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CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE, THEREFORE I AM

We have not yet faced the important question: what is consciousness? And how to distinguish consciousness from awareness?

Alas, consciousness is not easy to define. The English word consciousness comes from two Latin words: the verb scire , meaning “to know,” and the preposition sit, meaning “with.” Thus, consciousness etymologically means “to know with.”

Moreover, the Oxford English Dictionary gives not one but six definitions of the word “consciousness”: shared or common knowledge; internal knowledge or belief, especially regarding one’s own ignorance, guilt, shortcomings, etc.; the fact or state of consciousness or awareness of something; the state or power of being conscious as a condition or concomitant of thinking, feeling and will; the sum of all impressions, thoughts and feelings that make up a person’s conscious existence; a state of awareness considered as the normal state of healthy waking life.

None of these definitions are completely satisfactory, but taken together they give a rough idea of ​​what consciousness is. Imagine a situation in which each of these definitions applies (we will denote each of them with a subscript number from 1 to 6). A bouquet of roses is delivered to you. Both you, the messenger, and the sender share a consciousness regarding this gift. It is in your consciousness that you know the history, associations and meaning of roses, and what they mean as a gift to you (and in that consciousness you may or may not value the gift). Your sensory experience of roses is in your consciousness, through which you are able to smell their scent, see their color and feel their thorns. However, it is your consciousness that gives you the ability to assign meanings, consider relationships, and make decisions related to a gift (such as accepting or rejecting roses). Your consciousness is what makes you unique and different from your lover and from every other person who reacts in one way or another to the gift of roses. It is only because of your consciousness that you are able to accept roses at all or experience and demonstrate any of the above states of consciousness.

Even this analysis of the word “consciousness” does not exhaust its meaning. Consciousness has four different aspects. First, there is the field of consciousness, sometimes called the field of mind or the global workspace. This is what I called awareness. Secondly, there are objects of consciousness, such as thoughts and feelings, that arise and disappear in this field. Thirdly, there is a subject of consciousness – the experiencer and/or witness. (In reality, dictionary definitions refer to the subject of consciousness, or the conscious self with which we identify.) Fourth, in idealist philosophy consciousness is understood as the basis of all existence.

The everyday definition of consciousness equates it to conscious experience. Talking about the subject of consciousness without talking about experience is like talking about a ballet scene without ballet. Note that the concept of conscious experience is not limited to waking consciousness. Dreaming is a conscious experience, although different from the experience of the waking state. The states that we experience in meditation, under the influence of psychoactive substances, in hypnotic trances – all such altered states of consciousness include experience.

Common sense also tells us that conscious experience has many attendant circumstances, both internal and external. For example, as I type this page, I observe my mind while my fingers tap the keys of the typewriter. I’m thinking: How good is this page? Should I change this phrase? Am I explaining too little or too much? And then I hear a knock on the door. I scream – who’s there? No answer. I have to make a choice – either shout again, louder, or get up and open the door.

It’s simple with external accompanying circumstances. I don’t identify with my fingers, even when they do things that are useful to me, like typing this page. Few of us would identify consciousness with sensations, sensory impressions or motor actions. Can you imagine saying, “I am my walk to the door?” Of course not. Common sense tells us that the external concomitant circumstances of conscious experience are not fundamental elements of consciousness.

When it comes to the inner stuff of the mind—thoughts, feelings, choices, etc.—things become much less clear. For example, many people – following Descartes – identify themselves with their thoughts: I think, therefore I exist. For others, consciousness is synonymous with feelings: I feel, therefore I am. Some of us can even identify with the ability to make choices. For example, Nietzsche equates being with will.

Science is different from common sense: we turn to science when common sense fails. However, turning to psychology does not help. As the eminent cognitive scientist Ulrik Neisser said: “Psychology is not ready to take on the problem of consciousness.” Fortunately, the physics is ready. This means a return to quantum theory and the problem of measurement, which gave rise to the very discussion of the problem of consciousness.

An idealistic solution to Schrödinger’s cat paradox requires the consciousness of the observing subject to select one aspect from the multi-aspect coherent superposition of the living and dead cat, thus deciding its fate. The subject is the one who chooses. This is not cogito, ergo sum, as Descartes believed, but opto, ergo sum: I choose, therefore I am.

The mind and the laws of the mind are hidden in the night.
God said, “Let there be Descartes,” and there was light.
This didn’t last long. The devil shouted: “Hey!
Schrödinger’s cat is here! Restore the status quo!”

(We, of course, apologize to A. Pope.)

I know that classical physicists will shake their heads in disapproval, since they believe that in our deterministic world there is no freedom of choice, or free will. Because of their assumption of causal determinism, they tried to train us to believe that we are material machines. Suppose we forget for a while what we have been taught. In the end, our hypothesis allowed us to resolve the Schrödinger’s cat paradox.

