This fact gives us an unusual opportunity to investigate the underlying mechanisms of how the self feels and learns to distinguish between self and other. See Preston and DeWaal 2002¹⁴

The recent advent of reliable new experimental evidence on the role played by mirror neurons -especially those found in pre motor cortex and limbic brain- on our ability as observers to empathize with external ‘others’ about to execute an intentional act. It has now opened new possibilities of exploring the elusive ‘ontology’ of self consciousness because of the fact that there is a significant overlap between neuronal areas of excitation associated with our observation of another person's execution of an intentional action and neuronal areas that are activated when the observer execute the very same intentional action…. if we remember the caveat that the very same observable behavior may be present as the result of a very different intention/motivation.

We are suggesting how there may be a coetaneous transfer of related information from observed to observer by resonant coupling, analogous to what has been demonstrated in the apprehension of feeble sense-phenomenal signals from the external environment. In a previous article space limitations made it necessary to omit the metaphysical logic background necessary for a better understanding of the conceptual difficulties that must be analyzed and considered in our claim suggesting that introspective metacognition of self utilizes (or overlaps with) similar neuronal pathways used in ‘mind reading’ of external others.

It was the neuroscientist Gallese who first suggested that these shared mirror neurons between observer and observed can be interpreted as having a causally central role for the establishment of intersubjective relations, what he calls a “shared manifold of intersubjectivity” See Gallese, 2001¹⁵ Stueber, 2006¹⁶. We adopted this interpretation and developed it further to include another simultaneous transfer of information as discussed. Empathy by inner imitation is important not only in fostering cooperation among residents of new human communities but also in animals recognizing or associating with their own species. We need to distinguish between knowledge-poor first order ‘self’ apprehension of the ‘other’ by subconscious simulation, as it occurs in animals trying to join a pack, and second order metacognition involving complex psycho-philosophical conceptualization, the ones we summarized above. See Goldman, 2006¹⁷. We try to give some answers to the many complex questions that surface as we analyze this fascinating possibility of learning more about the self conscious state.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. In Deltona, Florida, Spring of 2110.

Bibliography.

1) Guyton, Textbook of Medical Physiology 6^thed. Saunders. See Cannon response.

2) de la Sierra, A. Towards a New Metaphysics of Existential Reality. http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/VHN6HSYWK3LTKWCTZZFCKR2C3U

3) de la Sierra, A. An Epistemontological View of Reality. Volume 2, Lulu Press

4) Wittgenstein, L., 1953, Philosophical Investigations, G.E.M. Anscombe (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell.

5) Piaget, J. 1977 The Development of Thought, Viking Press

6) Castañeda, H.N., 1966, ‘ “He”: A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness’. Ratio 8: 130-157.

7) Arnauld, A., 1641/1984, excerpts from ‘Fourth Set of Objections and Replies’, in Cottingham, Stoothoff and Murdoch (trans.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Volume II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8) Brewer, B., 1995, ‘Bodily Awareness and the Self’, in The Body and the Self, J. L. Bermúdez, A. Marcel, and N. Eilan (eds.), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 291-309.

9) Hume, D., 1739-1740/1978, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.); revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10) Locke, J., 1689/1975, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P.H. Nidditch (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.

11) Frankfurt, H., 1971, ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person’, Journal of Philosophy 68: 5-20.

12) Freud, S., 1923, The Interpretation of Dreams, 3d ed., A.A. Brill (trans.), London: Allen & Unwin.

13) Zahabi, 2007

14) De Waal, Fr. 2006. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

15) Gallese, V., C. Keysers, and G. Rizzolatti. 2004. “A Unifying View of the Basis of Social Cognition.” Trends in Cognitive Science 8: 396-403.

16) Henderson, D., and T. Horgan. “Simulation and Epistemic Competence.” In Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, ed. H.H. Kögler and K. Stueber, 119-143. Boulder: Westview Press.

17) Goldman, A. 2006. Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

End of Chapter 9

Interspecies quantum energy transfer.

Energy transfer

Abstract

We will briefly discuss how an observer A can ascertain the probable state of mind of an external other B based on empathy simulation of visual body language information (classical mirror neuron-based ‘mind-reading’) and interspecies transfer of quantum energy and/or spin across 4-d Minkowski space time when the state of atomic / molecular ions in A orbitals is transferred / teleported to atom B more than 10 miles away. An experiment is suggested for corroboration. Reciprocal exchanges of probable mind states information during unconscious states are analyzed..Advances in information transfer by teleportation may increase our knowledge of brain dynamics and quantum energy exchange between resonant-coupled brain states.

INTRODUCTION.

In our previous description of the BPS model of brain function¹ we anticipated that because magnetic and electrodynamic forces are outside our sense-phenomenal descriptive/ontological resolution capacities, that would not stop theoretical physicists from providing convenient conceptual representations thereof which we adopted by reference in discussing intraspecies sense-phenomenal information transfer in brain dynamics.²

Now, in addition to body language-based ‘mind-reading’ range, we explore the possibility that the same quantum energy intraspecies transfer mechanisms may also be in operation during the process of interspecies information transfer aka ‘reciprocal mind reading’. We hope this discussion will complement a previous discussion on the role of cortical pre-motor neurons (mirror neurons) during interspecies information transfer³ and further our understanding of the emergence of self-consciousness.

Just like we tried to warn the reader about the complexity and counterintuitive nature of our modified transactional model (see Cramer)⁴ in explaining intraspecies brain dynamics, we now introduce necessary assumptions on quantum energy transfer difficult to measure. By looking at the diagram below it was not easy then to visualize how an advanced component wave from an explosion originating in a distant emitter galaxy many years ago (currently being observed) makes its presence felt to our eyes in the present whereupon I, the observer, ‘accept’ the ‘offer’ wave (as soon as my visual rhodopsin absorbs the radiant energy being transferred) by sending my own advanced wave acceptance. The retarded wave component emitted by the galaxy source follows and is deemed to be the carrier of the particle(s) to be absorbed by me, the observer. When the observer first acknowledged and accepted the offer it responded by sending back its own advanced wave which destructively cancels the original emitter’s wave. Meanwhile the observer’s own retarded wave component enters into a constructive resonant phase coupling with the emitter’s own low amplitude retarded wave that amplifies the original sub-threshold emitter signal bringing it to its threshold detection value by the retinal receptor absorber.

This time around in quantum energy transfer there is no retinal or equivalent sense-phenomenal receptor organ involved but we likewise invoke the operation of similar waveform mechanisms leaving without identification for now the putative receptor (ions?) involved. This quantum energy/momentum transfer is deemed to complement the role of mind-reading mirror neurons resulting in an observer being able to obtain information about the mental state of the observed ‘other’. In our case now it is required that the observed ‘other’ is about to execute an intentional plan pre-programmed in cortical attractor space of his premotor area. During that instant only, when the observer focuses his attention on the other subject about to act, he acts as an emitter of an advanced high speed wave front offer. The other subject ‘accepts’/acknowledges the offer by sending his own advanced wave and a transaction takes place across the quantum entanglement. After the resonant phase coupling their respective advanced waves cancel each other as explained above and in the diagram below. This resonant energy coupling or entanglement is followed by the subsequent emission of both the observer’s and the observed retarded waves resulting in their adding up their amplitude component when in phase coupling resulting in a wave energy (amplitude) amplification of their respective subthreshold values to new threshold values now able to stimulate the relevant observer’s atomic or molecular ionic orbitals. All of this activity operates at unconscious levels where the absorption by the observed ‘other’ of the radiant energy transfer -carried by the retarded wave of observer- is acknowledged by the ‘other’, as we said, by first sending back an ‘acceptance’ advanced wave front and a delayed or retarded wave front in phase resonant mode wave at speeds faster than light for the advance component. The resonant but phase-uncoupled advanced component of both interacting subjects destructively cancel each other as described. Meanwhile their resonant phase-coupled retarded waves constructively interact resulting in an amplification of their respective subthreshold signals bringing the resulting wave to its threshold detection value by the relevant unidentified receptor ion/molecules in the observer. See diagram below:

adv,ret waves diag

It is important to note that this phase-related destructive cancellation of the interactive advanced waves would account for the lack of advanced wave energy transfer back to the observer. This way an asymmetric, causally efficient energy transfer has been created via the retarded waves, similar to the one described in the garden variety Schrodinger equation where the advanced component is ignored and non-relativistic invariance is back in play! The counterintuitive aspect behind this non-local, cyclical recursive, resonant-coupled entanglement is that the observer has been able to instantaneously achieve an interspecies communication link with the observed, just like it happened intra-species between sense-phenomenal receptors and cortical attractors.⁵We have not been able yet to identify the equivalent atomic/molecular ionic receptor orbital in the observer or observed able to create an entanglement by resonant stochastic coupling. For now, we prefer to think of an unpredictable stochastic background activity increase -rather than a random fluctuation / process - in the observer that will cause a corresponding increase in a metric of the quality of signal transmission or detection from the observed. This, because the coupling may not be possible between different species. How may this happen by the mediation of non-linear and suboptimal stochastic resonance?

Stochastic resonance, while complex in its probabilistic behavior, has been the subject of many multidisciplinary studies. The most important feature, relevant to our exploration, is that stochastic processes fit within our suspicion that the brain utilizes its alleged random aspects to create a noise background, part and parcel of an alleged ‘neural code’ in the living brain where signal processing, like in the electronic lab, benefits from background noise.

It was Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation⁴ insights that has made possible our approach to the understanding of inter-species brain dynamics. To follow we will briefly expand and modify some of its most relevant aspects, e.g., non-locality, easily the most controversial and counter intuitive. See next diagram below.

Minkowsky

Minkowski diagram

All quantum events essentially involve a reciprocal interspecies exchange of information between an emitter of EM radiation / quantum energy and an absorber at speeds greater than the speed of light. The interspecies information exchange is in the form of ‘advanced’ and ‘retarded’ waves. This ‘non local’ transaction is well documented and inspired on Lorentz-Dirac’s time-symmetric quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory. An emitter of quantum energy will produce time-dependent (e^+iwt) ‘advanced’ waves and ‘retarded’ waves (e^-iwt) representing the orthogonal solution to the EM wave equation. The controversy resides in the assumed absence of causal efficacy in a non-physical advanced wave to influence its physical target when it arrives. The contribution of Wheeler and Feynman has been to conceptually eliminate their participation by causing them (emitter àß absorber advanced waves) to be extinguished / cancelled when out of phase thus eliminating their causal effects, all by changing the boundary conditions. Notice that the ontological absorption process caused by a ‘retarded’ wave measured in the lab initiates the cancellation of the epistemological ‘advanced’ waves construct (never measured during the exchange), all after having established an alleged interspecies entanglement across Minkowski space-time by resonant coupling. Another example of the need for an epistemontological hybrid analysis…until someone demonstrates the perceptual existence of the advanced wave and the associated entanglement during an interspecies transfer of quantum energy. The measured results are the same as if they did not exist but at least the causality issue of having a non-physical entity causing an effect on a physical absorber is thereby theoretically eliminated. The quantum non-locality is predicated on the basis of their ‘particle’ nature and their ‘spooky’ existence, its instantaneous causal effect has now been demonstrated at distances exceeding 10 miles separation between emitter and absorber. One may argue that the inter-species transaction, whereby energy/momentum is being transferred, is non-local in that the future is affecting the past. As Cramer himself explained it: “This advanced-retarded handshake is the basis for the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is a two-way contract between the future and the past for the purpose of transferring energy, momentum, etc, while observing all of the conservation laws and quantization conditions imposed at the emitter/absorber terminating ``boundaries'' of the transaction. The transaction is explicitly nonlocal because the future is, in a limited way, affecting the past (at the level of enforcing correlations). It also alters the way in which we must look at physical phenomena. To illustrate, when we stand in the dark and look at a star a hundred light years away, not only have the retarded light waves from the star been traveling for a hundred years to reach our eyes, but the advanced waves generated by the absorption processes within our eyes have reached a hundred years into the past, completing the transaction that permitted the star to shine in our direction.” The counterintuitive nature of a faster than light energy transfer had to be assumed and accepted as an epistemological nonlocality mathematical trick to make sense of measured events at huge distances which Einstein characterized as spooky. The use of Wigner's time reversal operator (in its formulation provides for the operation of complex conjugates where the complex conjugate of an ontological retarded wave measurement is represented as an epistemological advanced wave.

Ironically, the non-physical mathematical description of the quantum mechanical state vector underlying the nonlocality interpretation is not different from the mathematical description of the ‘advanced wave’. Both, while being internally consistent formulations, are still subjective conceptualizations / accounts of an invisibility outside perceptual confirmation...yet, we have to live with this poetry until a better poem is evolved…

Meanwhile we will attempt to develop one better rooted on measurements or metaphysical logic, one now based on a reverse interpretation of nonlocal teleportation arguments Schrödinger once suggested when the quantum energy / information is being transferred from the observer A à observed B. Once A and B become entangled (e.g., by their polarized state or spin) by the advanced wave, each one will possess one photon. When A performs an operation on its photon with a third photon u, one of the resulting four probable outcomes (u₄₎will be transferred at speeds greater than light to B and will constitute now one of B’s four probable states (i.e., u₁₎. We now speculate that, once entangled as described, A’s retarded wave is absorbed by the observed B, who now will respond by sending back to A its own advanced and retarded wave thus revealing to the observer A information on the mental state that complements/supplements that simultaneously obtained by the mind-reading stage as explained above. Observer A now can have additional information about B, albeit shrouded with the uncertainty of being only one of various probable states of mind of B when about to execute a pre-motor planned intentional act. Whatever cortical premotor area in the brain of observer A then lights up and should give the clue as to what is the probable intended motor behavior of the observed B within the environmental circumstances being witnessed during the observation.

