Evolutionary Psychology
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Imitation and consciousness
Problems of cognitive neuroscience
Death of psychology
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The concept of consciousness

Evolutionary Psychology

Iacoboni et al. say that their piece of research is important for
understanding learning and development, which is certainly true, but
I think their findings bear relevance also to consciousness studies,
perhaps much more than any high-frequency oscillations, for example.
In order to make my point I would like to summarize some of my
earlier considerations:

In any treatment of consciousness there are two features which seem to
be in contradiction: The first of these is the apparent subjectivity
of consciousness: I can know my own feelings, but I can always doubt
if other humans have such feelings. The second one seems to be the
opposite to this, viz. the commonality of the conscious experience: I
can report my feelings and think that others can share them and
understand what I say. In fact, even the term consciousness is related
to common knowledge (Lat. com-scire, to know together). Thus,
consciousness would be something in common. If consciousness is only
subjective, how then common knowledge is possible? My own thesis is
(for details see Jarvilehto, 2000) that these kinds of theoretical
problems in consciousness research have their origin in the common
sense separation of the organism and environment. The scope of the
usual consciousness theories is too narrow; when limited to a person
artificially abstracted from the environment and other people, many
essential factors are left out. If consciousness is understood as
something in common, e.g. common knowledge, it is impossible to see
how this sharing could develop separately within each individual.

My proposal is that - in order to develop a comprehensive theory of
consciousness - we must look at the phylogeny and at such behavioral
characteristics of the organisms that have made common knowledge
possible. I have suggested that the critical feature in the advent of
consciousness was the development of such common activity -
co-operation - that produced something genuinely new as a result, i.e.
a common result, which was useful for the participants and for the
development of the system as a whole. The specific feature of this
result was that any individual alone could not achieve it, and it
could be varied under different life conditions.

It is actually quite surprising how little attention has been devoted
in consciousness studies to the real products of human consciousness.
However, the evolutionary significance of consciousness may perhaps be
seen most clearly in the structure of the human environment and
culture, and in the way humans have changed the structure of the
earth: in buildings, factories, roads, and even wars -- all results of
intensive and well-organized co-operation and possible only for the
human species as a whole, not for any individual alone. The
evolutionary value of consciousness is also indicated by the fact that
humans seem to be alone among other animals with their highly
developed consciousness. It may be precisely this highly developed
consciousness which gave mankind the power to destroy all animal
species which were too close and also capable of developing a similar
kind of consciousness.

The advent of consciousness means the appearance of an individual who
can reflect his own action results, because they are not only his
own, and who can look at his body from "outside", because his "I" is
not located in the body. The advent of consciousness means that the
individual (or now rather his body!) becomes an object of his own
action through other individuals.  The "I" is not an entity in the
same sense as a body, but a systemic relation. The thinking and
conscious subject is not a piece of flesh, but a set of relations and
processes in the social system, in relations to his conspecifics.

Thus, consciousness is related more to the human species, and
co-operation within the species, than to the individual as such. The
contents of (any individual) consciousness are the contents of the
way human species divides its world in significant parts. In the
content of consciousness nothing "absolutely subjective" (i.e.
related only to a certain individual) is possible. Such a content
would not be typically human, and would belong to the content of
another species. This explains why consciousness is so difficult to
define. As members of the human species we cannot go outside our
species and look at ourselves "objectively", thus giving a definition
of consciousness. All our science and all our words are related to
the human world; thus, in this sense all science is creation of
consciousness.

With its individualistic flavor the consciousness research has led to
a situation in which the borders of science and religion get obscure.
The saying "we must take consciousness seriously", is not different,
in principle, from the saying "we must take god seriously". God and
"inside subjectivity" are just different sides of the same coin. God
is the whole species, separated, and objectified, as beautifully shown
already by Feuerbach (1841); similarly, consciousness is the whole
species, separated, and subjectified. Consciousness research follows
the advice of St. Augustin ("Go inside, there you will find the
truth"), but to get a scientific flavor it needs the brain and the
modern sophisticated recording equipment. However, if it is thought
that consciousness is located in the brain, this does not make
consciousness research easier, but more difficult, because such a
theory, in fact, mystifies both neural activity and consciousess. If
consciousness is located in the brain, is it located in the cells or
between them? Or is it simply activity of the neurons? Do all neurons
have "conscious" properties? Etc. In fact, such a research leaves the
ontological character of consciousness completely obscure.

To summarize, I suggest that consciousness is present when there is an
organization for common results. Thus, its development could start
with imitation. This means also that all animals, which cooperate
with each other, have some kind of consciousness. However, we, as
humans, can have access only to the human consciousness, because it
is not possible to overcome the borders of the species (exceptions
here may be dogs or some other pet animals, which may to some extent
develop human consciousness). We cannot weave a web with the spider
or live in an anthill.

I have also suggested that we must start our considerations with a
unitary organism-environment system. This means that we should not
look at two separate systems: organism and environment, and try to
find consciousness in only one of them. If we think that consciousness
is related to the whole organism-environment system (or rather a set
of such systems) then we can at once realize that consciousness cannot
simply be described by biological events in the brain or physical
events in the environment, but as a specific form of a comprehensive
living system in its all environmental connections. This means also
that consciousness can be found only in co-operation of such systems.
Then the problem of consciousness turns out to be the problem of
description of the common organization of such systems, and this -- I
think -- should be the main task of the consciousness research in the
future.

REFERENCES

Feuerbach L 1841/1984 Das Wesen des Christentums. Berlin:
Akademie-Verlag.

Jarvilehto T 2000 The theory of the organism-environment system: IV.
The problem of mental activity and consciousness. Integrative
Physiological and Behavioral Science 35:1 in press. Manuscript may be
accessed on Web at /homepage/tjarvile/art4.htm

Marco Iacoboni <iacoboni@loni.ucla.edu> wrote:

> Our ability to imitate is probably the behavioral counterpart of the
> relational nature of consciousness. The involvement of Broca's area (a
> critical brain area for language) in imitation also supports this. Language
> is a relational tool.

I think one should be very careful in interpreting these new findings.
I am sure the individualistic approach to consciousness will use all
possible ad hoc hypotheses to show why "mirror" neurons should exist,
and many researchers will tell us that these are now the places in
which consciousness really resides. However, the existence of mirror
neurons does not follow from a theory which states that consciousness
is located in the brain, but such findings should rather be explained
"away".

If we think that consciousness always involves co-operation within the
species, then it is self-evident that we should find in the brain
processes which correlate with actions of other people. However, if
this point of view is accepted it will radically change many of our
basic concepts of brain function. For example, the present findings
are especially interesting, because they seem to show that the
division of the brain in functional modules, each serving their own
tasks, is simply wrong. The neurons which seem to serve e.g. speech
are also related to the actions of other people. This means that our
conception of speech is simply wrong if we think that speech (or even
the neural basis of speech) can be located into a single brain. We
should rather conceive speaking  as a co-operative process in which
two or more individuals join their actions together, which is
reflected in sychronization of their brain activities. If we go
further we will perhaps find out that almost all those "mental" or
"conscious" processes (thinking, subjective experience, qualia, etc.)
which were earlier thought to occur in a separated individual brain,
always presuppose a larger context, viz. environment and other people.

In fact, I think we should devote more attention to such processes in
the brain which make co-operation possible, and in this respect this
new line of research is on the right tract. Here certainly frontal
area (or prefrontal) plays an important role already from the
classical point of view, because planning etc. is certainly important
for any co-operation. However, I think we should see the situation
now other way round than usually thought: Frontal area is important,
because there are neurons which make joining to the activities of the
others possible; not therefore that consciousness would somehow
reside in those neurons. Of course, if we look only at ONE person
then it SEEMS that precisely these neurons are the neural basis of
consciousness, although they, in fact, serve only co-operation.

From:             "Timo Jarvilehto" <tjarvile@ktk.oulu.fi>
To:               <evolutionary-psychology@egroups.com>, "Ian Pitchford" <Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com>
Date sent:        Thu, 30 Dec 1999 13:35:02 +0000
Copies to:        m.p.ward-platt@ncl.ac.uk
Priority:         normal
Subject:          [evol-psych] Re: Neonatal imitation

Dr MP Ward Platt wrote:
> If we are to understand more about the neurophysiological ontogeny of
> imitation, dyadic behaviours and consciousness, we will need to study
> mothers and their babies together in fMRI scanners.

Yes, this is exactly what I would suggest, too. Has anybody carried
out "mirror neuron" studies (fMRI, EEG, or unit level) recording
simultaneously from two or more persons? In my laboratory we have
carried out some preliminary EEG work with simultaneous recording
from two persons carrying out the same task (the other one looking
when the other one performs, and the other way round), and there
seems to be some interesting dynamics in event-related potentials and
EEG rhythms.

Keith Sutherland wrote:

> It may even be that psychology will survive as an independent
> discipline. At the moment it is under attack from two strands of
> reductionism. Wolf Singer has predicted that the problem of phenomenal
> consciousness will be reduced to neuronal mechanisms, and that higher-
> order phenomena (such as self consciousness) will be reduced to
> interpersonal and sociological factors. In the process the conscious,
> attentive human subject -- the traditional subject of psychology -- gets
> squeezed out of the picture in this classic blitzkreig dual-pincer
> movement. Indeed the philosopher, Thomas Metzinger, has attempted to
> build a model of cognition on the back of the work of Singer that
> relegates top-down processes to one small footnote in a 40-page article.

