Scientific Brain Model Chapter VIII

 CHAPTER VIII - Humanity functions as a giant macroscopic brain: How does the sense of - collective or individual - consciousness emerge?

 * In the past - much unlike today -, humans lived at subsistence levels and the competition among groups was as fierce as unforgiving. One mistake and you were out; those groups who did not come up with the strongest innovations and most efficient practices were simply wiped out by those who did. In stark contrast, today we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. 

Primitive humans did not have at their disposal today's wealth of knowledge, upon which they could make inferences and build up. Clearly, if you have never heard about atoms, you will never be able to understand what is a molecule. If nobody has ever taught you the concept of living cells; you will be hardly able to make any sense of any biological process. What is more, in the past we were not nearly as powerful as we are in the contemporary times; but we were just living at subsistence levels: one tiny mistake and you were out. Our basic needs could not always be covered and folks were not ready to bow their heads down with just a series of misleading rhetorical tricks. Real results were needed or the whole group might be wiped off. THe competition was fierce and only those who came up with the strongest innovations and most efficient practices made it alive. 

* As it turns out, those groups who hit upon a good balance between competition and cooperation came up with the strongest fit to how things work.

 

Indeed, competition and the cooperation that follows from necessity are discovery and innovation's best fertilizers. Competition among the members of the group ensure that only the best ideas were followed, whereas the mediocre ones were abandoned. On the other hand, information exchange and cooperation enabled everybody to contribute to the collectivity, so that the group's human resources were optimized.

Fascinatingly, if we consider human evolution, from prehistoric to historical times, we could get a good glimpse of how the human learning process advanced and little by little we came up with new ideas, with which to improve our interaction with our environment. Now, self-minded as we are, - not unlike any other animal in Nature - humans do not require any incentive in order to compete against one another. But, cooperation, on the other hand, requires some information-exchange mechanism to be in place. Definitely, as we figured things out, we also had to come up with ways to share the new knowledge; otherwise it would die with us.

* Cooperation was boosted as language supercharged the dissemination of knowledge. THe development of a full-fledge language and an ever richer conceptual framework of how things work were two sides of the same coin. A virtuous circle was thus established, as a richer conceptual framework led to a more sophisticated language, which in turn empowered more individuals to perform a more educated exploration for new findings, with which our collective conceptual framework of how things work was further enhanced. 

At first, knowledge was transmitted as the new generations simply imitated the behaviors and gestures of the grown ups. But language obviously offers a far more versatile and powerful form of disseminating information. It was then a matter of time before we would somehow start agreeing on how we would refer to things. Probably the most natural method was to point at things to clearly indicate what exactly is that we are thinking about. That certainly does it for the most essential stuff. Once there was a basis, our primitive ancestors' language skills could naturally grow as parents demonstrated to the kids how to start a fire, how to sharpen a flint, how to make bread, how to smelt metal, how to put speech in writing... and the rest is history! Language definitely became a formidable tool to spread knowledge like wildfire. Not unlike a massively parallel-and distributed computing system, as folks kept exploring and trying out things, they were eager to teach their findings - if not to the neighbors (against whom, let us be honest, we after all have to compete) - at least to their children. It is like everybody was playing chess games in parallel, trying every possible action and making note of the outcomes of their experiments, so that those who followed could learn from their experiences. Obviously, those comunities which attained a better understanding of how things work got an evolutionary edge. It is then of no surprise that, as special and intelligent we enjoy thinking we are, many other animal species likewise evolved some form of language. Indeed, there is no indication that we were able to figure out more stuff and developed a greater knowledge; because we got a smarter decision-making agent, some sort of premium neurons or our brains were wired up in a particularly brilliant fashion. Rather, it seems more reasonable and plausible an explanation, according to which our Devil's idle hands afforded us more freedom to play and try out a wider array of actions, and, therefore, we were able to develop a richer conceptual framework. A virtuous circle is then established, as a richer conceptual framework leads to a more sophisticated language, which in turn empowers more individuals to perform a more educated exploration for new findings, with which to further enhance our collective conceptual framework. It so speaks to how stupid we have become, that since Civilization started to distinguish the members of the society by the exquisiteness of their lineages, still to the present time, we have always denied good education to the great majority of the population; particularly the youths of low socio-economic origin, precisely those who - despite, perhaps, having been damned with a vulgar decision-making agent - will always be more willing to put a bigger effort in exploring new better solutions. No doubt about it, if we have not figured out that humanity is the most powerful computing system in the world, it is because we definitely are not even half as smart as we believe to be. God bless then those wonderful folks, who took the first steps in the development of the internet. We will never be grateful enough to them, since it is hard to see how we would be able to escape from total collapse without their work.