At another level of organization it is not clear how the observed B, upon receiving A’s original retarded wave, evolves into B* causing observer A to substitute its original entanglement with B with a new state A* containing additional information about at least one (u₁) of the probable 4 alternatives (u₄) in the observed’s mind state. Consequently, teleportation has been effected across 4-d Minkowski space at the speed of light. The sequence of events may be described as follows:

1. When observer concentrates his visual attention on B in a first stage of a sense-phenomenal mind-reading effort he is concurrently sharing with B one of two photons creating an entangled state (A + photon a à Bell’s entangled state à B+ photon a.

2. In that moment the observed B has the intention of executing one of four probable motor activities (u₄) as planned in his pre-motor cortical attractor. His new state can be represented as B*= {B + photon a + u₄} with u₄ representing 4 probable outcomes of photon u influence. This causes a disentanglement from A causing

3. The evolution of mental state of observer A into a new state A* describing one of the four probable outcomes uof B*. Thus A*= {A + photon a + u₁.}. Therefore the observed B has effectively and unconsciously steered by teleportation the observer A into a new mental state containing one of B’s four probable motor behaviors, i.e., A* = u₁_.It should be noticed that the value of u₁, will depend on which of the four probable stochastic outcomes of B’s operation: either the state u, or a state that is related to u in a definite way.

This way the observer A has added a new dimension about his knowledge of B and needs not to rely exclusively on mind-reading of B based on his body language.This reciprocal interspecies communication of their respective mind states constitutes teleportation.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.

Locality describes the relationship between isolated parts of any quantum mechanical system when they are allowed to retain definite correlations with each other based on memory of previous contacts. Nonlocality, in our context, is invoked when the relationships or correlations are being enforced at faster-than-light speeds across 4-d Minkowsky’s space and time as supported by Bell's inequality inferences.

The transfer of information about interspecies changes in mental states across 4-d space, while being epistemologically /mathematically consistent as explained by vector state collapse, it is also counterintuitive leaving the doors open to different theoretical accounts. After all the quantum state is just an epistemological representation of the information we have inferred about invisible manifolds. When we try to observe / measure the invisible, is there a spontaneous or induced change of the mental state upon observation, when the so-called collapse or reduction of the wave packet allegedly takes place? Unfortunately ALL we can say is that our information has now qualitatively changed and consequently we have no choice but to change our symbolic or sentential representation of the information, i.e., invoke a change in the quantum state.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. In Deltona, Florida Spring 2010

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. See http://www.delasierra-sheffer.net/ID4-PlasticArt-com/index.htm

2. See “An Epistemontological View of Reality.” Lulu Press

3. See “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness, A BioPsychoSocial Model.” Lulu Press

4. See My Blog http://profiles.yahoo.com/blog/VHN6HSYWK3LTKWCTZZFCKR2C3U

End of Chapter 10.

Emotional vs. Rational mind states

Flaming brain, drawing

Abstract

In the introduction to a previous chapter (‘Towards a Coherent Metaphysics of Existential Reality’) we suggested that: “Our notion of free will in the BPS model is ‘freedom by conscious consent’ to (one of) an elaborate cortical attractor complex concatenation of appropriate adaptive responses consistent with a qualia of emotional happiness…” Now we expand on this assertion by dissecting and pointing out how may emotionally significant information (from visceral brain, perceptual receptors and motor/embodied inputs) is cognitively processed and play an important (deterministic?) causal role in creating or modifying the rational substratum component responsible for tailoring the design of the cortical attractor probable solution to a given contingency as expressed in the ‘free will’ consent to execute an ‘adaptive’ solution. How ‘objective’ or logical can our subjective decisions claim to be? We will examine the data underlying rational mechanisms in operation while we experience natural or induced (embodied) emotional perceptions or merely mental simulations thereof. We conclude that perceptual and/or psychological manipulations can be causally efficient in influencing the processing of ongoing emotional and/or rational information input and the role mirror neurons may have in this epistemontological admixture. This analysis resurrects afresh two old controversies: do we fight now because we were angry or we got angry because we were fighting (see James and Lange 1884 paper); men are born naturally innocent and society eventually corrupts them (Rousseaux’s Social ‘Contract’) or men are born with reptilian brains and society eventually educates them? Thus we argue that:

1) The same mirror neurons networks in pre-motor cortical attractor space of an observer involved in a first order processing of sensory input from facial musculature, posture, motion and other natural body language behavior and speech from an observed ‘other’, are involved in the cognitive instantiation of a self-induced emotional mental state equivalent to that of the observed ‘other’. This allows the observer to infer the emotional mental state of the ‘other’ when he is about to execute one of several probable adaptive responses to a contingent stimulus.

2) This may also be true when his body language is the result of an artificial manipulation simulating specific emotional states because such non-natural emotional embodiment can initiate or modify ongoing emotional qualia in synchrony with the emotional valence simulated.

3) Consequently it is not farfetched to assume that both observer and observed cortical pre-motor mirror neurons are also synchronized and entangled by resonant phase coupling allowing a second order tier of information to complement/supplement the sensory data.

4) We posit that the very same mirror neurons are actively involved in the instantiation of self consciousness when introspectively inner directed.

5) The available experimental data in the literature suggests that during the exercise of “free will by consent” (according to the BPS Model, when one of several probable adaptive alternatives available in cortical pre-motor attractor phase space) is not necessarily the most logical and seems to be strongly influenced by the emotional/psychic component of the biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium. The visceral brain compartment I insidiously surfaces in defense of biological integrity genes and sociological conviviality memes.

Introduction.

Anyone who has witnessed a ‘sham rage’ induction after a friendly cat’s hypothalamus has been stimulated by electrodes can testify that he will remain friendly during and after the display of rage. We can infer that the cat is not experiencing the expected aggressive mental state. Can we extrapolate such inference to the human species? Experimental evidence on induced ‘embodied cognition’ in humans (no electrode brain stimulation!) suggests the opposite, i.e., a successful post-induction experience of an emotional feeling may not be dissociated from the corresponding motor activity. This data suggests how effective embodiments of emotions -induced by perceptual or conceptual techniques- may be in creating the sought-after mind-set that precedes behavior, e.g., spending money. We discuss the likely neural pathways involved in such artificially created emotional states..

Argumentation.

We have discussed in previous writings how can an emotional mental state be successfully, naturally induced in an observer by his watching the ‘other’s facial features, body language or verbal expressions when the observed is about to execute an adaptive behavior, as mediated by mirror neurons in their cortical pre-motor attractor spaces. For details see “The Epistemontological Conundrum of Knowing Self and Others.”, Telicom XXIII.3, 2010. Now we add on more experimental data on the not-so-natural induction of emotional states in an individual subjected to manipulations of his facial musculature, body posture or motions as inducers.

We have previously reported on a very primitive recording (1970’s) of electromyographic (EMG) activity in muscles of facial expression in normal dental students and some of their bruxism patients when shown emotion-laden projections on a screen. In a nutshell, we were able to identify their expressed emotional state with an identifying graphic EMG ‘signature’ for every emotional valence where females consistently revealed an increased amplitude of waves as compared to males. At that time we couldn’t look for inverted or negative recordings in a Tektronics oscilloscope -the equivalent of the evoked negative potentials in EEG recordings- because we interpreted the specific profiles of the tracings as an identifying, non-verbal indicator/representation of a particular emotional content, an ‘inner language’ equivalent. Interestingly, we discontinued the experiments because we suspected the sharp EMG needle electrodes may have contributed to an ever present negative emotional valence state to cancel or diminish positive emotions and other problems with electronic background impedance. This may have been, in retrospect, the serendipitous beginning of ‘embodiment of emotion’ studies as will be briefly discussed below, especially those concerned with positive emotional valence reports paradoxically associated with cognitive errors in performance. This is congruent with our suspicion that emotions, in defense of human biological integrity needs, may default any other psychic or rational sociological conveniences.

Now, what if, just like the facial musculature EMG output signals give us information about the subject’s (intra-species) emotional mind states, can these same muscles’ provide a self-directed input stimulus modifying his own emotional inner mind state? So much for painful needle EMG electrodes on the sensitive facial surface, especially after we learn that an innocent pencil held by a subject’s teeth (smiling) or held vertically by his upper lip (frowning) can act to provide/induce a self-directed positive and negative emotion respectively, just like the natural smile/frowning counterparts, as reported by the subjects.

Can an observer count on these non-natural facial manipulations, body postures, simulated body language or movements as reliable indicators of the ‘other’s real emotional mindstate, at least as a first order macro source of information? At the intraspecies first order macro level, there is evidence of a good correlation between the emotional qualia experienced and the corresponding facial manipulation. At the level of interspecies second order micro level the answer is a tentative yes only if we can establish a reliable correlation between the the simulated body language expressing positive or negative valence and the corresponding emotional mental state qualia experienced by the ‘other’, when controlled by way of mirror neurons. There is experimental data indicating that when a positive valence emotion, e.g., macro body language simulation of happiness receives negative emotional input, e.g., projection slides or verbal insults, the monitors of brain activity are not synchronized as they were before the negative valence input was initiated. Thus, the first order interspecies synchrony between the observer and the ‘other’ mediated by mirror neurons is now reinforced by a second order inter-species synchrony, the anlage of resonant interspecies coupling? At this stage it is not possible to claim that the two level synchronization is specific for particular emotions mind states because it is not possible for the observer to know whether the ‘embodiment induction’ using facial musculature, posture, body language, etc. may have initiated or modified an ongoing emotional mind states in the observed ‘other’. We will briefly detail some of the participating anatomical structures in the experimental studies quoted.

The trigeminal nerve pathways carry cutaneous sensory information input (touch, pain, temperature, etc.) from frontal, maxillary and mandibular areas of its facial distribution but we needed to measure in the brain the output centripetal information originating in the same facial muscles when stimulated (stretch, contractions, pain, etc.) by the embodiment simulations. When we smile naturally an observer’s mirror neurons mimic the expression as detected in the appropriate pre-motor areas by fMRI or EEG and thus can empathize the emotional mind state of the observed ‘other’ as shown also in the corresponding autonomic nerves findings. This time we needed to artificially induce an emotional state by creating an equivalent smile in the observed ‘other’ by having him hold a pencil with his teeth, thus stimulating by contraction of the facial zygomatic major muscles or artificially lifting the eyelid by a contraction of the levator palpebrae superioris muscle. Likewise holding a vertical pencil with upper lip orbicularis oris muscle, as in frowning, induces a negative valence embodiment. In both cases fMRI activity was detected in the corresponding cortical motor area of these muscles. Furthermore, the experimental subjects simultaneously experienced the qualia of positive valence emotions. The results are not always as clear as expected and we then have to switch from the more reliable ontology to embrace the more probabilistic epistemology as will be seen to follow below.

These very same experimental subjects with positive valence qualia, unexpectedly, when submitted to decision-making challenges and tested for solutions, had a bigger percentage of error when compared to subjects experiencing negative valence mind states. In BOTH cases their EEG displayed the negative potential signature (Evoked Negative Potential, ENP) pathognomonic of negative experiences from other studies. Thus, it is fair to suspect that an artificial embodiment of an emotional state by, e.g., facial musculature manipulation may initiate or modify the intensity or valence of ongoing emotions. We may infer that, because a natural positive valence facial expression is also sensitive to an ongoing environmental social context, paradoxically the subject experiences himself (intra-species) happiness BUT he is also broadcasting body language information to an observer about the probability of a solution that may not be necessarily the most logical, under the existential circumstances. See Top

Summary and Conclusions.

A subject posturing for an emotion-specific body language expression, e.g., holding a pencil with his front teeth, not only verbally reports the experience of that specific emotion (positive valence smile), after the centripetal input signal from the zygomaticus major muscle activates his own corresponding pre-motor cortical mirror neurons. It also demonstrates the involvement of the corresponding autonomic changes. In addition, it also broadcasts to an observer his positive body language and the positive mind set behind his probable intended execution of an adaptive act which we suspect may not be his most rational choice necessarily.

This probable increase in error performance is based on EEG evidence gathered in subjects being monitored for changes in evoked-related potentials (ERP) and a diminished amplitude of the evoked-related negativity (ERN) while experiencing a positive valence affect, all sustained by increasing dopaminergic activity in the visceral brain compartment I (mesolimbic and anterior cingular cortex), mesencephalic Substantia Nigra’ and prefrontal cortex. This is usually associated with brain improvement in cognitive tasks, e.g., problem solving, memory and error detection.

It should be noted that when that same happy person is either exposed to a positive emotion-laden slide or verbal expression his report of a positive valence mind state is faster than when exposed to a negative emotion-laden slide or verbal expression while displaying a positive artificially induced mind state. Diametrically opposite but consistent results are obtained when the subject holds a vertical pencil with his upper lip inducing a negative frown expression. See Niedenthal Paula It is significant in this respect that when you deliberately interfere with facial musculature mimicry by making faces or chewing interferes with the recognition of the intended embodiment and experiencing of the induced emotion.

In short, in this and the immediately previous paper we have argued in favor of an interpretation that;

4) We posit that the very same mirror neurons are actively involved in the instantiation of self consciousness when introspectively inner directed.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. In Deltona, Florida Spring 2010

Bibliography.

1. Alexopoulos, T., & Ric, F. (2007). The evaluation-behavior link: Direct and beyond valence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43, 1010–1016.

2. de la Sierra, Angell “An Epistemontological View of Reality.” Vol. II Lulu Press.

3. de la Sierra, Angell “The ‘Epistemontological Conundrum of Knowing Self and Others’ Telicom, Vol. XXIII, No. 3

4. de la Sierra, Angell “A BPS Model of Quantum Brain Dynamics.” In Press.

5. Gallese, VC 2004 “A Unifying View of Social Cognition.” Trends in Cognitive Science 8:396-403.

6. Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593–609.

7. Gallese, V., & Metzinger, T. (2003). Motor ontology: The representational reality of goals, actions, and selves. Philosophical Psychology, 13, 365–388.