In the same spirit of inquiry we ask: what then? In response, the door opens. No matter how fascinated we are by thoughts and feelings, they come from old, unchanging, learned contexts. Is the same true for free will? Our choices set the context for our action, and therefore when we choose, the possibility of a new context arises. It is this possibility of leaving the old context and moving to a new one at a higher level that makes our choice free.

There is a special language specifically for describing a situation of this kind—the hierarchical structure of context levels. This language, known as logical type theory, was originally developed by Bertrand Russell to solve problems arising in set theory. Russell’s basic idea was that a set made up of members of a set is of a higher logical type than the members themselves, since the set defines the context for thinking about the members. Likewise, the name of a thing, which defines the context of the thing it describes, is of a higher logical type than the thing itself. Thus, of the three internal concomitant circumstances of conscious experience, choice really stands apart – it belongs to a higher logical type than thoughts and feelings.

Does this mean that it is the ability to choose that makes conscious for us the experiences we choose? At every moment we are literally faced with a myriad of alternative possibilities. By choosing from them, we realize the direction of our formation. Thus, our choices and recognition of choices define our selfhood. The main question of self-awareness is to choose or not to choose.

The idea that choice is the determining factor of self-awareness has some experimental support. Data from cognitive psychology experiments show that in response to unconscious perception of stimuli, thoughts and feelings arise, but not choices. According to the data described in the next section, we seem to make choices only if we act consciously—with awareness of ourselves as subjects.

This raises the question of what it means to act without awareness—the question of the unconscious. What is our unconscious? The unconscious is that for which there is consciousness, but there is no awareness. Note that there is no paradox here, since in the philosophy of idealism consciousness is the basis of existence. It is omnipresent, even if we are unconscious.

The confusion associated with the term “unconscious perception” is partly due to the historical features of its etymology. It is our conscious self that is unaware of certain things most of the time and is unaware of anything in deep dreamless sleep. In contrast, the unconscious appears to be aware of everything, all the time. It never sleeps. That is, it is our conscious self that does not have the consciousness of our unconscious, but our unconscious is conscious – these two terms are confused. You can read more about this in Daniel Goleman’s book, Vital Lies , Simple Truths.

So, when we talk about unconscious perception, we are talking about events that we perceive, but we are not aware that we are perceiving.

Experiments with unconscious perception

I know this sounds strange. How can a phenomenon called unconscious perception exist? Isn’t perception synonymous with awareness? The authors of the Oxford English Dictionary clearly believe this to be the case. However, new evidence from cognitive psychology points to a distinction between the concepts of perception and awareness.

The first experiments involved two monkeys. Researchers Nick Humphrey and Lewis Weiskrantz removed areas of the monkeys’ cortex associated with vision. Because the cortical tissue does not regenerate, it was assumed that these monkeys would remain permanently blind. However, it turned out that their vision was gradually restored – enough for the researchers to be convinced that the monkeys could see.

One of the monkeys, Helen, was often taken for walks on a leash. She gradually learned to do some things unusual for a creature that should have been blind. For example, she could climb trees. She also took her favorite food when it was close enough to grab it, but ignored it when it was out of reach. Helen obviously saw, but with what?

It turned out that there is a secondary pathway from the retina to a structure in the hindbrain called the superior colliculus . This visual pathway allowed Helen to see through what the experimenters called “blindsight.” Nick Humphrey accidentally came across a man who had “blindsight”. A disorder in the cerebral cortex left him blind in the left visual field of both eyes. Now experimenters had the opportunity to ask the subject what was happening in the mind when performing certain tasks using blind vision. The answers were strange.

For example, if this person was shown a light on the left side, to which he was blind, he could accurately point to its source. In addition, he could distinguish a cross from a circle and vertical lines from horizontal ones when they were presented in the left, blind visual field. But when asked how he saw these things, he insisted that he did not see them. He claimed that he was just guessing – even though the accuracy of his answers far exceeded what could have been the result of random guesses.

What does all this mean? There is now general agreement among cognitive psychologists that blindsight is an example of unconscious perception—perception without awareness of it. Thus, perception and awareness do not necessarily seem to be inextricably linked.

Further physiological and psychological evidence of unconscious perception came from studies conducted in the United States and Russia. The researchers measured the subjects’ brain electrical responses to various subthreshold signals. The responses were typically stronger when a meaningful picture, such as a bee, flashed on the screen for one millisecond than when a more neutral picture, such as an abstract geometric shape, was presented. (None of the subjects were obviously mathematicians.) In addition, when subjects were asked to report what words came to mind after these subthreshold signals, meaningful pictures produced words that were clearly related to the picture presented. For example, a picture of a bee evoked words such as sting and honey. In contrast, the abstract geometric figure evoked virtually nothing related to the object. There was clearly a perception of the image of a bee, but there was no conscious awareness of that perception.

