KARL JASPERS FORUM

TARGET ARTICLE 103

PROTO-EXPERIENCES AND SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES: CLASSICAL, QUANTUM, AND SUB-QUANTUM CONCEPTS

by Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal

9 January 2008, posted 12 January 2008

[0]

ABSTRACT

Deterministic reductive monism and non-reductive dualism are two opposite views for consciousness and both have serious problems. An alternative view is needed. For this, we hypothesize that elementary particles (strings, or fermions and bosons) have two aspects: (i) elemental proto-experiences (PEs) as mental aspect and (ii) mass, charge, and spin as material aspect. Elemental PEs are defined to be the properties of elementary particles and their interactions, which are composed of all types of subjective experiences (SEs) that are in superimposed form in elementary particles and in their interactions. This is because SEs appear to be non-reductive fundamental entities. Since SEs are superimposed, elementary particles are not specific to any SE; they (and all inert matter) are carriers of SEs, and hence appear as non-experiential material entities. This misleadingly leads to explanatory gap. Our hypothesis is that matter (mass, charge, and space-time) and associated elemental PEs co-evolved and co-developed into neural-nets and associated neural-net PEs, respectively. The signals related to neural PEs interact in a neural-net and neural-net PEs emerge (possibly by the chaotic process of self-organization), which are then embedded in the neural-net by the processes of development and sensorimotor tuning with external stimuli. That is, neural-net PEs are a set of SEs embedded in a neural-net. The non-specificity of elementary particles is transformed into the specificity of neural-nets by resonating the neural-net PEs with stimulus-PEs. For example, a specific SE redness is selected out of embedded neural-net color PEs in visual area V4/V8 neural-net when it is activated either by external stimulus such as a long wavelength light or by internal signals such as that from memory. This PE-SE framework integrates reductive and non-reductive views, complements the existing models, bridges the explanatory gaps, and minimizes the problem of causation.

Keywords: Proto-experiences; subjective experiences; explanatory gaps; hard problem; access and phenomenal awareness; attention; re-entry; memory; wakefulness; co-evolution and co-development of mind and brain; chaos theory; self; self-organization.

[1]
Introduction

Mind-brain problem is central to consciousness study and is one of the hardest problems we face today. There are many views between two opposite poles of deterministic reductive monism and non-reductive dualism. In monism, mental entities (such as subjective experiences (SEs)) emerge[1] from the non-experiential material entities (such as neural-interactions in the brain), and both types of entities are substantively one, whereas they are distinct in dualism (Lewis & MacGregor, 2006).[2] In monism, the serious problem is explanatory gap; whereas, in dualism, the relationship problem between mind and brain is not addressed satisfactorily.

In general, Chalmers classified most of the views on the metaphysics of consciousness into six types (Chalmers, 2003). Types A through C are reductive views where subjective experiences are considered as physical processes that do not involve expansion of a physical ontology. Types D through F are nonreductive views where subjective experiences are considered as entities irreducible in nature, which involves expansion or reconception of a physical ontology. (A) Type-A materialists (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Harman, 1990) deny psycho-physical or explanatory gap. Eliminativism (SE does not exist), analytic functionalism (explaining the functions explains everything), and logical behaviorism fail to explain SE. (B) Type-B materialists (Block & Stalnaker, 1999; Hill, 1997; Levine, 1983; Loar, 1997; Perry, 2001; Tye, 1995) accept conceptual/epistemic gap, but deny the empirical/ontological gap. They identify SE with certain physical or functional states, but it is not clear from where such SE came into existence. (C) Type-C materialists (Churchland, 2003; Crick & Koch, 2003; Edelman, 1993, 2003; Hamker, 2004; Koch, 2004; Nagel, 1974; Tononi, 2004; Van Gulick, 2001) accept the deep epistemic gap, but hold that it will eventually be closed by further research. Since this is an unstable view, it will collapse into a version of type-A materialism, type-B materialism, type-D dualism, or type-F monism. (D) Type-D dualists or interaction-dualists (Beck & Eccles, 1992; Foster, 1991; Hodgson, 2005; Popper & Eccles, 1977) deny the causal closure of the microphysical, and hold that physical states cause phenomenal states, and phenomenal states cause physical states. This view avoids the ‘combination problem’ of type-F view. Consciousness is an irreducible entity; physical and mental entities are distinct (substance-dualism); and there is downward causation of the mental on the microphysical. (E) Type-E dualists or epiphenomenalistic dualists (Jackson, 1982) accept the causal closure of the microphysical, and hold that phenomenal properties play no causal role in affecting the physical world. There is no downward causation of the mental on the microphysical. Physical states cause phenomenal states, but not vice versa. Consciousness is an irreducible entity; and physical and mental entities are distinct. (F) Type-F monists or panprotopsychists (Chalmers, 1996; Griffin, 1998; Lockwood, 1989; Russell, 1927; Stoljar, 2001; Strawson, 2000; Whitehead, 1978) accept the causal closure of the microphysical network, but hold that phenomenal or protophenomenal properties are integrated with it and are located at the fundamental level of physical reality. Type-F appears to have property-dualism and substance-monism.[3] In addition, consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic properties of fundamental physical entities, and it plays a causal role. Here, it is postulated that macro-psychophysical laws (connecting physical and phenomenal properties) evolved from micro-psychophysical laws (connecting micro-physical and proto-phenomenal properties). Our view is close to Type F proto-panpsychism (with property-dualism and substance-monism), where we assume that all types of SEs are superimposed in elementary particles such as strings or electrons and photons. This is because SEs are non-reductive fundamental entities. More appropriate term may be ‘non-reductive physicalism’ for the PE-SE framework.[4]

Our goals are (i) to introduce proto-experiences (PEs), and (ii) to investigate if PEs co-evolved and co-developed with matter (mass, charge, and space-time) into subjective experiences (SEs) and associated neural-nets.

[2]
Proto-experiences

[2.1.1]
Definition: We define elemental proto-experiences (PEs) as the properties of elementary particles and their interactions.[5] Elemental-PEs are composed of all types of subjective experiences (SEs) that are in superimposed form in elementary particles (strings, or fermions and bosons) and in their interactions.[6] Therefore, elementary particles are not specific to any SE and hence appear as non-experiential material entities as have been in physics. This misleadingly leads to explanatory gap. We are simply introducing elemental PEs without disturbing physics. Thus, no physical laws are violated and business is as usual for physics. Introduction of PEs has an advantage of explaining consciousness and eliminating explanatory gap in complementary way. All physical models remain as they are except consciousness related models are complemented and mystery of emergence is addressed. This is the PE-SE framework.

[2.1.2]

Is attraction/repulsion between charges elemental-PE? We have included elemental interactions in the definition of elemental-PEs, i.e., all SEs are in superimposed state in elementary particles and in their interaction. We have also stated that because of superposition elementary particles behave as non-experiential material entities. However, one wonders if the statement ‘a negative charge experiences attraction towards a positive charge’ has anything to do with elemental-PEs.[7] Similarly, one could ask if the four fundamental interactions (gravitation, electromagnetism, weak, and strong) have mind-like property, i.e., whether elemental-PEs can be expressed or latent and hence cannot be expressed. If these queries are affirmative, we have introduced experiential entities in elementary particles in terms of characteristics of elemental interactions, which are already present in physics. In other words, one could argue that one could simply interpret these properties of interaction also as elemental-PEs that have primitive proto-experiences with property-dualism and substance-monism.