8. Goldman, A. 2006 Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford University Press.

End of Ch. 11

Emotional vs. Rational mind states, part ii

White cat

Sham Rage*

Introduction.

The notion of free will as ‘choice by conscious consent’ of only one out of several appropriate adaptive responses being considered depends largely on the emotional substratum underlying the contingency being resolved, for emotions do not have an independent existence and man is him and his existential circumstance. When human behavior is now seen from the new perspective of a brain dynamic system trying to actively anticipate and cope with the ever changing realities of his internal, body proper milieu and the external environment, neuro-philosophy has to change gears and reexamine its abstract foundations. Accordingly, man can no longer be considered a passive entity reacting to new and old challenges according to an axiology based on available rational judgments in defense of self interests or a reasoned greater good. The only other option being an unconsciously driven irrational ‘choice’ of emotional activity, usually of negative consequences. This old view is consonant with a static Platonic view of existential reality.

In the new dynamic approach the distinction between a rational and an emotional component becomes blurred in the decision-making process where a continuous and complex global interactive cooperation among various brain structures creates self-adjusting probable adaptive alternatives to choose from; as if the intention to adaptively execute an effective neuro-humoral-musculo-skeletal action plan is only awaiting in a cortical phase space attractor to be consciously consented to. The emotional experience concomitant to the execution of all action plans plays a significant role in the final free will consent to execute an intentional behavior. We no longer need to put together/assemble in haste an adequate solution in response to a sudden unexpected environmental challenge, but only to release one of several we have previously rehearsed and now consent to in harmony with our mental well being.

Darwin’s early speculation about animal behavior, suggesting now that human facial expressions allows an observer to reliably mind-read his accompanying emotional mind state is now explained on the basis of the observer’s own experience of the same emotional state being explained by measuring the fMRI activity of the associated mirror neurons in pre-motor areas of both observer and observed. This particular phase synchronization between both neocortical loci of active mirror neurons is what may give the clue about the interactive relationship of intentionality and emotions. It still remains unclear –for the undersigned- how positive emotions may relate to more errors in rational judgments, an experimental surprise of sorts. How may all these factors be part of a complex neurodynamic, autogenic, self-organizing chaos activity will be briefly examined to gain an insight into what the optimal equilibrium should exist between the cooperative, global interactions of a goal-directed visceral (limbic) brain compartment I, the perceptual right hemisphere compartment II, the rational left hemisphere compartment III and an allegedly disorganized random noise background, i.e., between the biologic, psychic and social aspects of brain representations of existential reality and the random disorder of mental illness. It is to be noted the important role pre-motor cortical attractors (site of coordinated prefab action plans) play as seen in the REM state dream during which the motor neuron pools are inhibited from executing such ‘coordinated’ responses.

Argumentation.

Emotions are best understood not as the opposite of reasoned behavior but as their necessary complement. There are no emotionally neutral rational behaviors. We have discussed elsewhere how the non-linear, asymmetric, acausal Kantian world of ‘chaotic’ sensations entering (via sense receptors) the right brain hemisphere (compartment II) are required to be linearized to be subsequently processed in our innate left hemispheric (compartment III) language processor machinery after being first scrutinized for information content on possible threats to the biological integrity of the subject by the amygdaloid complex (for genetic relevance) and hippocampus (for context analysis). According to the classical platitudes, the gross sensory input from environmental objects and events was funneled by specialized receptors into memory compartments with idealized copies of the same input (intellect) to extract their rational meaning to the body economy. In the dynamic view, the intellect continuously updates, modifies and reviews sensory input representations and the organism’s motor resources to cope with meaningful changes in sensory input or motor capacity to cope with them in the environmental niche. The amygdaloid complex and hippocampus dealt with familiar situations at unconscious and subconscious levels respectively whereas novel contingencies arising from internal body proper, external environment or modified memories required accessing the language machinery to find meaning of the novelty by inductive or deductive logic strategies that now require new interpretations of brain function, especially when the resulting co-generation of language and thought induced the state of self-consciousness. Because existential reality is in the brain (no brain, no reported or measured reality!) and is also the result of a global interaction between billions of neurons actively engaged in a self-organizing, non-linear dynamic activity, an operational understanding of brain dynamics has to be recast within the context of an underlying non-linear, quasi-deterministic, probabilistic dynamic system; a quantum–based theory whose predictive, anticipatory value has been so useful to modern science methodology as well. Anticipation and evaluation of the unknown stimulus and the motor resources available to adaptively respond are now probabilities available to man to fashion his action plan intention. Way back in the beginning of the 13^th century, St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica) had already identified intentionality as a pre-existing action plan, goal-directed activity to solve a problem. The modern dynamic equivalent is the pre-motor cortical attractor where ‘free will’ consents to one of several available action plan alternatives, that which, in addition, are consistent with the musculo-skeletal and glandular resources AND the psychic well being of the responder. It is of interest that, when we can afford waiting for a solution, we dream almost exclusively about the things that please us or generate fears (see Anna Freud) except that our dream ‘solutions’ are not effective or coordinated because we have actually inhibited our motor cortex from activating our musculo-skeletal and glandular resources into action. Are dreams illogical even when we experience the qualia of fear or pleasure? We have to realize that the truth value solutions of the consciously rational logic and the subconsciously emotional ‘logic’ behind the biological and the psycho-social considerations are competing for primacy as witnessed in heroic or altruistic acts ‘contra natura’ or self interest. Do we consciously will the intention towards the efficiency of the end result or the joyful consequences of the action, the means or the ends? Which of the competing forces prevail? Can they cooperate? If so, at what price? Do we need to distinguish between free choice by consent and intentionality or as Dr. W. Freeman puts it “Whether intention of the end is the same act as the volition of the means?” Is there a logic to emotional behavior?

These are difficult questions to answer except when we accept the premise that emotions, like colors, have no independent existence and need to be embodied in a person, like colors in an object. They are not neutral, they are an inseparable part and parcel of an ongoing execution of behavior being enacted or being considered for future action. In this respect the physical display of ‘anger’ (hissing, pupil dilatation, posture, hair erection, etc.) by a cat after electrode stimulation of the hypothalamus, i.e., ‘sham rage’, may not qualify as an emotion absent the qualia that normally accompanies such body language expression. Yet, recent experiments show how artificial emotional embodiment induce the qualia feeling in the subject? It may be appropriate, at this juncture, to limit the use of the term qualia to situations where no chemical/physical stimulus is causally identified. Thus the pleasure of a chocolate candy is different from a feeling of love unless we posit that ALL emotions experienced originate from the initial action of brain chemicals. The same situation applies to the measured changes in the parameters that usually accompany excitatory emotions after experimentally injecting adrenaline into a subject (e.g., increased pulse, respiratory and heart rate), These subjects did not consistently experience an excitatory qualia as reported, (Guyton’s Text on Medical Physiology, see also contrasting views of W. Cannon & W. James). Yet we all have read about the reports on qualia experienced by psychedelic drug consumers. Just how do we answer the causality question about whether we fight because we are angry or do we get angry because we fight? Being aware of our species limitation in the resolution of perceptual and conceptual complexities, we find it again necessary to invoke cocausality or cogeneration until a credible distinction in their generation is independently proven. This we did when handling the enigma on the reciprocal causality generation of language and thought. If we accept the premise that neocortical attractors in premotor phase space contain both the logical and the emotional qualia concomitants dynamically interwoven into one continuously updated whole package, then the reliable distinction may not be now a priority to precise. This distinction did not stop Fodor from elaborating his successful model of ‘propositional attitudes’, a follow-up on Franz Brentano’s late 19^th century suggestion about how brain neuronal networks may generate ‘intentions’. Unfortunately, we may be able to gain reliable information about the emotional ‘attitude’ (physiological measurements, hormone levels, fMRI imaging, overt behavior, etc.) but not about the rational ‘proposition’ (musculo-skeletal and neuro-humoral readiness/functionality to deliver a required motor response) on which the intended action rests. A free will choice has both emotional and rational components intertwined as part of a given available attractor. What aspect should prevail in the final choice depends on the individualized circumstance of the subject, e.g., present challenge, education, health, previous experiences, faith, etc. Sometimes we will the result but postpone the intention to execute the action plan or viceverse. The importance of this distinction is of the essence when assigning responsibility for punishable acts; e.g., was the result intended (criminal act) or due to negligence in the execution of a different intention (tortious action)? But, are we free to form intentions or are they predetermined by forces beyond our control to guide? Enter 21^st century dissection of chaos theory, non-linear dynamics and quantum theory and their relevance and impact on the human species freedom to choose, regardless of the emotional or rational consequences of the choice to act. Are we prisoners of an inexorable evolutionary process or do we have freedom to counter, guide and control such natural pressures?

The first consideration that comes to mind is the overwhelming complexity attending even simple motions like voluntarily reaching for a cup of coffee on the table or involuntarily withdrawing our finger away from a hot stove when cooking. When we differentially dissect out the linear sequence of events from the neuronal motor pool to the effector muscles contracting we realize that we cannot consciously will the flexor or extensor contraction of each sequence of muscles participating, if we did the coffee will be cold or the finger will be burnt! This self-evident observation suggests that we are consciously choosing an appropriate response from several probable action plans available in the pre-motor cortical attractor phase space. We thus conclude that the speed of the response cannot always be explained as controlled exclusively by intervening synaptic delays. More impressive is observing a fully unconscious child’s precision in slapping a mosquito walking on his left cheek while fully asleep! In the first case both unconscious genetic and subconscious memetic mechanisms participate under normal conditions unless, e.g., the coffee was placed on a rotating table at varying speeds and we need to consciously calculate the speed of rotation in this novel situation. The second example dissects out the exclusive, genetically determined unconscious, albeit complex, state in defense of biological integrity from the joint participation of genetic and memory-based mechanisms operating at subconscious levels; except when the table is rotating requiring then conscious participation. Either way, unconscious or subconscious, experience tells us we can still freely choose a different action plan, e.g., I let my finger get burnt to prove a point! The examples chosen help us differentiate random from complex but purposeful chaotic order and the self-organizing brain activity to anticipate environmental contingencies in the elaboration of probable solutions ready to be enacted when freely willed into action. The underlying chaos order and non-linear dynamics of causality generating cortical attractors of probable solutions as monitored in EEG, PET Scans and fMRI of human brains may be adequately explained by a quantum dynamics model, a probability calculus in itself, as discussed throughout the preceding chapters. In Volume I, “Neurophilosophy of Consciousness, a Biopsychosocial Model.” we outlined the basic notions on how objects and events in the environmental niche got filtered, modified and transformed into short term working memory and then consolidated into permanent neuronal representations as idealized forms useful in the classification of future sensory encounters by comparison, cross correlations, and their continuous subsequent modifications by assignment of new Hebbian synaptic weights where visceral and cortical forebrain inputs elaborated the relevant dynamic perceptual-conceptual hybrid as fashioned by the emotional quale experience attending each modification. The possibility of creating probable future states made it easier to review, faster to implement and least likely to include errors, especially in the matching of adaptive efficacy with a positive valence emotional mental state, both immanent and transcendental. We prefer to consider the emotional mental state that prevails after the execution of an action plan consented to as being constantly modified to suit the details of the neuro-humoral (e.g., hypothalamus) and/or musculo-skeletal system ongoing activation sequence; neither as previously motivating the choice of action to implement (Walter Cannon response) nor the resultant of the completed action plan (William James).

This way, with our BPS model, it became easier and more credible to understand how intentional acts in potency are the possible result of the previous elaboration of continuously updated dynamic action plans that take into consideration the biologic, psychic and social aspects of the human brain decision-making process by continuously evaluating the hierarchical value of needs and conveniences in every stage of the decision-making sequential process, including the current state of cardio-respiratory, metabolic and endocrine support systems, musculo-skeletal postural stance in relation to the intended action, etc., all while also taking account of the perceptual and conceptual species limitations. Thus the need for a dynamic, hybrid epistemontological model to bring together the incomplete ontological-perceptual measurements and the incomplete epistemological inferences into an indelible unit whole. See “Explaining the BPS Model of Brain Dynamics.” above and Volume II, “An Epistemontological View of Reality”.

Contrary to the analysis by Dr. Walter Freeman, in our opinion all human behaviors consciously intended ultimately require a self-conscious realization that it is ‘I’ who is consenting to and intending to implement one of various probable action plan alternatives in pre-motor neocortical attractor phase space. In the absence of an original stimulus input triggered or originating from either the genes, memory data base, internal milieu interoceptors, environmental exteroreceptor or propioceptor activation, it is difficult to conceive of a deterministic emergence of an autogenous self-organizing, probable response to…..what?? What is the goal that induced the ‘goal directed’ adaptive response? E.g., in the absence of a previous visual receptor knowledge, what meaningful visual feature was detected by a particular retinal receptor cell causing me to send/receive advanced/retarded waves to the feature and thus become activated into relaying information specifically from optic nerve to superior colliculus à thalamic relay nuclei à primary visual cortex à association cortex à neocortex frontal lobes àfrontal lobes (where semantic, axiological concepts are synthesized and topographically mapped) à pre-motor cortex, if such feature is originally meaningless to me? This is the main reason why we cannot share the same enthusiasm for Freeman’s limbic role as a central processing unit as we did in the past when we posited the perisylvian shores surrounding that sulcus indentation as the hub where self consciousness arises based on such quantum wavicles interaction (See discussion on advanced/retarded waves, etc. on “Explaining the BPS Model of Brain Dynamics.”)? Conceptually it looks attractive but an ‘idle curiosity’ search in the absence of a convincing reason or motivation to search for stimuli in a safe environment is a soft sell unless previous hints/suspicions of unidentified probable dangers as monitored by previous sensory detection justifies it. Sorry for the existential accent that makes me feel like Sancho Panza talking to Don Quixote. Admittedly, the theory is so attractive that I still tentatively endorse it …until more data is available on that exclusive interpretation.

