Silence

 

Silence is more than repose or the mere absence of sound, for repose has a duration, and absence is the negation of something. This obvious facts were made completely clear and explicit by Cage in his wonderful 4’33’’. Thus, it should make more sense to talk about silences, in plural, avoiding the common reification of a concept that usually expresses an indefinite absence and metaphysically grows to express a final and pervasive state of the cosmos.

 In music, there is one kind of silence whose function is orchestrational: we decide which voices intervene, and the absence of a voice at a given moment in a piece implies choices of color and texture. Furthermore, as we read in Berlioz (Treatise upon Orchestration), silence can be obtained through orchestration: With the view of expressinig a lugubrious silence, I have in a cantata divided the double-basses into four parts ; causing them thus to sustain long pianissimo chords, beneath a decrescendo of all the rest of the orchestra. In fact, if Berlioz’s treatise is to be taken as relevant to traditional orchestration, we find several places in the work where the concept of silence plays a clear and conscious orchestrational function.

 There are also contrapuntal silences, related to texture as well, but performing a more basic determination of lines. These are silences which give time location and shape the musical discourse.

  A third type of silence is the harmonic absence, which, like the orchestrational silence, can only be understood as a choice for no action. For instance, a plagal cadence could be understood as the absence of a tonic chord, and in general, any play with harmonic sequences which frustrates expectations is the construction of a silence. This kind of silence is even easier to notice than the orchestrational, for in tonal music we expect particular cadences in particular locations of the piece, while the orchestrational choices of color have a wider range of possibilities. In serial music the silence-absence occurs in relation to the structure of the given series of the piece and its traditional transformations.

 Silence is also a religious concept, complementing and making meaningful the myth of the primordial sound, a favorite myth among musicians. Sound and silence together have given a rich spectra of metaphors for the expression of life’s persistent mystery, furthermore, they conform a full mythology in which the musician can express a wide variety of cognitive and social emotions. Toru Takemitsu has put it in terms of the modern musical religious experience: Confronting silence by uttering a sound is nothing but verifying one’s own existence.

 There is a further dimension of musical silence which can be extended to any epistemological experience. Through the action of memory (Mnemosine), silence extends and transforms sound on the inner dimension of the listener-composer. The piece of music extends beyond its sound parameters into the realm of the listener particular connections. The semantics of the piece build upon basic emotions and memories, complexifying the original input. Silence is needed to make the piece intelligible, to give it a meaning. Silence becomes a receptacle for musical reverberation both of the physical sound and of the psychological process initiated by the music. There are a number of Bach pieces (see the Ricercare of The Art of the Fugue, or the Contrapuntus X of the Musical Offering, etc.), Brahms, Mahler, and many others, which include this kind of silences. For instance, he writes at the end of the piece a white note and right after a silence of white (instead of writing a whole note) in which the piece gains an extra time for its processing, both at the acoustic and the psychological level. When not in the score, this kind of silence is spontaneously produced at the end of a performance, sometimes unfortunately broken by an insensitive rush for thunderous applause.

The Foundation of Musical Action Cannot be Music Theory

1. We consider that A is the conceptual ground or foundation of B when the cognition of B is impossible without the cognition of A, and A is immediately certain for our intuition. We say that A gives a semantical self-image, for it does not need further explanation, but B cannot produce a semantical self-image.

2. Music Theory has developed since Antiquity with the aid of mathematics, reaching today a fully mathematical status.

3. Mathematics is a formalized symbolic language.

4. Tarski’s theorem states that a formalized language cannot produce a semantical self-image.

Therefore, music theory could not be the ground of musical action or of anything else.

In fact, music theory -as well as musical action- are based on the social life of the human group, which in turn are based on the homeostatic protocols for survival: emotions. 

Music Material and Music Idea

A persistent discussion that I used to have with Morton Feldman when I studied composition with him at Buffalo was about the relationship between the music sonic material of a piece and the musical idea for the organization of the work. Feldman always thought that it is the material what determines and conditions a composition, what makes it work for a specific time-span and not for other. His orientation was mainly orchestrational and harmonic, so the material choices would have to do with the right chord orchestration, the appropriate and careful choice of progressions, registers and timbres. My answer was that such choices of orchestration had a double foundation, empirical and conceptual, and that if we separate them we only obtain an incomplete picture of the composition. In fact, I insisted, it is the conceptual part in the choice of the material what gives a link between the microharmony of the chordal progressions and the general structure of the piece (as much in tonal as in atonal music). My arguments never convinced him and he kept composing in his wonderful Bergsonian way, but the discussion has helped me, through the years, to better understand my own expectations about the compositional action.

The tension between the sonic-perceptual and the structural-conceptual part of a composition is better understood in a general epistemological frame. Put in Kantian terms (First Critique. A51): our conceptions and musical ideas without music material are empty, and our sonic constructions without a conceptual frame are blind.

What kind of morphisms can we establish between ideas and sonic materials? The most common are those given by our traditions: instrumental sounds and contrapuntal and harmonic structures to organize them according to different theoretical principles, going from the empirical to the conceptual. But also, there have been morphisms which gave a sonic material to a particular conceptual structure, going from the conceptual to the empirical. These morphisms make our concepts audible, they give an aural intuition to something which is not perceptible through the senses. Examples of these morphisms are found in Dufay’s Nuper Rosarum Flores, which reproduces the form of the Cathedral of Florence in the structure of the piece, or the adaptation that Lejaren Hiller made for computer of a piece of Johannes Kepler based on the proportions of the planets of the solar system, or, say, a piece that would use the pattern of reproduction of cells and bacteria and assign them to two durational patterns for a percussion duet. In this second category of pieces, we obtain new perceptual objects which render abstract ideas into intuitions expanding the world of sonic materials beyond our more spontaneous ways of creating them. Another question is the aesthetical interest of those new objects.