This description of the situation in cognitive neuroscience (and
associated neurophilosophy) well illustrates its basic conceptual
confusions. The confusion may be seen especially in the relation of
neurophysiological and psychological concepts: attention has effects
on "input", or perception of things follows from "binding" of
different neural modules together. However, most of these scientists
would have difficulties in giving any rigorous definition of the
psychological concepts (even attention or perception) to which they
ascribe quite an important role when looking at the physiological
events in the receptors or the brain.

From my point of view (Jarvilehto, 1998) it is essential that such
"top-down" psychological factors as attention are not "outside", from
where they would exert their effect upon the physiological processes
in the receptors or at subsequent levels of the nervous system, but
they are characteristics of the whole organism-environment system. A
comprehensive theory of perception should include such concepts, but
not as some mysterious factors influencing "perceptual inputs", but
as integral aspects of the system studied. I start with the
proposition that mental activity is activity of the whole
organism-environment system. Therefore, attention, motivation, or
emotions, for example, are not factors outside the system, but only
different aspects of its organization or functioning. The stimulus
attended is as much part of the processes of attention as the events
in the brain.

This means also that perception, for example, is not a top-down or
bottom-up process; neither does it consist of a sequence, such as
perception->action->change of environment->perception->etc. When the
subject perceives, he acts together with his environment; when the
subject acts, his action is not something that belongs to his body
only; it necessarily involves also those parts of the environment
which constitute his behavior. Perception leads to another
perception, and action to another action, because perception and
action are only different aspects of the same process. There is no
causal relation between the perception and the neural process as
little as there are any neural factors which would "cause" action.

Thus, psychology cannot be abolished by creating such dichotomies as
top-down vs. bottom-up, or phenomenal consciousness vs.
self-consciousness, and then reducing these to neural or social
factors. This sort of "reduction" represents only a cardinal
confusion of concepts in the present neuroscience.

I think Irwin Silverman is quite right when wondering why the article
was published in Science.

Ref.

Jarvilehto, T. THE THEORY OF THE ORGANISM-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM: II. SIGNIFICANCE OF
NERVOUS ACTIVITY IN THE ORGANISM-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM
Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 1998, 33: 331-338.
Web /homepage/tjarvile/nerve.htm

In response to Keith Sutherland's presentation of the binding
problem:

The binding problem is a pseudoproblem created by the modern
neuroscience, parexellence, and more related to the dead end of the
linear stimulus-response approach to the brain function than to any
real problem faced by the organisms in their world. [In fact,
the problem was already solved by Descartes when he chose the pineal
gland as the site of soul, because it seemed to be the correct place
to join the pictures from both eyes to one unitary percept]. The
problem is created through the following steps: The experimenter
chooses a set of stimuli and analyzes their physical
characteristics. He then records unit activity from the brain and
accepts as "correct" such responses, which have some constant
relation to the analyzed characteristics. This procedure reveals him
"feature" neurons. Conclusion: the nervous system is capable of
analysis of the physical characteristics of neurons. But then comes
the "binding problem": how are these characteristics combined to a
single percept? Here the experimenter does not realize that it
was HE who originally analyzed the stimuli, and it is HE who has
the binding problem, not the nervous system system or the organism
studied.

If the organisms would really carry out such complicated feature
analysis and synthesis in their normal environments, as indicated by
the binding problem, they probably had not survived for long.
However, for the organisms it is not important to analyze first in
detail what they have in their surroundings (how would the neurons,
by the way, know to which features they should respond, because the
possible features in the environment are infinite), but they must be
rather able to deal fast enough with THINGS which may be harmful or
useful. Only later it may be useful to analyse more in detail, what
these things consist of. In fact, such an analysis is possible only
afterwards, because only then the features belonging to a certain
thing may be identified. This is true also of our exemplary
experiment, because the stimulus exists, in fact, as a whole before
the experiment and before all its analysis as the
experimenter's percept.

Keith wrote:
> Timo:
> >The binding problem is a pseudoproblem created by the modern
> >neuroscience. [In fact,
> >the problem was already solved by Descartes when he chose the pineal
> >gland as the site of soul].
>
> >the experimenter does not realize that it
> >was HE who originally analyzed the stimuli, and it is HE who has
> >the binding problem
>
> On the same principle I imagine Dr. Watson could have decided that the
> clues left by the dastardly Colonel Moriarty were Sherlock Holmes's
> problem. To which the great detective would have replied: "Elementary,
> my dear Watson, it's all in the pineal gland."

Nice joke, thanks (although I am not quite sure if I understand the
connection). However, in my message there was a mistake which
might have made the text even more puzzling than I meant. I wrote:
> Conclusion: the nervous system is capable of analysis
> of the physical characteristics of neurons.
This should read, of course: "Conclusion: the nervous system is
capable of analysis of the physical characteristics of STIMULI."
 

I think Keith Sutherland is on the right track when worrying about
the future of psychology in the mainstream of cognitive neuroscience,
which logically leads to reduction of psychological processes to
neurophysiology. If we already at the start think that cognitive
processes are in the brain then we can at the end have only brain
processes, nothing else.  However, this is not anything new; already
Hippocrates thought so, and after his time many cogent arguments have
been presented in favor of the interpretation that there is something
basically wrong in this whole attempt.

When I wrote that Descartes had already solved the "binding" problem I
intended only to indicate that, in principle, his premises and
solution were similar as those offered now in the frame of the binding
problem. For Descartes the problem was that each eye produced one
picture of the world, but we see only one world. His solution was that
there must be a single place in the brain in which these two pictures
merge into one percept. We may substitute the pineal gland by the
prefrontal cortex, or synchronous high-frequency oscillations, but
the solution to the problem remains a Cartesian one: when nerve
impulses arrive to a specific region in the brain or attain a certain
synchrony then in some mysterious way a whole percept is produced (in
the soul?).

The binding problem is a logical continuation of the conception of
perception as consisting of elementary sensations each corresponding
to the analysis of a certain stimulus features by the neurons. In
psychology also early structuralists had this problem, but during the
last century their static conception of the perceptual process has
been replaced by more functional accounts (e.g. Gibson), stressing the
primacy of perception as a whole and the secondary nature of single
sensations. In such accounts perception and action belong together,
neither of them being reducible to brain activity, because the brain
is only one part of the system realizing these forms of behavior. (By
the way, why is there no "binding" problem for action?). Psychology is
the science which studies these larger systems, of which neuroscience
examines only some details. Therefore no psychological problem can be
solved by the help of recordings from the brain. However, such
recordings are not without value, because they may clarify the
contribution of some parts of the system to its working as a whole.

Kerry wrote:
> For us, the problem is that each "I" produces a picture of the world, but
> *we see only one world. Can we not therefore imagine that there is a
> single place in which our multiplicity of pictures merge into one
> 'collective reality'? Can we not substitute "culture" for the pineal? Doesnt
> this address the "something wrong" in the attempt to locate
> consciousness (and language) in the brain?

Yes, this is my point too, if I understand you correctly. I write
elsewhere (Jarvilehto, 2000):

"Hence, consciousness -- in a very general sense -- means appearance
of an organisms-environment system in which every single
organism-environment system acts as an element of the system as a
whole which is directed towards common results that are useful for the
whole co-operative system. In such a system it is possible to change
dynamically single organism-environment systems so that they may fit
each other in the process of achievement of results. In this larger
system the body of the individual gets the character of a tool; it is
in a similar position to any other part of the environment in as far
as it can be used in the achievement of a common result. I can look at
my hand in quite a similar way as I look at the hammer in the hand; I
can use both for certain purposes. However, the body of the individual
is not only "outside", it is also "inside", because the body sets the
point of reference for all actions of the individual. The body sets
the perspective to the world, the individual point of view to the
common result.

According to the present formulation consciousness is the
characteristic of the structure of the social system; therefore it is
not possible to regard consciousness as some sort of "inner" property
of the individual. However, consciousness is not only something
general, but every individual also has his personal consciousness.
This personal consciousness is not something residing "inside", but
means the personal participation of the individual in the results of
common action. Every participating individual realizes some aspect of
the general consciousness through his own action. The different
individual aspects culminate in the common result and participation in
 the common results widens the action possibilities and the personal
consciousness of the individual. The development of the personal
consciousness is therefore in direct relation to the possibility of
using the common results in one's own action."

> Continuing, can we not surmise that chimps probably learn to count in
> response to environmental pressures - specifically, of being under the
> watchful eyes of lab researchers? That is, why shouldnt the same S-R
> 'mechanism' be involved by any organism learning anything, if only we
> look at it the right way? (Another test of this incredible hypothesis might
> lie in the 'imitation' thread: is it beyond conception that a critter imitates
> something other than the gestalt *we 'identify' as a 'behaviour pattern'?)