There is no doubt about the important location of the perysylvian sulcus surrounding the Sylvian fissure, a cortical geographic locus so strategically located where so many important reciprocal inputs/output move to and fro the neocortex, visceral insula, hippocampus, cyngulum, entorhinal cortex, and especially the tempo-parietal angular gyrus where practically all sensory inputs converge and eventually connect to Broca’s area. The nested, multisensory loops are diagnostic of the crucial role they probably play in integrating perceptual, conceptual and emotional inputs into a hybrid rational-emotional and sensorimotor unit as discussed. But, to define perception as a form of intentional action originating in the limbic system, may be premature. Just because all roads (primary sensory areas, audio-visual, somatic, visceral) go and return from Rome (entorhinal cortex) is not necessarily a proof that, because they share reciprocal information, all decisions are made in Rome, the limbic system or, as we once perhaps wrongly suggested, in the amygdaloidal complex in the perisylvian sulcus when influenced by the rich connections between the hippocampus short term memory database and the entorhinal cortex, both actively dealing with quotidian, dynamic, online fluxes of information. From an experimental perspective, and due to our poor temporal sensory resolution of linear (flicker fusion frequencies) or cyclic (feed back, feedforward) sequences, it is safer to tentatively assume co-causality than to commit to a directional, linear sequence vector of causality.

Likewise, it makes sense to tentatively assume the presence of a verifiable chemical or an electromagnetic mediation in the direct transmission of information to receptors, effectors or associated networks. This is true for neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, neurohormones or radiation as efficient producers of reproducible motor responses.

However, this is not what happens when the direct or delayed motor response is accompanied by an evolving quale like pain, anger, love, happiness, fear, etc. as is the case about neuroamines and neuropeptide modulators from the brain stem reticular grey matter where they receive and send global, coordinating, competing and mostly inhibitory inputs. How may opposing/contrasting effects like the global histamine alerts or serotonin sleep; pain induction or endorphin pain relief; vasopressin aggression or oxytocin pacification; epinephrine acceleration or acetylcholine deceleration, etc. induce emotional qualia is not known except for their functional central core distribution suggesting a dynamic cooperative/integral involvement in its genesis. The adrenal neurohormones role in the emotional readiness for a defensive action or escape from nociceptive objects/events (Cannon response) is better understood. However they all have one thing in common, they are global responses consciously experienced and neither restricted to a previous decision to act (W. James) nor after the act (Cannon), it is an evolving, integrated synthesis format, coded and continuously updated (not unlike propioceptive loops) for future probable enactment and dynamically stored in premotor neocortical attractors awaiting for mobilization orders.

Observing the complex dynamics of brain functioning as evidenced by electroencephalography measurements gives us two immediate choices, either we are witnessing random disorder or the changing scenery of complex, chaotic order. To the extent that they obviously seem to represent the multiplicity of many discontinuous local functional states being bound/integrated into higher brain states, a global manifestation at each instant in time, we choose the complex chaos kind of order as better fitting. Knowing the limited combinatorial resolution of the human brain, it is not warranted to describe such activity as non-causal or devoid of a sequential transmission pattern. This is not to say they are continuous and stable. In fact they experience rapid (subsecond) time range and major variations in state as observed in the recorded electrical activity landscape, e.g., the transition from the wakeful to the sleep state. Every landscape represents a change in the spatial loci of neuronal network activity embodying different functions. Each component of a stream of consciousness either gets assembled in every step during its elaboration or gets rehearsed for its adequacy including the emotional concomitants. This is reminiscent of language parsing in search of the acceptable syntax best balancing the need for adaptive communication efficacy and emotional feeling of well being with the result. There are now existing efforts to simulate these microstates in computers. In our opinion, the global spatio-temporal macro pattern suggesting a chaotic cooperative state of affairs should not exclude the possibility of additional cooperation by synaptic and micro level phase coupling of oscillators inducing synchrony. How may such fleeting organization become unstable and undergo a transition into another global macro state encompassing both hemispheres and allegedly generating self consciousness as a dynamic operator is not clear.

Summary and Conclusions.

The neurodynamics of cortical attractor theory as a novel conceptual framework of brain dynamics need not imply a self-organizing acausal machinery in the form of a dynamic operator of sorts. The participation of garden variety synaptic transmission, neuromodulators and neurohormones, all laboring in cooperation with electromagnetic wavicles, give rise to a headward vector of self-organized integrated action that constrains the activity of the participating neuron units into creating a macro pattern of organized activity from their constituent micro elements. Somehow this integrated ‘organization’ thus created is destabilized -with the arrival of a new sensory, memory, genetic or emotional form of stimulus- into subsequent new states of activity delineating the trajectory sequence of the response, the global state response. The ‘somehow’ explanation is usually lightly dismissed as equivalent to the generation of a big storm from a few droplets of water... but the analogy is incomplete because whereas the droplets –under the existing natural circumstances- had no choice but to evolve in strict adherence to nature’s laws to remove the excess heat to another geographical location in need of it. In the human case, the evolved probable solution into a cortical attractor had to be consented to by the free will of the subject, a very different situation. Normally we would consent to the most probable adaptive solution we could find in the neocortical premotor attractor basin landscape and emotionally live with at the end. But, we also have choices not to because of special individualized circumstances, like sacrifice, mental disease, personal gain, etc. There exists a hierarchy of values that influence the final enactment of the most probable adaptive solution as discussed in the BPS Model; from the basic unconscious level preservation of biological integrity and species viability, operating at the genetic level, to the psychic well being qualia based on previous memetic experience subconsciously compared with (memetic data bases) associated with the choice and optimization of conscious social conviviality with those others sharing the environmental niche. The unity of intentional action must bring all three BPS factors to an acceptable equilibrium state as discussed. The emergence of self consciousness from mere subconscious awareness would only be necessary when the new perceptual or conceptual stimulus may represent a psychosocial novelty challenge requiring assigning a meaning to it. In this case The subconscious must access the consumer higher level brain resourcess in the form of language faculty parsing to extract its meaning and co-generating language and thought in the process. During the elaboration of an attractor probability in this case, the syntax structure is generated in the form of preceding ‘propositional attitudes’ a la Fodor, thus incorporating the emotional moiety in the process. The correlation of emotions with chaotic, uncontrolled activity is, besides being an improper term (chaos is complex control) is unwarranted because just as color has not an independent existence from the object, neither do emotions exist in the absence of an appropriate circumstance. Neither color nor emotions are primary attributes.

Bibliography

Brentano FC (1889) The Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong. Chisolm RM and

Schneewind EH (trans.). New York: Humanities Press (1969).

Clark RE, Squire LR (1998) Classical conditioning and brain systems: The role of awareness.

Science 280: 77-81.

Damasio AR (1994) Descartes' error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. New York: Putnam.

Darwin C (1872) The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals. London: Murray.

de la Sierra, Angell O. (1998) Vol. I,II,III Neurophilosophy of Consciousness Lulu Press

Eleftherion BE (ed.) (1972) The Neurobiology of the Amygdala. New York: Plenum Press.

Freeman, WJ (1992) Tutorial in Neurobiology: From Single Neurons to Brain Chaos. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 2: 451-482.

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. Florida, 2009

End of Chapter 12

Variations on an unfinished theme-poem
by minkowsky/einstein.
A critique of the close/neppe toe
from a bps mindscape.

Orbits around brain

Introduction.

We view this new TOE model, in a nut shell, as a systematic attempt to create a mathematical road map to guide our virtual round trip journey from our human brain, across the multidimensional space-scape of an invisible transfinity, to reach the putative source(s) of vital extrasensory information reaching us and affecting our real time existence in our ecosystem niche on the biosphere. Transfinity, as the term implies, spans across/along the entire spectrum of relevant energy-driven activity outside our sense-phenomenal measurements, from the micro sub-Planckian to the macro cosmological level, especially the mesoscopic relevant activity in our own biopsychosocial (BPS) model of reality. In a previous publication¹ we outlined those putative sources as existing in noumenal ‘reality’ characterized as timeless, asymmetric, etc. …and how our brains, genetically restrained to linear processing of sensory data, required a linearization process to make sense and find meanings from inputs arriving from our inside our own existential 4-d ‘cage’ and beyond in transfinity n-1d space time. Inside existential reality we need real-time solutions that maintain and sustain our biopsychosocial (BPS) equilibrium, solutions that recognize our species biological limitations in the resolution of sense-phenomenal information in our midst and limitations in the brain’s combinatorial capacity for resolution of complex symbolic/sentential, un-aided representations, i.e., existential reality is best cognitively understood as an epistemontological hybrid whole. Consequently we needed to reformulate our model of reality by bringing into play all recognized inputs from genetic, memetic and transfinite (from quarks to cosmos) sources.

For starters, we thought it proper to redefine the recursive/reversible communication pathway intraspecies², interspecies³ when inside the existential 4-d cage and when reaching outside into n-1d transfinity⁴. We had to choose an appropriate unit of information transfer (all energy o-d singularity point wavicles, the Planckian ‘what’?) and an appropriate 4-d unit spatio-temporal differential geometry compactification whose dimensions evolve during expansion and, at some point, come within the sense-phenomenal 4-d scrutiny of human observations and/or measurements of their content (aggregating Planck units?). We have struggled with the suitable unit structure of transfer whether a Planck unit or suitable multiples/aggregations thereof (fractal photon units?) This was our early call for a new paradigm shift, a head on plunge into dark matter chemistry, the reward in being able to explain how the so called ‘invisible’ mind is causally efficient in moving the visible brain into measurable mesoscopic activity as biophotons, etc. inside our 4-d cage (see Persinger). All energy unit singularities does not exclude negative energies and zero energy states which are all important of crucial importance to explain a possible phase conjugation for negative fermions with their positive counterpart and thereby resolve the puzzle of matter-antimatter asymmetry at the end of the road. We are confident that this way information transfer between the invisible mind and the visible brain now questioned by determinist fundamentalists may become explainable if not describable. What is now viewed as extrasensory epistemology is actually consistent with our sensory ontology and will probably be explained in terms of ‘triadic’ axion unit 0-d zero point singularities interacting/coupling with visible matter structure. As we said, our submodeling attempts have been non-productive …so far, and our expert colleagues are ignoring us. The TOE model is silent to this possibility. It is in this context that we now scrutinize and discuss the new TOE model by proponents.

Argumentation.

In the new TOE model “According to the general theory of relativity, asymmetric distribution of mass will warp three-dimensional space and cause movement, which creates a dynamic system and introduces the fourth dimension called time. Einstein and Minkowski proved that time may be described mathematically and geometrically as a fourth orthogonal dimension, and the metric for locating a point in a four-dimensional space-time reality can be calculated consistently if the time unit of measurement (duration, symbolized as Δt) is multiplied by i (the square root of minus one). This tells us that, while space and time are both measurable as dimensions (i.e., variables of extent) they are fundamentally different.” The rest of most of the TOE model story is, in our opinion, a variation on an unfinished theme-poem by Minkowsy-Einstein as will be seen below.

In contrast to the new TOE model, in the BPS model our noumenal, unit 0-d pure energy point singularity is asymmetrical where an exergonic release of energy has initiated expansion and condensation into primary particles in the equivalent of an ‘event horizon’, is ubiquitous. We didn’t call this unit singularity preceding expansion a “first receptor”. We had also decided that an appropriate real-time unit phase space suitable for our timely sensory detection/measurement of relevant objects/events was not our familiar empty 3-d Cartesian space, but an additional time element needed inclusion to indicate when any such object/event made its presence felt to the proper sensory/instrumental receptors, i.e., inside a 4-d spatiotemporal context. Fortunately Minkowsky and Einstein had already worked it out for us. It was also clear that such adoption brought in addition a very special mathematical situation we did not know how to exploit -as the new TOE has so elegantly done-, that it represented the coming into our sense-phenomenal 4-d existential reality a cognitive awareness of the presence of any measurable object/event point with a built-in connection pathway (by expansion) to the extra-sensory n-1d transfinite loci or the theological infinity, as the case may be argued. In addition, we also get irrational, imaginary and complex numbers so suitable to epistemologically reduce and formulate symbolic representations into more credible poems to discuss, debate and refute (by physicalists-determinists). There is no doubt that the new TOE model has made excellent use of the new mathematical tool to explain how may communication between our human species and the invisibility of transfinity is possible, if ever. Our BPS approach was limited to conceive the information transfer from transfinity (as we have published for intra and inter species energy/matter/information transfer), as a brain’s selection process where, after amplification of relevant traveling wavicles, it is followed by their resonant phase coupling with appropriate receptor waveforms and their subsequent relay to a lower energy sink and more stable premotor phase space cortical attractor locus. There free will is exercised by conscious consent to one of several, previous pre-fab probable alternatives, the best adaptive (to the problem at hand taking into consideration the ongoing circumstantial neuro-humoral environment, see “BPS Model of Brain Dynamics.”) and probable prefab solution. This was partially a variation of Dr. Walter. Freeman’s seminal model, now extended beyond the olfactory analysis. However, the ‘background’ steady state activity recorded in the EEG represented to us, not a mere energy amplification device for incident random spatial radiation but the result of a constant sub-threshold activity originating from relevant sensory/extrasensory sources within 4-d or transfinity. That was…and remains an unfinished poem. Through lack of advanced mathematics training and perhaps imagination, we limited our unit o-d singularity point evolution to an easy laymen visualization of how information transfer wavicles project to and from between brain and transfinity as the evolution of an expanding invisible, pure energy o-d point forming first a 1-d line then a 2-d plane, a 3-d sphere/box to the micro equivalent of our existential 4-d Minkowsky spatiotemporal volume of sensory detection in subsequent steps. At that time we did not find it necessary to detail or elaborate on the details of the predicted variations on the stage of a 4-d unit theater volume as the traveling singularity moved across dimensions, releasing energy and forming condensed unit particles in the process. That would decelerate and diminish initial energy content until detected by a brain or any suitable receptor, i.e., leave out the details about the moving particle consequent gravitational deformations of the unit 4-d space(?) with their attending differential geometry symbol representations as scalars, vectors, spinors, twisters or compactification aggregations as strings, Kaluza-Klein, Calabi-Yau, etc. be handled by trained mathematicians and/or visionaries.