The Socio-Epistemological Dimension of Music Composition

Neither our individual destinies, nor our future as species are written in the stars. For the same reasons, there is not a music of the spheres beyond the orbit of the Platonic composer and mathematician. Transcendental idealism is the remnant of the ancient fears and superstitions, not only entertained by the old narratives but also by the not-so-obvious mythologies of the universal law inherited by philosophy and later by modern science. Not all modern science believes in the existence of a universal law, but its Queen, theoretical physics, worships such hypostasized order of the universe, giving the norm for how we should think about the cosmos, and defining reality disregarding the serious epistemological problems of completeness faced by formal systems after Gödel, expensively selling their tale about the universe in tune with the most careless medieval metaphysics. This scientific mess, poorly balanced by the advances of life sciences, helps very little to the development of a musical practice based on our human law, i.e., in our neurophysiological limitations.

Music composition is mathematical inasmuch mathematics (remember that the Greek root of the word is related to knowledge) represents basic epistemological actions of the living beings (not only humans), as Changeaux and Dehaene have shown through neuroscientific experimentation. Music composition, like math, is an epistemological action which establishes spatio-temporal relationships among objects, a cognitive multidimensional process which creates life experiences, ordering life accordingly. As any syntactic algebra, it can be interpreted (modelized) in many different reference frames, assigning object-values to its constructions, whether sounds, colors, space-extensions, emotions, poetic meanings, etc. In this sense, music composition goes beyond not only mathematics but also beyond what our traditions (including the avant-garde) have passed down to us as art of sounds. I remember, quite some time ago, a conversation with Iannis Xenakis at the Viitasaari New Music Festival (August, 8^th, 1986) in which I objected to his Parmenidean exposition the importance of aesthetic decisions in composing, not as much in terms of the choice of beautiful sound objects as in terms of the role played by freedom in the determination of a piece, which an exclusively mathematical orientation in composing seemed to deny. His answer was that he valuated music in terms of the intelligence used to manufacture a piece, understanding intelligence in mathematical terms, i.e., according to a mythology of the universal law in which there is a unique truth and a right way to express it, in his case, an interpretation of the Markovian algebra for complexity. But intelligence is not just a question of syntactical complexity reducible to the algebra of thermodynamics, for there is an emergent semantical complexity in life which in fact does not fit very well into the traditional mathematical thinking, whether stochastic or not: the complexity of bio-social phenomena defy the simplicity of our formalized conceptual models. Music composition is a social phenomenon and can only be understood encompassing a wider realm of symbolic constructions, which are also the frame for mathematics (despite the vehement denial of the recalcitrant Platonists) and for any human action.

At the same time, the acknowledgement of the socio-epistemological dimension of music frees composition of the conditionings of music industry, the concert hall, or the world of art, which today tame creative action under the whip of old social inertias (the genius religions), for the epistemological value of composition, its applicability in many different reference frames, makes it a tool for the general symbolical development of the human being. The extraordinary vitality of the music composition of the XX century grew in part out of the daring of the avant-garde movement, but also out of its uncompromising attitude in relation to its social status (sometimes too messianically expressed) as a realm for free aesthetical action, a play proposal to break social and individual ancient shackles.

Medical Ethics

The prevention and treatment of illnesses is conditioned not only by our biological knowledge but also by the effective integration that we have of other sciences and our control of the physical environment. Medicine is obviously linked to the rest of human knowledge but, being the science of human life, is also determined by the particular social forms in which our life develops, by the economical conditionings in which health and sickness find an additional restriction. In this sense, medicine is a social science and a social action, not a mere biological knowledge of the physiological functions of the human body.

The social action of medicine, the self-care and self-preservation performed by human societies, is not the result of the efforts and ideas of a single generation but a vast cultural endeavor. For that reason, it cannot come as a surprise that beyond the evident success of our survival as species, the accomplishments and failures of the medical practice have not been measured with an identical rod, and the very same biological actions of life and death have been ethically valuated differently according to diverse axiological systems. Medical actions have not a simple biological valuation but a symbolically complexified domain which gives them a particular axiological tension. Such encounter of disparate forces –common to other life sciences- demands from medicine a continuous critical thinking in which theoretical reflections cannot lose sight of its everyday praxis, the resolution –urgent most of the times- of cases in which a concrete human being fights with death in unbearable pain. Medical ethics is the result of this critical thinking, covering a wide domain of problems, from the moral decisions of the clinical practice to the questioning of concepts like health, sickness, person, life and death, providing philosophical frames for their definitions. On the other hand, medical ethics examines critically the cutting edge research of the biological sciences, taking care that the main international political and ethical agreements are honored, and that the human being is treated within the ideals of respect, equality and dignity.

Medical ethics, like any other ethical action, is a ground for continuous disagreements and conflict at the individual and collective level. The differences of ethical codes are founded on different metaphysical values linked to ways of life, leaving little room for philosophical argumentation. Today, human ethical valuations range from those of the Anima Mundi groups and nations, to mixtures of different kind of universalisms of the laws and gods, passing through the materialistic valuations of modern science. In this global milieu, if there is going to be any general reference frame for ethics it has to be the consensual international conventions and declarations where the social person of the human being is put, at least ideally, at the center of any medical action. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948, the Conventionfor the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950, the Conventionon the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989, are today the pillars for any medical ethics, not as a final charts, but as starting points for further development.

When we talk about medical ethics we are therefore talking about a praxiological action (ethical and political) with epistemological consequences. The definitions of life, death, person, human being, sickness, health, pain, individual consciousness, etc., -according to our present knowledge of the universe- determine intellectual frames of reference that will produce new emotional and cognitive horizons. Such an expansion is not ethically easy. Medical ethics needs to be expressed through non-contradictory critical argumentations and not simply by sterile appeals to religious or political authority. To this methodological axiom, I would add the inspiring role of two ethical values which underlie not only the Hippocratic Oath, but also Aristotle’s works on ethics: love for life and valor. 