[2.1.3]

Critique: One could argue that there is no shred of evidence for “what it’s like” to being an electron being “attracted” to (say) a single proton; the terms ‘experience’ , ‘attraction’, and ‘repulsion’ in interaction between charges are simply anthropomorphic terms and have nothing to do with elemental-PEs. However, it is unclear what else electron could “feel” towards proton other than a force of attraction. One could argue that electrons do not have subjective experiences, but they behave as if they have experience-like properties in a rudimentary way (e.g., they can react to the flow of information such as a force of attraction or repulsion); this elementary behavior (or whatever that may be) could be considered as elemental-PEs.[8]

[2.2]
PE-SE framework vs. Physicalism: What way is PE-SE framework different from the Types A-C straightforward or standard physicalistic views (SEs are emerged entities in neural-nets from the interaction of non-experiential physical entities, such as neural signals)?[9] The difference is that we acknowledge the existence of proto-experiential entities in physics, where the emergence of SE from proto-experiential entities (such as interaction of neural PEs) is lot less ‘brute’ than that from non-experiential matter.

[2.3]

PE-SE framework vs. Panpsychism: What way is PE-SE framework different from panpsychism (Strawson, 2006)? The history of panpsychist arguments for ‘experience’ as a fundamental aspect of atomic forces are found as far back as Empedocles, and recur in the thinking of Lotze, Priestley, Haeckel, and Troland. However, it is not clear whether their meaning of ‘experience’ was subjective experience or proto-experience. According to (Manjaly, 2007), panpsychism as described by (Strawson, 2006) may lead to elemental substance dualism and causal-interaction problem. The PE-SE framework has substance-monism and property-dualism at elemental level. All kinds of SEs are in superimposed form in elementary particles and in their interactions. Therefore, entities are not specific to any SE and behave as non-experiential material entities. In other words, all entities are not conscious as assumed in panpsychism. In PE-SE framework, elementary particles are carriers of SEs; they are not even proto-conscious. As the level of co-evolution increases, specificity increases. This implies that at some level, there might be critical specificity for proto-consciousness. For example, when red light falls on the skin of primitive amoeba-like animal (floating in the ancient sea), it detects it and makes a characteristic wriggle of activity (Humphrey, 2000); one could argue that this primitive creature may have specificity higher than its critical values and may qualify for proto-consciousness. To have SEs, systems must satisfy essential ingredient of SE, such as wakefulness, attention, re-entry, memory, and neural-net PEs (Vimal, 2008c). In addition, system must develop resonance process (described later) to generate specificity, i.e., we need neural-net for having SEs.

[2.4]

Types of elemental-PEs: What are the proto-experiences, exactly? ^[10] (i) We have defined elemental-PEs are all types of SEs superimposed in elementary particles and their interaction. Furthermore, if the arguments of Section 2.1.2 and 2.1.3 are affirmative, then one could also argue for the following additional elemental-PEs:^[11],^[12],[13] (ii) attraction, (iii) repulsion, and (iv) possibly energy (E = h = hc/= mc²) that may have information related to PEs.^[14]

[3]

Subjective experiences

A major question is how do non-specific proto-experiences leads to specific subjective experience and/or how do SEs emerge from neural signal interactions related to PEs? This is addressed in this Section and the following Section ‘Co-evolution & co-development of brain and mind’.

[3.1]
Neural-PE, neural-net PEs, and subjective experiences: At every level of evolution, a relevant physical entity has its associated PEs: from elemental PEs to neural-net PEs. For example, one possible source of PE in brain might be the proto-experience of ions that rush across neural-membrane during spike-generation (including activity in astroglial cells and metabolic energization), which can be called neural-PE.[15] According to (Freitas da Rocha, Pereira, & Bezerra Coutinho, 2001), coherence between feedforward incoming and reentrant feedback signals seems to be a necessary for consciousness as a ‘conflict-solving process’. For this, contributing factors are (a) reticular activating system, (b) local electrical synchronization, (c) chemical modulation at the synapse, and (d) the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) mechanism involving Mg⁺⁺, glutamate, and Ca⁺⁺. The latter two factors (c) and (d), GABA-mechanism, classical Na⁺/K⁺/Cl^- system, possibly astroglial cells and metabolic energization of the brain (Lewis & MacGregor, 2006; MacGregor, 2006a, 2006b), and calcium ions (trapped in astrocytes by a static electric field) interacting with neural electric fields (Pereira Jr., 2007a) contribute to the substrate for neural-PEs.[16]

Signals related to neural-PEs interact in a neural-net and neural-net PEs emerge, which are then embedded in the neural-net during co-development. The process of embedding involves genetic disposition, co-development of neural-net and its associated PEs, sensorimotor co-tuning with external stimuli, re-entry (repeated entry of signals in neural-net to form traces for embedding PEs), assignment, and selection of SE. To spell out literally how neural-net PEs can be embedded in a neural net, we take an example of color. We assume that co-evolution processes[17] have already co-evolved elemental proto-experiences and matter (mass, charge, and space-time) into genetic proto-experiences and genes, respectively.[18]

[3.1.1]
Genetic disposition: Red-green color is X-chromosome linked (Pokorny, Smith, Verriest, & Pinckers, 1979). If both parents have normal trichromatic color vision, then children will have normal color vision. If both parents are protanopes (red-green color blindness: inability to see the color red or to distinguish red and bluish-green) then children will be protanopes (assuming both X-chromosomes of mother are abnormal). If the father is protanope and the mother has normal color vision, then a chance of daughters being protanopes is 50%. If the father has normal color vision and the mother is protanope then sons will be protanopes and a chance of daughters being protanopes is 50% (assuming both X-chromosomes of mother are abnormal). Thus, genetic disposition makes a significant difference.

[3.1.2]
For the co-development of neural-net and its PEs before birth, the ‘epigenetic landscape’ model of embryonic development (Waddington, 1940) using chaos theory can be used by appropriately recognizing the various factors (Bruzzo & Vimal, 2007). For example, the initial conditions of chaos theory could be genetic disposition described above because little change in initial conditions has significant effects. The ‘attractors’ are the same as in embryonic development in addition to embryonic neural-net proto-experiences. This will yield development of retinal rods and cones, retinal cells, lateral geniculate nuclei, and visual cortical areas and their connections. However, they still need to be co-developed significantly after birth. The developmental process starts when an egg and a sperm meet (reproduction process) and continues for a few months postnatal. In fetus, before birth and after brain is formed, one could say that visual cortical cells have visual proto-experiences and auditory neural-nets have auditory proto-experiences.