* To the extent that our ability to figure things out is the capital reason of our success, it is useful to view humanity as the most powerful of all (learning) computing systems: Not unlike the neurons in the brain, we form a massively parallel and distributed processing network. Not unlike the neurons in the brain, we compete against and cooperate with one another, as we look for the best recipes to accomplish our goals. Natural language is the coding scheme that the brain uses to code concepts and sequences of actions, and humans employ to share recipes. Finally, reinforcement learning are the dynamics the brain and human societies will (ideally) follow to reward, respectively, those neurons and those humans who come up with the ideas and recipes which work best for the whole.     

Language is so the final, critical leap, whereby we get upgraded from self-minded individuals to members of a higher-level complex system such as a human society. This statement may seem rather dull - given that the term 'complex system' has such wide meaning -; but there is actually a whole lot to unpack from it: The defining feature of a complex system is that it is composed of many components interacting with one another. To the extent that human societies develop some truly impressive knowledge on how the world around them works, it is reasonable to view human societies as (learning) computing systems. Logically, - not unlike neurons to the brain - humans are the units of the 'humanity' computing system, since it is the competition and cooperation among humans what constitutes the basis for the computations of the whole. As observed above, it is the information exchange powered by language, what brings this complex computing system into being. At first there were neurons whose firings - and those of their 'neural associates' - were getting reinforced or inhibited, depending on whether the neuron's response was followed by reward or punishment. These simple reinforcement learning dynamics led to the emergence of concepts, which afforded a more efficient exploration and acquisition of sequences of actions for the achievement of a certain goal.  . Since concepts are coded in natural (human) language, the sheer sequences of actions represent in themselves natural language scripts, detailing the steps that need to be followed in order to accomplish the corresponding goal. Now, your brain might prefer to utilize a coding scheme different than mine to code concepts; but -given that we will be stronger if we work together - why not agreeing in a common coding scheme? Make no mistake, there is not really a choice: if we are still here, it is - among other reasons - because our ancient ancestors somehow converged in the same coding scheme. Those others who did make the mistake, did not make it out alive. Indeed, since we share a common language, we can exchange some really useful tricks and recipes to achieve some really cool stuff. Voila!, - not unlike what we observed for the neurons in our brains - those human conducts leading to success become more popular, whereas those leading to failure get abandoned. Furthermore, if we ever figure out how to establish a true (non-fake) democratic system, the society will implement those policies preferred by the majority of the people. In any case, with or without true democracy, at the end of the day, Nature's incorruptible and merciless 'survival of the fittest' rule will enforce that those societies adopting the most successful policies will thrive and prevail; whereas those which fail to learn from experience - regardless of how intelligent, beautiful, godly, fake-democratic or true-democratic their members are - will be prone to making mistakes and sooner or later collapse and die off. It should then not come to a big surprise that the most successful societies are those which develop strong, efficient and (most importantly) fair systems for education, health care, justice, etc.. In other words, the good news are that, as merciless as Nature's survival-of-the-fittest rule may be, at the individual brain level as well as the society level, there is no need for any rocket scientist, but the most successful conducts are generally those which work well for the majority of the members of the system.

 

* Indeed, humanity functions as a giant macroscopic brain. Our investigation of the Universe proceeds according to the brain's massively parallel and distributed processing paradigm, and our ideas about the world are likewise subject to the brain's reinforcement learning rule. We can then use this stunning analogy to get some very good insights on how the brain's most fascinating phenomena come about. As a matter of fact, if humanity functions as a brain of self-minded brains (as opposed to a brain of self-minded neurons) we can follow the same reasoning to achieve a much better understanding of humanity itself and the gross dysfunctionality of today's human society.