I think you are right, although I wouldn't call it "S-R mechanism",
but co-operation. It is interesting to note in this connection that,
when teaching parrots to speak and to understand speech
(Pepperberg, 1991), quite critical seemed to be the method in which
co-operation was created among two humans and one parrot (Alex), and
in which the use of language was related always to real results of
behavior (i.e. no "extrinsic" reinforcers were used). Perhaps also
other animals could be taught in a similar way, and they could join
co-operation with humans and develop some sort of consciousness.
However, I think the borders between the species are very high, and a
human being can never have a similar relation to a newborn parrot as
to his/her own baby.

Timo

Ref.

Jarvilehto, T. (2000) The theory of the organism-environment system:
IV. The problem of mental activity and consciousness.
Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 2000, 35:1 (in
press). Web: /homepage/tjarvile/art4.htm

Pepperberg, I.M. (1991) Referential communication with an African Grey
parrot. Harvard Graduate Society Newsletter, Spring, 1991, pp. 1-4.
Web: http://www.cages.org/research/pepperberg/harvard.html

Robert Wasley wrote:
> instead of the term 'co-operation' might I suggest 'immersion'.
> Co-operation restricts the experiencial dynamic to sentient or near sentient
> beings. However in the experential dynamic there exist not only
> subject-subject relationships, but also subject-object ones as well.
> Examples of relationships of this type would be us in relation to,
> collectively or individually, with the physical environment or articles of
> techology. Immersion as a term is suggested because 'stimulus-response' or
> 'heuristic' or 'co-operation' applies to only the most obvious factors at
> play. In fact, the dynamic is a subtle, finely woven fabric of feedback
> between all elements. To make it even more complicated, not only between
> elements present in any particular environment, but those brought into the
> mix in the form of symbols, emotions, notions of the past, expectations for
> the future, and our imagination. Evolving such a picture encourages images
> of a social 'quantum foam' instead of some level of cause and effect however
> finely drawn.

Thank you for the suggestion; probably "immersion" describes better
what I also try to say. I try to describe a living system in which
all elements belong together and are defined through each other. This
is a little difficult by words. I also see this system as something
which extends not only spatially, but also temporally; so the past,
present and future elements are also real "co-operating" (or
immersed) parts of the system.

I would predict that psychology as a study of detached individual
devoid of any other connections to the environment and other people
than inputs defined by the experimenter, will necessarily go over
into neurology/sociology. If Keith wants to fight for preservation of
psychology in this context, he will certainly fail or go into
mystics. However, I have tried to stress that in this framework of
research there really was no PSYCHOLOGY as a science, but different
attempts to support folk-psychological concepts by neural data or
computer models.

I have the hope that it is possible to develop psychology which takes
into account the accumulating knowledge of physics, neurophysiology
and biology, but lets these sciences work in their own domains, and
develops scientific descriptions of human beings (and animals) as
acting PERSONS. As persons can be defined only in relation to other
persons it is not possible to reduce their actions or properties to
the description of bodies or brains of detached individuals.

Bernie Baars wrote:
> I have a much more optimistic view of the future than Keith does. I think
> psychology is being STRENGTHENED, not attacked, from at least two different
> quarters. It's not reductionISM that is the issue here, the endless arguments
> about one thing being explainable in terms of another, but rather actual
> FINDINGS about the relationship between consciousness and neurons. Immensely
> exciting scientifically.

I would vote here for Keith. What is exciting is the fact that there
are no FINDINGS about the relationship between consciousness and
neurons. There are only findings on changes of activity of
neurons in different experimental situations, and it is highly
questionable how these situations are related to any psychological
processes as usually no psychological theory is specified, and all
psychological concepts are either operationalized or defined on the
level of some folk-psychology. This is especially true of
consciousness. Furthermore, it is not true that
> Suddenly science has become re-humanized,
> and in my view, it will continue to become more and more human,

On the contrary, the present cognitive science has led
to de-humanization of the experimental subject (and with him all
other human beings, too), the only interesting object for the
study being only a single brain or a set of neurons in this
brain. The human agent is tranferred into his brain or even into
parts of his brain. The present cognitive science leads to
individualization and neuralization (perhaps even neutralization) of
all significant human problems. This leads necessarily to the idea
that rehabilitation, for example, concentrates on single brains,
parts of them, or even genes in them. From the point of view of the
society this may be practical, because the scapegoat can be always
easily shown.

I think instead of calling the present direction of cognitive science
(or biopsychology) neo-Jamesian one should rather use the terms
neo-Gallian or neo-Spurtzheimian, honoring the achievements of the
frenology.

Bernie wrote:
> Let me list the new PSYCHOLOGICAL topics that are suddenly hot,
> because of brainscan findings:

It seems to me that we are stressing here different things. I speak
for the development of psychological theory, and Bernie argues on the
basis of advances in recording technology.  The list of Bernie may
impress those who pay the research, but in reality the most (should I
say all?) of the brainscan findings and their interpretation are
devoid of any well-based psychological theory, to say nothing about
the limitations of the method as such. ( If the brainscan shows that
mental effort is located in the prefrontal area, one could as well
say that shame is located in the cheeks when the subject becomes red
in the face with an indecent picture). I think we are still in
cognitive neuroscience theoretically almost in the same situation
as in the sixties when this recording boom started (at that time I
shared myself this enthusiasm). If we cannot at the present explain
comprehensively even the appearance of simple itch on the skin when a
mosquite sucks my blood, then it is really strange to maintain that
we are close to solving the brain "mechanisms" of such complex
cognitive processes as production of speech or conscious perception,
for example.

Marco Iacoboni <iacoboni@loni.ucla.edu> wrote:

> The activation of Broca's area in human imitation suggests that language
> may arise from a simple ability to imitate well (see also THE MEME MACHINE
> by Susan Blackmore).

If we suppose that imitation is the first phase in the
development of more complicated co-operation, this would nicely fit
together with the idea that language is the means of formation of the
co-operative system, and that the use of language is related more to
the type of co-operative system and intended common results than to
any symbolic representation of the world.

Jan Holmgren wrote:
> I mentioned that Whitehead warned against the 'fallacy of misplaced
> concreteness', but I didn't include the quote. Here it is: "This
> fallacy consists in neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when
> an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain
> categories of thought. There are aspects of actualities which are
> simply ignored so long as we restrict thought to these categories." I
> think it can be quite reasonable to ignore the impact of qualia as a
> methodology in certain sciences, but it cannot be done generally.

I think those who want to "explain" consciousness by the activity of
neurons fail to see that a neuron is an abstraction, the existence
of which is completely dependent on the theory which we have about
the brain. A neuron is magnified by the microscope into our scale of
observation so that we may describe its anatomical structure with
such everyday concepts as fibers, walls, particles etc. In reality, a
neuron is something which we cannot directly observe with any such
properties. We see neurons as we see them, because we are conscious
(not the other way round) and have a cell theory, a theory according
to which the cell is the basic architectonic unit of any organism. If
our theory was that of chemical fields, for example, we would see in
the microscope only those fields and no cells at all.

Of course, we need a brain to be conscious. However, we need also
much more (environment, other people etc.), and the attempt to locate
consciousness to the brain or parts of the brain is no different, in
principle, from the attempt to place it into the heart or stomach.

Michael H. Barnes wrote:

> If this means we cannot explain
> consciousness by neural activity, it also means we cannot explain
> the earth's motion through ideas about gravity and mechanics, or
> plant respiration through knowledge of oxygen and carbon dioxide,
> the structure of cell membranes, etc.  ALL of our explanations have
> similar limits and a significant degree of abstraction.

I think you mix here several things. I understand that explanation
means that we describe something with more basic concepts. When
explaining the earth's motion though gravity and mechanics, we do
exactly this. My point is that, when explaining consciousness, "a
neuron" is not as a concept more fundamental than consciousness,
because it is an abstraction, which is possible only therefore that
we are conscious beings, and that we have a certain kind of theory of
the brain. A neuron, as we see it in the texbooks, is a metaphor
based on a neuron doctrine; it is not a "naturalistic" description of
the brain as it "really" is. I want only to stress that it is a
cardinal mistake to ascribe to this kind of abstraction that
explanatory power which is typical of the present main stream
cognitive neuroscience: consciousness, religious thinking, emotions,
visual perception, gender differences, etc. -- all of these are a
function of ONLY neural activity in the circumscribed areas of the
brain.

In the present situation it seems that any recorded change in the
activity of the brain correlated with some conscious or behavioral
process (usually ill-defined) warrants the conclusion that this
process is in the place of the recording. This is not at all
different from saying that walking is located in my legs, because I
can see my legs moving when I walk.

> Science is
> nonetheless doing extremely well at producing well-tested
> conclusions that function as though they were the truth (whatever
> that is).  In the history of the human race, to my knowledge, no
> other method has been able to show itself successful at reliably
> and clearly distinguishing between what will function well as
> universally valid truth and what will not.  Why try to make an
> exception in the case of consciousness?

My understanding of the scientific method entails that we should be
open for all kinds of alternative explanations, and shouldn't let
technique or recording possibilities determine our thinking. I think
the neuron doctrine of consciousness is nowadays more related to
religious belief than to any rigorous application of scientific
method. However, I do not think that the scientific method is the
only way to learn to know the world (or the "truths"). It may be
helpful in establishing some aspects of the world view, but certainly
not in its entirety. I think without music and arts, for example, the
knowledge of the human world would be severly limited.

> When I read objections to neural
> accounts, I keep looking for a sign of what the alternative
> hypothesis might be.  To account for consciousness through neural
> activity is a naturalistic account.  If there is some other possible
> naturalistic account for consciousness, it would be helpful to these
> discussions to learn what that is.

To be conscious means to be a human being, part of the human species.
To account for being a human through neural activity is simply
wrong: it is not enough to have a brain, but much more is
needed. The neuron doctrine for consciousness works, because
implicitely (even if homunculus is denied) it is thought that man is
himself (with his conspecifics) inside of his own brain. Thus, this
"more" (the human species) that I insist on, is, in fact, buried with
the neuron doctrine into the convolutions of the prefrontal cortex,
for example. This is viable "vitalism" if any.

John van Wyhe wrote:
> I don't see what Timo Jarvilehto is disagreeing with. If he does not like
> language of neurons, fine. But it sounds to me like he is trying to keep
> space open for a warm and fuzzy mysterian view of BRAIN FUNCTION. That is
> what people are referring to by such vague, and in my view totally
> anachronistic terms such as "consciousness". All that stuff is functioning
> human brains.

I am disagreeing with "a warm and fuzzy mysterian view of BRAIN
FUNCTION" which conflates neuronal language with psychological
concepts when maintaining, for example, that "consciousness" is
simply functioning human brains. In my theoretical framework
psychological concepts refer to processes of whole organisms in their
behavior. As we cannot speak about behavior without taking the whole
system -- brain, body, and environment -- into account, it is
nonsense to say that psychological processes could be localized in
the brain. If we use the language of neurons then we speak about
physiological processes, and we should keep it like that. The real
mysterian views are related to the identification of the
psychological processes with the nervous functioning, or to giving
them some independent existence. The findings about the functioning
of the brain as a part of the organism-environment system may help in
understanding human behavior, but they can never alone explain it.

Miscellaneous

To:                <evolutionary-psychology@egroups.com>
Subject:          Re: [evol-psych] Putting a new face on visual recognition
Date sent:        Wed, 26 Jan 2000 13:15:38

What is happening with science? When reading such articles as below,
I have the feeling that fMRI techniques have changed the brain
research into a bad poetry, in which any incidental correlation or
association of activity in one place "believed to subserve..." with
another ("believed to subserve...") gives the right to conclude that
something important has been shown. If this is how "we will soon know
everything about the brain and behavior" (cf. Murray on Eugenics
and Laziness ), then I think we will have no hope.

Timo Jarvilehto

> Reply-to:      "Ian Pitchford" <Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com>
> From:          "Ian Pitchford" <Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com>
> To:            <evolutionary-psychology@egroups.com>
> Date:          Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:21:28 -0000
> Organization:  http://www.human-nature.com/
> Subject:       [evol-psych] Putting a new face on visual recognition

> Discovery Channel Canada
> Putting a new face on visual recognition
> January 24, 2000
>
> Research led by a Canadian has shown that the mechanism in the brain involved
> in how we identify faces is much the same as how bird experts process bird
> images, and how car experts see their favourite cars.

To:               "Paul Barrett" <p.barrett@liverpool.ac.uk>
Subject:          Re: [evol-psych] Re: Ev Psy and Armani ties
Copies to:        <evolutionary-psychology@eGroups.com>
Date sent:        Fri, 28 Jan 2000 15:02:54

Paul Barrett wrote:

> In all of this, including Paul Okami's contributions, no-one has yet
> explained what the evolutionary fitness criteria are. That is, what makes an
> "alpha" now - looks, intelligence, personality, sexual attributes, wealth,
> power, family connections ...? Is it any or all? Where do we stop?

I agree. I think nobody has neither explained what " adaptation"
eventually means. I have always told to my students that all
psychology is basically developmental psychology, because in order to
understand any presents forms of human behavior and their
interrelation, we must be able to follow their co-evolution. If we
just look at the final products we will never grasp their
interrelation (even if we calculate any number of correlations)
if we don't have some idea of the process how these products came
into existence. I thought this is evolutionary psychology. Now it
seems that I must change my teaching. If evolutionary psychology is a
branch of science using only one unclear principle (adaptation) as
all-embracing explanation of development then I am certainly not
an evolutionary psychologist.

If I understand correctly those who use the concept of adaptation as
an explanation of human forms of behavior, attitudes, or traits, take
it for granted that there is a ready-made environment into which the
organisms must adapt. I think such conception is simply wrong.
Already v. Uexkull (and many others after him) stressed the view that
environment is as much dependent on organisms as organisms on
environment. If this is true then there is simply no a priori
environment into which the organisms could adapt. In fact, from the
point of view of the organism-environment system model evolution is
not a process of adaptations of separate organisms into ready-made
environments, but a process of achievement of results which make
continuation of life possible.
 

Although consciousness -- being able to experience, describe, and
report one's own actions (perceptions, emotions, movements, etc.) --
is certainly one of the central problems of psychology, traditional
cognitive psychology has not shown much interest in this problem. It
is also clear why: although critical towards classical behaviorism,
cognitive psychology shares with it the idea that human information
processing may be studied without using this concept. This is
understandable, because from the point of view of linear information
processing all psychological or neural processes go on in the same
domain, although sometimes the question appears of why some processes
seem to be connected with reportable experiences and some do not.
Anyway, the processing starts with the input and ends with the output;
whether something between the input and output becomes conscious has
no special role in the explanation of the output. Even if some parts
of the processing may be "conscious", such experiences have only an
epiphenomenal character. Conscious and unconscious are not usually
defined and separated on the theoretical level.

At the present the situation has changed, and both cognitive science
and neuroscience have started to take the problem of consciousness
seriously. In a few years, this has resulted in a large amount of
literature trying to answer questions like "What is consciousness?",
"How can consciousness be explained?", etc. However, these questions
may be wrongly formulated. If we suppose that consciousness underlies
somehow the use of language (i.e. there is first consciousness and
then language), then it is not possible to describe consciousness with
words. This would presuppose that we could go beyond the present form
of consciousness.

Usually, consciousness is conceived as an individual, private,
subjective, personal faculty hiding somewhere in the abyss of the soul
or brain. This follows logically from the separation of the organism
and environment: when considering human action we deal with two
separate systems, one is man with his body and inner life and the
other the environment with all its stimuli and other people acting on
the former system. Thus, man (or a body) must be the carrier of mental
activity and consciousness, and it is this system which is in
interaction with the (physical) environment system located outside.
Such a conception is usually also connected with the idea that the
activity of some parts of the brain may become conscious, or that it
is precisely this activity which makes us conscious. From this follows
the question of how the activity of these parts differs from the
activity in those parts that do not have this characteristic. If the
contents of consciousness are determined by the brain or some parts of
it, we should be able to show some specific neurophysiological
characteristics in those parts. However, neurophysiology deals only
with physiological characteristics of neurons. It does not deal at all
with the concept of consciousness, and so at once we have here a
problem that cannot be solved.

What are the essential features or criteria for the existence of
consciousness? The first one is certainly its apparent subjectivity: I
can know my own feelings, but I can always doubt if other humans have
such feelings. Thus, consciousness is something private. The second
feature seems to be opposite to the former one, viz. the commonality
of the conscious experience: I can report my feelings and think that
others can share them and understand what I say. In fact, even the
term consciousness is related to common knowledge (Lat. com-scire, to
know together). Thus, consciousness is something in common. Can this
contradiction be solved ?

Here my thesis is (for details see Jarvilehto, 2000) that the
theoretical problems related to the concept of consciousness have
their origin in the common sense separation of the organism and
environment. The problem of consciousness has  always been difficult
precisely because consciousness has been sought in a person
artificially abstracted from the environment and other people. From
this point of view also, social activity means at best only some sort
of "interaction" between separate individuals, and therefore it is
necessary to postulate a consciousness or "sociality" within each
individual separately. If, however, consciousness means something in
common, e.g. common knowledge, it is impossible to see how this
sharing could develop separately within each individual.

If consciousness really exists in the individual, then it should also
exist without "you". This, however, is not possible, as always when
"I" exists there must also be a "you"; "I" may be defined only in
relation to somebody else. Thus, an "I" may exist only if several
individuals exist, making a common organization possible. An
individual is nothing without the co-operative organization, because
he gets his properties only through other individuals; we could even
say that an individual is the co-operative organization, but only from
a limited perspective. And this perspective is set by the
characteristics of his body defined in relation to the other
individuals.

The appearance of consciousness means the appearance of an individual
who can reflect his own action results, because they are not only his
own, who can look at his body from "outside", because his "I" is not
located in the body, and separate objects from his body. The advent of
consciousness means that the individual (or now rather his body!)
becomes an object of his own action through other individuals. The
agent of this action is not the body, but an "I", a set of relations
in the organization. In the system consisting of several individuals
each "I" means only a systemic point of view of the co-operation and
of the environment created in this co-operation through the common
results. This aspect or point of view is not directed from the body
into the "outer" world as if an "I" was looking outside through the
bodily windows, but this aspect means that all action and its results
are related through other individuals to one's own  body. From the
point of view of consciousness one's own body is as much "outside" as
the other parts of the consciously perceived world.