[3.1.3]

After birth, the co-development of neural-net and its associated PEs is achieved via sensorimotor co-tuning with external stimuli. In this process, re-entry process plays important role, which is a repeated entry of signals in neural-net to form traces for embedding PEs. If any of these processes is disturbed, abnormality occurs. For example, if new born is blind-folded and hence does not receive visual stimuli, then development of visual system will be abnormal (Wiesel & Hubel, 1963). According to (Sur, Garraghty, & Roe, 1988), “functional visual projections can be routed into nonvisual structures in higher mammals, suggesting that the modality of a sensory thalamic nucleus or cortical area may be specified by its inputs during development”. Striking reorganization of orientation maps in early life was induced by orientation-restricted continuous visual exposure (Tanaka, Ribot, Imamura, & Tani, 2006). Normal red-green genetic information and normal sensorimotor interaction with red-green stimuli will set up appropriate red-green color neural-net that will have all red-green color SEs (such as redness, greenness, and all the intermediate just-noticeable-differences) embedded in it. When long wavelength light keeps on stimulating the visual area V4/V8 color neural-net repeatedly from birth to its critical period, SE redness will emerge in it due to re-entrant interactions between feed forward and feedback signals. This is because neural signals are proto-experiential signals in the PE-SE framework. [The lesion in the fusiform gyrus (where V4 is located) leads to achromatopsia (Zeki, 1990). V1/V4 may serve as the bridge locus for color qualia (Beeckmans, 2004). V4/V8 neural-net includes all those area that are involved in color SEs including Self-related areas (Northoff et al., 2006).] Each-stimulation leaves a trace of a specific neural-net PE in the neural-net in terms of memory; this memory trace is potentiated by repeated stimulation. This is consistent with the self-organization[19] of neural-nets: “the organic structure of the [connection] matrix [of the brain] facilitates particular patterns of energy flow, which in turn affect the subsequent development of the matrix” (Schwalbe, 1991). According to (Arendt, 2005), “life-long self-optimization process, epigenetic information remodels the cognitive, behavioral and emotional reactivity of an individual to meet the environmental demands.” Genetic programs the basic wiring pattern of the brain, whereas the experience does the fine tuning throughout life (Post & Weiss, 1997). According to McCrone, “The tip of an individual dendrite may swell to expose new synapses, physically strengthening a connection. Or a neuron might sprout extra dendrites. Or whole new neurons might be brought in to swell the pathway. The number of ways of tuning the connection between two brain cells – of wiring in a memory – runs into the dozens, probably even the hundreds. The result of all this careful tuning is a neural landscape sculpted by its experiences” (from the development of brain: http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_page_two.html). Self-organization process specifies neuronal interconnections and continuously reshapes the brain using the epigenetic information obtained from microenvironment (such as biochemical signals generated by local neurons and glial cells) during early development and sensory experiences during late development and post-development or adulthood (Arendt, 2001, 2005; Chapman, 2000). Although we do not precisely know how, but since brain is non-linear dynamic system, somehow SEs emerge in neural-nets, which are then embedded in it as neural-net PEs (or latent SEs).[20] The embedding process may itself be chaotic memory consolidation process (Abraham, 1995) with neural-net PEs being chaotic attractors.^[21] According to (Sugita, 2004), “Experience in early infancy is indispensable for color perception”. Before critical period of color vision, new born may be unable to discriminate color well. Four-week-old infants responded only marginally to moving red/green gratings, but 9-week-old infants and adults responded well (Teller & Palmer, 1996). Two-month-old infants have some form of color vision (Peeles & Teller, 1975). The color vision of three-month-old infants is based on hue and/or saturation, rather than brightness (Teller, Civan, & Bronson-Castain, 2004). Covariance channels for color and luminance are interdependent in infants (4-6 months old), whereas they are independent in adults (Peterzell, Chang, & Teller, 2000). The tuning functions co-develop after birth by interaction with external stimuli to matured level when adulthood is reached. For example, the spatial frequency tuning functions of red-green mechanisms for 11 year old boy were broader than for adults (Pandey & Vimal, 1993; Vimal, 1998a, 2002a). A model of activity-dependent self-organization of geniculo-cortical inputs, the exposure to drifting gratings results in orientation tuning (Tanaka, Miyashita, & Ribot, 2004). Since a SE and its associated neural-net are the result of co-development, both may influence each other. For example, synaptic weights may change during co-development depending on the subjective experience of stimuli leading to the above tuned mechanisms. The process described above can be called calibration process.[22]

[3.1.4]

Specificity: An elemental PE is non-specific in the sense that it does not represent any specific SE because all types of SEs are superimposed in elementary particles, i.e., elemental PE involves all SEs in superimposed form. The specificity of PE increases as it co-evolves to higher level. For example, genetic-PE will have higher specificity than elemental-PE but will have lower specificity than neural-net-PE. Specificity is zero for elemental-PEs because they involve all SEs, whereas specificity is 1 for unique hues such as yellowness (neither red nor green) because it is not in other SEs. A bacterium has bacterium-PEs with specificity higher than that of elemental-PEs, but it may not have SEs if it does not satisfy the above essential criteria for SEs (even if it has Orch OR). We need to investigate if jellyfish, worms, turtles, and squids can satisfy the criteria for SEs; we know humans (and primates) can. Specificity increases from genome to the development of SE. Thus, the non-specificity of proto-experiences develops into the specificity of SEs.

[3.1.5]

Assignment of a SE: The external objects that reflect long-wavelength lights evoke subjective experience (SE) redness in normal trichromats. One could ask how and why the subjective experience redness (not blueness or greenness) was assigned to long wavelength lights. The dynamics of brain’s self-organization suggests, “cyclical process of emergent goal seeking, refference and sensory feedback constitute the basis for a subject consciousness” (Turbes, 1993). According to chaos theory, a self-organizing system, such as brain, is an open system, which is intimately connected with its environment; it can create novel structures and new modes of behavior (Bruzzo & Vimal, 2007). Therefore, complex SEs (such as redness) might have been created by the self-organization process of brain to cope with its environment during co-evolution.^[23] In addition, the resonance process (Section 4.2) might also have contributed in the optimum assignment of SE during co-development. Sensory quality or SE is largely internal, covert and private; it appeared only after natural selection shaped it. For example, one could make statement: “In the past my ancestors evolved to feel red this way because feeling it this way gave them a real biological advantage” (Humphrey, 1992; Humphrey, 2000). In other words, during co-evolution of SE, many SEs might have been tried by random or chaotic processes. The hypothesis that SEs are useful in obtaining summary of all information related to a physical event is consistent with (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). However, the assignment of a specific SE to a specific stimulus might be via adaptation and natural selection. That is, SE redness might have been randomly selected and Nature must have found it very useful to assign it to long wavelength reflecting objects by adaptation and natural selection. Our ancestors must have tried all possible combinations. The redness for red was assigned because this fitted the best. Red object such as color of blood is very important for survival; it is the brightest of equiluminant colors. Therefore, Nature via natural selection and adaptation selected redness experience for those objects that reflect long wavelength lights. Blueness or other SEs for these objects would not fit the best; SE redness for them was the best fit, therefore this selection survived (‘fittest survive’). That is, the subjective experience redness must have been selected for the state of relevant neural net responding to the objects reflecting long wavelength lights because it was the best fit in view of the adaptation and natural selection processes of evolution. The assignment of SE blueness (or other remaining color SEs) to long wavelength light was selected out because it was not the best fit. Furthermore, the emergence of any entity, by any process, must have its existence before random process acts on, which is consistent with our fundamental postulate that all types of SEs are in superimposed form in all elementary particles. One could argue that SE co-evolved with its neural correlate from intrinsic elemental-PEs and matter, respectively. Many SEs might have appeared during co-evolution for assignment by random process. That is, many SEs for red objects might have appeared but the current SE redness of red must had fitted the best in trichromats, which was most useful in daily life. The SE redness for dichromats might be different from that for trichromats. You have to be protanopic if you want to experience protanope’s subjective experiences, such as protanope’s redness. [24]

[3.1.6]

Selection process: A specific subjective experience, for example, redness is selected out of embedded neural-net color PEs in visual V4/V8-red-green-neural-net when a long wavelength light is presented to our visual system. In other words, neural-net-PEs are a set of SEs embedded (and stored as memory traces) in neural-nets in latent or covert form. Thus, the selection process could simply be accomplished classically by the signal due to external stimulus, which is capable of activating the related embedded memory trace (i.e., the specific neural-net PE) in the relevant neural-net as the specific SE, i.e., selection by the resonance process (Section 4.2). Alternatively, orchestrated objective reduction model (Hameroff & Penrose, 1998), based on quantum coherence in dendritic microtubule-network (Engel et al., 2007), can also be used for the selection of the specific SE out of many neural-net PEs (embedded in microtubule-network) by collapsing many states (or PEs) into a specific one (SE) depending on the stimulus. The neural-net-PEs embedded in neural-nets can be considered as neural-correlates of Penrose Platonic values encoded in fundamental space-time geometry (Hameroff, 2007),[25] however, this mechanism is not clear. Similarly, when signals related to neural-PEs travel along the auditory pathway and interact in auditory neural-net, auditory SEs emerge. Thus, the emergence of a specific SE depends on the context, stimuli, and the specific neural-net.

