Consciousness

Consciousness

From Science Alert

BEC CREW

16 SEPTEMBER 2016

Consciousness Could Be a New State of Matter

This Physicist Says Consciousness Could Be a New State of Matter

Consciousness isn't something scientists like to talk about much. You can't see it, you can't touch it, and despite the best efforts of certain researchers, you can't quantify it. And in science, if you can't measure something, you're going to have a tough time explaining it.

Multiple Choice

1. Why is consciousness a difficult concept?

• It doesn't exist

• It can't be explained

• It can't be measured

Look at the underlined expression

But consciousness exists, and it's one of the most fundamental aspects of what makes us human. And just like dark matter and dark energy have been used to fill some otherwise gaping holes in the standard model of physics, researchers have also proposed that it's possible to consider consciousness as a new state of matter.

To be clear, this is just a hypothesis, and one to be taken with a huge grain of salt, because we're squarely in the realm of the hypothetical here, and there's plenty of room for holes to be poked.

Multiple Choice

What does it mean?

• we can find many flaws in this hypothesis

• We can easily observe this phenomenon

• it is something subjective

The name of this proposed state of matter? Perceptronium, of course.

The hypothesis was first put forward in 2014 by cosmologist and theoretical physicist Max Tegmark from MIT, who proposed that there's a state of matter - just like a solid, liquid, or gas - in which atoms are arranged to process information and give rise to subjectivity, and ultimately, consciousness.

Tegmark isn't suggesting that there are physical clumps of perceptronium sitting somewhere in your brain and coursing through your veins to impart a sense of self-awareness. 

What is consciousness?

Rather, he proposes that consciousness can be interpreted as a mathematical pattern - the result of a particular set of mathematical conditions.

Just as there are certain conditions under which various states of matter - such as steam, water, and ice - can arise, so too can various forms of consciousness, he argues.

Figuring out what it takes to produce these various states of consciousness according to observable and measurable conditions could help us get a grip on what it actually is, and what that means for a human, a monkey, a flea, or a supercomputer.

Multiple Choice

How should consciousness be interpreted?

• as a state that can be manifested under certain conditions

• it's a part of your brain that gives you self-awareness

• as an explanation of the different forms of matter

Giulio Tononi, Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

The idea was inspired by the work of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who proposed in 2008 that if you wanted to prove that something had consciousness, you had to demonstrate two specific traits.

According to his , the first of these traits is that a conscious being must be capable of storing, processing, and recalling large amounts of information. 

"And second," explains, "this information must be integrated in a unified whole, so that it is impossible to divide into independent parts."

'Glimmers of consciousness'

This means that consciousness has to be taken as a whole, and cannot be broken down into separate components. A conscious being or system has to not only be able to store and process information, but it must do so in a way that forms a complete, indivisible whole, Tononi argued.

If it occurred to you that a supercomputer could potentially have these traits, that's sort of what Tononi was getting at. 

As George Johnson writes for The New York Times, Tononi's hypothesis predicted - with a whole lot of maths - that "devices as simple as a thermostat or a photoelectric diode might have glimmers of consciousness - a subjective self".

Why physicists are saying consciousness is a state of matter, like a solid, a liquid or a gas

 "When we look at a glass of iced water, we perceive the liquid and the solid ice cubes as independent things even though they are intimately linked as part of the same system. How does this happen? Out of all possible outcomes, why do we perceive this solution?"

It's an incomplete thought, because Tegmark doesn't have a solution. And as you might have guessed, it's not something that his peers have been eager to take up and run with. But you can read his thoughts as they stand in the journal Chaos, Solitons & Fractals.

Consciousness occurs in 'time slices'

That's the problem with something like consciousness - if you can't measure your attempts to measure it, how can you be sure you've measured it at all?

More recently, scientists have attempted to explain how human consciousness could be transferred into an artificial body - seriously, there's a start-up that wants to do this - and one group of Swiss physicists have suggested consciousness occurs in 'time slices' that are hundreds of milliseconds apart.

Matthew Davidson - Can we replicate consciousness?

"If consciousness is indeed an emergent feature of a highly integrated network, as IIT suggests, then probably all complex systems - certainly all creatures with brains - have some minimal form of consciousness," he says.

"By extension, if consciousness is defined by the amount of integrated information in a system, then we may also need to move away from any form of human exceptionalism that says consciousness is exclusive to us."

Multiple Choice

How can you prove that something has consciousness?

• It is an exclusive characteristic of humans

• It is the ability to process information in a unifying way

• when it has incomplete thoughts

Multiple Choice

How is consciousness related to the particles that make up matter?

• It all depends on the molecules rather than the pattern in which they are arranged

• Matter is not involved in the formation of consciousness

• Consciousness transcends the particle nature of matter

Multiple Choice

Why do we feel that consciousness doesn't have a physical dimension?

• Because its properties do not depend upon its material parts and it can behave in a distinctive way

• Because it can be described only by equations like waves

• Because it has a computational ability that has a minimum set and is self-aware

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is NOT a prerequisite for a physical system to be conscious?

• storage of information

• information processing

• dependence on its environment