 Yes, some very simple dynamics can yield miraculously spectacular results! In fact, fascinatingly enough, we find that the same patterns we see at the individual-brain level get projected into the society level. Indeed, there is a stunning parallelism between the designs and institutions we observe at the collective level and the individual level. As a matter of fact, it is not difficult to see that this parallelism stems from the fact that human societies and individual humans are both complex systems following the same dynamics. Absolutely, much like individual humans, it makes a whole lot of sense to view human societies as living beings operating under the same reinforcement learning and survival-of-the-fittest rules.

One of the most obvious examples of this is the equivalence between writing and long-term memory. Undoubtedly, a living being will be fitter the better it interacts with its environment. But, obviously, it will be impossible to learn anything without memory. What is more, the longer the range of the system's memory, the better able it will be to learn to optimize its interaction with its surroundings. Hence, given the ruthless competition for survival, it can only be expected that any complex system operating in  this wild world of ours will develop some form of long-term memory.

Probably the most fascinating of the equivalences between the individual-brain level and the human society level is the sort of 'metaphysical isomorphism' existent between the individual-brain's conscious knowledge and the society's current scientific knowledge state of the art. Relating back to the earlier discussion on concepts, this sort of equivalence or 'metaphysical isomorphism' is the kind of 'thing', which remains sufficiently unexplored that we have not yet seen the need to give it a name, which to refer to it by. Thus, all what can be done is to describe 'how' this equivalence works; that is how individual-brain conscious knowledge and scientific knowledge correspond to each other. As a matter of fact, it would be inaccurate to view these two bodies of knowledge as separate things; but they are more like the two sides of the same coin. Indeed, on one hand the individual-brain conscious knowledge can be seen as the scientific knowledge state of the art of the individual's society of neurons; but, in addition to that, the society's scientific knowledge simultaneously represents the total sum of the conscious knowledge of each of all the members of the society. Intriguingly enough, the concurrence and synchrony between the society's scientific knowledge and the individual's conscious knowledge keep a remarkable parallelism with those existent between a complex multi-cellular living being's DNA and the set of RNAs each of the cells that make it up operate with; namely, while the DNA determines the global organism's behavior, the set of RNAs produced by a cell's nucleus marks how the cell functions. Correspondingly, while a society should in theory function in accordance to the most advanced scientific and technical knowledge, each of the members of the society takes conscious decisions based on his or her conscious knowledge. THe fact that DNA and RNA, as well as scientific knowledge and conscious knowledge are all nothing but schemes to represent operational information must definitely be a significant factor why it is possible to establish such a striking parallelism. Indeed, while DNA and RNA utilize a nucleotides-based coding scheme to code cellular functions, conscious knowledge and scientific knowledge use natural language to specify how human beings can carry out tasks and achieve goals. Admittedly, however, the human knowledge system is a bit more sophisticated than the genetic knowledge system: namely, language is the coding scheme employed by the brain to code conscious knowledge, but language is likewise the medium employed by humans to share such information. Needless to say, scientific knowledge is a synthesis of all this shared information. Now, not unlike a living being's DNA, the collective knowledge feeds back to the individual members' conscious knowledge. To make a long story short, language wires up, brings to life and keeps powered up the whole humanity computing-system living being. What is more, language is humanity's backbone, nervous and blood system.  

* If we can think of the society's collective consciousness as the synthesis of the individual consciousnesses of all of its members; then by considering what exactly represents said society's collective consciousness, what does it entail and how it develops, we can get some very good and fascinating insight on what leads to the emergence of our own sense of (individual) consciousness. For instance, what led to the emergence of the US national ideology and sense of national identity?