[4]

Co-evolution & co-development of brain and mind

Our hypothesis implies that non-experiential matter (mass, charge, and space-time) and related elemental proto-experiences (PEs) co-evolved and co-developed, leading to neural-nets and associated PEs, respectively. Had there been no co-development of mind and brain, we would have some proto-experiences but we would not have subjective experiences. This is further investigated in (MacGregor & Vimal, 2008).

There are apparent problems related to the ‘co-evolution and co-development of mind and brain’ and Type-F monism, such as ‘combination problem’, the ‘unconscious mentality problem’, the ‘completeness problem’, the ‘no sign problem’, and the ‘not-mental problem’ (Seager, 1995).

[4.1]

Combination or generation problem: The ‘co-evolution and co-development of mind and brain’ hypothesis addresses the ‘combination or generation problem’: “how low-level proto-experiential and other properties somehow together constitute our complex unified conscious experiences” (Chalmers, 1997; Seager, 1995). In other words, the puzzling question is how a specific SE emerges from the interaction of less specific neural-PEs.[26] To address this, let us take again an example of color. Our framework suggests that the ‘V4/V8 red-green (R-G) neural-net’ and associated color neural-net-PEs co-evolved, co-developed and co-tuned with environment from its constituent physical entities and their proto-experiences. When this neural net is activated (i.e., when the net is awake, re-entrant, attentive, and has working memory) by a long wavelength light, the neural-net has the subjective experience redness, which is selected from the latent subjective experiences (or ‘neural-net PEs’)[27] of the net. When the neural net is not active then we consider that subjective experiences are latent in it. For example, when ‘V4/V8 R-G neural-net’ is not activated, the subjective experiences of colors such as redness to greenness are in latent or covert form, which is called ‘neural-net PEs’. Thus, the combination problem is addressed with the limitation of mysterious emergence of SEs.

[4.2]

Resonance process: This ‘mysterious emergence of SEs’ can be unpacked a little bit: SEs arise/emerge because of the resonance process. Embedding process and selection process (Section 3) involves resonance mechanism for generating specificity: SEs superimposed in ionic/electronic neural-PEs resonate with that in stimuli. In other words, the specificity for SE can be addressed using the concept of ‘resonance’. Each SE has a signature in terms of experiential resonance frequency (_se). Both embedding process during co-development and selection process involve resonance mechanism: SEs superimposed in ionic/electronic neural-PEs resonate with stimuli (a) to create specific memory traces in neural-net during co-developmental sensorimotor tuning for the embedding process and (b) to select a specific SE from the embedded neural-net PEs for the selection process. For example, the resonance frequency (_redness) related to the SE redness that is superimposed in the V4/V8-neural-net signals need to match with the frequency related to redness that is superimposed in long wavelength light say 650 nm (_{650nm,redness}). In other words, the superimposed SEs in ionic neural-signals in the V4/V8-neural-net resonate with that in 650 nm light and the result is the ‘emergence’ of SE redness in V4/V8-neural-net.

As mentioned before, in PE-SE framework, SEs are superimposed in all elementary entities/particles (strings, or fermions such as electron and bosons such as photon) as elemental-PEs. This entails that external objects also have superimposed SEs in their PEs. In other words, photons have superimposed SEs in their PEs; however, 650 nm light may have higher specificity because less number of SEs may be superimposed in it, such redness and nearby color SEs but not SEs related to blueness, taste, olfaction, somatosensory and so on. This makes resonance process simpler. In addition, ‘red-color’ that is the property of object (Byrne & Hilbert, 2003) may also play role in resonance process for generating specific color related SEs, such as redness. This view is sympathetic to radical externalism (Honderich, 2006) and sensory-motor account of vision (‘seeing is a way of acting’)(O’Regan & Noë, 2001).

Since online resonance process may be time consuming whereas one can have access (reportable) awareness in the range of 75-500 msec depending on the complexity of scene (Beeckmans, 2007), it is hypothesized that some of specific SEs for specific neural-net states might have been stored (for having SE faster) in the respective neural-nets via resonance process during co-development and sensorimotor tuning.

Resonance process is consistent with the hypothesis that when Jackson’s Mary (Carruthers & Veillet, 2007; Jackson, 1986), although expert in color vision, did not have SE of redness when she was in her black-white room; however, when she leaves the room and interacts with red color objects she will have SE of redness.

Alternatively, a hypothesis in the neural-based PE-SE framework is that (i) there exist a virtual reservoir[28] that stores all possible SEs, (ii) the interaction of stimulus dependent feed-forward and feedback signals in a neural-net creates a specific neural-net state, (iii) this specific state is assigned to a specific SE from the virtual reservoir during development and sensorimotor tuning by the evolutionary process of adaptation and natural selection, (iv) this specific SE is embedded as a memory trace of neural-net-PE, and (v) when a specific stimulus, such as long wavelength light, is presented to the neural-net, the associated specific SE, such as redness, is selected by the selection process and experienced by the neural-net. This hypothesis implicitly related to resonance process and needs further research.

[4.3]

Unconscious mentality problem: There is a huge gap between atomic proto-experiences and neural-net proto-experiences. The ‘co-evolution and co-development of mind and brain’ hypothesis fills this gap and addresses the ‘unconscious mentality problem’: “accepting the mentality of the elemental units of mind while denying that they are actually conscious experiences” (Seager, 1995). This is because they (inert material entities) are actually carriers of SEs (i.e., proto-experiences) at elementary level, not conscious subjective experiences. This may sound like the problem related to panpsychism. However, it is not the case in its strict form because ‘an entity has proto-experience’ does not mean ‘it has subjective experience’ as we have. Subjective experience may not even be present in lower forms of life that do not have its essential ingredients such as wakefulness, re-entry, attention, and memory signals. Therefore, not every entity is consciousness (has SEs or first person experiences). For our framework, a term closest to panpsychism may be ‘panprotopsychism’ (Chalmers, 2003). Mind in inert system can be thought of as some kind of field-like or wave-like entity, which is the carrier of SEs in unexpressed form.

