Collapsing the Consciousness wave

A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs

email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

BBC Horizon – Tuesday 20th October 2009 – Marcus du Sautoy – The Secret You

“The search for consciousness, the search for me.”

In this fascinating documentary Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy asks “where do

ideas come from?” He charmingly continues, “I can’t remember when I first became
aware of me.” The suggestion that ideas and inspiration require the subjective sense
of self is a long debated one with echoes in the philosophical conundrum of subjective
consciousness itself and just when the self is recognised.

As part of my ongoing research and writing into Consciousness Studies I created the
following post on an online forum of my friend and colleague, Anthony Peake, author
of “Is There Life After Death, the extraordinary science of what happens when we die”,
the discussions within that thread are particularly interesting in light of the comments
made during the programme.

When Does Consciousness Begin?

http://www.anthonypeake.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=841

What is essential in thinking about Consciousness is a clarity of meaning behind the

terms we use, which in itself conjures many problems. What do we mean by
consciousness, sentience, awareness, self-awareness, reflection, reaction etc? Whilst
experimentation such as that outlined in the programme by Prof Gordon Gollop Jnr
that “the only compelling evidence is for chimpanzee, orang-utan and human” to
experience self-awareness is compelling, are we to extrapolate from this that other
forms of life function on a different level of consciousness, a largely reactive sentience
such as the children before the Mirror Self Recognition Test? They react to the sensory
stimulus but fail to recognise the self aspect of such reaction.

As a counter to my “When Does Consciousness Begin?” question, Marcus superbly

later suggests, “Where does Consciousness stop? Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps it’s a
gradation”, and it is this Scale of Consciousness that requires the fine definitions for
whilst a child below 18 months obviously does have consciousness, it equally
obviously has no sense of identity and self, which appears to be an evolutionary
learned skill within the subjectivity of consciousness. Indeed if we look at plants and
single cell life-form, no-one would suggest they have consciousness, at least not how
we think of consciousness, but a plant responds to light and heat with a reactionary
sentience that surely must be placed along this gradation of consciousness.

From the MSRT we see the repeated experiments that such self-awareness develops
around the 18-24 month stage. This leads to what I term the “Reflexive Self
Consciousness” taken from the writings of the polymath, Eugene Halliday. As
evidenced by Prof Gallop’s assertion that “the only compelling evidence is for
chimpanzee, orang-utan and human” to experience self-awareness, the biological
evolution of man and the corresponding neurological evolution of our brain has
enabled such self-awareness to develop with the aid of cultural and societal influence.
Prior to this stage the infant is largely a reactive sentience but also learns via repetition
and copying. When the self-awareness is attained this sense of “I” develops the
psyche and the subjective consciousness itself. Effectively this places the “I” of the
subjective consciousness in a frame of time and space and to quote Prof Gallop
directly from the programme:

“To be self-aware means that you can engage in mental time travel, you can think
about yourself in relationship to things that happened in the past, the present, and
may even happen in the future.”

A Dark Philosopher Page 1 21/10/2009

Karl L Le Marcs
 Collapsing the Consciousness wave
A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs
email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

Thus the evolutionary benefits of a corresponding evolution of consciousness are

evident as Marcus himself states, “our heightened level of self-awareness has
bestowed upon mankind an evolutionary advantage that’s allowed us to shape the
world according to our vision.”

However, what also comes with a realisation of self is a question about the external
reality; the objectivity of consciousness, “but the ability to envision the future has a
profoundly unsettling consequence.”

“Death awareness is the price we pay for self awareness.” (Gordon Gallop Jnr)

Therefore does an infant below 18 months old, with no (or very little) sense of self-
awareness, have any comprehension of death? What of fear? Can consciousness
without a self-aware element experience fear? And fear of what exactly?

Can the same question be applied to lower level consciousness, such as that within
plants etc:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33400752/ns/technology_and_science-science/

The above article suggests that plants can recognise rivals and fight for survival.
“Plants can't see or hear, but they can recognize their siblings - They use chemical
signals secreted from their roots.”

This again suggests a reactionary sentience rather than a self-reflexive awareness but
clearly shows that the gradation of consciousness has to be far greater than common
belief suggests.