Now, it is important to stress that the society's scientific knowledge is the sum of the conscious knowledge of each of its members; but does not include the sum of the total knowledge of each of all the members of the society. Specifically, none of the members' unconscious knowledge forms part of the society's scientific knowledge. Indeed, scientific knowledge is the synthesis of all the information that researchers have written down in scientific articles. Thus, to the extent that unconscious knowledge is such because nobody has yet been able to spell it out with words, it has not yet made it to any publication. You may have a fantastic talent scoring tripple-pointers; but so long you do not know how to spell out with words how you do it, you will not be able to transmit your skill and nobody will therefore be able to learn it from you. An immediate extension of this observation is that nobody will be able to know anything going through your mind, beyond what you can explain with words. This in turn leads us to another fascinating equivalence: namely, we can think of the society's collective consciousness as the synthesis of the individual consciousnesses of all of its members. Indeed, there is the same kind of 'metaphysical isomorphism' between collective consciousness and individual consciousness as what I previously described between the society's scientific knowledge and its members' conscious knowledge. Now, what is so exciting about this remark is that, if we consider how does the society's collective consciousness emerge from its members' conscious thoughts, it should not be difficult to visualize how does our individual consciousness likewise emerge from our brain's neurons' activity.  

    

Before we begin, however, we first have to reach an agreement on what it means to be self-conscious. In accordance to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am", it seems reasonable to say that a living being's consciousness is the state of being aware of one's thoughts. In other words, consciousness emerges when one becomes aware of one's current needs and desires, as well as the plan that will be or is being followed to fulfill them. THe problem with this criterion, however, is that it does not provide any insight on how it may be possible to measure the degree to which one is aware of something. Consequently, the system will have to produce some sort of indication, as of what are its goals and plans to achieve them, in order for us to be able to know it is conscious of them. 

At this point it will be useful to bring back the earlier questions on the emergence of consciousness, namely: How did the settlers of British North America come to think of themselves as citizens of the U.S.? Moreover, why did they take up arms to fight for their new nation's independence? There is absolutely no doubt that none of the rebels had needed to dwell on the question, in order to produce an unequivocal response. Clearly, at some point in time they had come to believe, that their lives would go for the better, if they broke away from Great Britain, and they had got so convinced about it, that they were willing to take up arms and risk their lives to fight for such a goal. These folks then came to think of themselves as members of a new political unit, when a sufficient number of them embrace these beliefs and began organizing themselves and acting as one man.

It is certainly legitimate to wonder why these settlers came to feel the need to break away and whether there were actually good reasons justifying their conviction according to which life would be better under a new, independent state. As a matter of fact, for already many years they had been living in the new world and never appeared to find any problem in being subjected to the laws of the English king and parlament. Yet, at some point, certain distinguished figures in their communities started making the case, that their current status was insufferable and it had become imperative to fight for independence. Little by little, these prominent members were able to sway other folks and gather support to their cause until a sufficient majority of the population had been convinced. It then stands to reason to say that the 13 colonies had become self-conscious, since they would not have found any difficulty to produce an explanation, as of what was their goal and how did they plan to accomplish it.

In sharp contrast, our dear frog buddy is doomed. Without any means to communicate with us, there is no way it will ever be able to prove anything to us. We are so helplessly besotted with our own intelligence divinity, that - not unlike Ancient Classics - we think that all other animals are nothing but stupid barbarians that do not even know how to speak. Frogs, on their part, - much unlike dogs and many other pet animals - do not understand any word of human language. Frogs - much unlike dogs and many other pet animals - do not need humans to feed them and so could not care less what we think. Long story short, it does not matter whether our froggy pal's brain evolved any kind of planning and reasoning mechanism and or it is totally aware of its thoughts and existence, so long it has no way to communicate anything to us, we will just assume it is only acting instinctively and give it a resounding NO on the Consciousness Test. 

The point that I will try to establish is that the construct and sense of consciousness will naturally emerge in any (living-being like) learning system (i.e. a system which follows an ultimate aim to perpetuate itself and is therefore subject to the 'survival of the fittest' rule) making choices in accordance to the sort of 'tree-search based' planning and reasoning mechaanism described above. Indeed, as discussed throughout the earlier sections, once the brain becomes able to remember, maintain, generate and analyze sequences of actions it will be possible to establish a link between an initial state and a target state. By the 'survival of the fittest' rule, only those systems which learn to select and successfully pursue those goals that keep them alive will have a fair chance to prevail. Moreover, since the description of each milestone, as well as the instructions on how to advance from one milestone to the next, are all coded in natural language, as the search proceeds up and down the tree of all alternative combinations, the system will feel a train of thoughts of the kind we associate with conscious thought. Finally, since plans are represented in this way as sequences of actions, in order to generate a script, it will suffice to go through the sequence and transcribe each set of instructions at each step along the way.