[4.4]

Other problems: As in (Seager, 1995), the remaining three problems are addressed as follow. The ‘completeness problem’ is that the inert system should also show sometime causal power of proto-experiences, which is not the case; this leads to incompleteness of physical picture of world. The ‘no sign problem’ is, “there is no evidence whatsoever of a nonphysical dimension to the elemental units of nature” and there is no ‘sign’ of mentality in the basic features of the world. The ‘not-mental problem’ is “if there was some feature of these units we chose to label as ‘mental’, what possible ground could one provide to justify this label” (Seager, 1995). To address these problems, it would be suffice to say that we are proposing proto-experiences (not conscious experiences) at elementary level and inert matter is the carrier of SEs, as defined in Section 2. Furthermore, it would be helpful to think how the material aspect (such as atom, molecule, protein, genes, amoeba, cell, neural-net, brain) of an entity evolved; whatever algorithm one comes up, it should be the same or similar for the ‘mental’ aspect of that entity.

One could argue that proto-experiences seem to be epiphenomena at elemental level. However, proto-experiences defined as the property of interaction could also be considered as alternative useful interpretation of events that physically occur. After co-evolution and co-development, subjective experiences can also be similarly considered as alternative useful interpretation of physical events, such as a summary of all information related to a physical event (see also (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007) for ‘summarizing all information’ as one of the functions of consciousness).

Moreover, it does not appear that physics needs to be modified/extended (business as usual), except to note that elemental-PEs were already inherent in physics. Elemental-PEs are defined to be ‘all types of SEs in superimposed form’ in elementary particles and their interactions. In addition, this definition avoids the problem of causation at elemental or any higher level because our framework is in within the scope of physicalism (Strawson, 2006).[29]

[4.5]

Further justification: The PE-SE framework is somewhat consistent with Chalmers’ view (Chalmers, 1996): Experience is somehow fundamental to nature, such as proto-experience associated with every physical process. This would “make a theory particularly elegant and simple, and it may also help integrate experience inside the causal order, rather than having it dangle outside as a sort of epiphenomenon”(Chalmers, 1996). It does not suggest that “electrons are having deep thoughts about the protons they're revolving around!” It is “just some sort of very simple, primitive analog of experience” at elemental level (Chalmers, 1996). Strawson also suggests that PEs should be included in physics to address mind-body problem (such as explanatory gap) and to be a real physicalist (Strawson, 2006), but see (Nagasawa, 2006).

In PE-SE framework, it is not clear that classical (not Australian) zombies[30] (Chalmers, 1996; Strawson, 2006) and robots are evolved to have PEs in their neural-nets as in humans. Therefore, they may not have SEs even if they are equipped with signals for wakefulness, re-entry, attention, and memory. Under deep anesthesia or deep sleep, we do not have signals for wakefulness and attention; therefore, we do not have SEs even though our neural-nets have signals related to re-entry, memory, and PEs.

How elemental-PEs precisely evolved and developed into human-SEs (without ‘brute emergence’ (Strawson, 2006)) still needs to be addressed satisfactorily to have any significant impact. However, this is beyond the scope of this article (see (MacGregor & Vimal, 2008) for further extension), except to note that one may usefully follow very closely with how matter evolved and developed into human neural-nets, and observe what has emerged at each step of evolution. In other words, we need to consider the co-evolution of matter and associated PEs carefully, for example, into respective genes and associated genetic-PEs, and then their co-development (including co-calibration and co-tuning with external stimuli) into respective neural-nets and associated neural-net-PEs.[31] Once this is achieved, then other ingredients of awareness (such as wakefulness, re-entry, attention, and memory) are needed for the emergence of a specific SE in the associated specific neural-net.

To unpack a little bit, let us consider the following scenario: Positive and negative ionic charges play major role in spike-generation. For example, sodium ions with positive charge, potassium ions with positive charge, and chlorine ions with negative charge that are mostly involved during the generation of action potential (spikes). These spike-signal (i.e., signal related to neural-PE) then travels from one neuron to another and interacts with other similar signals in a neural-net during re-entry, attention, and memory processes needed for SEs to emerge. Consider a hypothesis: photopigment-genes and associated genetic-PEs leads to the formation of cones and rods and associated receptor-PEs, respectively; other relevant genes and associated genetic-PEs leads to the formation of retina, lateral geniculate nucleus, visual areas V1, V2, V4/V8 and respective associated PEs. The PE of a neuron (neural-PE) is the PE that emerged during interaction of ions in spike-generation,[32] and has specificity higher than elemental-PEs. These neural-PEs interact with each other in a neural-net leading to neural-net PEs by sensorimotor interactions during co-development, co-calibration, and co-tuning with external stimuli. The specificity of neural-net PE is higher than that of neural-PE. When signals related to re-entry, attention, and memory processes interact with signals related to stimuli, a specific SE is selected from neural-net PEs (as discussed in Section 4.2). This selection (or resonance) process leads to the highest specificity. For example, the V4/V8-neural-net-PEs related to Red-Green channel may consist of a set of redness-greenness color SEs. When a long-wavelength light stimulus is presented to an awake and attentive visual system, a specific SE redness is selected from this set of colors. One could say that the V4/V8-neural-net related to Red-Green channel is the experiencer of SE redness.

The major problem is how neural-net PEs emerge in the above complex sensorimotor interactions of neural PEs during co-development, co-calibration, and co-tuning with external stimuli. Neural PE seems to be ionic (elemental) PEs such as PEs related to a large number of sodium, potassium, and chlorine ions that rush across cell membrane during the surge of ions to generate action potential (spikes). One could try explaining neural-net-PEs or SEs by employing procedures such as the method of combining neural-PEs or the method that uses the principle of emergence in respective neural-nets. For example, simple SEs such as in thought processing, touch, motion, pain, and various climaxes may be explained using some types of combination of neural-PEs. However, complex cardinal SEs such as redness, greenness, and blueness certainly need the principle of emergence because it is not clear that any combination of neural-PEs will result such SEs.^[33] In any case, this emergence may be the optimized solution of the mind-brain problem because it will be less ‘brute emergence’ than that from non-experiential matter. Further investigation is needed.

[5]

Significance

[5.1]

The PE-SE framework complements the existing models of awareness. For example, visual awareness is assumed to emerge in the visual neural-net of thalamocortical system (that includes dorsal and ventral visual pathways and frontal cortex) due to dynamic interactions among widely distributed neuronal groups (Edelman, 2003). In the PE-SE framework, the essential ingredients for access awareness (that is reportable, accessible to a subject's reasoning and belief system) include (i) wakefulness, (ii) reentrant interactions among neural populations, (iii) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate awareness, (iv) memory that retains information for awareness, and (v) neural-net PEs (a set of SEs embedded in a neural-net) (Vimal, 2008c). Attention and the ability to report are not necessary for phenomenal awareness (Block, 2005; Lamme, 2003). (Block, 1995)’s access consciousness is equivalent to consciousness of consolidated concepts, and his phenomenal consciousness with phenomenal experience (Beeckmans, 2004). The neural source for the arousal system is the ascending reticular activating system in the brain stem, which brings the thalamocortical neural nets to wakeful state as a baseline for awareness to occur (Siegel, 2004). Reentrant interactions among neural populations bind stimulus attributes (such as location and features) and entail awareness (Edelman, 2003; Hamker, 2004). Attention could be the results of reentry and competitive interactions (Hamker, 2004) and modulates the stimulus related feed forward signal and awareness. We hypothesize that neural-net and related SEs are the results of the co-evolution and co-development of matter (mass, charge, and space-time) and related elemental PEs (properties of elementary particles and their interactions), respectively. Our hypothesis adds another ingredient in a complementary manner: the existence of PEs for generating SEs.