Biological and Neurological evolution therefore combine to bring human

consciousness to where it lies today on the gradation of consciousness. Dr Stephen
Gentleman confirmed that, “in the brain we estimate there are something like 100
billion nerve cells” and the substantially developed cortex in the human brain
“probably allows us to be self aware”, but can the whole of consciousness be reduced
to just the firing of individual neurons within the brain? In the brain stem it is the
Reticular Activating System which projects to the Thalamus and in-turn out to all the
Cortex much in a similar way that a computer’s memory functions and certainly in line
with the latest holographic theories of brain functionality to Dr Gentleman’s conclusion
that consciousness depends upon “constant activation of the cortex”.

This suggestion is supported by the evidence of Prof Marcelo Massimini and the
experiment that Marcus du Sautoy underwent with the Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation (TMS). Massimini suggests that consciousness is caused by the
“interconnectivity among different elements” with the brain and that during sleep, and
presumably certain parasomnias, such interconnectivity is significantly subdued.

Marcus contentiously asked, “scientists already know that the brain remains active
during sleeping so what does happen when we doze off and lose consciousness?”

Is consciousness “lost” during sleep or is the functionality merely reduced and

quietened? We all dream and phenomena such as Lucid Dreaming, Astral Travel etc
suggest a functioning state of consciousness during certain periods of the sleep cycle.

If we look at the parasomnias from the hypnogogic state on dozing to the

hypnopompic state on waking and the myriad of altered states of consciousness
between, which are beautifully described in Jeff Warren’s excellent book “Head Trip”,
such as somnambulism, sleep paralysis, sleep terrors, bruxism etc then the
suggestion is that consciousness is far from “lost” during sleep and any altered state
of consciousness, even to coma states.

A Dark Philosopher Page 2 21/10/2009

Karl L Le Marcs
 Collapsing the Consciousness wave
A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs
email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

So, is a coma just a punctuation of Consciousness?

In the programme, Dr Adrian Owen suggested to Marcus that patients in a vegetative

state still respond to certain external stimuli but lack the degree of consciousness
which one would usually attribute to having consciousness. This is similar in concept
to the Zombie idea of David Chalmers and Philosophy that suggest a hypothetical
being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks
conscious experience, qualia or sentience but in this experiment Dr Owen was
interested in the neuronal activity within the pre-mortar cortex, responsible for activity
planning movements of limbs. Again it was demonstrated that during sleep the
interconnectivity of individual neurons was diminished to substantially lower levels
than those during waking consciousness, but further suggestive that consciousness is
not lost during sleep.

Dr Anthony Absalom discussed anaesthesia and how this affects consciousness. This
subject is of great interest to one of the leading exponents in the whole field of
Consciousness Studies, Stuart Hameroff, whose theory of Quantum Coherence in the
Microtubules of the brain is amongst the highest regarded. Hameroff was an
anaestheologist who took Roger Penrose’s original suggestion that consciousness is
a form of Objective Reduction. Penrose came to the problem from the view point of
mathematics and in particular Godel’s theorem. Hameroff approached it from a career
in cancer research and anaesthesia gave him an interest in brain structures.
Hameroff’s Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) thus combines approaches to
the problem of consciousness from the radically different angles of mathematics,
physics and anaesthesia.

Different anaesthetics work in different ways upon different parts of the brain so a
conclusion as to how anaesthetics affect consciousness is far more wide ranging than
initial inspection would suggest.

Dr Absalom suggested that the consciousness of self is largely produced through the
basal ganglia, a group of nuclei at the base of the forebrain connected to the cerebral
cortex and the thalamus and a resonant loop neurologically which begins and ends in
the cortex. If this indeed is the home of the self then this reflects what Descartes
described as the “seat of the soul”, although Descartes suggested the Pineal Gland for
such a location.

Marcus de Sautoy raised another interesting philosophical question when discussing

his atheism and the nature of the soul with his meeting with Dr Henrik Ehrsson, whose
experiments into the “I” feeling are empirically very powerful. Indeed I reflected just
how many atheists believed in the self, as opposed to the oneness of consciousness?