What is the purpose of prolonging life in painful terminal diseases?

Let us examine the problem from the point of view of rational ethics based on anthropological grounds. By rational, I mean a discourse whose statements are not contradictory among themselves, and by anthropological grounds, I mean a non-transcendental valuation of life, a human axiology. Particularly, I will use two anthropological ethic principles:

P.1 Principle of life preservation: We have to preserve human life.

P.2 Principle of primacy of the public interest: the life of the group has preference over the life of the individual. Human individual life is conditioned by the life of the group and subsumed to its needs. Not only my actions are rightful when they do not imply any sort of harm to others, but they cannot be autonomous when there is an urgent need of the society: we work and die for the group whenever is needed. And since the needs of society are always urgent, life preservation is limited by public interest, as has always been the case with wars.

In relation to our question, we can imagine, at least, the following scenarios for a dying patient in pain:

1   I.  The patient is sustained by public funds.      

           a. Society denies further sustenance for it is an incurable disease and cannot benefit from the situation. 

      b. Society agrees to sustain the patient despite the non-economic benefits of the situation.

1.   The community wants the person to live longer in pain.

2.  The community wants the person to live longer but not in pain.

3.  The community leaves the choice to the individual.

2      II.  The patient is self-sustained.

a.   Still the society wants to exercise control.

1.    Society wants the individual to suffer.

2.    Society wants the individual to live longer but not to suffer.

b.  Society declares the case to be a private choice.

In case I.a, when the patient is sustained by private funds and society denies further sustenance, we are dealing with a rational choice according to principles 1 and 2, for P1 cannot be enacted (is a terminal disease), and there is nothing positive for the patient (supposing that s/he is driven by the principle of avoiding pain) in the situation. The rational action is assisted death.

The second choice (I.b) has, in turn, three scenarios. The first one, I.b.1 is not as rare as it would seem. Such is the case with criminals or by religious motives in which the valuation of pain extends beyond this life to other worlds. There are religious ethical values that consider suffering as a way for purgation in the context of otherworld scenarios. In this case, is not the principle of life preservation that is at work, but a principle of punishments and rewards on a transmundane scale. This is contrary both to any anthropological principles and to the structure of most of our legal systems. Since this punishment does not serve any practical purpose for the community, beyond sadistic morbid satisfaction, it obeys only non-rational valuations, therefore are not part of rational ethics.

The second scenario of the second choice, I.b.2, when the community wants the person to live his/her final days without pain, does not affect the principle of life preservation, for life cannot be preserved in this case, and also conforms to the public interest principle, which in this case is to alleviate the patient’s pain. The rational action is the alleviation of pain whether by the increase of medication for relief or by the shortening of the condition of pain. If pain cannot be alleviated, the rational outcome of the scenario is assisted death, for since P1 cannot be accomplished and the choice is not to suffer, it can only be obtained by shortening the duration of pain.

The third scenario, I.b.3, is to leave the choice to the patient, which will decide therefore either to continue his/her suffering to the very end or to suicide. None of these decisions is contrary to the ethical principle of life preservation nor to the one of public interest, for life cannot be prolonged and the community has passed the choice to the patient, i.e., has given the ownership of life to the individual. This case is equivalent to II.2.b, and both are rational actions.

Case II.a. 1, when the patient is self-sustained and society still wants to control the life of the individual for it wants him to suffer (for whatever ethical or metaphysical reasons) is equivalent to the 1.b.1, and therefore, is not a choice of rational ethics. On the other hand, case 2.a.2, is analogous to 1.b.2, and represents a choice of rational ethics which developed to its consequences leads to assisted death.

Therefore, pain can only be prolonged in terminal disease cases under non-rational ethical principles, whether those corresponding to the personal choice of the individual or the group.

Feeding the gods: the market of human organs

In the Samoan myths of the afterlife, the soul of the poor is food for the soul of the noble and rich [Frazer, 1922]. Are we living in the Samoan afterlife? Well, for some of our unfortunate contemporaries the situation is not so different. Simon Rippon has discussed the issue in an interesting paper on the Journal of Medical Ethics, where he analyzes the thesis of the moral and economic benefits for the poor which provides the free market of live donor organs. He expresses the thesis of the Laissez-Choisir  (LC) argument in three premises.

P1. People in poverty who would choose to sell their organs if a free market existed must regard all other options open to them as worse.

P2. If we take away what some regard as their best option, we thereby make them worse off, at least from their own perspective.

P3. If a policy makes some worse off from their own perspective, it would be paternalistic for us to judge otherwise and to implement the policy on their behalf. We ought not to be paternalistic in this way. Therefore, we ought not to prohibit organ markets for the supposed good of those in poverty who would choose to sell their organs if a free market existed.

LC has been subscribed by Julian Savulescu [2003] and by Gerald Dworkin [1994] on the grounds of the freedom of choice of the sellers and the paternalism of any attempt to regulate the market. Janet Radcliffe Richards [Radcliffe et al.,1998], on the other hand, has subscribed LC on the grounds of a worse scenario if the prohibition is reinforced. Rippon’s paper refutes LC's claims on the grounds that sometimes you may hurt people by giving them an option that they would be better off taking: the addition of the option makes it more difficult or costly to perform the reasoning necessary to reach the best decision. His argumentation refutes P2, but fails to address what from my point of view is at the center of this moral problem: hypocrisy, or put in ethical terms, the inconsistency between the moral values of society and its actions.