This further elaboration is what we found in the new TOE model beginning with the incorporation of Fermat’s last theory argument that makes the TOE’s bridge from here to eternity safer to travel. ‘What’ they will find, ‘when’, and the ‘where’ spatial coordinates of the ‘what’ remains unsolved but why not make a try on the ‘how’?

In developing the new TOE’s dimensionometric strategy to justify their claim about the proper path to answer the insistent physicalist question: ‘where’ in the invisible manifold is the ‘what’?, number theory’s Fermat's Last Theorem was a good help when it suggested (and one of the new TOE proponents proved) that: no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation aⁿ+ bⁿ = cⁿ for any integer value of n greater than two. This is strong ‘evidence’ that, if John Doe in real time existence wants to explain his model of reality to us humans he is more credible when using real (Peano) numbers to explain what objects/events can ‘happen’ inside our Minkowsky existential cage, regardless of their origin anywhere along the quark-cosmos continuum.. or beyond? As the TOE model proponents say: “In Euclidian geometry, you can demonstrate that, as long as you are using anything in the infinite array of real numbers fields, you do not escape the 3 dimensional reality that we all experience.” The proponents’ controversial justification for the use of the time dimension in their formulation (vide infra) and Fermat’s last theorem proof, constitutes the basis on which the new TOE model rests. Notice the importance of defining a unit spatio-temporal volume of reference and the different meaning of ‘time’s role in the BPS and TOE models. As explained in their own words: “This is so as the field of real numbers is defined geometrically by 3 dimensional space because every point in 3 dimensional space can be located with a triad of real numbers. As has been indicated, what is triadic is the fundamental 3-D orthogonality of time and space and biology.” It is noted that the new TOE pays little attention to the role ‘prime’ numbers play in the C-matrix sub-model or when the lines of intersection are other than orthogonal. It can be further misleading to affirm, with Einstein, that there is ‘physical’ evidence that space and time are ‘actually’ being changed as ‘evidenced’ “..through measurements of the orbit of the electron and the orbit of Mercury showing very clearly that space is warped into a 4-D space-time continuum,..” as when describing the propagation of light using Lorentz transformations or Gaussian co-ordinates to symbolically represent non-Euclidean n-1d surface curvatures as Euclidean planar 2-d surface suitable for analysis as if such epistemological ‘map’ were the real-time ontological/measurable ‘territory’, visible or not. Real observable/measurable forces do not deform geometrical representations! These geometrical contortions are just conveniences ‘in abstracto’ that makes it easier to understand/visualize invisible objects/events moving inside the 4-d human cage or from one dimension into another when the relevant transformations guide the shift of matter/energy content from one frame of reference to another. Our BPS or the new TOE model do not consider the super complex characterization of particles traveling as varying forms of stabilized black holes, e.g., as various multiples/quanta of Planck’s unit matter/volumes. Could this be the way they travel across dimensions? Especially when we mathematically impose on them the requirement to travel at the constant speed of light by conveniently using Lorentz transformations so that static observer and moving observed consequences in the measurements are minimized if not canceled. This is where the Wheeler-Feynman advanced/retarded wave poem liberates us from the constancy shackles of light speed restriction, all a consequence of having now the possibility inside our unit existential 4-d cage imaginary and complex numbers traveling at speeds exceeding that of light (non locality), as briefly discussed above. See “BPS Model of Brain Dynamics”⁵. This is the reason we consider the 4-d existential reality w e experience as the result of our brain’s blending of the ontological perceptual and the epistemological conceptual images as a hybrid epistemontological unit in consciousness, all the compensatory sub-conscious effort to adapt to our species resolution limitations as explained above. But we can still experience the genetic driven species urge to explain our origins and eventual destination. We dream and compose poems so long as they are acceptable in the market of ideas and have predictive existential value in maintaining a happy, viable and sustainable biopsychosocial equilibrium in the human species. This genetic drive forces us to think outside the existential 4-d box and make poems, some rooted on credible perceptual and conceptual mind elaborations, others completely dissociated from their 4-d box sensory presence or conceptual existence as in some deterministic ‘theologies’..

Both BPS and new TOE models agree that, except for the characterization of the ‘primary receptor’ preceding the 0-d point singularity expansion, the zero point of our symbolic representation is not the same as nothing. We add that zero dimension is only the ‘proof’ of our species limitation in its perceptual identification, sensory or instrumental. Furthermore, we find it difficult to conceive this point singularity as being simultaneously symmetrical and initiating an expansion at the ‘event horizon’ as the TOE model does and instead we envision a noumenal stage of non-linear, asymmetric unit of proto matter expanding as it moves to lower energy sinks in compliance with 2^nd. law of thermodynamic theory and fueling the ‘event horizon’ evolution into the configuration of a living higher structure, now in apparent violation of natural laws of entropy disorganization and being instead the result of an innominate intelligent plan/design ‘causally efficient’ in producing such negentropic result so self evident in e.g., spontaneous in-utero ontogenetic organization of life, atomic distribution of electron orbitals and cosmic inter-galactic order. The new TOE model wrestles with that singularity concept and calls it the ‘primary receptor’, some call it the alpha point, God, creation, or the fuel initiating the expansion into an eventual highest order, a conscious human life at the humanistic very center of a conceptual neocopernican universe. The new TOE claim about the symmetry to be found in their 0-d singularity as verified empirically by COBE probe data needs further elaboration because we understand that symmetry refers to the invariance of any measurable physical form of an object regardless of what kind of rotation or transformation from one coordinate system to another, hardly the required conditions for an event horizon expansion. In our opinion it may be best to consider pure energy 0-d point singularities as convenient mathematical singularities but different from zero because they are unavailable for direct measurement (black holes?). Therefore, rather than considering the symmetry of elementary particles “..a precise and accurate description of the situation in the real world of quantum mechanics.” We prefer to limit such state as just a convenient explanation until experimentally verified.

The spherical surface of the TOE model primary receptor, where our BPS proto-matter allegedly began to form is likened to the reversal of the event horizon in a black hole where gravity slowed down the original force of universal expansion and caused the condensation into the first elementary particles (quarks?) of an evolving proto-universe. Both positions will forever be haunted by the ghost of the ‘infinite regression’ argument.

According to the proposed TOE model the gravitational deformation of the evolving 3-d units of space mysteriously brought about the first spiraling vortex motions randomly moving across n-1d space and yet more mysteriously assisting in the inter-dimensional transfer of information? This vortex role needs further elaboration to justify its alleged involvement. In our admittedly un-informed view on why vortices?; we prefer the role of the spiral geometry as representing a recursive cycling path where a point energy source travels along a diminishing radius of curvature circumference in reaching an energy receptor sink point locus (a new unit 4-d volume? In the offing?). Or, like the new TOE model justifies as “..measurable fields …exhibiting different characteristics of information transfer and processing functions..” This explanation on information transfer is unclear and needs more precision. How may this shifting spiraling conveyance reach any particular level of brain consciousness from transfinity in terms of the number of dimensions present is an unconvincing argument of the C-matrix in spite of the correlative mass/energy gravitational induction/transfer with such vertical geometry in motion. Their association with sub-Planckian 3-d symmetrical quarks is unclear. Likewise, at the macro level of e.g., tornadoes or comets, their association with extrasensory pre-cognitive information transfer from the C-matrix to the brain is speculative and undocumented.

Because of our poorly-informed knowledge about dark matter particle physics we find it difficult and confusing to accept the alleged evidence that all elementary particles are perfectly symmetrical, a notion that intuitively suggests a quasi resting state. Perhaps the unit 0-d quark is already an asymmetric aggregation of additional 0-d units which will tend to spin or spiral when affected by any outside force. The extension of these arguments on subatomic particles to molecular size pharmaceuticals is not documented. Likewise, the assertion based on Fermat Last Theorem, that “..no matter how many dimensions are found to exist, the dynamic form of every existential distinction will tend to be vortical.” is not developed.

The arguments presented about the alleged symmetry of elementary particles as opposed to the asymmetry found in the macro level implies two separate domains of reality! Thus the need for a mesoscopic scale model as the new paradigm where mass/volume of known periodic table elements will be considered as the addition of Planck unit quanta, the same described for black body radiation, i.e.,. 4.22419x10^–105 m³. If it were to be found in the ongoing Hadron collider experiments that quark volumes are integral multiples of the Planck volumes/mass satisfying the equation X³ + Y³ + Z³= Q³, we can explain why they are only found in combinations of three to form hadrons. This way we may be able to figure out how their rate dR/dt of linear expansion where radial expansion ‘R’ is directly proportional to the amount of energy E fueling it but indirectly proportional to the amount of particle mass M condensed as they expand and release energy, i.e., dR/dt= f(E/M). With the noumenal state being forever barred from direct human scrutiny we have no choice but to be content with only the appearance of reality to the conscious brain or as the new TOE model expressed it: “The nature of the reality we experience appears to unfold as a sequence of causally related events consisting of matter and energy interacting in time and space; and science, as we know it, consists of efforts to understand and explain this sequence of events.” The TOE model argument that nothing existed before the big bang event horizon because there was no inertial resistance to oppose its original fast, exponential expansion phase seems to contradict the COBE monitor data suggesting the opposite, unless the ‘primary detector’ and its nebulous surrounding milieu were not only invisible to satellite monitors but to metaphysical logic detection as well!

This brings further complications to the TOE model because it plays out Einstein’s speed of light universal constant as, in fact, a variable depending on the inter-conversion rate of energy ßà mass! This would mean that if dR/dt= f(E/M) represents the ratio of energy to mass in the universe and “..there is some evidence that the ratio may have decreased since the expanding event horizon because of the conversion of more energy to mass than mass to energy..”. (emphasis supplied). This conversion, if spontaneous, is in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics BUT it implies a spontaneous, uncaused creation of the zero-point, pure energy singularity, especially if nothing existed before the first exponential expansion or event horizon, as the TOE claims! The BPS model does not see passage of time as a factual, observable measurable event, rather as a virtual convenience our consciousness created when measuring change, the only independent variable whose evolutionary path constitutes an observable, falsifiable event inside our 4-d cage, ever so difficult to apprehend in its details by logic symbols or sentential logic. Relativity and quantum physics tell us that indeed the brain creates consciousness so we can find the existential biopsychosocial meaning to all things, those that are and those that are not, as they somehow find their way into our 4-d sense-phenomenal scenario for ontological or metaphysical/epistemological cognitive identification when at their threshold levels for human/instrumental detection. Even then, their relevance/meaning to a BPS equilibrium state is what makes those objects/events come alive in consciousness, otherwise they may remain invisible. We often wonder if either relevance or meaning makes dark matter presence detectable, if such is real, invisible to our brain processing inside the 4-d cage? As the TOE model clarifies “quantum physics tells us that we have no right to say an object exists until it is registered in consciousness; mental attitude can affect physical health and even the outcome of events.”

This is essentially what the TOE model characterizes as the three primary functions of consciousness. Both models, admittedly or not, cannot describe or explain the ‘what’ or ‘why’, the ‘when’ or ‘where’ of consciousness, only the tentative ‘how’. This is especially true when dealing with differentiating ‘self’ from ‘others’ because of the unsolved paradox of how ’I’, can possibly become engaged in performing an act ‘a’ and simultaneously ascertain/know it is ‘I’ performing by using same machinery parts committed to the performance? Who is ‘I’? We can only explain ‘how’ it may happen as Piaget did in his empirical observations and conjectural analysis of growing toddlers when they allegedly were able to distinguish, by their behavior, they were not an extension from their crib but a distinct, separate entity.

The “How do we draw distinctions in others” explanation in the new TOE model is an heroic attempt to explain and categorize and, from our BPS perspective, is an elaboration of the first function, “how to differentiate self from others”. That, besides being almost as difficult if not impossible, especially when trying to force the distinction capability inside a mathematical straight jacket. Brown’s explanation (Law of Forms) that: “..the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself…” is a non-analyzable conclusion. In a previous publication we analyzed the ‘knowing other’ both as a function of the activity of mirror neurons using similar neuronal mechanisms and answering both questions about self and others but was limited about mind reading ability in anticipation of behavior. We equated the intraspecies, interspecies and transfinite information transfer to phase resonant coupling processes to consolidate several previous publications on the role of mirror neurons, the unconscious genetic (amygdale) memory, the subconscious memetic (hippocampus, cortex) memories and the conscious neocortex decision-making dynamics in attractor phase space. To state that a form of consciousness existed at the expanding event horizon and continues to exist and is also pervasive throughout all space and time, and is the origin of all extropic forms in the universe is another non-analyzable speculation about an important component of the C-matrix of the TOE model.

The TOE’s C-matrix ‘what’ is as elusive as the ‘where’ of consciousness locus. How does a dream achieve that alleged shift of the dreamer toward the first receptor sphere that makes possible an awareness of a higher dimension of reality? Why not a random access to memories, relevant but inaccessible to language processing to be ‘expressed’ with a logical meaningful content as an inner language dream. Anna Freud gives hints of possible emotion-laden conflicts not classically processed in the Broca language area. We have suggested an experimental set-up with fMRI recordings of ongoing transfer of information along pathway connecting parieto-temporal angular/Wechsel gyrus (convergence of sensory input) to Brocas area during a variety of experimental sensory input during the awakened and sleep state for comparison. In our BPS model we become self conscious during the elaboration of a relevant language syntax to convey meaning as expressed as inner (thought) or reported language. We would expect that cortical premotor attractor space, where consent to logical prefab solutions are available is not metabolically active.