The popular press seized on these experiments, declaring them experimental proof of Sigmund Freud’s idea of ​​the unconscious, which had captivated the scientific world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, what is our unconscious? The unconscious is something for which there is consciousness (as the basis of being), but there is no awareness and no subject. Thus, in the case of unconscious perception, we are talking about events that we perceive (that is, events that are perceived as stimuli and processed by the brain as such) but are not aware of this perception. In contrast, conscious perception involves the perception of stimuli, their processing, and awareness of the perception.

The phenomenon of unconscious perception raises a crucial question. In unconscious perception, is any of the three usual concomitants of conscious experience (thoughts, feelings, and choices) absent? The experiment with subthreshold signals suggests that thinking is present, since as a result of the unconscious perception of the image of a bee, the subjects thought about the words “sting” and “honey”. We obviously continue to think in our unconscious, and unconscious thoughts influence our conscious thoughts.

With regard to feelings, important evidence has been provided by experiments with split-brain patients. In these patients, the left and right hemispheres of the brain were surgically separated, except for cross-connections in the hindbrain centers associated with emotions and feelings. When one patient’s right hemisphere was presented with a photograph of a naked man among a series of geometric patterns, she blushed, thereby demonstrating her embarrassment. However, when asked why she was blushing, she denied being embarrassed. She had no conscious awareness of these inner feelings and therefore could not explain why she blushed. Thus, feelings are also present in unconscious perception, and unconscious feelings can cause inexplicable conscious feelings.

Finally, we ask whether choice can also take place in unconscious perception? To find out, we must send an ambiguous signal to the mind-brain, suggesting the possibility of alternative reactions. In a related cognitive experiment, psychologist Tony Marcel used polysemic words that have more than one meaning. His subjects watched a series of three words flash on a screen in succession at intervals of 600 ms, or 1.5 s . ⁶ Subjects were asked to press a button when they consciously recognized the last word in the series. The original purpose of the experiment was to use the subject’s reaction time as a measure of the relationship between the congruence (or lack thereof) between words and the meanings assigned to words in series such as hand-palm-wrist (congruent), watch-palm-wrist ( not creating a preset), tree-palm-wrist (incongruous), and watch-ball-wrist (not connected). For example, one might expect that presenting the word “hand” before the word “palm” would create a preconditioning for the perception of the word’s hand-related meaning (i.e., “palm”), which would then improve the subject’s reaction time during recognition third word, “wrist” (conformity). If the tuning word had been preceded by “tree,” then the word palm would have been assigned the lexical meaning of palm (tree), and recognition of the meaning of the third word, “wrist,” would have taken longer. This is the result that was actually obtained.

However, when the middle word was masked with a pattern so that the subject saw it unconsciously but not consciously, there was no longer any noticeable difference in reaction time between the consistent and incongruent series. This should be surprising since both meanings of the ambiguous word were likely available to the subject, regardless of the priming context, but neither was favored over the other. Choice appears to be a matter of conscious experience, but not of unconscious perception. Our subjective consciousness arises when a choice is made: we choose, which means we exist.

It is suitable. When we do not choose, we are not aware of our perceptions. Therefore, a person with “blindsight” denies that he sees anything when he avoids an obstacle. A woman with a split cortex blushes but denies feeling embarrassed.

Cognitive psychology may eventually be able to help explain consciousness—especially if it is used to test ideas based on the quantum theory of the subject/self. Both quantum theory and these experiments show that there is a scientific basis for the Western tradition’s emphasis on freedom of choice as a central premise of human experience.

Note that if the quantum explanation of Marcel’s experiment is correct, then this experiment indirectly demonstrates the existence of coherent superpositions in our mind-brains. Before choice, the state of the mind-brain is uncertain – like the state of Schrödinger’s cat. In response to an ambiguous word, the mind-brain state becomes a coherent superposition of two states, each corresponding to a different meaning of the noun palm: a tree or part of a hand (palm). Collapse (reduction) consists of choosing between these states. (Due to conditioning, there may be some bias toward one meaning. For example, a California resident might have a slight preference for the meaning of palm as a tree. In this case, the weighted probability of the two possibilities would not be equal, but would favor the biased meaning However, there would still be a non-zero probability for the other value and it would still be a matter of choice.)

I choose, therefore I am. Remember also that in quantum theory the subject who chooses is the singular universal subject, not our personal ego or self. Moreover, as the experiment discussed in the next chapter shows, this choosing consciousness is nonlocal.

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS