The Analysis of Conscious Systems

Following William Wimsatt, I have developed a model of complex systems that have strong interactions between levels. See §3.2 in http://larrygoldberg.org/reprints/cmplclim.pdf. There are several difficulties in applying my analysis of interactionally complex systems to conscious systems. As explained on the Homepage and in the Theories section of this site, the study of conscious systems should consider their possible interactions with the ocean of virtual particles which interpenetrates their entire volume. One difficulty for systems analysis is that mutual interactions with virtual particles are built into the very definition of fundamental particles and fields but are arbitrarily considered "external" to complex systems, such as organisms or brains, that may also interact with them. Arbitrary definitions aside, if virtual particles do interact significantly with electromagnetic configurations at many different spatial and temporal scales, ranging in size and time scale from atoms and their constituents to macromolecules, cells, brain processes, and beyond, then it would seem misleading to characterize virtual particles as inhabiting a level of organization. Like the atmosphere, oceans, and other turbulent or self-organizing fluids, virtual particles may be organized at many different mutually interacting scales.

Likewise, if I am correct (in my interpretation of an aspect of quantum mechanics) that wavefunctions are associated with patterns of virtual particle behavior that constrain the possible motion and interactions of particles or systems of particles (given our necessarily incomplete description of their initial states), then different wavefunctions would operate (in their collapse and entangled consequences) at many different levels as well. If conscious systems register their electromagnetic states in the arrangement of virtual particles in the vacuum, then the patterns of virtual particle activity and the wavefunctions that emerge from them would reflect the "level" of the electromagnet patterns imprinted on them. Finally, if consciousness is associated with the exploration of possibilities represented by wavefunctions and with the choice of possibilities inherent in their collapse, then the level of conscious process, if one could speak this way, would be tuned to the spatial scales of any entanglement of disparate particles described by the associated wavefunctions.

The temporal scales of wavefunction collapse are instantaneous, however, and would be less significant for assessing the time scale of a conscious process than the lifetime of the wavefunction in association with which consciousness may have explored the various options represented in the wavefunction. Although many studies have been done in cognitive neuroscience that establish the response time of certain conscious states to certain brain process precursors, no one has been able to study the response time of brain states or processes to conscious intervention. Eventually, however, we may be able to make a temporal record of the export of a brain state to the vacuum suggested by an analysis of several competing substates, the duration of quantum computation or conscious consideration of the exported options while the wavefunction evolves, and the entangled consequences at disparate brain locations that move the brain towards one of the competing substates. The process may be iterative, until a clear steady state results, such as the coherent neuronal firing in the 35 to 75 Hz range, called the "binding frequency," which is believed to be a associated with working memory in at least some sensory modalities--a common operational definition of consciousness. Moments of neuronal coherence may signal a harmonious reflection in the vacuum and wavefunctions that represent fewer options for the brain particles they represent (whether in independent, interacting, or entangled states). In some such way, consciousness may move from problem-solving to coordinated action, with time scales that can be understood in terms of conventional cognitive neurophysiology, but which ultimately may be shown to have unexplained "time-outs" unless we consider the process of wavefunction propagation of possibilities over time and its possible association with conscious consideration of options before an act of choice at the moment of collapse. (It would be ironic if consciousness were aware only of the outcome of a quantum computing process, but not of the process itself.)

One of the research goals of ISOCOSM is to extend system science to embrace the analysis of complex systems characterized by conscious processes enabled by interactions with quantum mechanical phenomena, with all the temporal and spatial complexities involved that are sure to challenge current hierarchical and interactional forms of systems analysis. We have not mentioned at all issues regarding whether consciousness is spatially or only temporally distributed, whether it can be thought of as providing the cause of wavefunction collapse, or wavefunctions and their collapse simply describe the process of quantum computation or conscious imagination and consideration and the results of such deliberation. Although the indulgence in such questions of ontology (the study of what's real) and explanation (the identification of the rules by which acceptable forms of reality cause a real phenomenon of interest) may seem abstract speculation, the systems analyses presupposed in the study of conscious systems will have much to do with what questions we ask about their structure, patterns, processes, behavior, and evolution. A rule of thumb in science is to view systems definition and analysis as essential to the identification of an empirical domain for an emerging area of science, while theory and model development follows that can hopefully provide some explanations. In real life, of course, there is feedback from explanatory findings to systems definitions and analyses. Eventually, something of a paradigm emerges that enables inherently interdisciplinary research methods that are suitable for the development and testing of interdisciplinary theories that address a well-integrated empirical domain that nonetheless reveals significant problems as to what is going on. These problems and the priorities with which we pursue them determine the directions of research interest, at least those that are derived from our epistemological concerns regarding what forms of knowledge are needed. There are social factors, of course, that also contribute, through funding pressure and popular demand, to certain directions of research interest. These social interests are hopefully based on ethical and aesthetic values that help to motivate the scientific community, even as the scientific community will hopefully be able to communicate the state of their field to the public to facilitate greater appreciation of what our scientific options really are. Complex systems, especially those that interface with conscious and quantum realms, can be studied in many different ways, depending upon the systemic behavior that may interest us. The value of a serious attempt at a preliminary system analysis, abstracted from the conscious systems with which we are most familiar and intended to represent any conscious system that we may find, is that it may put the epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic tradeoffs that we must make in formulating personal and social science policy in a broad perspective that facilitates informed choice.