“According to Henrik, my sense of a separate I is an illusion created by my brain

processing data from my senses”, said du Sautoy. But we are constantly shown that
the data from our senses is far from trustworthy, so just how fragile and tenuous our
connection to “I” seems to be is startling as that data is changed.

Prof Christof Koch, author of the magnificent “The Quest For Consciousness – A
Neurobiological Approach”, offered the suggestion that consciousness “emerges from
a collection of neurons”, and questions if an individual neuron is conscious in itself.
Again this depends upon the definition of conscious, for if an individual neuron has
any awareness of stimuli then its consciousness would be nothing compared to the
consciousness of the whole being, which again stretches the gradation of
consciousness to even wider degrees.

“There are cells deep inside the brain that seems to respond very specifically only to
very specific, very familiar individuals.” (Christof Koch)

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Karl L Le Marcs
 Collapsing the Consciousness wave
A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs
email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

Koch’s “Concept Neurons” bring with them an interesting analogy within computers.

Installing a program onto your computer doesn’t place the data in one easily
retrievable piece. Rather it spreads individual pieces of data throughout the hard drive,
much as the latest research into memory suggests that such is stored in the whole
brain rather than a specific section and that recollection works on a holographic
principle.

The concept neurons thus function as a data gate on a hard drive identifying
specifically encoded data and then connecting with the next in the chain to produce
the effect.

So what is the neurological equivalent of defragmenting the hard-drive?

Some of the work being completed by Prof Marcelo Massimini and the Transcranial
Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) has echoes of the work of Wilder Penfield in the 1950s
where he stimulated the brain of patients with electrical probes while conscious on the
operating table, under only local anaesthesia, and observed their responses in order to
help reduce the side-effects of surgery. His work on memory recollection is also
astonishing, which again suggests the general non-locality of individual conscious
experience.

Marcus du Sautoy then suggest we now have “a repeatable experiment that reliably
measures the degree to which a brain is conscious”, and that consciousness as a
whole depends upon the degree of complexity and integration within the brain. The
mathematical conclusion is that the whole is more than just the sum of the parts,
which quantum mechanics can support and which raises the question whether
consciousness is simply an epiphenomenon of the brain.

“Am I conscious or are my neurons conscious, and is there a difference?”

If one is conscious (and recalling Descartes Cogito Ergo Sum, “I Think Therefore I
Am”, one would conclude so) then any awareness/sentience/experience that an
individual neuron may respond to could not be labelled in the same way, but on the
gradation of consciousness one could suggest there is no difference, just a variation
of functionality. It is the self-reflective element that produces the consciousness that is
understood by humans, so perhaps Descartes should be updated to Sum Conscius Ut
Cogito Ergo Sum “I am aware that I think therefore I am” [conscious].

Whilst it was concerning that the Dualist argument wasn't particularly given much
credence it was notable that neither was that of Materialism, Idealism, Realism etc and
beyond into Panpsychism, Panexperientialism, Panprotoexperientialism, Hylozoism,
Hylopathism and more, most likely owing to time constraints on the programme.
Indeed I have been watching a couple of extra pieces of footage that were not included
in the final show online.

What was most surprising is the experiment into choice capacity, which itself has
many echoes in the intention experiments of Lynne McTaggart to the fantastically
interesting work of Dean Radin.

The suggestion that one’s decisions can be pre-identified up to 6 seconds ahead of

conscious awareness is yet more evidence to the fact that reality is absolutely an
illusion and what is out there is not as is presented to consciousness.

The temporal time delay of consciousness has long been acknowledged as the delay
between what is objectively empirically observed and that data then being presented to
subjective consciousness, but the delay of 6 seconds is certainly one of the longest
that has been experimentally demonstrated.

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Karl L Le Marcs
 Collapsing the Consciousness wave
A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs
email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

Indeed is it actually the decision that is pre-identified or the unconscious stages of the
process to that decision? Or as the experimenter, John stated “a deterministic
mechanism that leads up to your decision at a later point in time that was inevitable.”
Although, it would be impossible to determine whether such was inevitable or not but
one could show the causal effect neurologically of that decision, which would please
science owing to its fundamental problem with the philosophical nature of free will.