The appeals to freedom of choice are a mockery: freedom of choice is always limited by initial conditions and only possible in a system with perfect flow of information, i.e., is just an ideal condition, a convenient narrative of domination which justifies many abuses. The sellers of organs do not know the full scenario but simply get into further trouble, buying themselves, at best, some extra-time: we are offering to the person a floating device so s/he can be saved to be properly eaten lately by the sharks. When we appeal for the freedom to decide upon our own body, we forget that such a right is denied at large throughout the world, as we see in the relation to the free use of drugs, or in war situations, or in terminal diseases: the restrictions on the freedom of choice for the individual in these three scenarios is inconsistent with the approval of a free live donor market. We have to decide, the body belongs to the individual or it does not. But even if we reach the civilized point of letting the individual decide upon his (her) life and body, the idea of a free market does not necessarily follows. Why should there be market conditions for human transplanting? The still on-going belief on the supernatural capacities of the invisible hand of the market, the old Laissez Faire, is an old superstition linked to other supernatural beliefs and has no grounds on economic data: market crisis are paid by the population at large through public funds.

There are not easy and straightforward rational solutions when ontologies are involved, especially when those are otherworld valuations. The live donor market problem has, nonetheless a solution based on human valuations. If we value life and freedom of choice we cannot interfere in the free donation of organs, but it seems rather perverse and human degrading the idea of solving (or even alleviating) poverty through merchandizing human body parts. Although prostitution reaches beyond the sex domain into realms of manipulation and domination, when we are dealing with body parts, nobody would sell a part of his/her body if the need for survival was not urgent. The control of the organ market by society will force other solutions for poverty, more permanent and consistent with the values that we are teaching to our children and write in our Constitutions, the values that can hold a community as a human social contract. From my point of view, our own life cannot be maintained at any price. We have reached to this point of social evolution precisely by standing against barbarisms and abuses. The ridicule and shallow proposals for a human life based only on money valuations, are an insult against intelligence, and therefore, against life.

References

Dworkin G. [1994]Markets and Morals. In: Dworkin G, ed. Morality, Harm and the Law.

Oxford: Westview. 1994. 155–61.

Frazer, James. [1922]. The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead. Vol. 2.  MacMillan and Co., London.

Radcliffe Richards J, Daar A, Guttmann R, et al. [1998] The case for allowing kidney sales. Lancet. 1998. 351:1950–2.

Rippon, Simon. [2012] Imposing options on people in poverty: the harm of a live donor organ market. JME. Med Ethics 2014;40:145–150.

Savulescu J.[2003] Is the sale of body parts wrong? JME 2003;29:138–9.

Constructive Neurophilosophy

Bennet and Hacker [2003] have discussed at large the regrettable state of the relationship between philosophy and neuroscience after Crick, Edelman and Zeki expressed, in different terms, their reticence to grant philosophy any competence in questions about consciousness . While Edelman [2001,208] proposed the grounding of epistemology in neuroscience, Zeki [Bennet and Hacker, 2003, 398] went as far as to say that neuroscience will solve the problems of philosophy. Unfortunately, neuroscience has not been able to fulfill such an ambitious program, but its contributions to epistemology are certainly elucidating areas that for long remained obscure and contradictory.

A polemical situation like this is not new for the philosophy of science. The epistemological discussions raised by the Vienna Circle and their extensions and developments well through the XX century met similar objections, especially among physicists. But the problem has even deeper roots, and goes back to the distinction between philosophy and natural philosophy, or put in epistemological terms, the distinction between a philosophy based on metaphysical assumptions and which proceed exclusively by inference from those assumptions (pretty much like axiomatic mathematics, or like theology, or rational ethics), and an inductive philosophy based on experience and contrast of hypothesis by experiment. The monolithic concept of philosophy and philosophical argumentations used by Edelman and Zeki does not apply to philosophy more that it would apply to mathematics.

From a constructive point of view, mathematics and the rest of our epistemological thinking has its roots on biological grounds, a postulate that, although expressed by Kronecker [Bishop, 2012,2],  it took till the experimentations of Changeaux [Changeaux and Connes, 1995] and Dehaene [2001] to be widely accepted, and only among the different epistemological branches that spread from Brouwer’s intuitionism. If we understand by biology only neuroscience, Edelman’s thesis would be right, but it seems too narrow a definition, and highly imprecise, for not only neuroscience, but biology itself seems to be only understandable in a wider astrobiological conceptual frame. Such a frame has to include also the anthropological system, the emergent buffer introduced by human societies, so we find ourselves in a much more complex situation than the one devised by naïve neuroscience.

No doubt, neuroscience has very much to say in the psychological processes of the ego formation and the question of consciousness (and Edelman’s theory of global mappings is a proof of that), but its language lacks the expressive means to address it in a critically manner, i.e., neuroscience has not the means to investigate its own methodologies (ontoepistemological bases of the scientific method, protocols of valuation, etc.), and therefore, to give a meaningful theory of the processes of life. On the other hand, if neuroscience adopts other languages (like the language of epistemology) to express their theories and expand them in wider conceptual realms, such action would be philosophical, and the parochial distinctions of Crick, Edelman and Zeki would no longer have any meaning.

The epistemological reductionist seems to ignore the semantical implications of Tarski’s theorem, i.e., it ignores the notion of emergence of meaning. Theoretical terms do not have necesarilly the same meaning in theories which are sintactically reducible among them. To reduce one theory to another is to find a common symbolical representation for both of them, and that implies that both have the same capabilities of expression, and therefore that we are expressing basically the same thing in both theories, a realist ontology which ignores the historical dimension of our theories and which implies the belief in an underlying reality beyond human symbolization.

It does not have to be called philosophy, let us call it constructive neurophilosophy or systems biology, or any other name, but the epistemological work has to be done if we want to have meaningful argumentations. The process is double: axiomatic critique (of the principles and of the methods) and theoretical construction. The results and postulates of neuroscience are needed at both levels.