Summary and Conclusions.

We had hoped that the ‘Calculus of Distinctions’ would provide to some of us a proper language-based conveyance of probable symbolic or sentential logic reduction/explanations about objects/events outside the sense-phenomenal 4-d cage. These distinctions, beginning with the distinction of self from other as a sine qua non to make distinctions in ‘other’ reality. Our evaluation is that the new TOE is not ready yet to start formulating the adequate representations of quantity, enumeration and equivalence, as required in any calculus. How intelligence or consciousness participates in finding distinctions as the basis of developing meaningful patterns for maximizing man’s existential survival inside his 4-d cage biopsychosocial survival is not spelled out. However, the TOE provides for the reader an excellent mathematical foundation to understand better how the transitions from one dimension to another are represented and the basis thereof. This way, e.g., a tensor is represented by a matrix with the probable numerical value of the relevant elements of the matrix equal to the scalar (0-d tensor), vector (1-d tensor), or n-1d vectors (n-1d tensors) forces acting (measurable!) on a given point in sense-phenomenal 4-d space. Can we call this manifest presence a description (the object/event IS) or an explanation (MAYBE it only probably exists?)? From our 4-d perspective it is a description, in absolute terms it just may be a probable explanation. Their affirmation that spatial and temporal dimensions are fundamentally different even though they may be linked together mathematically, as in Minkowski space, is not clear, for they both represent convenient abstractions to indicate not only where the measurable phenomenon was detected but at what time it became a reality in 4-d space. The only fundamental difference in our model is that whereas we can conveniently adjust the spatial volume dimension to accommodate the probable variations encountered in the analysis, we cannot control that inexorable independent variable we call change and conveniently represent as ‘time’. One can visualize a volume being changed/warped but not time even though arguably, by erroneously equating time=change, one can incorrectly substitute ‘changed’ for ‘timed’ in this sentence to mean “one can visualize a volume being timed/warped … or its equivalent abstract visualization of time-space deformation/warping by gravitational or other forces, a clear category error where ‘real’ matter (whether visible or not in a given dimension) was instantiated inside the convenient but still abstract space-time symbolism. Just like the when the invisible electric and magnetic forces are often lumped together because they act together in the propagation of visible light we can detect and measure inside the 4-d cage, ah.. they also ‘occur’ (we hope) as separate static forces in our EM poem. This is a common error among otherwise brilliant theoreticians. This is a deliberate call to metaphysical logicians aka mathematicians not to lose sight of our real-time 4-d mesoscopic cage while flying high into the n-dimensional lala land. Life is a dream and dreams are just that, dreams!!.

When elaborating on the foundations for a C-matrix, the new TOE carefully skirted the issue of the ‘what’/’where’ in brain-based consciousness, e.g., if the conscious self, as the TOE model suggested, exists in dimensions exceeding, but still encompassing their three dimensions of “ordinary” space, how does self or consciousness recognize or make distinctions between separate objects in our human 4-dimensional space? Notice that this nomenclature only allows us to hopefully/probably ‘describe’ the probable effects of a field that can be measured inside our real-time cage. We can agree that there is only present and “What we think of as the past is actually only images we associate with pattern of impulses stored in the brain, and what we conceive of as the future is only images associated with patterns of impulses we create using “past” images and logic, projecting into an imagined future.” We have expressed it differently, to maintain a present, ongoing image alive we recursively go presentàbackàpresent and, by using the past memory as the basis of a probable new solution, we are at that moment recursively and simultaneously in the dynamic present, past and future analyzing our options when having to confront an important threat to our BPS equilibrium, especially when the threat is novel and has no recorded precedents in memory.

The TOE model makes a good defense of their dimensionologic arguments about the case when different objects/events may coincide in time creating two or more time-lines especially when these may coincide and still can all be represented in their 3T geometric time. As we said earlier, their intersection only represents in our model their simultaneous presence one particular moment in time when we could detect their presence. This means, in addition, that in sense-phenomenal 4-d reality it is not enough to detect/describe one or more energies/forces measured but when are they present and interacting in a meaningful and relevant BPS context. Consequently, for EACH of the 5 natural forces known to be present/described in our mindscape each one needs an additional time dimension for every 2 measurable interactions/intersections, e.g., when all 5 forces/energies are simultaneously present as 4-d Minkowsky units each, then the resulting mix = 20-d reality further reduced to a resulting composite of 4-d existential description/explanation relevant to our BPS equilibrium! We would rather develop a new paradigm model consisting in adding Planck quantum volume units of matter/energy until we approach/arrive at the mesoscopic macro dimension we humans are familiar with and see what happens from that gemish. But we don’t know what to do with the dark matter accumulation that may result and their probable relevance to our view of real-time reality. We have all the metaphysical logic tools and still looking for a suitable strategy to develop it….., we will … hopefully sooner than later.

The new TOE model offers some possibilities in their development of their C-matrix. Could the forces associated with conscious thought, volition and intent be ultimately related to energy/matter instantiated in the form of atoms with orbiting positrons attracted by a negatively charged nucleus, as posited for dark matter.” Can these hypercomplex forces/energies be located in a hyperspace location for consciousness? The TOE model shyly suggests that the forces “..may be found as a result of the elementary particle/waves of our world being complex hyper-dimensional objects. Even though patterns of neuron firings in the brain may be correlated with thoughts and actions arising from those thoughts, no trace of the conscious observer who has these thoughts and distinguishes self from other has been found in the 3S, 1T world. Is it possible that the seat of the conscious self may reside in the additional dimensions of reality?” Brilliant vision but, where do we go from there? We have insisted and argued that existential reality can only be meaningfully understood as the result of 4-d and/or reduced n-1 d representations in our brain, regardless of whether it represents the invisible noumenal or the visible/measurable existential state. Because the energy/forces being reversibly transferred to or away from a conscious brain -where ultimately they become ‘alive’ and take residence- exist in our 4-d mind/brain space. Thus the need to define how their interaction/intersection transfer is realized, whether vortex spinors/twisters conveyors or otherwise. In this respect the TOE model alerts that “linear forces acting on an object in any reality of three or more dimensions will result in predominantly spiraling motions. Experiments in particle physics bear this out, revealing spinning particles and spiraling motions. For this reason, special tensors called “spinors” and “twistors” have been developed. Spinors are tensors with components of angular momentum or spin, developed by physicists Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli for application to elementary entities like electrons and positrons, with intrinsic rotation or spin. Twistors are spinors developed by British mathematician-physicist Roger Penrose specifically for three spatial dimensions, and one time dimension, where the time dimension variable is “i”, the square root of minus one. This is also known as Minkowski space, after Hermann Minkowski, the mathematician who developed it specifically for the mathematical description of Einstein’s special relativity.” This all makes good sense but we are not in a position to visualize how these conveyors are formed and/or what influences guide their motions.

Assuming that vortices travel across dimensions as propelled by attractive/repulsive gravitational forces, what role do dimensions play in this physical interaction is not clear. Is the direct eyewitness observation of two visible metallic objects attracting each other from a distance the result of dimensions?? Can dimensions physically interact? Do dimensions have a physical structure? As we have said above, it is not enough to describe two intersecting forces we can measure inside our 4-d space, it is more relevant to cognitively ascertain WHEN their respective time-lines will intersect and can be consciously felt as a relevant BPS reality. The TOE model position that “Gravity reflects the existence of a fourth dimension, coinciding with and central to the warping. It is not an attraction from a distance but the result of interacting dimensions allowing for movement because of warping of the dimensional structure.” may ultimately be correct but as an explanation of our eyewitness account of two metal objects attracting each other from a distance as explained by the inverse square law, well, may have to be explained as a dimension-relevant meta-dimensional event by the TOE model. The Bohr hydrogen orbital model basis for the explanation of diamagnetic and paramagnetic influences in larger molecular species according to their non-homogenous/asymmetric distribution of mass complies better with Occam’s razor reasoning. It is our feeling that building a complex super structure resting almost exclusively on variations on a theme-poem by Minkowsky-Einstein cornerstone, i.e., the metaphysical warping of space time invisibility being causally efficient in producing a falsifiable physical attraction, is risky business. Are the fundamental forces of electricity and magnetism creating three dimensions of consciousness by warping TOE’s 6D reality? Why should electricity & magnetism be considered as different from ordinary matter/energy wavicles in the creation of the ‘conscious dimension’? Dimensions have just a virtual physical structure in the ‘representation’ of either a sensed object/event (territory) or its invisible n-1d counterpart in workable dimensions (the map) so long as n-1 d transfinite objects/events find their way thru the dimensional track into our real-time 4-d cage description/explanation or probable inferential ‘detection’. It is true that Einstein regarded matter, energy, space and time, in short, physics as a problem in geometry but he also stated that the: " concept of time is a persistent illusion" when referring to the path from transfinity to our 4-d field of sensory or mental ‘detection’ of the unit singularity wavicle aggregates not about how it condensed into the particles we can detect as constituents of the content/message.

It is not clear how, if n represents possibly an unreachable infinity, n-1 represents a probable reachable transfinity and n+1 wouldn’t make dimensional/measurable sense, the TOE model statement that ”..an n-dimensional reality produces an (n+1) -dimensional reality which contains an infinite number of n-dimensional realities. We call this the Principle of Dimensional Extrapolation. .” Proper notation clarifies dimensionality. Likewise for a 3-d object/event to be captured into a probable reality it must coincide with the given moment (t) an observer attempts to detect it with his senses or mind state. As argued above, a pure energy, unit expandable, condensable singularity wavicle is a 4-d spatiotemporal unit of 0-d asymmetry in n-1 d transfinity space which, upon finding its way into our 4-d cage for detection by instruments or brain/mind, condenses stepwise(?) into unit particle(s) and may aggregate into detectable dimensions (instruments or mind-state). The complementary relationship forming the basis of the attraction along the dimensional path between the origin and the brain has been outlined in previous publication and defined as a wave offer and an acceptance relationship (see Wheeler Feynman diagram. The TOE model characterization of a “…finite, static 3D reality in a state of maximum entropy; i.e., matter and energy either do not exist in the space, or they are evenly distributed throughout the space. Such a space would not be warped by any external force and would thus be perfectly symmetrical. There would be no movement and thus no sense of time.” may either describe an energy sink state with no free energy to do work or transfer to a different location or their ‘primary receptor’ state as evidenced by the COBE satellite images. Either way it may not qualify as the origin of the event horizon state or the mysterious primary receptor. The BPS model unit 0-d dimension wavicle point singularity has maximum pure energy (micro black hole?) to be released (as proto matter à elementary particles) as it gets transferred to its eventual receptor destination inside the brain or away from it.

The TOE model’s excellent didactic ‘lei motif’ repeating that when: “..a point of reference, .. the origin in our 4D reality, is chosen and orthogonal reference lines are drawn from the origin to enable us to locate any point, P(x, y, z, t). (then)… The orthogonality of the lines from the origin is arbitrary, but if they are not …, calculation of the distance between any two points is greatly complicated. (and)… when an additional dimension is introduced and included in the ..description, it is projected as orthogonal to all other dimensional reference lines. (because then) ..only the metrics of (up to)…three-dimensional reality can be represented by real number variables…(otherwise)…additional orthogonal dimensions must be represented by multiples of the square root of negative one (i), and measurements and calculations in that space-time will involve complex numbers of the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers. (parentheses added). This, as explained above, is the cornerstone of the TOE model structure. The Achyles tendon, from the reductionist’s point of view, continues to be how may this mathematical scaffolding may reach the coordinates of the primary receptor special spatio-temporal configuration site? This makes the C-matrix configuration somewhat elusive in our opinion. How may ‘conscious wavicles’ be measured and metrics discovered?

However, wherever there may exist a 0-d pure energy point singularity or quantum multiples thereof, as explained, an infinite number of 4-d units can be mathematically constructed as all existing in the present and expressed in real (Peano) numbers, their volume being a function of the number of variables being accommodated.

Summary and Conclusions.

To build a ‘bottoms-up’ multidimensional model of reality we should start from the pure energy 0-d point singularity wavicle somewhere in n-1d manifold i.e., from 0-d point à 1-d line à 2-d plane à 3-d box/sphere space à 4-d space-time à n-1d = n(4-d) somewhere, looking for patterns of dimensional features that may be extrapolated from those dimensions into realities of a higher number of dimensions until we arrive the 4-d sense-phenomenal reality..

We distinguish ontological and epistemological representations that appear inside perceptual 4-d or outside of it in the conceptual memory domain including genetic, memetic and n-1d transfinite data bases. We have discussed elsewhere how the brain contrast/compare and determine the old from the novelty, the safe from the threats by mediation of the amygdale, hippocampus, unconscious and conscious cortical strata in premotor neocortical phase space attractors. We have also discussed how information reversibly travels interspecies and intraspecies, from the internal/external world for transmission as electrical impulses over neural pathways to the brain for processing into three-dimensional images mimicking objects and changes in the external “real” world in the consciousness of the observer. It all starts from the specifically human feature of being able to introspectively distinguish self from other as a ‘sine qua non’ or the very basis of conscious experience, as explained elsewhere, e.g., Piaget theories, etc. The sense-phenomenal perceptual ‘field’ includes, besides what’s inside the external 4-d cage that is measured, also the internal body proper neuro-humoral milieu monitored by receptors as discussed elsewhere. The internal body proper equilibrium is best maintained at subconscious servo-control levels as explained. Besides the classical external receptor input from inside the 4-d domain, n-1d elementary particles/waves in the physical universe bring/carry information as photons and electrons and become part of the mix. Because of temporal feedback, humans think they are directly observing what they believe to be the real world, while in fact, what he is seeing are only images in his own head that may or may not be one-to-one representations of the “real” world, reality is in the brain. Not only that, because the images and memories they evoke may be laced with emotions, the observer may further subconsciously edit and interpret the images as representative of a safe/dangerous, beloved/hated, good/bad, or a neutral object/event, and this interpretation will influence his actions and the outcome of those actions. We have discussed this relevance of individualized emotional circumstances influencing what may have been initially a pondered rational decision.