For instance, on every turn, a chess player performs a tree search to explore what sequence of movements will land him at the best possible position. Basically, on each turn, he tries to find the one movement, which - regardless of how the opponent reacts - will progressively lead him to an ever stronger position. Obviously, he will be better able to accomplish this objective the more deeply he looks ahead. Now, to the extent that at any time he will be able to explain what are the reasons leading him to select a specific course of action, it would be fair to say that he is conscious of what he is seeking, as well as how and why he hopes to achieve it. Moreover, as he goes back and forth, up and down, left and right in his tree search, exploring at each step each of its options , as well as his opponent's possible responses, he will feel  the corresponding train of thoughts running through his mind.

Another question is, however, what is it good for to be conscious of one's plan and the goal it aims to, if the goal itself is just artificial, as it is the case, for example, for a computer system running an artificial-intelligence Chess-playing algorithm? What is the point of a plan, if there is no real objective in the first place? It certainly feels odd to speak of the consciousness of an inanimated object, without any real aim or purpose of its own. Indeed, as Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" reflection implies, our concept of what we call 'consciousness' is intimately tied to the concept of existence and the aspiration to (in one form or another) perpetuate oneself, and in the absence of these the concept of consciousness loses any real meaning.

Let us so return to a more realistic case, and consider how does consciousness emerge in a baby's brain. Assuming a baby's cries are - at the time of birth - an instinctive reaction, if consciousness is the state of awareness of one's needs, desires and plans to accomplish them; then it stands to reason to say, that a baby's consciousness first emerges, when its brain makes the connection between its cries and having its needs attended. If you like the intelligent-agent line of thinking, you may see this magical event as the miraculous awakening of a human's intelligent agent, by means of its first aha moment. Alternatively, the model that I propose here suggests  that, from the very first moment the baby is born, the kind of planning and reasoning mechanism described earlier is in operation, and is about to make its first realization. There is little doubt that we are born with a whole lot of instinctive wisdom wired up in our brains (like, for instance, starting a crying behavior whenever the baby feels any necessity); but, to the extent that we have not yet had any interaction with the environment, the planning and reasoning mechanism has not yet produced any conscious knowledge. Yet, since the day the baby was born, time and time again its needs have consistently been attended shortly after it began crying. As a result, the (instinctive) association between the crying behavior and necessities being satisfied, has grown ever stronger. Time and time again, the baby has felt some need and its brain has put its planning mechanism to work in search of a plan to satisfy it. Since the conscious knowledge base does not yet offer any good insight, all what the baby's brain has to go by is its instinct. As a matter of fact, now it has some very strong intuition that some little tears will achieve the goal. This is no longer any random choice. This is not a beginner chess player just trying out the first movement that comes into his mind. It is about time that the planning and reasoning mechanism puts our intuition to a test. If the outcome is then successful, the new recipe will be noted on the conscious knowledge base.

 

Voila! the connection has been established! From here on out, whenever we feel any need, there is no reason to rack one's brain, exploring hundred possible alternatives. Our cookbook has already an awesome trick for it: "I just have to cry a little and I will get what I want".

Clearly, the baby has become self-conscious, since it is now fully aware of its wishes as well as how to achieve them. However, to the extent that it will still be a while before our little angel knows how to speak, it will not be able to spell out its thoughts. Still, if we could previously agree that the 13 Colonies had become self-conscious, because a great majority of the population as well as their representatives exhibitted a strong believe that the new nation would serve their interest best and therefore expressed an unequivocal intention to fight for its independence; then it seems reasonable to say that the baby is self-conscious, since a significant group of our sweetheart's neurons believe matters for them will go for the better, if they all agree to start a crying behavior. The obvious problem with this argument, however, is that - to the extent that it is not known that neurons have some kind of decision-making agent - it does not make much sense to speak of a neuron's beliefs. Yet, if we accept that actions speak louder than words, then, so long the relevant neurons fire whenever it is appropriate to shed some tears and refrain from firing whenever it is not appropriate to cry, for all intends and purposes, the baby is aware and in control of what it is doing.