Consequently, consciousness cannot be located in any parts of the
individual, in his head or hemispheres of the brain. The localization
of conscious experience in the head is based on the mistaken
conception of the subject of the conscious action. The subject of
consciousness is not the body, brain or a neuron, but an "I", a person
that may not be defined on the basis of the structure of his brain,
but rather as a point of intersection in a net of social relations.
The "I" is not an entity in the same sense as a body, but a systemic
relation. The thinking and conscious subject is not a piece of flesh,
but a set of relations and processes in the social system. Such
relations create a person who is distinct from all other personalities
precisely through those specific relations. Thus, a person may be
defined as a point of intersection of all social relations, the body
being the spatial location of the point of intersection; the concept
of person contains all those parts of the world and relations which
are important for the life process of the individual. These parts are
the basis of the identity of the individual, his self. Nobody may have
an identical personality or self to somebody else, because it is not
possible to have the same social relations as somebody else. It is
this fact that gives to every individual his uniqueness. For the self,
the body is an object like other parts of the environment, but with
one important difference: the body is the point of reference for the
self in relation to the common results; the body creates the personal
aspect of social organization.

Thus, modern brain research, for example, is faced with an impossible
task when trying to find in the brain special areas for consciousness.
This attempt is something similar to the effort of trying to find
"steering" by looking only at the steering wheel of the car. This
doesn't mean denial of the importance of the brain or the nervous
system when consciousness is studied. However, locating consciousness
in the brain leads to questions which cannot be answered, because for
consciousness to exist we need much more than the brain alone. Of
course, if we remove the brain one loses consciousness, but the same
also happens if all other parts of the body, or of the total
environment (with other people) are removed. On the other hand, even
large parts (e.g. one hemisphere) of the brain may be dissected
without any permanent loss of consciousness. The development of the
nervous system was most probably important from the point of view of
the advent of consciousness in the phylogeny, but this does not mean
that consciousness is located in the neurons.

In conclusion, consciousness is something that cannot be explained by
more "basic" concepts, although we may trace its possible development
in the evolution of nature.  There is no answer to the question "What
is consciousness?", because this question is wrongly formulated.

Ref.
Jarvilehto, T. THE THEORY OF THE ORGANISM-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM: IV. THE
PROBLEM OF MENTAL ACTIVITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS Integrative Physiological
and Behavioral Science 2000, 35:1 (in press). Web address
/homepage/tjarvile/art4.htm

Sue Pockett wrote:
>... But perhaps a discussion of whether there is any way to
> integrate the radically different world-views of
> those who believe that consciousness came first and those who
> believe consciousness to be something entirely new that evolved
> as a by-product of the evolution of animals would not be out of
> place.

I think you touch here a very central point for all considerations of
consciousness. It is actually amazing -- taking into the account the
huge amount of literature -- how little development of
consciousness has gained attention in philosophy or developmental
psychology. So long there is not even a sketch of a theory of
development of consciousness, the quarrel about the priority of one
or another is useless at least in the scientific domain.

In reply to the message of Harwood Fisher:

I am not sure if I got your point. I try to stress simply that
the uniqueness of the individual is not due to his body or brain
(as commonly supposed by many neuroscientists), but it is created in
a system of co-operation by the relations of the co-operating
individuals. An individual is more than his body, although his body
defines his point of view to the co-operating system.  The properties
of the individual are not residing within, but they are created in
social relations. In fact, most people would agree, of course,
that somebody good in one context may be very bad in another, even if
he behaves exactly in the same way in both contexts. This, however,
means that we should see properties as relations, not as some sort of
substantial "essence" residing within things. In my opinion, such a
theory of properties has very far-reaching consequences for
philosophical and psychological thinking (and probably also for
consciousness studies). I have tried to formulate some of them in the
article mentioned in my first posting.

I did not understand your second point. What kind of dualism do you
mean?

When following the discussion around the uses of consciousness I have
been wondering why nobody has mentioned the most obvious: the human
culture and all artifacts man has created. Of course, somebody could
say (as in so many discussions) that  these could be created also by
zombies without consciousness. However, I think all such usual
considerations miss one important aspect: the results of conscious
human co-operation may be achieved by zombies or robots AFTER humans
have already invented and made them. If somebody finds a simple
solution to a  difficult problem there are always people who -- after
the solution has been explained to them -- think they could have done
this also themselves. Similarly, a zombie may work according to
instructions to produce something similar as a conscious and skilled
craftsman. However, when a craftsman works he does not follow
instructions, he has an idea and just lets his skill work out the
result he has consciously in mind.

However, I do not mean that consciousness is in a causal relation to
the products of culture in any linear fashion. From my point of view
consciousness is an aspect of the human co-operative system rendering
such results possible. Thus, it is the system as a whole which makes
the result possible; only in this sense one could speak of causality.

As to the definitions: I think everybody knows that a definition may
have some meaning only in the context of a formulated theory. In
consciousness research the main problem is that there are no real
theories; even the best candidates are only  more "scientific"
reformulations of common sense thinking (e.g. that consciousness will
be found in certain parts of the frontal cortex) .

Timo Jarvilehto wrote:

> >However, when a craftsman works he does not follow
> >instructions, he has an idea and just lets his skill work out the
> >result he has consciously in mind.
> >
> >However, I do not mean that consciousness is in a causal relation to
> >the products of culture in any linear fashion. From my point of view
> >consciousness is an aspect of the human co-operative system >rendering
> >such results possible. Thus, it is the system as a whole which makes
> >the result possible

And Jesse S. Cook commented:

> This seems to contradict your statement above about the craftsman.
> Creativity and ivention usually are not results of a "cooperative
> system".  It is usually the result of one who "has an idea and just lets
> his skill work out the result he has consciously in mind."  This no doubt
> was the case with the first human to make a stone tool 2.5 million years
> ago when culture began.

No, from my point of view there is no contradiction. The action of a
skilled craftsman is a result of intensive co-operation in a creative
culture of craftsmanship (including teachers, other craftsmen, laymen
etc.). When the craftsman is working he is an expression of this
whole culture. Similarly, all progress in science is always a result
of co-operation of a huge number of scientists. Presenting a
a new idea or a new theory in science is never really only an
individual act, but a result of the efforts of the whole scientific
community.

Mike Lyvers wrote:

> Finally, Timo Jarvilehto suggests that consciousness cannot be localized to
> the brain, as consciousness results from interactions between the organism
> and its social environment. This is easily refuted. If Timo puts LSD in his
> brain, it has no effect at all on my consciousness, but if I put LSD in my
> brain there is a dramatic effect on my consciousness. So consciousness can
> indeed be localized to the brain.

The localization of consciousness in the brain cannot be shown with
such easy tricks. When Mike puts sugar into the gas tank of his car
it has no effect at all on driving of my Nissan, but if I put sugar
into the gas tank of my car then there is a dramatic effect on
driving of my car. So driving can ideed be localized to the gas
tank.

I cannot stop wondering this discussion about definitions. It does not
help anything if we only change words, replace a word with its
synonyms. I does not help if we look into the dictonary and use the
words as they are commonly used. In science a definition of a concept
is possible only in the frame of a theory, and it is usual that such
definitions have not much to do with the ordinary use of the word. I
think the discussion about definitions so far has shown that there are
participants who want to reduce consciousness to some more primary
stuff (e.g. distinctions, awareness, neural activity in prefrontal
cortex, etc) and then those who think (like me) that consciousness is
in some sense primary, it cannot be replaced with other words,
because the use of language is already an expression of
consciousness. If our starting points are so different then it is
clear that no common definitions are possible. Thus, instead of
quarreling about the words we should discuss the points which
support/oppose our theoretical positions.

Peter Main wrote:

> But now an interesting question arises, because my Pentium is a Von
> Neumann machine, but my brain is better described as a connectionist
> machine.  The question is this:  could a machine of either type be
> conscious, or only a connectionist machine?

I think one should reformulate this question in terms of the concept
of agency: When I am conscious who is the agent? Many people seem to
think that it is not really me who is conscious, but rather my
brain (or some part of it). Similarly, if a machine is conscious who
is then conscious? Here we could go another way and answer: The
machine is conscious if the man who made it is conscious, because
without humans there are no machines.

In fact, in most discussions around this topic there is simply a mess
in the use of the concept of agency. If I am conscious and this
consciousness is to some extent dependent on brain processes, then
the brain cannot be conscious. If I can make decisions, then the
neurons cannot decide anything. Consciousness cannot be explained by
looking at the properties of neurons. It may exist, because neurons
have physiological properties making agancy in a larger context
possible. If we say that we are conscious, because our prefrontal
area is conscious then we do not answer the original question, but
tranfer it only into another domain. When I behave consciously, my
behavior is not in the neurons, but in a larger system consisting of
my brain, body, and environment. If I want to walk my neurons
need not have legs.