Where is the location, the seat of consciousness, inside/outside the brain? John Neumann’s puzzle about the genetic, memetic and n-1d information entering and leaving the body “and somehow it registers in the consciousness of the observer.” tells all. John von Neumann couldn’t ascertain its location. The primary pre –Big Bang receptor and consciousness may both exist, and that they are necessary to the existence, experience and understanding of reality; but the questions of exactly where and how they exist and function still remain a mystery. The seat of consciousness may exist in real dimensions beyond the 4-d perceptible through our physical senses? As a working hypothesis, let’s assume that it does, and that at least one dimension exists beyond the four we perceive. Perhaps located in an extended reality with additional dimensions, with the ability to be aware of and operate in the 4-d reality. Consciousness (as C-matrix) comes in as the primary receptor, all the way back at the event horizon (e.g., the big bang): The patterns, the information and the logic that is a blueprint of everything that could or would develop out of the big bang had to be present at the event horizon. What are the forces that create these warpings? The warpings of 3 dimensional space to 4, 5, and 6-D in the T domain are all related to gravitation because of the multiple gravitational centers in proximity Earth. Furthermore, the two electromagnetic (EM) forces could warp reality in 2 different ways because they act at (right) angles to each other—this has been verified experimentally: Consequently, if there is another force, we could postulate these additional EM forces that act at a distance.

Experiments have shown that the elementary particles of the EPR paradox (simultaneous knowledge of both the momentum and position of a particle, see Einstein –Bohr debate) do not exist until they register on receptors holds for all elementary particles. John Wheeler: “No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon.”. We have information on brain receptors but when the ‘prayer’ to a God is initiated in the brain, where is the destination receptor in n-1d? Are there two fundamental realities, a macro, deterministic Newtonian and a micro probabilistic quantum reality or is this a reflection of the human limitations as an observer.? Do particles exist dispersed at random in space between source and receptor (Bohr)? It would seem as if each of a pair of complementary elementary particles formed at the same time would contain information about the other particle when detected, no matter how far apart in time and space, i.e., they are entangled giving rise to the counterintuitive ‘non-locality’ measured behavior. Is there an infinity continuum between the micro quarks and the smallest galaxy, connected by similar unit paths where quarks/measurable universes harbor respectively smaller and smaller entities and bigger and bigger galaxies, ad infinitum? Now we can place the unit quantum singularity, as defined to include negative energies, at both ends of the spectrum where everything in between, especially at our 4-d mesoscopic level of organization, will be ascertained as real within certain probability parameters of being detected with a receptor as a dark matter mesoscopic quantum phase with unknown quantum properties, including the consent-type of free will and intentional action in 4-d real-time scales familiar to us. Dark matter would be responsible for the mysterious vital force. Is there room for free will at the deterministic macro or the probabilistic micro? Currently, the prevalent scientific belief is that all phenomena and events making up the universe can be characterized as a mixture of materialistic determinism and randomness. This leaves absolutely no room for free will. It is also counterintuitive to believe that the details of our lives could be completely determined by factors over which we have no control. In our BPS model we suggest that we consent to one of several probable options subconsciously assembled from the various genetic, memetic and n-1d inputs and located in pre-motor cortical phase space attractors. We ultimately choose the probable option most compatible with a qualia of well being and happiness, however transient and illogical it may turn out to be in the long run, we have free will! We have published the detailed progression of relevant/irrelevant environmental info from a receptor to the neocortex with the participation of the unconscious (DNA genetic memory, amygdala), the subconscious (hippocampus/cortex memetic memory) and conscious (neocortex) processing. Yet, the BPS model is incapable of explaining even the basic self-evident human experience of conscious awareness, let alone emotions and feelings and other human transfinite n-1d experiences that lie beyond explanation in the model.

Another aspect of Dr. Close’s/Neppe model is energy expansion. Science has identified four physical forces: the strong and weak atomic forces, electromagnetic forces, and gravity. But, if the standard model is correct, there is a fifth force: the force of universal expansion. The local effects of the first four have been studied extensively, but the fifth is considered primarily on the cosmological scale. This article explores the hypothesis of an expanding Earth under the gravitational effects of moon, sun its own matter.

This raises some interesting questions: Is the ratio of energy to mass in the universe changing? If mass is increasing and energy is decreasing, as implied by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the speed of light is slowing down. What does this imply about the expansion of the universe and the evolution of space-time? Can we know for sure?

Dr. Angell O. de la Sierra, Esq. Deltona, Florida, Spring 2011..

End of Chapter 13

Epilogue*

These farewell notes are meant to briefly question what roles emotional mental states may play, if any, on your ability to dig deep into the abstract representational world in search for ideas to correlate with the situation being analyzed and identify the best alternatives to choose from. I tried to outline and discuss this issue in the last two chapter of my Volume III. I had been enormously stressed by family problems. My dear ex-wife Judy was not improving after her breast cancer had come back with a vengeance. I was getting ready to donate a kidney to my older son. My youngest daughter was having family problems and my oldest daughter left our house in Deltona to join her in North Carolina. I had to get my mind busy to avoid being mentally crushed by my own emotional feelings. Deep concentration isolates you temporarily from your existential problems. Besides I had been for some time now preparing myself for retirement from academia when I would spend time synthesizing my ideas on reality and consciousness. I thought I could integrate data from inherited genetic DNA memory, perceptual sensory input, acquired memetic memory, conceptual inferential input (based on language processing) and the associated emotional mindstate all into one comprehensive hybrid biopsychosocial (BPS) physical/metaphysical package. It would embrace the physical ontological and the metaphysical epistemological and fuse them together with the quasi-deterministic glue of quantum theory, leaving room for free will and a credible explanation for self consciousness. A big project indeed! I would leave out my Catholic religion because I was convinced I could use same arguments non-believers use to prove my point and be more convincing thereby. Somehow we had to escape the classical dogma that only the human mind sensations and rationality constituted the exclusive cognitive faculty. I had to find out what was in between, things like how the sense-phenomenal perceptual was coded into general neuronal network representations expressing the universality of otherwise direct, singular objects/events immediately present in the environmental niche and also how the conceptual was coded into general neuronal network representations expressing the indirect, mediate, attributions, explanations about their meaning to the body economy in the BPS spectrum. The search for meaning was to be found with the aid of language sentential or symbolic logic representations making possible the co-generation of self-consciousness and the associated emotional mental state corresponding to the particular judgment. That meant the interactivity relation between the sense-phenomenal (internal or external) input, genetic/memetic memory input and their associated emotional mental state. Ideally each input would be dynamically and globally integrated and the resulting package would be dynamically updated and be retrieved from cortical spaces on short notice as our adaptive judgment on a given contingency. Sensibility to the body proper internal and the environmental external, as a bottomsàup process would now include not only sense-phenomenal intero, extero and propioreceptors but also quantum electromagnetic energy absorbers. The headsà down process of understanding the meaning entailed the possible emergence of self-consciousness with the help of an inner proto language generated as a forerunner of the language processing.

The common denominator behind all these speculations was what, in my opinion, had escaped the imagination of most of my colleagues: the realization that both the perceptual input, bottoms up and the conceptual, heads down processes are severely limited in their capacity of resolution in our human species. Thus, when making judgment about optimal adaptive spatiotemporal responses to important contingencies, we can no longer have certainty about the truth value of our inputs or output content or meaning respectively, we only have probabilities. We have no choice but to satisfy that human innate curiosity about his origins and destiny and make mental representations of that micro subplanckian and macro cosmological invisibilities with the aid of metaphysical epistemological logic tools and cross our fingers. Ergo, the ontology value of an un-aided scientific methodology is complemented/supplemented by epistemology because understanding and sensibility are both subserved by the faculty of modeling with a hybrid epistemontological approach which I had promised myself to develop. Thus, incomplete in the absolute sense as they are, the practical reason that Kant defended must be now reinterpreted to include evolving explanations on the structure/function of the invisible, non-existential reality that includes theological and physicalist faiths. The cognitive processing undertaken by the rational faculty depends on the quality of the bottomsàup information to produce the logical inferences underlying our headàdown modal judgments -hopefully consistent and coherent- within the context of our biopsychosocial existential reality. And this is necessarily reflected in our evolving legal codes and constitutions. It is clear that the self-conscious affirmation of one’s existence, the “I” actor and observer, is situated at the executive vortex where all relevant perceptual/conceptual representations converge as the synthesis of the several semantic constituents of that cognition into the high order cognitive singularity of a cortical premotor attractor space ready to be consciously chosen to activate the corresponding muscles or glands into action. How these primitive neural representations become further represented in the form of a priori logical constructs and assembled within the existential circumstance and ongoing mental state of the subject and made available for free will access and choice may be outside the reach of rational tools and I anticipated much trouble examining what I consider the most crucial human cognitive faculty, that of making judgments. The most difficulty will no doubt be explaining the induction or cogeneration of self consciousness with the language faculty and understanding the cooperative role between the classical synaptic and the electromagnetic quantum processing.

It’s a new logical world we are all witnessing. The comfort of the quotidian existence under the Boolean world of truth or falsity and certainty has now evolved into the stressful uncertainty of a probabilistic world where disjunctive and conditional statements always enter the decision making process to preserve the truth-functional structure of logical reasoning. Many of us out there whose hobby is to model reality have to always keep in focus the our most serious brainstorm pronouncements are necessarily inferences on representations and never descriptions of observable reality. In the bottoms-up phase our brains represent inner and outer objects and events inputs for linguistic processing into other types of metaphysical logic representations and the heads-down output are only inferences representing a mediate cognition of that original object/event. Our particular judgment on a given situation, i.e., our opinion, is thereby the resultant of representations of previous representations until one final concept binds many representations and worse, many concepts may comprehend a single representation. Our judgments are far from being objective, they are inferential and subjective. That is the best our species can offer in the matter of cognitive certainty. That fact of life when combined with another fact of life, our innate curiosity about our species origin and destination necessarily makes room for beliefs and faiths, theological or not. I had much difficulty marketing this unpopular idea among non-theists. Not less difficult was my attempt at developing a convincing formulation where I had to settle for the cogeneration of language processing and self consciousness as just a convenient explanation for invisible processes outside my limits of corroboration as to the details.

Marketing these concepts to multidisciplinary audiences is most difficult, especially when dealing with theoretical physicists and mathematicians who would not accept that their physicalist constructs are in themselves ‘beliefs’ not radically different from classical symbolic or sentential logic representations leading to belief-type theological ‘propositions’. These latter type can be as fallible and uncertain as the former and, considering the intended influence in social conviviality, may be considered as subjectively necessary and sufficient defeasible/revokable propositions. Ultimately, they are both the result of unconscious genetic, subconscious memetic processing of bottoms-up inputs (from internal, external objects or events) into neuronal network representations, including their assignment of agreed upon language-related label descriptions or attributions predicated on their size, shape, color, etc. to be followed by conceptual elaborations predicated on those or related previous representations of same objects/events. At this level the functional copula subject-predicate (object/event description or action, e.g., table is red, chair is moving) allows the formation of logical language rules according to which judgments are expressed in a logical syntax and semantic form necessary for communication in a given language. Ergo, both mathematics-induced propositions and theological-induced beliefs are ultimately inferences about an invisible world derived from the use and application of pure laws of logic and expressed in a predication copular format (subject-predicate, modal-conditional). Coetaneous with the modifications leading to the final structuring according to truth-functional value considerations, a self conscious identification with such circumstantial consideration ensues. In this respect I took issue with Chomsky’s syntaxàsemantic vector in formulating sentential logic as being the opposite vector based on the primacy of the innate primitive biological self preservation imperative ‘meanings’ (‘intension’) controlling syntax considerations, the details of which depend on the idiosyncrasies of the adopted language structure. Curiously, the actors behind the recent advances in technology have given low priority to issues only capable to be expressed in modal or conditional logic formats especially when the brain’s emotional states, resisting logical formulations, exert a causal influence on the outcome of a decision to act or not. Somehow physical theoreticians seem to conveniently ignore the inexorable presence of real life existentialist component (emotions) in every significant human judgment. Unfortunately, it is not so much about the legitimacy of a rational, truth valued, unified composite of objective, meaningful and relevant parts defining a claim about the ideal world as much as it is about how the lonely leader and his emotional mental state circumstance will translate into the needs of the society he represents vis a vis his own. The logically structured, semantically well arranged, truth valued judgment representing the best legal and moral, biological, psychic and social interests of a collective is only a goal in clear controversy with the biopsychosocial needs of the individualized components of the collective. All propositional ‘facts’ or theological ‘beliefs’ are of necessity inferences about the visible and invisible aspects of existential reality, life inside an epistemontological hybrid reality we cannot escape from. Ergo, existential reality does not equate with objective reality. The former is an acceptable, subjective constraint of reality in se whose absolute truth and meaningful values are only apparent. On the other hand, how accurate and ‘objective’ can the human brain representations of objects/events be? Especially when further constrained by the imposed linguistic compositionality in which it must be expressed in both inner and reported proto-rational syntax/semantic straight jacket. Thus ‘objective judgments’ thus elaborated are not to be confused with the symbolic or sentential logic truth of their representations as materialist physicalists would have us believe, logical consistency is a necessary but insufficient outcome. Symbolic or sentential logic representations of the invisibility of the noumenal or cosmological reality can be rationally intelligible yet truth valueless. Truth is a goal to be achieved as we travel the sinuous path along an evanescent asymptotic line. Consequently we can only have opinions on the probable value of our representations of an invisible reality, and that is as close as we can go about knowing the truth of our reality. We can only aim at an isomorphic correspondence between the structure/function of an object/event and the symbolic/sentential logic representation as expressed in a syntax/semantic copula we call an ‘intensional’ explanation or opinion, not a description which we reserve for sense-phenomenal entities. This means that the brain cannot produce absolute truths whether analytical (in differentiating), synthetic (in integrating) representations before the facts (a-priori) or after the empirical facts (a posteriori). For all men and rabbits, all empirically based, synthetic judgments a posteriori are the result of subconscious processings and can, in theory, be programmed in a computer. They relate more to the guarantee of biological survival of the species as they interact with a potentially hostile phenomenological environment with limited necessary resources. At the exclusively human level where psychosocial considerations become part of the human species survival equation we have to resort to brain representations of the chaos of sensations and access an innate language faculty to classify, sort, combine, permute and parse to extract the meaning of an otherwise atemporal, acausal and asymmetric reality ‘in se’. Genetic and memetic memories of past and present provide the bottoms-up input of coded representations to evolve probable alternatives of adaptive responses to future contingencies to be freely chosen by consent from dynamic cortical attractor spaces. In the process both language and self-consciousness are cogenerated. The participation of amygdale, hippocampus, thalamus and limbic system in the formulation and synthesis of the representations (in harmony with natural law) into cortical phase spaces has to be detailed and remains as a great challenge to cage into a credible formulation. The materialist physicalist need not be challenged by a hybrid, epistemontological model of reality because, as Kant admonished, conceptual thoughts without perceptual meaningful content (intensions) are empty just like a pure physical ontology without a metaphysical epistemology is blind. The indelible complementary/supplementary and semantic interactivity of perceptual and conceptual (ontology, epistemology) is of the essence for an existential cognitive act to take place, for neither senses can conceptualize nor rationality sense.

