Bob Blum: CONSCIOUSNESS: What, Who, When, and Why

Feb 28 Sun 12:00 PM
Location
TechShop

120 Independence Dr.
Menlo Park, CA 94025
800-640-1975

This is a private home or office

Attendance
 70  people attended.
4.50 4.5018 (18 ratings)

Who organized?
Monica

Lecture 1 in a series on the Neurobiology of Consciousness

by Robert Blum, MD, PhD www.bobblum.com

Consciousness is critically important to our sense of the world and of ourselves.
It is also one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of science.

WHAT is the definition of consciousness? I will focus here on perceptual
awareness.
WHO is conscious? We accord that status to our fellow humans and to
certain other animals. I introduce comparative neuroanatomy and discuss
the WHEN of consciousness – when did it evolve?

WHY did consciousness evolve? What’s it good for?
(It confers great evolutionary advantage in a fiercely competitive,
and changing world (fight or flight, feed or fornicate, friend or foe?)

I discuss David Chalmers Easy Problem vs Hard Problem and
the Turing Test, its star performer Elbot, and other Zombies and
Sleepwalkers on Autopilot.
Bernard Baars: Executive Summary, and Global Workspace Theory.
Template Matching: What one knows one sees.
Consciousnes as "best fit," global constraint satisfaction.
Ray Jackendoff’s intermediate level theory of consciousness.

Christof Koch’s search for the NCC: the Neural Correlates of Consc and the
theory of Koch and Crick: thee unconsc. frontal lobe looks at the perceptual (back) brain.
The Neuron Doctrine of Consc. But which neurons? Billions of neurons are
unrelated to Consc: gut, spinal cord, cerebellum.
What properties of neurons correspond to consc?

Emergence: Weak (patterns in groups of components) vs Strong (new phenomena)
Downward Causation by Consc? How does the "spirit world" of consc cause neurons to fire?
Is consc epiphenomenal (ie useless, like the sound of a locomotive)?
John Searle: Biological Naturalism (Property dualism)
Roger Penrose: "Consc is not computable and cannot even be simulated."

Is the brain the whole story? Near Death Experiences:
The Human Consc Project: A Multi-Institution Experiment;
Out of Body Experiences (As a homework assignment)

Recording from and stimulating single neurons. Grandmother Neurons.
Wilder Penfield: Re-experiencing the past by neural stimulation
Koch and Fried: Jennifer Aniston neurons
**********
As preparation I recommend the essay on my website www.bobblum.com
entitled The Mystery of Consciousness
**********
This will be a non-technical lecture suitable for the general public.
Subsequent lectures will cover exciting new research on the neuroscience
of consciousness as revealed by fMRI, electrodes arrays, and microelectrode studies.
*********

Bob Blum was an undergrad at MIT in math/neuroscience and continued his studies of neuroscience in medical school at UCSF. He then completed a PhD in computer science (AI) and biostatistics at Stanford and was on the research staff for ten years.

His team at Stanford developed the RX Project, which automated the discovery of clinical causal effects. RX garnered numerous NIH, NLM, and NSF grants. Bob then returned to clinical medicine as an emergency physician for Kaiser Hospitals. Since retirement he has returned to the study of cognitive neuroscience and its intersection with AI. That is the focus of his website, www.bobblum.com.