Thus, a machine or a brain as such may never have consciousness of
their own.

Valerie Gremillion wrote:

> Well, driving could certainly be localized to your *car*. And indeed
> you are being imprecise here - to continue with this analogy, this is
> like saying that consciousness occurs in the mouth because someone
> took their LSD by mouth - without considering the final (determinable)
> site of action. I'm no car mechanic, but isn't it sugar in the *engine*
> that causes problems? And you might reasonably associate the ability
> to drive with the engine.

I am sorry about my unclear formulation. With "car example" I
tried to show the untenabilty of chemical arguments in respect to the
localization of consciousness. However, I think you are wrong when
saying that driving could be localized to the car. "Driving"
presupposes also a road and a driver. Hence, in order to have
"driving" we must have a system consisting of many differently
localized parts the relation of which is constantly changing.
Therefore, it is not possible to have any strict localization for
"driving".

When considering consciousness we also deal with a complicated system
involving much more than the brain only. To say that consciousness is
located in the brain (or in some part of it) is only a postulate,
nowadays even very close to a religious belief. I do not like this
postulate, because it eventually leads to identification of mental
concepts with the neural ones (identity hypothesis), and I think we
have seen during this century that such a reduction is not seminal
for the development of comprehensive explanation of human behavior.
It is, however,  the first common sense postulate one might think
about when starting research in neuroscience (I thought so at the end
of sixtees), but it leads to conceptual difficulties which cannot be
solved. Similarly, it was natural to think that earth is the center
of the universe, but this postulate led to difficulties in
understanding the movements of the planets and to the division of
physics into earthly and heavenly parts (Aristotle).

Chris Malcolm wrote:
> It is also possible that we could invent machines capable of evolving
> a language of their own, without consciousness. Experiments are
> already being done in this area, using robots which find it
> advantageous to co-operate, but as far as I know all that is being
> evolved so far are dictionaries of evolved single-word meanings, what
> one might call human-dog language, no grammar.
>
> Can you be more precise about what you think is the essential
> involvement of consciousness in language?

It is a usual criterion for the existence of consciousness that one
has the ability to report one's own feelings or behavior to other
people and the others may at least to some extent understand these
reports, because they are also conscious. If this is true then we
cannot use language in description of consciousness. Such a
possibility would presuppose that we can be conscious of our
consciousness. This, however, leads to nonsense, because then we
could be also conscious of consciousness of our consciousness. - Some
discussants here seem to think that it is possible to have such
"meta" -abilities. However, I think they forget that we can in
reality never go beyond such forms of action as "thinking",
"wanting", or "feeling". It is not possible to think thinking, want
wanting or feel feeling. If I think of thinking then I contemplate
some products of my earlier thoughts, if I want wanting then it means
that I am not satisfied with what I wanted earlier, etc. In any
case I am not practising some "meta"-skills, but I am simply thinking
and wanting.

> Timo Jarvilheto wrote:
>
> >When considering consciousness we also deal with a complicated system
> >involving much more than the brain only. To say that consciousness is
> >located in the brain (or in some part of it) is only a postulate,
> >nowadays even very close to a religious belief.

And Mike Lyers replied:

> It is far more than just a "postulate" or "religious belief": there is
> plenty of strong evidence for it. Damage a person's brain, or alter its
> chemistry, and the person's consciousness is altered - often dramatically
> so.

In case of a complex system the elements of which are distributed in
space the results of lesion or stimulation experiments cannot be
used as arguments for location of "function". In this respect
neuroscience shows very little theoretical progress; the idea of
localization of mental functions in the brain or consciousness in a
neural "cosnciousness system" is just repetition of the old
frenological model (without the bumbs on the head).

What do we mean exactly when we say that a certain function has a
location in space?

Let's look at the action of an artist when he is preparing a piece of
art. Where is "painting" located when the fine movements of the hand
and fingers create a picture on the canvas? In the brain, in the
hands, in the paintbrush, or on the canvas? If we destroy some of
these elements it becomes more difficult to create this piece of art.
Some of these elements may be more easily substituted than some other,
but in the act of painting  they all are necessary. Can we say that
the process of painting is located in the part which seems to be most
active or important?

No, of course not, because painting is a process which is realized as
a whole organization of elements which are located in different parts
of the world. This organization is realized as a totality in the
painting. If some element, even a very tiny one, was missing the
painting would not be the same or it would not be ready at all.
Therefore, all elements are active in relation to the result of
action; none of them is passively participating in the result.

If we kick a ball only one leg seems to be active, because we see its
movement. However, the other one, the supportive leg, is also an
active part in relation to the result of action, which we will see at
once if we remove this leg. Similarly, it is one of the most common
mistakes to regard as active in the study of the brain only those
parts in which we may find responses or other kinds of changes with
our recording methods. From the point of view of the result of action
all other parts (in which seemingly nothing happens) are also active
if they are prerequisites for the behavioral result. From the point of
view of the whole system this is also true of all environmental parts
joining in the result. Thus, if all elements together form the result
how could we say that the result is located in only one element of the
system!

From this it does not follow that mental activity does not exist at
all in reality. This would be similar  to maintaining that the
"steering" of the car does not really exist, because we cannot locate
this action in any single part of the car (or road). Although we
cannot locate "painting" in any part of the painting process and
cannot determine it in any other way than through an inspection of
elements participating in the organization of the action, the concrete
result of this process may be seen in the ready-made painting on the
canvas. "Painting" is not something "fictional" or an epiphenomenon,
but real behavior which is realized in the co-operation of many
concrete elements. Therefore, painting cannot be something related
only to the brain  or body, because all behavior is a process in which
parts of the body and environment intertwine. The basic mistake in any
locating of mental functions to the parts of the brain is very simple:
some part of the complicated system is equated with the whole result
of the system.

If it is thought that mental functions are located in parts of the
brain, this does not make brain research easier, but more difficult,
because such a theory, in fact, mystifies both neural and mental
activity. If a thought or consciousness is located in the brain what
does it exactly mean? Is it located in the cells or between them? Or
is it simply activity of the neurons? Moreover, if it is a property of
the activity of neurons, do all neurons have such a property? If not,
how then do the neurons which have "conscious" properties differ from
other neurons? Do only certain kinds of neurons have mental activity?
Etc.

George Reeke wrote:
> ... it takes the extended system of
> brain plus body plus world to form a conscious entity, but all those
> components are not necessarily required to express consciousness, once
> formed (at least for a short while, let's not bring in sensory deprivation
> here), nor are they necessarily needed to explain its principal functional
> mechanisms.

This is a very good point, but I would like to complicate the
situation still further. If we agree that consciousness is a function
or aspect (or whatever) of a complex dynamic system then we should
first ask what the necessary constituents of this system are. The
conception that this system consists only of neurons in the brain is
based on the common sense idea that consciousness may exist -- at
least in some cases -- also independently of any specific
environmental factors: we may, for example,  move from place to place
and still retain our consciousness unchanged (at least we may think
so). However, this conception presupposes that we have some exact
definition of simultaneity, i.e. that we can really say "NOW, there
are no specific environmental factors, and NOW at this very same
moment I am conscious". Unfortunately, there are no means to
determine such simultaneity, and even the neurons in our brain are
firing after each other, at different points of time. Thus, we
must regard time as one dimension of the system we are studying.
Consequently, the constituents of the system have not only different
spatial locations, but their participation is also distributed in
time. Therefore, we must count as constituents of the system also
such parts of the world which seem not to be "present" right now. If
the constituents of the system during its development are brain,
body, world, then they continue to be necessary parts of the system
also in its more mature forms, and we can understand or explain these
mature forms (or mechanisms if you like) only by looking into their
development. In fact, I think development means that the organism
gets in so many complicated ways bound with its environment that it
finally SEEMS as if it would need no environment at all.

Jesse S. Cook III wrote:
> You missed the point.  The first human to make a stone tool, for
> instance, had no "intensive cooperation in a creative culture".  (In
> fact, s/he had no culture.  The first stone-tool maker invented culture,
> although s/he was unaware of that fact.)
>
> The same is true of the first human to invent the controlled use of fire,
> to build a shelter, to fashion an article of clothing, to invent the
> domestication of plants, etc.  In short, the invention of anything,
> material or immaterial, that hadn't existed before and wasn't a composite
> of things that had existed before or of knowledge that had existed before
> was accomplished without "intensive cooperation in a creative culture".

Well, I am not an anthropologist, but I think they would say
there was no single human being inventing such things, but they
gradually evolved in the activities of large groups of people.
Certainly the use of tools, for example,  had a long history from
simple pieces of wood or stone which could be as such used for
certain purposes to spears and axes manufactured with great skill.
 

George Buckner wrote:

> Timo:
>
> Perhaps it would help if you could give us a simple hypothetical
> situation, involving (say) a (conscious) person's perception of an
> object in the external world, and that person's subsequent behavior
> in response to that perception (or is that already assuming too much?).
> Just how would the dynamics of this hypothetical be described with the
> approach you propose?