However, all human species limitations in perceptual/conceptual resolution being considered, it is fair to say that there may be conceptual meanings without rational underpinnings (intuitions) or perceptual experiences that resist their expression as logical constructs (revelations). Should they be considered empty, bogus or meaningless and denied cognitive status? Just like quantum theory, nowadays the best ‘scientific methodology’ cannot qualify as objectively valid, it is nonetheless rationally intelligible about the invisibility of a subplanckian reality containing massless ‘objects’! Unlike this case, theological theist experiences cannot be combined with ontological measurements to generate quasi objective valid arguments as is the case also with brain dynamic modeling. But recorded history and human experience of negentropy has validated the anthropo-centered, self-referential nonconceptual intuitions we know as religious beliefs. The Cartesian type of truth preferred by materialists would leave no room for scientific or religious beliefs in that it requires the actual sense-phenomenal verification of the object/event being precisely reduced to symbolic/sentential representations in its physical absence. Beliefs, by and large, are defeasible and subject to evolutionary modifications. Moderation requires that belief be subjectively and objectively sufficient and coherent with sets of other beliefs. In theory propositions may be false yet the believer –theoretical physicist or mystic- can demonstrate that his conviction is operationally justified until revoked in the lab or the social ecosystem niche. The embodied finitude of the human species condition justifies more cognitive flexibility. And this includes a consideration of the inseparability of the human emotional affect at all stages during the elaboration of a final judgment, a very difficult element to include/formulate into the equation. The judging capacities of the existential human being in his circumstantial milieu cannot be ignored by self-serving purists. I hope this emphasis on human existential realities is not construed as a free willing Sartrian type of existentialism. It simply means that the logical format of Fodorian ‘propositional attitudes’ formulations has to emphasize more on sense-phenomenal content at the expense of self serving logical format. But, for the purpose of communication we need to categorize ongoing sense-phenomenal perceptions within the framework of an agreed-upon universal a priori referential for the purpose of providing guiding rules for the evaluation of objective truth content, freed -when possible- from irrelevant modal or affective ‘non sequiturs’, reminiscent of the Kantian ‘Categorical Imperatives’ controlling the participation of fallacies and moral sins in the formulation of propositions. It may be necessary to psychologize modality in the structure of the subject-predicate copula if it helps identifying the semantic content of a judgment. It is difficult to distinguish propositional attitudes from logic modality. A predicate monadic logic concentrating on ‘intensional’ content is valuable but insufficient for our limited purposes of a brain quantum dynamics model and we like to leave open the possibility of an interesting dualistic cooperation mentioned in the last paragraph.

It is important to realize that, because human existential reality is in the brain, an understanding of its dynamics must start with the raw data of sense-phenomenal impressions, in the style of empiricist philosophy. But these sensory impressions are limited in conveying information about the structure/function of existential reality. So to compensate for ontological deficiencies in resolution we need to complement/supplement the paucity of facts with an epistemological rationalist approach based on credible metasensorial, probable but defeasible / revokable facts as found in metaphysical logic propositional representations. After all, not all cognitions arise from sensory data but also from innate genetic memory, acquired memetic memories or a combination thereof. The epistemological component of the ‘hybrid’ approach I am suggesting will accommodate whatever logical procedure there is available that brings you the closest to an original sense-phenomenal description. This may take the cognitive format of substituting the invisible ‘form’ for its visible ‘effects’. This transition from a sensory ‘description’ (what) to an inferred ‘explanation’ (how) as an acceptable identification has two modes in their order of reliability: logical and natural supervenience between the invisible object/event X and the credible manifestation of its inferred presence by logical induction or a measurable effect Y. How does invisible X relates/determines Y? Ideally one can isolate X logically but not in nature. X will have a strict causal determination of Y iff X features are necessary and sufficient to generate Y features such that changes (form or semantic content) in Y will cause a corresponding change in X. In brain dynamic studies we have only a limited number of ways of establishing the relationship between the X variable of interest (e.g., anger, interest, inhibition/activation, etc.) and Y a measured (increased circulation, metabolism, electrical activity, etc.) or behavioral effect (crying, laughing, etc.) as a function of a controlled input (sensory/environmental or spoken/semantic) by the investigator. When these a-posteriori cognitive responses are elicited in the absence of sensory impressions we suspect they respond to innate or an unidentified a-priori input. So long as mathematics is a valuable language tool to represent objects/events in their absence or other representations, semantic judgments, a-priori or not, depend on their original tangible content and not on the language tool. It should also be noticed that sensory modalities are neutral and only the circumstantial reality of the actor makes them meaningful or not, as registered in the output/behavior.

I had previously been warned about the technological explosion of the post computer, late 20^th century age, and the cognitive strangle hold theoretical particle physicists had on controlling science/natural philosophy evolution into the 21^st century. I always like to stand on solid firm grounds before my mind soars into the virtual domain of open ended abstractions. In real life a good car mechanic may be more important than the physics prof. specialized in automotive mechanics when it comes to fixing my damaged real car. In the study of consciousness we have many problems to solve in the brain even before we understand how it works. But theorizing about how the mind processes sensory input and executes an adaptive solution transcends the immediate and sets the strategy for solving ALL putative and related problems that may arise. But you still require hands on knowledge about the structure/function of the car/brain the way a mechanic/professional does. When, upon retirement you work alone and when this is translated into mind/body relationships neither the bright logic mathematician nor the skilled neurosurgeon will do in a satisfactory way unless you go multidisciplinary and constantly fear spreading yourself too thin. But it was better than knowing everything about the computer formulations applicable to brain dynamics by studying more and more about less and less until asymptotically you knew everything about nothing! It would be hard work but I needed to escape my emotional pain and chose the multidisciplinary way. This decision required choosing the logical foundations of my ‘existential’ approach. My conclusions would hopefully be falsifiable in the laboratory measurements and/or verifiable on the metaphysical logic desk. Ideally my judgments on self consciousness would be of the synthetic a-posteriori variety leaving to mathematicians the analytic a –priori computer processing of their symbolic/sentential logic representations which did not require their familiarity with structural/functional aspects of e.g., the amygdala, hippocampus or cortical columns. Likewise, knowing about them and not knowing what to do with them other than excising them of injecting some specific medication when injured was not the solution either. We had to develop a hybrid approach combining their respective contributions into one whole unit, the epistemontological unit. We needed a synthetic a-posteriori modus operandi to be based principally on empirical or contingent results of varying degrees of generality. Our species sense-phenomenal resolution limits underdetermines sensory impressions as to their truth value and semantic content. Consequently, the resulting judgments are based on empirical, not a-priori, intuitions. The logical truths of analytic judgments includes those possible worlds in which human experience in those noumenal worlds is impossible. Their semantic content is conceptually, not sensory based.

It is important that we learn more about brain dynamics, about how we humans make decisions on important and relevant biopsychosocial (BPS) issues that control the quality of our quotidian and intellectual lives because human rationality is essentially oriented towards making continuous adjustments to optimize the outcomes of our interactivity with changing environmental influences beyond our control. Because of the self evident biological imperative for the human species survival, as witnessed by the spontaneous, unconscious servo controlled adjustments, our efforts are biased towards an anthropocentric focus sustained primarily by meaningful and trustworthy empirical/referential data inputs. Thus the emphasis on formulating our judgments based on synthetic a-posteriori propositions especially when analyzing the relevant psychosocial aspects of existence where the results may not necessarily be applicable in all possible worlds. This is not meant to stop the search for universal synthetic a-priori truths as a goal when budgetary priorities are assigned. If nothing else, we unavoidably come to the conclusion that beyond sensory phenomena there ‘exists’ a complex structured reality that resists being reduced to logical representations, an entity all languages explain as being caused by an ‘intelligent design’ without being committed to a tempo spatial description. While natural philosophies are systematically built up on propositions whose bottoms-up inputs originate from directly referential sensory attributions perceptual data, or their conceptualized representations, our innate self conscious faculties generate a higher order unity that requires the consideration of an ‘intelligent design’ as history and negentropic order testifies to. Is there a non-rational or proto-rational consciousness that transcends existential reality? Quare.

One often wonders why would anyone insist on continuing to spend precious family time trying to explain things like life, consciousness, language acquisition and processing, brain neuronal representations of information and their translation into inner and reportable language, etc. Is it not better to spend your unpaid time during retirement in sports and entertainment or at the bar? Why this almost obsessive compulsive search for explanations about an invisible world at both ends of a quasi infinite spectrum? Does the mind hallucinate when burdened with an oversupply of gray matter? I mean also hallucinations on messianic ambitions or on controlling minds for universal or self serving benefit. I never paid much attention to this slow but unrelenting drive to analyze, scrutinize and forever find a reason or explanation for anything and everything that moves or not. This is enough to drive anyone normal out of their minds to witness on a daily basis. If not, ask my pretty wife Suzi. Always moving around solving problems in perpetual motion along the fast track of existence. All of which makes me think about what proportion of doers and thinkers society needs for survival. Can Volusia County survive without auto mechanics…..? No! Can it survive without experts in classical mechanics theory…? Definitely yes! Should people be free to choose their hobbies after retirement? Some choose bar hopping, playing golf, stamp collection, bed hopping, writing, lawn landscaping, reading, cooking, playing music or travelling. What could be wrong with marrying your computer in a joint search for invisible objects to be arbitrarily represented with letters, numbers or words so you can now play with them using also arbitrary and convenient rules of play? Should that be considered a hobby or psychopathological behavior? Should we be saved from psychic self destruction………?

As a parting coda allow me to philosophize a little on what I have tried to market in the previous chapters of this Vol. III: ”The Hypothetical ‘How’ Integrating the What, Where, When, Who and Why of the Constitutive Elements of 4-d Human Existential Reality.”

This brief exposition could have been entitled “Reciprocal Information transfer between human species and n-dimensional space.”, or “From here to eternity and back.” for that matter. It naturally follows from my two previous chapters on ‘intraspecies’ and ‘interspecies’ information transfer respectively. Within the contextual guidelines of the ‘epistemontological hybrid, biopsychosocial (BPS) model, the ‘what’ refers to the information content (matter, energy) whether ontologically described in its intraspecies transition from sensory receptors to consciousness or epistemologically explained as it reciprocally travels to and fro man and n-dimensional space. The rest is my sheer wishful thinking poetry. The expressions are ontologically rooted on observables from the scientific methodology arsenal and on epistemological inferences from metaphysical logic axioms/tautologies where reduction to symbolic or sentential logic representations has been deliberately reduced here to a minimum to reach all informed audiences. The ‘epistemontological’ hybrid approach will become obvious if we can imagine the linear temporal transition of either a visible sphere or a line in our real-time Minkosky 4-d macro space as these structures sequentially halve their dimension until they escape unaided sensory or instrumental detection (from magnifying glass to electron microscopy). As the described features of ‘what’ enter an invisible extrasensory domain we have no reason to believe it has existentially disappeared (as long as we ‘sense’ its relevant effects) simply because we may have to resort now to explanations as to its probable presence somewhere in space. While it may originally sound counterintuitive, it is not difficult to imagine, e.g., the basketball size becoming a softball size, a tennis ball, a ping-pong ball, a marble size, etc. until it eventually becomes a zero dimensional point singularity, invisible to us because it has transcended/escaped our sense detection inside our 4-d sense-phenomenal state. Same argument applies to the visible line -or any other geometry imaginable- transition towards a spherical point singularity. Likewise we can imagine a not so linear, stepwise and reversible sequential flow of information projecting from different geometries inside or outside our sensory sphere of detection (which we conveniently may represent as 3 dimensions of space xyz and one of time) to form our 4-d Minkowsky sensory world. We can either choose 3 lines diverging from same origin ‘o’ at right angles to each other or use spherical coordinates inside a geodesic. This reverse flow of information arriving eventually to a particular receptor as a zero-dimensional quantum energy unit sphere (wave) to and fro all of space or hyperspace, whether relevant or not to the human species quotidian experience carries important information to our environment. Upon arrival it will release its energy content on any particle, atom, molecu