In fact, it does not matter what were the actual motives and reasonings, why the settlers of British North America fought for independence or whether they ever openly declared them or went surreptitiously about it, so long they somehow aided the fight, for all intends and purposes, their collective actions led to the birth of the U.S. national ideology.

Indeed, it does not matter if the vehicle has a pilot, who can explain why it turned to the left or to the right. So long the vehicle turns to the left and to the right, whenever it is appropriate to do so, for all intends and purposes, the vehicle is conscious of its aims and actions. Definitely, anybody watching the vehicle would swear that behind the steering wheel there is an intelligent agent. What is more, if the vehicle puts together its plans of action performing some sort of tree-search algorithm, it will experience the same kind of train of thoughts , that humans associate with conscious thought. Finally, if all that would not be enough, it turns out the autonomous vehicle does not even need a pilot, in order to be able to explain when, how and why it acted the way it did: since  plans are generated as sequences of actions, in order to produce a script, it will suffice to go through the sequence and transcribe each set of instructions at each step along the way.

* Consciousness requires - at a minimum - the objective of continuing one's existence. Or, what is the point of consciousness, if there is nothing to be conscious about?

Now, If we are ready to accept that actions speak louder than words and therefore no explanations should be required to acknowledge a system's self-consciousness, but intelligent behavior should suffice; then our froggy pal could very correctly contend the exact same reasoning should equally apply to it. Indeed, our buddy snaps at any fly left and right with a mastery, virtuosity and grace, that we could never even dream to come close to. Yet, since we will never listen to a single word it is saying (let alone be able to understand anything), it will never have a chance to make its case, but we will unceremoniously negate it any agency, self-consciousness or intelligence.

Let us be honest, the thing we call 'consciousness is not only ill-defined, but it is as cryptic as unfathomable and elusive to fully get to grips with. The concept of consciousness is of any relevance to the extent that it is a crying symptom. For millenia humans have come to believe in the existence of a soul or some sort of intelligent, decision-making agent, as the most straightforward explanation for our train of thoughts and sense of consciousness. However, if our brain theory on the orgin of intelligent behavior takes a scientific approach and therefore avoids resorting on the assumption of any such agent, then the interest of consciousness demotes to the level of a mere collateral observation, that the theory will have to explain: namely, what leads to our train of thoughts and sense of consciousness? However, since it no longer represents the heartbeat of any kind of decision-making agent, there is no point in looking for an explanation as of how consciousness produces intelligent behavior; neither does it make any sense to diminish the 'intelligence' (whatever this should mean) of any other animal species, if it does not provide any sign of self-consciousness.

In fact, on the opposite end of the argument, it would not be difficult to conceive a system, which - with very little in terms of intelligent behavior to show for - would appear most absolutely self-conscious to any conventional observer. As stated before, today there are artificial systems, which would pass Turing's Imitation Game Test, when confronted to any but the most highly-educated of the human interlocutors. For instance, if - as I suggested above - a system's ability to spell out its needs and desires, as well as its plans to achieve them, is all what we require to acknowledge said system's self-consciousness; then some artificial needs and desires would do to pass the Consciousness Test. Indeed, if the system is free to come up with whatever arbitrary aims, then it will not take a rocket scientist to figure out some plan to achieve them as well as to elaborate a scrip providing all sorts of explanations. For that sake, any computer Chess-playing algorithm would only need to output a script of its tree search exploration, in order to appear self-conscious and pass the Consciousness Test. Needless to say, the caveat is a system pursuing that kind of artificial goals would not pass the Survival Test. Evidently, since the system does not have any clear strategy of survival, but only pursues frivolous needs and desires, it will not be fit enough to make it out alive in this very wild and competitive world of ours. 

This is to say that it is of little value to be self-conscious, if one does not even know how to stay alive and all what there is to be conscious about is one's impending demise. Clearly, to the extent that being intelligent can, if at all, only be of any meaning so long one makes intelligent choices, it definitely does not make any sense to consider an agent intelligent because it is self-conscious, but because it prevails. As we see with Turing's Test, if the level of intelligence or consciousness is to be judged by a human, it will not be possible to obtain an objective measurement. Evidently, the only test of any real value is Nature's 'survival of the fittest' rule.