May I answer by citing a passage from a recent article of mine
(Järvilehto, 1998), because it seems to directly address this topic:

"Now we may return to the explanation of our earlier example, the
reaction time experiment. What would the description of events look
like if we examine the situation in terms of the theory of the
organism-environment system? It is important to note that we should be
able to explain all earlier findings based on two system abstraction,
to show that the conception of the unity of the organism and the
environment is a genuinely new and broader concept than the
traditional one. This means that we should be able to reinterpret the
ordinary stimulus-response situation as well as explain why the
concept of the separation of organism and environment is so
self-evident and strong from the common-sense point of view.

From the present point of view the whole way of explaining events in
the stimulus-response paradigm is awkward. When we are interested in
understanding the behavior of the organism we should start with those
events which are most important for them. The essential question for
any organism in its life process is not whether stimuli or responses
exist, but whether its responses lead to such results as make its
survival possible. From the point of view of the organism the
different forms of behavior have meaning only in relation to the
obtained results; for the experimenter any aspect of the behavior may
be significant as an object of study (therefore s/he separates
stimulus and response, for example). The stimulus is a separate part
of the situation only for the experimenter, because s/he has created
it and s/he is studying events in the experiment in relation to only
this factor. From the point of view of the subject the disturbance in
the environment ("stimulus") allowing the response is an integral part
of the behavior leading to the result.

What then is the real significance of the stimulus in explaining the
behavior of the subject in the reaction time experiment?

When the subject presses the button in a reaction time experiment, the
button press is a result of behavior organized already long before the
appearance of the stimulus. The subject must have undergone a certain
phylo- and ontogenetic development. S/he must have acquired ears,
fingers and finger muscles. S/he must have come to the experiment.
S/he must sit during the experiment in a certain way, listen and
remember the instructions of the experimenter, etc. In other words,
already before the appearance of the stimulus there is a tremendous
number of elements which must be organized such that the result, the
pressure of the button is realized. Only the co-ordinated and
integrated organization of all these elements makes the required
result possible. Thus, when the stimulus finally appears it is only
one and maybe quite trivial factor in this complex process of
organization of the organism-environment system. The stimulus is not
causally related to the button press, but it is only one of the
elements necessary in the achievement of the result.

What, therefore, is the explanatory role of the "stimulus" in the
reaction time situation? As a matter of fact, the situation is quite
the opposite of what it is thought to be in a superficial
stimulus­response way of thinking. The reaction of the subject does
not appear because a stimulus is presented, but the stimulus itself is
a result of the action of the subject, and it is possible only
therefore that the subject is organized to act in a certain way. The
stimulus exists as a stimulus, because a preorganized system defining
some environmental change as a stimulus is present already before this
change appears. When the stimulus is finally presented it does not
cause any "processing", because this "processing" has been carried out
already before its appearance in the sense that the organism must have
a system into which this environmental change defined by the
experimenter fits. The subject is not "reacting" to the stimulus, but
the behavior of the subject defines the changes in the environment
which may act as "stimuli" and are needed as a part of the
organization necessary for the achievement of the desired results.

From these considerations follows a principle which is of utmost
importance for all psychophysiological and neurophysiological
research. The events appearing after the stimulus in the brain (or in
behavior) are the result of organization preceding the
stimulus; they do not reflect any processing of the stimulus,
nor do they indicate any processes started by the stimulus per se.
Every stimulus in a way closes a system, the whole activity of which
leads to the result of behavior. In addition, the perception of the
stimulus is a result of the preceding organization. Thus, the
perceptual process is not produced by the stimulus, but it is going
on already before its presentation. A stimulus means the possibility
of acting; there is no causal relation between the stimulus and
perception, because the stimulus is only one element in the system
realizing perceptual results. Every perceived change in the
environment means a change of behavior, new possibilities of
realizing the results of behavior."

I hope this helps a little.

Ref.
Järvilehto, T. THE THEORY OF THE ORGANISM-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM:
I. DESCRIPTION OF THE THEORY.
Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science 1998, 33, 317-330.
Web
/homepage/tjarvile/chap1.htm

George wrote:

> I was originally schooled in anthropology, and that was my understanding
> also.  Some person or persons had to be the first, either by planning or
> by accident.

I do not deny that it might have been one person who eventually was
the first who took a tool in use, but I only want to stress that he
did not start from a void. There were certainly also other people who
had tried something similar before. Similarly, when somebody presents
a new scientific theory he always builds on ideas developed by many
other scientists before him. - I think here it is critical how we
understand the concept of "individual performance". In most cases an
"individual" invention is rather like a  relay race in which the
individual is the member of the team who arrives to the goal. It
is the group who wins, not its last member, although his performance
may be quite essential for the win. For some reason we need idols (as
models perhaps), and therefore we stress too much the role of that
individual who is lucky enough to finish the work of others.

But what is an "individual" anyway? Is it only a separate body, or
something more?

George Buckner wrote:

> Few would disagree that the physical and cultural environments play a
> large role in C as far as the details of content (and development, as
> George Reeke suggested) are concerned, but is there simply nothing more
> to say of the conscious organism beyond the fact that it's in the same
> big box with all the other environmental factors and cultural props?
> Can't we draw an operational boundary somewhere, even if only for
> purposes of discussion?

I have not said we shouldn't draw boundaries. My point is that
the boundary is in a wrong place if we think that consciousness can
be located in the brain (or in the body of an individual). My
methodology in determining the systemic borders starts with the
question: What is the result achieved? This question leads to the
study of the development of the system and to the determination of
relevant factors necessary in result achievement. This means that
we should not FIRST determine the boundaries on the basis of common
sense, and THEN wonder what the system really is what we are
studying.

Brian Mitchell wrote:
> The illusory nature of existence (Maya) as presented in some Eastern
> religious philosophy is not as simplistic as this characterisation
> suggests. The illusion resides in us and concerns a misapprehension
> about our own nature: that we have a distinct and finite existence,
> separate from all things (self). If this is an error, it is a very
> deep one, and so might give rise to many other subsidiary errors of
> perception and judgement, since we are prone to create everything in
> our own image.

I like this idea of Maya, too, but maybe in a somewhat different
sense. In my interpretation Maya does not mean that perception as
such would be illusory; the illusion is created when the own point of
view is regarded as an absolute determination of reality. In the
organism-environment theory perception means reorganization of the
organism-environment system, action, in which new parts of
environment join the system revealing some aspects of reality.
Each percept is the realization of an aspect of the real world. It is
not something going on in the head or to be constructed from the
"Ding-an-sich".  In each conscious perception the world turns one of
its sides toward us, a side which can be used in joint action with
our fellow humans in our culture. If I regard my point of view in
any sense absolute, then we are dealing with Maya, but if I
understand that I may have only a limited view to the reality, and
by increasing co-operation with other people I may add new aspects
to my point of view, then I am adding more and more reality to
my existence.

Brian Mitchell wrote:
> Suppose
> consciousness were not the PRODUCT of anything, but was a universal
> given, like time and dimension. And suppose that consciousness
> evolved the brain in exactly the same way we can say that light
> evolved the eye. Light itself did not evolve, organisms evolved ever
> finer sensors to enable them to utilise light. Could our
> brains/nervous systems have evolved to utilise consciousness?

This is very close to my point, too. We cannot explain or define
consciousness, because we start with it. I wrote in my first message
in this discussion: "In conclusion, consciousness is something that
cannot be explained by more "basic" concepts, although we may trace
its possible development in the evolution of nature.  There is no
answer to the question "What is consciousness?", because this
question is wrongly formulated." All attempts to reduce consciousness
to physical/neural concepts are impossible already therefore that
these descriptions of the world are themselves high level
abstractions which may be formulated only by conscious human beings.
In fact, it is funny that those people who think that the physical
description is the final description of the world never think of the
following contradiction: although they maintain that the world
eventually consists of physical things, there is no physical way to
describe any of these things as a whole. We may measure their
dimensions, record reflectance etc., but these recordings are not the
thing. Only an observer may connect all the properties that make a
thing, and here we are already outside the bounds of physics. For the
physicist there does not exist an environment in the sense it exists
for any organism.

Jan Holmgren wrote:

> Each of us is part of a boundlessly complex world, which is "given
> shape" in extensive cooperation. However, the "shapes" we discern or
> consciously create always appear in conscious experiences, each of
> which is local (within a person) and transient (localized in time). I
> think Timo suggests a new way to classify that which we discern: to
> not focus on things and bodies, but focus on more extensive and
> dynamic, less easy to discern, but more realistically understood parts
> of the world. However, I cannot understand how this could work without
> a distinct apparatus for detection in each of us, a device for the
> making of very precise conscious experiences.

I think we are approaching each other, and I could well accept the
idea that the brain and neurons are important for the consciousness
in the sense that they help to detect or fix certain properties of
the world when we act (in the reorganization of the
organism-environment system). This would not mean that consciousness
is located in the brain, but the brain would rather be a "tool" which
-- in cooperation with the body and the specified parts of the
environment -- creates the possibility to achieve common results in
co-operation with the other people.

I can't stop wondering why those people who maintain that
consciousness is located in a specific part of the brain, are not at
all puzzled by the fact that I could with the help of some specific
arrangements (opening the scull, using mirrors etc.) look myself at
the part of the brain in which my consciousness should be located. I
could even at the same time observe on the oscilloscope firing of the
neurons in this "consciousness" region, this firing being allegedly
identical with my consciousness.