References

Bennet, M.R and Hacker, P.M.S. [2003]. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Blackwell Publishing. Malden, (MA-USA), Oxford (G.B) and Victoria (AUS).

Bishop, Errett. [2012] Foundations of Constructive Analysis. Ishi Press International. New York an Tokio.

Changeaux, J.P. and Connes, A. [1995] Conversations on Mind, Matter and Mathematics. Princeton University Press.

Dehaene, Stanislas.[2001]. The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics. Oxford University Press. New York.

Edelman, Gerald M., and Tononi, Giulio. [2001]. Consciousness. Penguin Books. London et alliae.

Does the Church-Turing thesis describe the workings of the human brain?

 Modern computers are based on the Von Neuman architecture, which consists in a central processor that executes sequentially one operation at a time over a given data according to some predefined instructions stored in a memory. Such machines can be reduced to a universal Turing machine, furthermore, the Church-Turing thesis postulates that any computation can be described as a program of the so called universal Turing machine. The thesis can be equivalently formulated as: any computation is a sequence, and such sequence can be composed further into more complex sequences by a concatenation rule common to the smaller sequences. Does human computation follow the Church-Turing thesis? The parallel wiring of human brain seems to deny it,  in fact, the computer metaphor for the brain is inaccurate and crude, as many authors (Edelman) have carefully discussed.

Sackur and Dehaene’s interpretation of the experimental data from some basic arithmetic computation suggests that the old cognitive dispute between sequential and parallel brain processing is better understood in terms of conscious and unconscious computation, understanding such concepts in terms of Neural Darwinism (or equivalently, Workspace Theory). Conscious processing according to this thesis would consist in multiple serial stages of stochastically accumulated evidence, i.e., the operation of the human brain is approximately serial, a Von Neuman-like machine [Sackur and Dehaene. 2009, 209], or we should better say: although the architecture of our computers and the human brain are not commensurable, the linking of two conscious processes of the brain have an almost-sequential character, that can be accurately described by the model of a Von-Neuman like machine.

References

Sackur, Jérôme and Dehaene, Stanislas. The cognitive architecture for chaining of two mental operations. Cognition 111 (2009) 187–211.

Three Basic Neuroscientific Postulates about Consciousness

According to the widely accepted commentary-key paradigm for the definition of the concept of consciousness proposed by Lawrence Weiskrantz [1997], subjective reports are the primary criterion for deciding whether a percept is conscious or not. The proposal is akin to the accurate report concept of  Seth, Baars and Edelman [2005]. The reports do not have to be verbal, in fact, many neuroimaging experiments are based on manual reports of conscious perception [Dehaene, 2006]. In any case, the paradigm assumes attention as a key property of consciousness, for it would not make any sense a non-attentional report. However, the proposition “there is consciousness iff there is attention” is not subscribed by some neuroscientist, for subjects can become conscious of an isolated object or the gist of a scene despite the near absence of top-down attention, and, conversely, subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects [Koch and Tsuchiya, 2006].

Such domain for the concept of consciousness has been neurophysiologically characterized by 3 postulates [Seth, Baars and Edelman, 2005]:

1.      The EEG signature of consciousness. LaBerge[2006]: Synchronous activity in clusters of apical dendrites produces electromagnetic (EM) fields that can radiate outward, and if they are strong enough to reach the surface of the scalp they can be measured as EEGs. The electromagnetic field has been proposed as the physical substrate of consciousness by McFadden [2000] and Pockett [2000]. According to these investigators it is the overall field pattern within the brain formed by all of these individual fields that constitutes momentary consciousness.

2.      The dependence of consciousness on the thalamocortical complex. There are different neural-based theories which have postulated the link of consciousness to the thalamocortical circuitry, such as Llinas y Pare [1997], Bogen [1995], Baars[2003], Tononi and Edelman[1998] etc. The dependence of consciousness on the thalamocortical complex. There are different neural-based theories which have postulated the link of consciousness to the thalamocortical circuitry, such as Llinas y Pare [1997], Bogen [1995], Baars[2003], Tononi and Edelman[1998] etc. Furthermore LaBerge [2005]had proposed that the stability of the cognitive processes of consciousness (sustained attention, imagery, and working memory) are possible due to the stabilization produced by apical dendrite activity in pyramidal neurons within recurrent corticothalamic circuits, and that the wave activities of apical dendrites that stabilize the ongoing activity constitute the subjective impressions of an attended object and the entire sensory background.

3.      The widespread brain activity in consciousness. While unconsciousness is local, consciousness is a widespread neural activity, as it is shown by several (two dozen) neuroscientific experiments [Seth, Baars and Edelman, 2005].

References

Baars, B. J., Banks, W. P., & Newman, J. (Eds.). (2003). Essential sources in the scientific study of consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bogen, J. E. (1995). On the neurophysiology of consciousness. I. An overview. Consciousness and Cognition, 4, 52–62.

Dehaene, Stanislas; Changeux, Jean-Pierre; Naccache1, Lionel; Sackur, Jerome,

and Sergent, Claire. [2006] Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.10 No.5 May 2006.

Koch, Kristog, and Tsuchiya, Naotsugu. [2006] Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.11 No.1

Laberge, David.[2005] Sustained attention and apical dendrite activity in recurrent circuits. Brain Research Reviews 50 (2005) 86 – 99.

Laberge, David.[2006] Apical dendrite activity in cognition and consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition 15 (2006) 235–257.

Llinas, R. R., & Pare, D. [1997]. Coherent oscillations in specific and non-specific thalamocortical networks and their role in cognition. In M. Steriade, E. G. Jones, & McCormick D.A. (Eds.). Thalamus (experimental and clinical aspects) (Vol. 2, pp. 501–516). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

McFadden, J. [2000]. Quantum evolution. London: Harper–Collins.

Pockett, S. [2000]. The nature of consciousness: A hypothesis. Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press.

Seth, Anil K.; Baars,  Bernard, J. and Edelman, David B. [2005]. Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals. Consciousness and Cognition 14 (2005) 119–139.

Tonomi, G., & Edelman, G. M. (1998). Consciousness and complexity. Science, 282, 1846–1851.

Weiskrantz, L. [1997] Consciousness Lost and Found: A Neuropsychological Exploration, Oxford University Press.

Is there anything absolutely necessary in the world (universe)?

We can conceive something necessary within a particular scenario, like when we define cause as a necessary relation between events which determines a temporal sequence of those events within a particular conceptual frame, but can we conceive consistently a necessary being in absolute terms? Necessary relations in relative terms are introduced by definition as exomorphic conditions of the system, and they work as definiens for other relations and objects. Such is the Lebenswelt intuition of cause, which simply expresses a composition of representations (o better, mappings in a neural space) according to a sequence. However, as an absolute determination, the old bronze chain of Ananke reappears as a transcendental object that grounds a full set of old hypostasis of the universal law.

Kant’s arguments for the fourth antinomy are equivalent to these:

A. There is something absolutely necessary in the world, both[1] as a part of it and as its cause.

1. Our experience of the world shows sequences of alterations or changes in it.

2. Those alterations are causal sequences, thus necessary relations.

3. Since without those alterations there would be no world (for the concept of world implies the concept of time sequence) those causal sequences as a whole are an absolutely necessary condition of the world.

4. Such absolutely necessary condition is in the world (without it there is no world at all), both as its cause and as part of it. It is obvious that the causal sequence is part of the world, for an element of a time sequence (the first one in this case) cannot be outside of time. Likewise, it is its cause.

∴ A is correct.

B. There is nothing absolutely necessary in the world or outside the world as its cause.

1.Suppose that the world itself is a necessary being.

2a. There exists an absolutely necessary beginning of the series of alterations of the world. But by the first antinomy (Did the universe ever begin?) we have proven that it does not make any sense to say that the universe had a beginning (absolutely necessary or otherwise) or that it did not have one, thus 1 must be rejected.

2b. The series is without beginning. Nonsense by antinomy one.

3. The world cannot be a necessary being.

1’. Suppose that there is a necessary being outside the world.

2’. In order to act in the world it would have to be in the world and be a part of a time sequence. As we have seen in antinomy three (Could we be spontaneous?) a free action cannot be considered causal at all, for it cannot be inscribe in a sequence of necessary relations. In fact such antinomy shows the transcendental origin of the concept of cause, and all its problems.

3’. There is not a necessary being outside the world that could be its cause.

∴ B is correct.

But A and B cannot be both correct.

The antinomy shows the transcendental (a priori) origin of the concept of necessary, a concept that has been extrapolated from its life scenario as a notion of restriction of an organism within a particular context, to an absolute metaphysical restriction for the whole universe, where it becomes not only fuzzy but contradictory with other intuitions.

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[1] I have extended Kant’s disjunctive (...)entweder als ihr Teil oder ihre Ursache(...)  to (...) beide als ihr Teil oder ihre Ursache (...), for outside time causality is not causality at all. In fact, Kant reaches that conclusion in the second part of the argumentation of the antithesis.

Could we be spontaneous?

While the previous two antinomies of reason examined the contradictions in the use of concepts of our basic space-time intuition, such as the idea of a beginning or of basic quanta, Kant’s third antinomy mixes the basic intuition of causality with the moral concept of freedom, two notions of different conceptual order. The result is a rather confusing argument, though the reductio ad absurdum works beautifully simple by the appeal to the epistemological principle of conceivability: an object can only be conceived through a defined and finite sequence of mental processes.

Let us understand by cause a necessary relation between events (objects, relations) which defines a temporal sequence of those events within a particular conceptual frame.

A. Causality according to laws of nature is not the only way to derive the relations and objects of a given scenario: we must include also causality according to freedom.

1. Assume that there is only causality according to the laws of nature (CN).

2. Everything that happens in a given scenario, its objects and relations, the whole scenario itself, implies a previous state of its elements. The regress in the causal chain can be extended ad infinitum.

3. According to the principle of conceivability, such process cannot be conceived, i.e. it does not produce any cognition. But the foundation of CN is that we can conceive nature through it.

4. Thus there must be a form of causality different from CN that accounts for an spontaneous beginning in causality.

∴ A is correct.

B. CN is the only principle at work in nature: There is no freedom or spontaneity of any class.

1. Assume that there is freedom as an especial form of causality (CF).

2. A scenario and its objects could then be just spontaneously produced following CF and not CN.

3. We can conceive such a finite sequence if it is well defined, however, the connection of the events in CF do not follow a necessary connection, for the freedom or spontaneity implies that the action might be initiated or not, i.e. it is contingent and not necessary.

4. Then, a free action cannot be considered a causal action at all.

∴ B is correct.

A and B cannot be both correct.

In terms of physics, any initial movement not defined explicitly within a particular conceptual frame of physics is nothing but a transcendental object which produces antinomies. Human freedom is a moral object defined in psychological and social terms, not translatable to the basic magnitudes of physics.

In terms of morals, the will receives different mythological interpretations according to the exomorphic representations used in the construction of social and individual identity. In morals, it is the contingent character of the action what defines the actor within a particular frame, while in physics it is the necessary character of the action what defines the object within a particular frame.

The question of how much are we conditioned in our actions, has to include the physical (physiological) and the moral conditionings. Neuroscience shows a greater conditioning that we would like to admit in relation to our sacred realm of morals. Freedom is basically a juridical concept. Nonetheless, there is a realm where our actions become like those of the ancient gods: aesthetics, understood as our will to create, to compose, to make variations, to name, to connect the unconnected…

What is to improvise? To let dance life in us. What is to choose? A wonderful belief in our autonomy. For Walt Whitman there was no conflict. An easy equation: Spontaneous me, Nature.

Are there really atoms?

By atom I mean the literal denotation of the word: something which has no parts, as conceived by Democritus and Leucipus. Today atoms are strings, or branes, or whatever object that we may fancy as being the end of the line in the decomposition of things into smaller parts.

Kant’s second conflict of the transcendental ideas is formulated in relation to the notion of simple substance, in the sense of a basic form of atom or monad. Let us formulate the antinomy without his Aristotelian semantic operator of substance/accident. I will use two principles which I consider evident:

Principle alpha: A composite object is constituted either by simple or by composite elements.

Principle beta: An object, whether simple or composite, can only be conceived through a defined and finite sequence of mental processes.

A. Every composite object in the world is constituted by simple elements, and nothing can be conceived anywhere but the simple or what is constituted by simple elements.

1. Suppose the contrary: composites are not constituted by simple elements, then by principle alpha, they are constituted by composite elements.

2. Since there are not simple elements by assumption 1, the series of composites keeps going on forever.

3. By principle beta, such object cannot be conceived.

4. Then composites have to be constituted by simple elements.

∴ Our thesis A is valid.

B. No composite object in the world is constituted by simple elements, and nothing simple can be conceived anywhere.

1. Suppose the contrary: There are simple elements and composite objects are constituted by them.

2. A simple element can only have one single property which defines its identity.

3. Simple elements cannot be identical. When we say that A≡B, we are saying that there is one and the same property in both A and B but; but we are saying also that we constitute a property with two things, i.e. that they are not simple but a composite.

4. Simple elements cannot be different. When we say A≢B we are ascribing two properties to A: the property which defines its identity as A, and the property of being different from B. And analogously for B.

5. If simple elements cannot be identical nor different, they cannot be defined.

6. Since they cannot be defined, they cannot be conceived through a sequence of mental processes (principle beta).

7. We cannot conceive simple elements.

∴ Our antithesis B is valid.

It does not make any sense that both thesis and antithesis are valid.

The idea that there are atoms is absurd, and so it is the idea that there are not simple parts in the universe. These ways of thinking express the problems in the application of concepts of ordinary experience (Lebenswelt) such as “simple/composite” beyond ordinary scenarios. Physics steps very easily in metaphysics, in fact, it could not avoid it, for it has to carry intuitions from everyday life (Lebenswelt) into the formalized world of science (Überlebenswelt). Physics needs basic building blocks, objects and relations, to construct its theories, but does not need to reify them and declare them final entities of a universal order. Such attitude implies that as a science has to renounce to the unreasonable ambitions developed in the present as the ultimate kind of knowledge, and embrace a modest but necessary position as our tool to construct concepts for the experience of space-time and matter.  

Did the universe ever begin?

    Antinomies are the guardians of a threshold.

It seems rather reasonable to suppose that the universe had to begin sometime. Our traditional myths confirm it, they even ascribe authorship to the action, and even modern mythology tells us of an instant cero, (or is it a one?)  anyway, a Big Bang explosion started everything. If we ignore the idea of an instant cero, which presupposes an observer beyond what we are saying that happens, i.e. the universe is the universe plus something else unrelated to it (remnants of older mythologies) it all seems commonplace and obvious. Then philosophy steps in (didn’t it step already?)and asks: is that a metaphor or do you really mean it? Is it not necessary for an explosion to happen that the exploding thing expands in something which is already there, say, space? Then space and time were already there, are they objects? Certainly, if they were there, they cannot be relations among objects for there were not any yet. However, if you say that space and time were created in the Bang, then your explosion is a metaphor, but a metaphor of what? What is the literal referent? A beginning, but how could there be a beginning when there was not time yet? It does not make any sense to say “the beginning of time”, for beginnings and ends are in relation to events, and how could time be an event if events are results, occurrences which presuppose the notion of time? Etc., etc.

   Life in this planet had a beginning, and it will certainly end when the sun becomes a red supergiant, but we cannot project those intuitions of beginnings and ends to the universe as a whole (unless for artistic purposes). If we do, we step into antinomies related to transcendental concepts, concepts that are not in the league of our mathematical logic.

   Kant’s first antinomy proved both that the universe could not have a beginning and that it could not be without a beginning. This was the argument:

A.   It had a beginning.

       1. Then, there is a pre-time which is empty time, where nothing precedes anything.

      2. Since we cannot make distinctions of any kind between its elements, we cannot know whether or not anything exists, nor we can determine the starting point in relation to anything else, so we would not know if it actually was the beginning.

  ∴ Therefore, the universe could not have a beginning.

B.   It had not a beginning.

     1. Then, between any two moments an eternity would have elapsed, and also an infinite series of eternities.

      2. But we cannot complete an infinite series through a successive synthesis of thought.

      ∴ Therefore, the universe could not be without a beginning.

Thus, we obtain an antinomy.

The argument is based on reductio ad absurdum as a consequence of our incapacity to think the universe in both cases. The antinomy is interesting for it points out  not to any theories of the constitution of matter but to the limitations of our rational thinking to the construction of causal sequences.

Let us give another argument for the antinomy:

A.   It had one and only one beginning.

       1. Then, it had to be a single space-time point starting the sequence.

    2. But we cannot think about a single point, for points are not individual objects and cannot be characterized by their properties. In fact, none could observe it or even think about it.

       ∴ Therefore, the universe had not a single beginning.

B.   It had no beginning.

     1. But we can pick a random set of points from such sequence and build a reference frame in relation to an arbitrary set of properties of matter, and boldly declare the set as the beginning. This seems to be a rather non-philosophical decision, but it is precisely the one adopted by modern science.

    ∴ Therefore, the universe had a single beginning.

   It does not make any sense to say that the universe had a beginning, neither that it did not have it, as it does not make any sense to say that Ra’s Eye (the sun, for us) sees everything, neither that it does not see anything at all.

Quid tibi tanto operest, mortalis?

   

   There is a wonderful passage in Lucretius in which Nature speaks to the old dying man who wails aloud, over-complaining about his own death: What troubles you so much, oh mortal? The passage is part of a long funerary advice for those who do not practice the dreams of an afterlife, a consolation before death that follows the principles of the human law.

   If you lived well, what is all this groan and moan about? Why don’t you, like a banqueter fed full of life retire, and rest in peace forever, you greedy?

   But if you lived a miserable life, if all you once had is now spilt and lost, why do you lament the end of your pains, why would you like to add more, you fool?

   The one who lived gathering blessings develops greed, a condition of the dopaminic emotional system in which the neurotransmitters responsible for the movement and search functions of the organism cannot be turned off. It is curious how such a lack of balance has been favored in relation to economic matters and discourage in relation to thinking, precisely the ground where it would find its own limits: the dopamine cause.

   The fool who lives a miserable life and still wants to continue is showing a condition of extreme fear, an unhealthy response to the enculturation myths of death, the metaphysical morphine provided by religions which extends checks of immortality wrapped in the uncertainties of a trial controlled by a long list of (difficult to avoid) superstitions in relation to family and group.

   The manipulation of these matters is the technology of immortality, a way of life and a profession since the times of the myths of Osiris. It was the counterpart to the development of a genuine private sphere of emotion, of self-identity and self-consciousness, i.e. a narrative of a person in me, in you, which is independent of the economic personae which we have to perform within our human group. The lyrical citizen claims his/her immortality as the logical development of a conscious life, for we feel that what we are is not limited to our particular body or circumstances (part of the Aeschillus Paradox).

   Fear of death is only overcome by a better understanding of life, and by this I mean an understanding of its processes through the modern myths of astrobiology, contrasting them with the Ancient myths, and developing our own understanding. The art of dying on time, neither becoming a zombie not a priest of senseless early deaths, is an art to be developed by each one of us. Grow up: nobody can tell you what is your life or your death, nobody! Think-live by yourself, from this amazing here and now.

Undecidability and Modern Physics

    Let us construct a symbolic formal system with the following elements:

1. An arbitrary axiomatic system which contains Gödel’s axiomatic system together with its rules of inference, say G_a.

2. The functions and relations of the system are recursively defined and free from contradiction.

3. We construct an isomorphic representation of the subsystem of non-numerical symbols by a system of positive integers, ascribing natural numbers to the symbols. Therefore, we can express any formula in numerical terms (particularly as a sequence of primes, as Gödel did, but the fundamental theorem of arithmetic is irrelevant for our argument), and also express proofs as sequences of positive integers.

4. We construct a set of formulas F which are directly provable within the system and which represent common expressions of our calculus. 

Then, for every formula f_i ∈ F, there is a numerical formula p_i ∈ P, for P⊆ F, such that G_a⊢ p_i.

Construct now a f_j which expresses “this formula is not provable”, a valid and meaningful expression of our calculus. Therefore, there is a p_j numerical formula which corresponds to f_j.

The undecidability theorem says that p_j is undecidable (unentscheidbare).

Proof:

Suppose p_j is true. Then p_j is not provable, but p_j ∈ F, set of directly provable formulas, so there is a contradiction.

Suppose p_j is false. Then ¬ p_j is true, i.e. p_j is provable, but p_j says that it is not provable, so there is a contradiction.

Therefore, we cannot decide about p_j

   We say that a system S is complete when for a given formula A∈ S, we can prove either A or ¬A. In our case, G_a is not complete.

   Physics considers itself immune to Gödel’s theorems. Gordon Kane, with the blessings of Edward Witten, has publically rejected the validity of the completeness theorem for physics, to name but a single and significant case of the irrelevant effects which Gödel theorems had in physics. But I fail to see how.

   The laws of a conceptual system of physics are equivalent, at best, to theorems of a calculus which express necessary connections. Then a true formula of physics would be provable from the conceptual physical frame (made by both theoretical and observational concepts) where it belongs, i.e. formulas are proven by experiment but experiments are only meaningful within a particular conceptual frame. We can construct for such system an isomorphic image of its semantic formulas (those that say if a formula of the physical system is either true or false) in the system of the positive integers, and make a calculus of formulas that operates like G_a, establishing functions and relations recursively defined all the way to statements of our more basic experience (Lebenswelt). Nonetheless, by the undecidability theorem, such calculus is not complete. In turn, this implies that conceptual physical systems are incomplete.

   What is then physics talking about when it says that is unveiling the ultimate laws of nature? It is building a contemporary narrative of the universe, repeating the traditional unveiling of Isis, though the image constructed has not more logical foundations than the old theosophical one. Inasmuch as physics insists in giving ontological proofs of a particular constitution of the universe based in arithmetic, it will only give an incomplete image. Of course, if it renounces arithmetic, it would have to return to the old shaman visions, and not even that, for arithmetic is just a generalization of the individuation processes and time experience in high organisms. However, this does not mean that there is a complete conceptual construction, or could ever be one. In fact, when considering that for any statement of a calculus either A or ¬A is provable, we are declaring a principle of epistemological omnipotence very much related to a belief in universal laws. Undecidability is the logical declaration of the mirage of the  physical universal law, too heavy a blow for the traditional epistemological aspirations of the Queen of Sciences, modern physics.