[5.2]

The PE-SE framework bridges the explanatory gaps and explains Self (Bruzzo & Vimal, 2007). There could be three types of explanatory gaps, namely the gap between (i) subjective experience (SE) of object and the object of SE, (ii) SE and the subject of SE, and (iii) subject and object, where the term ‘object’ means internal representation of object (or associated neural correlates). The first gap is the famous Levine’s explanatory gap (Levine, 1983): the gap between what we believe subjectively about our qualitative experiences (i.e. SE), and scientific descriptions (i.e., internal representation or associated neural correlates) of those experiences. The hypothesis is that SE, its subject, and its object are the same neural activity in a neural-net, where a neural activity is a proto-experiential entity in our framework. In this context, neural-net also includes self-related brain areas (Northoff, 2007a; Northoff et al., 2006). This is true because re-entry binds all the neural signals of areas specialized for a particular attribute, such as visual areas V4/V8 for color, V5 for motion, and cortical midline structures[34] for Self. In re-entrant framework (Edelman, 1993, 2003; Hamker, 2004; Tononi, 2004), signals re-enter repeatedly in a neural-net and bind all the features. We are referring this re-entrant signal related to the triad (subject, object, and their SEs) being the same neural activity. These gaps are actually closed if the above hypothesis is not rejected; this triad appears distinct in our daily lives, but it is a sort of illusion because internally they are same neural-activity. When information related to ‘subject experiencing objects’ projected (perceptually) outside (Lehar, 2003; Velmans, 2007), objects appear in three-dimension with respect to reference subject (self). Alternatively, one could argue that the internal reality of the triad being the same neural-activity in a neural-net is an illusion with respect to the external reality of the triad being distinct (and vice-versa). Moreover, the subjective experience of objects could be (a) phenomenal awareness that is mostly related to feed forward stimulus dependent processing in primary and association sensory cortical areas and sub-cortical areas, where attention is not necessary, or (b) access (reportable) awareness where fronto-parietal attentional feedback is needed to interact with feed forward stimulus dependent signals.

The subjective experience of subject is Self (I-ness), which can operate in 3 levels hierarchically or in parallel depending of various conditions: (i) proto, bodily, or physical self is related to sensory processing in sensory cortical and sub-cortical activations, (ii) core, minimal, or mental self is related to self-referential processing in cortical midline structures via deactivation, and (iii) autobiographical, emotional, spatial, verbal, narrative, or spiritual self is related to higher order processing in lateral (ventrolateral PFC: VLPFC, dorsolateral PFC: DLPFC) cortical activations (Northoff, 2007a; Northoff et al., 2006). Self-awareness may be related to the higher order processing; self-referential processing is only conscious processing whereas self-related processing includes both unconscious and conscious processing of stimuli in relation to the self; unconscious processing of self-related stimuli (implicit self) may involve subcortical and anterior cortical midline area such as VMPFC and the OMPFC (Northoff, 2007a). Since areas of all levels interact with each other, self encompasses different levels of self-related processing and is associated with the equilibrium within the whole embodied brain that is embedded in the environment (Northoff, 2007a). Furthermore, SE cannot be objectively measured; it requires subjective research; however, the relative effect of SEs, such as that in color discrimination, can be measured objectively.

[5.3]

The PE-SE framework contributes in the minimizing the problem of causation. Since elemental PEs are the properties of elementary particles and their interactions that are the building blocks of material universe, PEs influence some of the forces in physics, i.e., the cause-effect phenomenon, in our PE-SE framework, is bi-directional (PE ↔ matter). This minimizes the problem of causation.[35]

[5.4]

Integration of reductive and non-reductive views: In reductive views, all phenomena can be reduced to the characteristics of elementary particles. However, before the introduction of PE-SE framework, elementary particles are considered as non-experiential material entities. That is why explanatory gap appeared. In PE-SE framework, all elementary particles (strings, or fermions and bosons) are considered to have all kinds of SEs in superimposed form. Although they are carriers of SEs and behave like non-experiential material entities, all phenomena including mental entities can be reduced to physics. Since SEs are also consistent with non-reductive views, both reductive and no-reductive views can be integrated (Vimal, 2008b).

[5.5]

Extension of the PE-SE framework: As commented by MacGregor, this article “opens up two major areas for future development combining theoretical and scientific scrutiny building jointly in physics, neurobiology, and brain-mind theory: (i) the evolution / development of consciousness in terms of PE-SE complexes in terms of physics, molecular biology, and brain physiology to match off against both various life forms and the human brain, and (ii) the place of PE-SE complexes as associated with interactive causation in these structures and processes in the human brain.” A part of this has been accomplished in (MacGregor & Vimal, 2008).

Furthermore, one could argue that instead of assuming all kinds of SEs superimposed at elemental level, assume all (or some) types of SEs superimposed at neural-net level. For example, (i) Orch-OR model assumes all types of SEs as Platonic values embedded in spacetime geometry (Hameroff, 1998b), (ii) assume that V4/V8 color related neural-net has all types of color SEs superimposed in it, or (iii) assume that specific SE say redness related V4/V8 neural-net state is assigned to SE redness. In that way, evolution will have less load to co-evolve from elemental level. This is interesting idea and needs further research; however, it is closer to dualism, which has the problem of association or mind-brain relationship problem. This is also an explanatory gap because it needs explanation in dualistic framework. Thus, so far, the PE-SE framework appears to be the optimized solution.[36] However, one could argue that the dual-aspect of elementary particles (strings or fermions and bosons) puts heavy burden on evolution because matter has to be carrier of SEs over billions of years until neural-nets emerged to be capable of having SEs in expressed form. But, one could also argue that inert matter being a carrier of SEs is in analogy to DNA being a carrier of inheritance/genetic information. Therefore, even though it is not an efficient mechanism, it may be a realistic one. Furthermore, it would be nice if a mechanism can be discovered, which can produce PEs or SEs whenever and wherever needed and also address the explanatory gaps.

[6]

Conceptual analysis: A conceptual analysis is provided for the PE-SE framework using analytical philosophy.[37] Let us take a simple specific example of explanatory gap.

(I) We have color related subjective experience (SE) ‘redness’.

(II) We have redness related V4/V8-neural-net that includes self-related areas such as cortical midline structures.

(III) Question is how (I) is derived from (II), i.e., how ‘redness’ emerges in its neural-net.

Consider the following premises: (1) is conceptual analysis and (2.1)-(2.8) are scientific explanations.

(1) Redness is a SE of a ‘red-color’ object and is typically caused in a experiencing normal healthy trichromat when that trichromat looks at a red-color object that reflects long wavelength light.[38]

(2.1) It is hypothesized that all types of subjective experiences (SEs) are superimposed in elementary particles (strings or fermions such as electrons and bosons such as photons) and their interactions.

(2.2) Superimposition[39] of all SEs into one entity leads to non-specificity; therefore, electron is non-specific.

(2.3) The two aspects are material aspect (such as charge, mass, spin) and mental aspect (such as SEs redness, … orangeness, … yellowness, … greenness).

(2.4) From (2.1)-(2.3), electron is a dual-aspect entity that has material aspect (such as charge, mass, spin) and mental aspect (such as SEs redness, … orangeness, … yellowness, … greenness).[40]

(2.5) The material aspect and mental aspect co-evolve and co-develop into red-green V4/V8 neural-net and associated color related neural-net PEs (such as redness, … orangeness, … yellowness, … greenness), respectively, that are embedded in that neural-net.[41]

(2.6) Subjective experience ‘redness’ is selected from the set of color related subjective experiences (redness, … orangeness, … yellowness, … greenness) that are embedded in ‘red-green V4/V8 neural-net’ when long wavelength light is presented to our visual system: call this specific state of ‘red-green V4/V8 neural-net’ as specific ‘redness-related V4/V8 neural-net’ that experiences the specific SE ‘redness’

(2.7) Embedding process and selection process involves resonance mechanism (Section 4.2) for generating specificity: SEs superimposed in ionic/electronic neural-PEs resonate with stimuli.