George Buckner wrote:

> That we are so tightly connected with our environment is nothing new (and
> nobody here has recently proposed a purely atomistic view).

If we are so tightly connected with our environment why do we draw
already in the beginning of the research the boundary for interesting
phenomena at the skin? Why do we accept uncritically the common sense
idea that psyche should be in the head? I think a partial
answer could be: Because we have developed such a nice equipment for
recording changes in the organism. This technical development started
with this common sense idea, and now we are bound with our
expensive recording systems (MEG, etc.) the use of which MUST be
argued to those who regulate the economical resources. What would
they say if you would suddenly admit that this equipment is
not the key to our psyche or consciousness?

(Well, I remember how enthusiastic we were in the middle of sixtees
when we made the first recordings of expectancy wave (CNV) and
readiness potentials. At that time we had really the impression that
we have now a direct window into the secrets of psyche... I wonder
that so many researchers in this field still believe in this.)

I think George is not right when implying that environment is taken
account in explanations of human behavior. The problem is that in
cognitive science the environment is not seen as a problem at all,
and it simply consists of physical stimuli. However, this
means that the environment which George speaks about and which is
used in the research, is the environment of the researcher, and has
strictly defined significance in the experimental form for the
experimenter alone. The basic mistake then is that the experimenter
implicitely gives to his own environment a generally valid existence.

However, such generally valid environments do not exist;
the environment is always somebody's environment, it belongs to a
certain organism-environment system. The objectivity of the
environment is not possible, not in any absolute sense. For humans
the objective environment exists, because the human environment is a
shared environment; it is independent of the existence of a certain
spectator. It is, however, not independent of the existence of the
human species. The description of the environment may be objective
only in the sense that this description is based on consciousness and
on common knowledge about the environment. In such description the
"scientific" analysis of the environmental features does not give the
basic materials for perception, but presents the most derived and
abstracted features, the analysis of which already presupposes the
existence of conscious perception. It is therefore questionable
whether such an analysis may give any basis to the psychology of
concsciousness, or even to the most simple perception.

I think such conclusions are probably not be new, but they in any
case considerably differ from the mainstream of cognitive
science and make questionable the hope that we will soon solve
the "easy" problem a la Chalmers by  the typical "stimulus ->
neural representation" recording methodology.

>
> Timo Jarvilehto wrote:
>
> >If we are so tightly connected with our environment why do we draw
> >already in the beginning of the research the boundary for interesting
> >phenomena at the skin? Why do we accept uncritically the common sense
> >idea that psyche should be in the head? I think a partial
> >answer could be: Because we have developed such a nice equipment for
> >recording changes in the organism. This technical development started
> >with this common sense idea, and now we are bound with our
> >expensive recording systems (MEG, etc.) the use of which MUST be
> >argued to those who regulate the economical resources. What would
> >they say if you would suddenly admit that this equipment is
> >not the key to our psyche or consciousness?
>
And Mike commented:
> I wonder what Timo would say about an individual whose brain waves have
> gone flat. The person's environment is still there; the rest of his body
> still functions; but is the person still conscious?

It is a very basic problem in the interpretation of EEG that we may
show some correlations between psychological processes and brain
waves (event-related potentials etc.), but we can never only on the
basis of the  recording these voltage changes alone conclude that
the psychological process or state in question would be present.
Therefore every EEG clinician takes in the interpretation of EEG more
or less implicitely into account also many behavioral factors and
other clinical data. It is, in principle, possible that the EEG is
flat (whatever this exactly means; there is always some noise) and
the subject is conscious, although normally this is, of course,
interpreted as deep coma or brain death.

Michael Schmitz wrote:
> It seems to me you do not sufficiently distinguish the thesis that
> consciousness can be localized in the brain from the thesis that
> consciousness is identical with some (physiological) brain state.
> The second thesis implies the first, but the converse does not hold.
> It's perfectly coherent to localize consciousness in the brain while
> denying that it is identical with physiological brain entities. Two
> things can be in the same space at the same time. The right model
> for thinking about the relation between consciousness and the
> relevant physiology is, I believe, that of the micro/macrorelation,
> as between heat and molecular motion, water and H2O and countless
> other entities. Macro and micro level are not identical with one
> another because one can, for example, know about consciousness
> without knowing about the brain at all, certainly without knowing
> what the NCC of consciousness is. Our ways of conceptualizing
> consciousness are very different from our ways of conceptualizing
> the brain.

Thank you, Michael, for the comment, but I know this argument very
well, because it was the next step after I stopped believing in
identity theory a la Feigl. There are many eminent proponents of the
idea that consciousness (or mental processes in general) are a
*function*, an *emergent property*, or a *macrostate* of the brain.
However, it seems to me that these expression are only verbal
tricks aimed at disguising the factual reduction of mental to
physical. I cannot treat here all the problems with this position, but
I'll bring forward a two points:

1. The ontological status of micro- and macrostates. You write "Two
things can be in the same space at the same time". Either this is
some sort of higher order mysticicism, or then we do not understand
"thing" in the same way. If two things occupy exactly same space at
the same time then they are necessarily one and the same thing.
Furthermore, a table is a *thing*, but the molecular description of
the table is no thing any more. It is a molecular description of the
table.
2. Consciousness as a macrostate of the brain sounds nice, but
we get at once in difficulties when we try to define this macrostate
somewhat more exactly. What should we include in this macrostate?
Neurons only? Or cerebrospinal fluid, glial cells, extracellular
space between the cells? Where to draw the boundary? Should we
include the spinal chord? What about the receptors in the retina?
What about the electromagnetic radiation enveloping these receptors?
Does this macrostate include also environment? (then we would be
already close to organism-environment theory and it would be nonsense
to say that the brain alone is the basis of this macrostate, and
that consciousness can be localized there). As you can perhaps see,
the "brain" (=head) is seen as the site of this macrostate, because
it is already at the start regarded as the seat of soul.

You write also:
> There is no reason
> why consciousness should be seen. The idea of seeing consciousness,
> I am sure you will agree, makes no sense, again regardless of
> whether it's your own or somebody else's.
I never said you can see consciousness. On the contrary, with my
example I tried to demonstrate the absurdity of the idea of
localization of consciousness in a specific part of the brain: that
I could look at the place in my brain, in which *my looking at this
place in my brain* is located.

You state furthermore:
> You cannot visually picture consciousness in the brain, but not
> everything that we can understand can be visually imagined. The
> reason that I (and many others) find it inevitable to localize
> consciousness in the brain is that it seems clear that in the
> foreseeable future a neuronal condition will be found - or perhaps
> has already been found with the 40-Hz oscillations - that at the
> micro level fills the causal role we know consciousness to play at
> the macro level, in the whole system of the organism and its
> relations to the environment. If one is a robust realist about
> consciousness, the existence of experiential states, events, and so
> on, there then seems to be hardly any choice but to say that the
> conscious experience is where the NCC occurs. Surely one would have
> all the empirical, scientific support for such a statement one could
> have.

I think this passage shows clearly what kind of disguise the
"macrostate" is. The causal events happen in the microworld and
consciousness is only an epiphenomenon or identical with these causal
processes. It is only playing with words if you claim that you do not
reduce consciousness to neural events. It is impossible to understand
how the contents of consciousness could be created in the macrostate
if not through the processes in the microworld. Thus, the reduction
is complete.

> Relations to things outside consciousness are certainly in
> various ways essential to it. But that no more precludes a
> localization of consciousness, than the fact that the steering wheel
> of the car is only what it is through its relations to various other
> entities, precludes its localization.

I think it is a big mistake to regard consciousness as a thing. I
would rather compare it with the steering of the car, and this is
certainly not located in the steering wheel.

It seems to me that at least part of the difficulties in dealing with
the concept of consciousness is related to the use of one word. This
word is "experience".  Sensations, perceptions, qualia, emotions etc.
are all related to the "subjective experience".  Consciousness means
having subjective experiences, but there seem also to be unconscious
experiences. Some claim that knowlegde about the world is eventually
based on subjective experience, and positivists maintain even that
this is  the only possible basis of science. However, somehow we can
understand also the experiences of others, and thus much of the
knowledge we have seems to be based on experience about which we have
only heard.

What is "subjective experience" anyway?  I think there are at least
two possible ways to deal with this concept: 1) it is generally an
experience somebody has, or 2) it is a conscious experience. In the
former case we would include as experience also such instances when
the experience cannot be reported or communicated, i.e. the subject
has an experience, but he doesn't know it. In the latter case the
experience has qualia which can be communicated to the others, and
somehow the others may share the experience.

If we accept the first case as experience, is experience then
reduced just to any change confined to only one body (or nervous
system)? Then subjectivity had no more content than the privacy in
the sentence "If I eat a sausage then you cannot eat the same
sausage". Can we establish some criteria for "experience" as a
change related to consciousness as contrasted to any change in the
body? Furthermore, if experience is interpreted as absolute
privacy, how is shared or conscious experience possible?