Photos of this Meetup

See all photos

Talk about this Meetup

  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 4, 2010 2:47 PM
    Randall Reetz
    I think it makes sense to move this discussion to the message board. I have started a thread "Is Consciousness All That". Lets leave this space for comments directed to Bob's talk.
  • Randy Smith
    Posted Mar 4, 2010 2:15 PM
    Randy Smith
    I actually heard a PARC Forum in which the speaker claimed normal conscious phenomena could be explained by QM. Nothing paranormal etc. However, I suppose this fellow may have been an exception in this "field."
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 4, 2010 9:51 AM
    Randall Reetz
    About quanta: they flirt between our 4 dimensions and a space/time free zone. But their flirting collapses as they interact with each other. That is why there is space/time. The crap meta-physisists ascribe to QM is only theoretical. Meaning it is only true of single quanta in absolute isolation. Try to find an isolated quanta (oh, and don't actually find it, cause that will collapse all of the weirdness!). I see no mechanism in cells (brain or otherwise) that can isolate quanta... do you?
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 4, 2010 9:41 AM
    Randall Reetz
    Remember, meta-physisists are not interested in explaining normal mental activity. They need (a misunderstanding of) quantum mechanics because they want to explain or justify or leave the door open for the para-normal (telekinesis, teleportation, extra-sensory perception, after-life and out of body, etc.). These people are not happy with the physical world - 14 billion years of evolution and the privilege of being alive are not enough.
  • Randy Smith
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 10:55 PM
    Randy Smith
    Regarding QM as key to consciousness: What is the reply to this obvious thought experiment? Make h bar (plank's constant) arbitrarily irrelevant by replacing a brain with an equivalent giant version that replicates the inputs and outputs to each neuron at a very large scale. The resulting "mind" will certainly act identically to the original, including making claims to feel conscious. But it will be as close to Newtonian as you wish to make it. (Certainly this is a well-worn line of argument?)
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 10:41 PM
    Randall Reetz
    Even "what the bleep"ers explain consciousness without QM. But they aren't interested in what brains do. They hold out hope that we could transcend material confines and think our way to omnipotence. For that you need a science you don't understand. QM isn't weird. What is weird is trying to think of it at the scale we live within. At the QM scale, and when a quanta is somehow isolated, all sorts of weirdness is possible. Notice that we aren't single isolated quanta.
  • Shelley
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 9:27 PM
    Shelley
    Yep, QM comes up when folks see consc as non-computational. Not so. Shadlen found that decision making in monkeys is computed by neurons sending messages through different brain structures and feedback from these structures. He could predict their decisions. A human brain is much more complex (layers, connectivity, feedback loops), genes turning things on and off and its a self organizing system like a flock of birds. Consc is part of this bio mess. Devil is in the details, synchronization?
  • Richard Karpinski
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 9:22 PM
    Richard Karpinski
    I was actually impressed by the inherent simplicity in Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" where he said the key fact is that we're always predicting the near future and can thus discover unexpected things quickly. That helps to notice what might be important details like there is now a bear in the cave. His Numenta co simulates cortical columns rather than neurons and synapses. Great demos a couple of years ago and now a partner sells a recognizer for people in security videos. No CONSC. yet.
  • Richard Karpinski
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 9:10 PM
    Richard Karpinski
    I think it's just that quantum mechanics sounds sexy and nobody claims to understand it. The experts say if you think you do, then you don't. It's just weird. Einstein had problems with spooky action at a distance. Me too.
  • Lex Ricketts
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 5:29 PM
    Lex Ricketts
    Quantum mechanics seems to be a buzzword brought up at the meet-ups these few times I?ve attended. My use of the term was done to contrast the simplicity that I believe the subject deserves.
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 2:40 PM
    Randall Reetz
    If someone (Lex?) can show me how quantum processing happens in the brain, or why it is necessary to explain "mind"... I am all ears.
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 2:38 PM
    Randall Reetz
    I am not saying that human consciousness is simple. But, I am guessing that its complexity has a lot to do with the high capacity of our pattern detection and refinement facility, and not with any special sauce that exists in "consciousness" and not elsewhere in the neural circuitry. I don't see a need for quantum dynamical processing in the brain. If we didn't have 100 billion neurons each in direct communication with an average of ten thousand others, I might go looking for quantum a cure.
  • Alex Gaputin
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 12:51 PM
    Alex Gaputin
    Meaning is derived from connections of perceptions. No consciousness or quantum physics needed. I'm scared when I'm looking down a cliff. Why? because there's a strong connection between "looking down a cliff" & "dying". subjective Meaning/Feeling created! Where is the quantum physics and/or consciousness?
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 3, 2010 11:33 AM
    Randall Reetz
    Lex, Please explain how "quantum mechanics" has anything to do with consciousness. Do you understand or have a background in physics? Sounds an awful lot like you want or need to ascribe extra-physical capacity to the mind and you (falsely) see quantum dynamics as the "physical" back door necessary to facilitate the extra-physical??
  • Lex Ricketts
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 9:13 PM
    Lex Ricketts
    Consciousness, I see it as a two-fold symptom. It is a symptom because it is not a thing and it seems to be derived from a process.
  • Lex Ricketts
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 9:12 PM
    Lex Ricketts
    The two-fold elements of the process appear to be the ability to sense an environment and the ability to derive meaning from those perceptions.
  • Lex Ricketts
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 9:11 PM
    Lex Ricketts
    We know about the sensory portion of this, but deriving meaning from those perceptions, now I?m afraid it?s going to take a much deeper understanding of quantum mechanics for that. Especially if our IQs are going to remain intact. Randall you?re a brave man saying thing like this: ?What if consciousness is, at essence, very simple? What if it is simply and only adding as input the recent history of a system's own actions and reactions to all other perceptual streams??
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 4:33 PM
    Randall Reetz
    Experience is always localized. No system can interact with the world around it without effecting that world. So at some level, even the most passive system will sense itself as disturbance in system? consciousness achieved! An entity's sense of itself will be as simple or as complex as the pattern learning capacity it wields.
  • Alex Gaputin
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 11:01 AM
    Alex Gaputin
    Consciousness does not have to be the goal. It a symptom of good AGI. Consciousness emerges partly from abstract symbolic manipulation, which emerges from non conscious things....
  • Randall Reetz
    Posted Mar 2, 2010 10:59 AM
    Randall Reetz
    I have a hunch that it would be much harder to build consciousness-free intelligence than intelligence with consciousness. Memory itself seems impossible without some level of consciousness. Raw uncompressed memory provides none of the advantages of learning which is a selective compression issue. A compressed (semantic) memory will always stand out against reality (a primary sensory input stream). Removing the self completely from memory would be an expensive filtering problem.
of 2