(2.8) From (2.1)-(2.7), ‘redness-related V4/V8 neural-net’ plays a red-color related role.

(3) From (1), (2.6)-(2.8), SE ‘redness’ is experienced by ‘redness-related V4/V8 neural-net’.[42]

(4) From (3) redness related ‘explanatory gap’ is deflated.

If one wants to be limited to classical physics, premises (2.1)-(2.8) can be replaced by classical scientific explanation: (2) ‘Redness-related V4/V8 neural-net’ that embeds ‘redness’ plays a red-color related role. (3) Hence, ‘Redness-related V4/V8 neural-net’ is neural correlates of SE ‘redness’, i.e., SE ‘redness’ emerges in this net. For this, the term ‘emerges’ needs to be unpacked as done above in premises (2.1)-(2.8), but then physics needs to be extended.

[7]

Summary of hypotheses: The hypotheses of this article are summarized as follows:

(i). Our main hypothesis is that all types of SEs are superimposed in elementary particles such as strings or fermions (e.g., electrons) and bosons (e.g., photons) and their interactions. Therefore, they are not specific to any SE and hence behave as non-experiential material entities. This is misleading because it generates explanatory gap. One could argue that elementary entities such as electrons do not have subjective experiences, but they behave as if they have mind-like or experience-like properties in a rudimentary way; they and inert matter are simply carriers of SEs in the PE-SE framework.[43]

(ii) Non-experiential matter (mass, charge, and space-time) and related elemental proto-experiences (PEs: properties of elemental interactions) co-evolved and co-developed, leading to neural-nets and associated PEs, respectively.

(iii) SEs are emerged during the interaction of feed-forward and feedback neural-PE signals in neural-nets either by the chaotic process of self-organization (because this process has ability to create novel entities to meet the environmental demands) or by resonance process. All possible SEs (including cardinal SEs) are stored in a virtual reservoir. See endnotes 28 and 42 for further details.

(iii) Our neural-based PE-SE framework assumes that (a) the interaction of stimulus dependent feed-forward and feedback signals in a neural-net creates a specific neural-net state, (b) this specific state is assigned to a specific SE from the virtual reservoir during development and sensorimotor tuning by the evolutionary process of adaptation and natural selection, (c) this specific SE is embedded as a memory trace of neural-net-PE, and (d) when a specific stimulus, such as long wavelength light, is presented to the neural-net, the associated specific SE, such as redness, is selected using the selection by resonance processes and experienced by the neural-net.

(iv) The essential ingredients for access awareness (that is reportable, accessible to a subject's reasoning and belief system) include (a) wakefulness, (b) reentrant interactions among neural populations, (c) fronto-parietal and thalamic-reticular-nucleus attentional signals that modulate awareness, (d) memory that retains information for awareness, and (e) neural-net PEs (a set of SEs embedded in a neural-net). Attention and the ability to report are not necessary for phenomenal awareness.

(v) There are three types of psychophysical gaps, namely the gap between (a) SE and the object of SE (explanatory gap), (b) SE and the subject of SE, and (c) subject and object, where object is internal representation. The SE, its subject, and its object are the same neural activity in a neural-net, where a neural activity is a proto-experiential entity in our framework. The SE of subject is Self (I-ness). The PE-SE framework helps in bridging the explanatory gap.[44]

[8]

Conclusions: Our framework consists of four hypotheses (dual-aspect primal entities, co-evolution and co-development of subjective experiences and associated neural-nets from elemental proto-experiences and matter, internal-representation, and sensorimotor interaction) that lead to structural and functional coherence (Chalmers, 1995) between mind and brain. Since a self-organizing system, such as brain, can create novel structures and new modes of behavior, it can also create complex subjective experiences (such as redness) to cope with its environment during co-evolution. The adaptation, natural selection (fittest survive), calibration, and resonance processes can assign specific subjective experiences of objects and subject to the associated specific neural-nets via co-developmental processes such as sensorimotor tuning with external stimuli. When a stimulus is presented to the system, the associated subjective experience is selected from the embedded neural-net proto-experiences. Our hypothesis (a) contributes in bridging the explanatory gaps because elemental proto-experiences are introduced, and (b) minimizes the problem of causation because our framework is within the scope of physicalism. The PE-SE framework seems to integrate reductive (Types A-C) and non-reductive (Types D-F) views of philosophy, and relevant models in psychology, evolution, neurophysiology, chemistry, and physics. Our framework of neural-net PEs critically challenges existing theoretical perspectives that could significantly alter the directions of future research in the neural basis of awareness.

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Acknowledgments

A part of this work was presented at the conference Quantum Mind 2007 in Salzburg, Austria (Vimal, 2007). The work was partly supported by VP-Research Foundation Trust and Vision Research Institute research Fund. Author would like to thank anonymous reviewers, David Chalmers, Ronald J. MacGregor, Adrian Klein, Zoran Josipovic, Lothar Schäfer, Wolfgang Baer, Robert Neil Boyd, Jim Beran, Roulette William Smith, Chris Schriner, Richard Wilson, Alfredo Pereira Jr., Robert Karl Stonjek, Kelvin McQueen, Robert G Kybird, Leon Maurer, John Mikes, Joseph McCard, Ivars Fabriciuss, Vivekanand Pandey Vimal, Shalini Pandey Vimal, Love(Shyam) Pandey Vimal, and Manju-Uma C. Pandey-Vimal for their critical comments, suggestions, and grammatical corrections, and Bjorn Merker and A. Byrne for email correspondence. A shorter version of the article located at < http://www.geocities.com/rlpvimal/PE-SE-Vimal-Short.pdf >. Other related articles are (Bruzzo & Vimal, 2007; MacGregor & Vimal, 2008; Vimal, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c; Vimal & Davia, 2008).

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Competing interests statement

The author declares that he has no competing financial interests.

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Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal

Vision Research Institute, 428 Great Road, Suite 11, Acton, MA 01720 USA; Dristi Anusandhana Sansthana, A-60 Umed Park, Sola Road, Ahmedabad-61, Gujrat, India; Dristi Anusandhana Sansthana, c/o NiceTech Computer Education Institute, Pendra, Bilaspur, C.G. 495119, India; and Dristi Anusandhana Sansthana, Sai Niwas, East of Hanuman Mandir, Betiahata, Gorakhpur, U.P. 273001, India

Corresponding address:

Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal, Ph.D.
Professor (Research)
Vision Research Institute,
428 Great Road, Suite 11, Acton, MA 01720, USA
Ph: +1 978 263 5028; eFAX: +1 440 388 7907
Emails:<rlpvimal@yahoo.co.in>,<rvimal@mclean.harvard.edu>
URLs: <http://www.geocities.com/rlpvimal/>; <http://www.geocities.com/vri98/>, <http://www.geocities.com/das00m/>

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Endnotes:

[1] The term ‘emergence’ implies that a new entity is created during interactions of two or more entities and its property is not present in the interacting entities.