This programme was excellent at what it was required to do and I felt that Marcus du
Sautoy introduced the fundamental facts very well. I can understand the frustrations
for some that this show didn't go deeper, but I feel the level of discussion that Marcus
excellently presented is absolutely essential to bringing Consciousness Studies into
the zeitgeist and weltgeist of society.

If he were to begin lengthy discussions on the Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness

or the Objective Reduction of Penrose through to the Orchestrated Objective
Reduction of Hameroff; the 40-Hz oscillations in the cerebral cortex of Crick and Koch;
Re-entrant loops in the thalamocortical systems of Edelman or Quantum Coherence in
microtubules then I don't think the response to the show would have been quite so
popular by the masses!

The specific word "qualia" may not have been uttered but the whole idea of qualia
certainly was. du Sautoy asked why he experienced the colour red the way he did; why
he could smell the pine and feel the sun on his skin; this is qualia and perhaps the
word itself wasn't used as it is possibly only known to those within Consciousness
Studies or Philosophy.

In my view this programme has been received at two vastly contrasting ends of the
scale. To the layperson it appears to have been really interesting and brought to
awareness some of the vast areas that Consciousness Studies can take you, which in
my opinion is superb. To the academic and professional it has been condoned as
trivial and barely touching the surface.

To me this is the whole problem with Science, Philosophy and Spirituality; each is
pulling their corner and making the tear between them even wider.

To those who came to this program anew or with even a basic interest they will take
from it much to investigate and study and I applaud Marcus du Sautoy, Horizon and the
BBC for that. To those who came to the program looking for an academic discourse on
the search for the Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness or a discussion on Godel's
Theorem's implications within Objective Reduction will be disappointed.

Consciousness is the only experience that one can not deny. We can deny what our
ears, eyes, nose tell us of the world but we can’t deny that we have the experience. As
a result Consciousness is entirely subjective. But what of other minds, the other
people we see? Are they all Zombies in the philosophical sense or do they each have
their own qualia and consciousness? If we accept that others are as conscious as we
are then we must equally accept that consciousness has existence outside of our own
experiences, which takes consciousness away from subjectivity into the realm of
objective consciousness and the collective consciousness. Quantum mechanics, and
specifically the Copenhagen Interpretation, suggests that it is the act of observation
that collapses the wavefunction to create reality. Could such be also applied to
Concsiousness? As our biological and neurological evolution developed our brain we
attained consciousness and established the nature to self-awareness, observing
ourselves as separate individuals. Could we be all one-consciousness experiencing
itself subjectively as collapsed particles of consciousness from the objective
consciousness wave? Whilst our subjective experiences appear separate from others
could there be a higher connection to all living things, mind and matter?

The search for consciousness, the search for me……..and everyone and everything….

A Dark Philosopher Page 5 21/10/2009

Karl L Le Marcs
 Collapsing the Consciousness wave
A Dark Philosopher - Karl L Le Marcs
email: adarkphilosopher@aol.com

This interconnection (or accommodation)

of all created things to each other,
brings it about that each simple substance
has relations that express all the others,
and consequently,
that each simple substance
is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe.
Just as the same city
viewed from different directions
appears entirely different
and, as it were, multiplied perspectively,
in just the same way
it happens that,
because of the infinite multitude of simple substances,
there are, as it were, just as many different universes,
which are, nevertheless,
only perspectives on a single one, . . .
And this is the way of obtaining as much variety as possible,
but with the greatest order possible,
that is, it is the way of obtaining as much perfection as possible.
—G. W. Leibniz, The Monadology, 56-58, 1714

On Spectrums Of Consciousness………
'there's the individual/universal dyad. on the spectrum of consciousness, points of view can be
anywhere along that. most of us are clustered down toward the individual point of view. the moon
experience catapulted us toward the other end.'
- Edgar Mitchell (astronaut - apollo 14)

“Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness."
- William James

Karl L Le Marcs – (A Dark Philosopher)

I am a Philosopher and Quantum Theorist working on a new theory of Consciousness

called “Collapsing the Consciousness wave” (CtCw).

A Dark Philosopher Page 6 21/10/2009

Karl L Le Marcs