Who attended?

  • 70 attendees
    • “ Full house! Lots of folks looking for definitions where there are none and Bob handled them nicely! ”
    • “ OK Bob, Cool topic. Lots of knowledge and insight. But remember that you walked into this consciousness minefield voluntarily (maybe you should do what I have done and choose a less controversial topic such as evolution?). The extreme range of audience reaction territory ("Your thesis is not falsifiable as it is based on a logically inconsistent definition of consciousness!" vs. "Is the moon conscious?") is to my mind, evidence of a need to tighten and focus your thesis (or push the human species reset button). Why not reduce the "Who, What, Where... of Consciousness" to introduction/overview (20 min max), and then dive directly into your thesis space ("consciousness is elemental to any intelligent system"). There needs to be some sort of comparison space. What is an intelligence like if it doesn't have consciousness. If you are saying that zombies are the counter-example, you need to show why. I would love to help (with organization, chunking, tempo and typography/layout). ”
    • “ An inspiring presentation! Gave me a new appreciation of the highly integral and multidisciplinary nature of this subject. Looking forward to Bob's next talk. ”
    • “ The concept was well presented. i wish there was more discussion about about a falsifiable fundamental definition of Consciousness & its direct relation to AI. ”
    • “ This was an awesome Meetup - can't wait for parts 2 and 3! ”
    • “ Although the definitions don't have clear boundaries, Bob Blum came prepared to discuss the topic with lots of great examples. ”
    • “ Thanks Bob, I consumed a dose of exquisite mind food during your excellent presentation, and excited a bit of my neurons. I'm 100% conscious! ”
    • Jack Park (+1 guest)
      “ Awesome! ”
    • “ Great material, but need to manage audience better and hold questions for breaks at say every 1/4 of talk. So 3 q&a sessions during talk, then one at end. Especially when discussing consciousness, because it's a topic so many are passionate about. Bobs material was great, but we wasted a lot of time on inane questions from audience. ”
    • Kevin (+1 guest)
    • Lanet (+1 guest)
    • Lex Ricketts (+1 guest)
    • Reluctant Heretic
    • Dan Brehmer (+1 guest)

Our Sponsors

Syntience Inc.

AI research company. Provides video equipment, time, and web space

Other nearby
Meetups
Why these groups?
x

The Meetup Groups shown here are topically similar to Bay Area Artificial Intelligence Meetup Group.

Groups are more likely to be displayed here if they:

  • have a Meetup scheduled
  • have a high rating
  • have a group photo
  • are "public" and not "private"
  • have shown they are likely to stick around (older than 30 days)
Find more Meetup Groups
in Menlo Park

Log in

  • Not registered with us yet?

Forgot your password?

or

Log in to Meetup with your Facebook account.

Sign up

or

Join this Meetup Group even quicker with your Facebook account.

By clicking the "Sign up using Facebook" or "Sign up" buttons above, you agree to Meetup's Terms of Service