[2] In general, the term ‘consciousness’ may includes self (subjective or first person experience of subject), subjective experience (SE) of object, processing of SE, thought processing, memory, attention, access and phenomenal awareness, will, qualia, initiation of activities, and/or other cognitive processing. However, in PE-SE framework, consciousness and SE are interchangeably used. In this article, the terms ‘subjective experience’ (SE) and ‘consciousness’ have same meanings as ‘first person experience’ (1E) has. They represent the experiential quality of the content of consciousness. Thus, SE is different from the content of SE. It is a puzzling question that a SE associated with a neural-net asks to itself how the same SE is emerged in the same neural-net, i.e., I want to know how myself is emerged in me. Dualism requires mind and matter on equal footing and they are impendent entities, i.e., the system has both substance dualism and property dualism. Whereas, dual-aspect implies that mind and matter are two aspects of the same entity, i.e., the system has property-dualism and substance-monism as in current PE-SE framework.

[3] Another similar but ancient framework is eastern RigVedic-Buddhist ontology: there are primal entities (Adi-shiva, pure consciousness, unified field, pure information) from which material entities (Prakriti, Brahma) and mental entities (Purusha, Vishnu) are derived, emerged, or evolved. This is a sort of neutral monism (Stubenberg, 2005). See (Schäfer, 1997, 2006) for cosmic-consciousness, (Boyd & Klein, 2007) for sub-quantum (SQ) field, (Wallace, 2007) for Buddhist unitary dimension of fundamental reality or primordial consciousness, and (Sarasvati, 1974-89) for RigVeda.

[4] Email communication with Alfredo Pereira Jr. on October 9, 2007; see also (Pereira Jr., 2007b).

[5] Although, PE is the property of the interaction, but for convenience it can also be considered as a property of the entities that are involved in interaction. This justifies the statement: ‘We define elemental proto-experiences (PEs) as the properties of elementary particles and their interactions’.

[6] This is because SEs do not appear to be reductive entities and hence they must be intrinsic fundamental entities; we have assumed that they should be considered as mental aspect in the dual-aspect model at elemental level to minimize the problems. According to (MacGregor & Vimal, 2008), “Every individual string corresponds to an individual elementary particle (string, or fermion or boson) and its vibrational mode defines which type of particle it is”. In addition, all kinds of SEs are superimposed in each elementary particle in PE-SE framework. Therefore, it is hypothesized that all types of SEs are also superimposed in every individual string. In other words, a string may have two aspects: material and mental aspects; its material aspect is embedded in space-time: the four dimensions of string; its mental aspect may be embedded in one or more of the remaining dimensions of string (MacGregor & Vimal, 2008).

[7] The attributes of matter are mass, charge, space-time, and interaction between them. Some of the definitions of mass are as follows (Anderson, 2005): (i) Inertial mass is defined as ‘the property of matter that resists acceleration’. (ii) Gravitational mass is defined as ‘the property of matter that feels the tug of gravity’. (iii) Mass of matter comes from ‘the interaction of matter with the quantum vacuum field’ (which ‘is the lowest energy state of space-time and is made of residual electromagnetic vibrations at every point in the universe’) or Higgs field, which pervades the universe. The two charges repel each other if they are of the same sign and attract each other if they are of the opposite sign. In these definitions of mass or charge, one could argue that a proto-experience (PE) is the inherent quale such as (a) ‘experience’ when matter experiences during interaction with a field, ‘experience’ of resistance when matter resists during acceleration, or ‘experience’ of tug when matter feels the pull of gravity, or (b) ‘experience’ of repulsion or attraction when charges repel or attract each other. In other words, PE might be the quality embedded in the interaction (such as interactions involved in electromagnetism, gravitation, and so on). In sodium chloride (table salt) ionic crystal, each sodium ion experiences a force of attraction equally to all of its neighboring chlorine ions, and vice-versa. In PE terms, they have ‘attractive’ PE for each other. However, these arguments are debatable because one could argue that the terms ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’ are anthromorphic and are used to explain the interactions to the students of physics in simplified manner.

The discussion with Stonjek (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MindBrain/message/10808) suggests that elemental-PEs can be further elaborated as follows: The substrate of the elemental-PE ‘attraction/repulsion’ at quantum level can be described as an interaction between fermion and boson (such as photon) that results in the appearance of ‘attraction/repulsion’. The electron ‘experiences’ the force, the force is an interaction between particles via bosons. The actual process of attraction (or repulsion) is one of an interaction with a boson - an exchange particle that is the cause of the two particles moving toward (or away from) each other. Moreover, each ion only interacts with bosons and the bosons interact with ions. “Once inside, positively-charged sodium ions ‘nudge [push]’ adjacent ions down the axon by electrostatic repulsion […] and attract negative ions away from the adjacent membrane” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_potential). Nevertheless, the rationale for assigning PE to elemental interactions is that they are packed with ‘experiences’ in superimposed form (and hence non-specific) and are assumed to be ‘proto-experiential’ entities in our PE-SE framework. This assumption needs justification and unpacking, which is done in endnotes 44, 43, 28, 10 and 3. Since elemental-PEs are non-specific, they appear as if there is no ‘experiential’ property in elemental interaction and it is merely identifying the particle on which the non-experiential material force acts. This causes confusion and leads to explanatory gap. The question whether elemental-PEs, attraction and repulsion, are experiential in nature or simply ‘particles moving toward or away from each other’ is whether it is first-person or third-person description: one has to be electron to answer the former question correctly. In either case, the PE-SE framework cannot be rejected because one can assume entities are simply carriers of SEs if they do not show experiential nature.

I am sympathetic to two alternative models: (1) ‘Emergence’ mechanism can be unpacked by assuming that SEs might arise by the chaotic and self-organization processes of brain to cope with its environment during co-evolution and co-development; this will not require extending physics, but needs further unpacking to close the gap. (2) Another hypothesis related to ‘panpsychism based on macro-experiencers, rather than micro-experiencers, as fundamental ingredients of reality’ may deflate the gap (Lloyd, 2007); this appears to be close to dualism and also needs unpacking. Both alternatives can be unpacked as done for elemental-PE in endnotes 44, 43, 28, 10 and 3. The unpacking process might need extending quantum physics to sub-quantum level.

One could also argue that non-experiential inert matter is simply carrier of SEs. When the specificity of an organism-neural-net is higher than the critical value, PEs are expressed as SEs. For example, these carrier type PEs might be expressed into organism-PEs for the first time about 600 million years ago (Mya) in early organisms with specificity higher than critical value, in which photoreceptors were evolved to signal light (Lamb, Collin, & Pugh, 2007). Later during Cambrian explosion (~ 540 Mya), animal body plans began evolving very rapidly and image-forming eyes and visual systems emerged (Lamb et al., 2007); probably the specificity of animal's neural-net was high enough to express their PEs into some rudimentary SEs. As argued later in Section 3, SEs arise/emerge because of the resonance process. Embedding process and selection process involve resonance mechanism for generating specificity: SEs superimposed in ionic/electronic neural-PEs resonate with that in stimuli. Thus, the PE-SE framework cannot be rejected.

[8] In our email correspondence (6 September 2007) Schäfer commented as follows: When you make statements like: “One could argue that there is no shred of evidence for ‘what it’s like’ to an electron being ‘attracted’ to (say) a single proton.  However, it is unclear what else an electron could ‘feel’ ...”, then you seem to say that, no matter the quotation marks, elementary entities have a sort of psyche. It is kind of intrig