why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?

[Alan V]

Thank you for pointing out the book to me.

My wife, who knows my interests, pointed it out to me. It's one of my favorite things in life to find a book which articulates many of the issues I've been thinking about, in such a way as to extend my understanding.

I should be able to post my summary on Sunday.

[Belacqua]

It's far away from the poetry theme, but this blog post might interest people here. It addresses the limits of materialism, panpsychism, and qualia, with reference to traditional philosophical viewpoints.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/01/...tself.html

[Alan V]

Thank you for pointing out the book to me.

Okay, so this is my short summary of some of the main points from The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind by Michael Gazzanina. If you are reading the book too, you can add to what I have said since I didn't understand some sections.

In his introduction, the author states that he wants “to examine how matter makes minds.” He thinks “consciousness is an instinct. Many organisms, not just humans, come with it, ready-made.” Further, he states, “We are each a confederation of rather independent modules, orchestrated to work together.”

After reviewing the history of western philosophical and empirical thinking about the mind/brain problem in the first two chapters, the author lists several of the important scientific discoveries about consciousness from the last century. These include:

1) Penfield’s discovery of how the human body was mapped out in brains,

2) The discovery that “consciousness is inevitably lost when the function of the higher brain stem is interrupted.” This is interpreted to mean that consciousness depends on the “combined functional activity in the diencephalon [the higher brain stem or mid-brain] and cerebral cortex, not within the diencephalon alone.” In other words, consciousness does not exist in just one place in the brain.

3) The discovery that the brain is modular, which means that it is highly specialized functionally. Even different aspects of language are controlled by different parts of the brain (Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area). Such modules have a high number of connections within them, but only a few to other modules.

4) The discovery that epileptics who had their corpus callosum cut, severing the connections between the brain’s hemispheres to prevent seizures, clearly demonstrated they had two independent minds subsequently, but sharing the same emotions and motivations from the mid-brain. These minds did not share information as before, however, and therefore were distinctly different than they were in combination.

Gazzanina and Roger Sperry studied such split-brain patients together. From such studies, Sperry concluded that conscious experience is a property of brain activity which is:
1) nonreductive (it can’t be broken down into its parts),
2) dynamic (it changes in response to neural activity),
3) and emergent (it is more than the sum of the processes that produce it).
He also concluded “it could not exist apart from the brain.”

Francis Crick and Christof Koch concluded that “at any one moment some active neuronal processes correlate with consciousness, while others do not.” In other words, the brain is active in performing other functions than consciousness. Nevertheless, “there must be an explicit correspondence between any mental event and its neuronal correlates.”

More and more progress was made assigning specific functions to specific brain areas through a study of patients with various brain injuries. One discovery was that a kind of basic consciousness was very difficult to eradicate through specific brain injuries, and that patients were only aware of the brain circuits which were still working. For instance, people who were missing half of their visual field still thought they were seeing everything they could before. “If we lose a particular function, we lose the consciousness that accompanies it, but we don’t lose consciousness altogether.” Another discovery was that some circuits out-compete others for conscious attention. In other words, even when modules are fully functional and processing information, not all rise to awareness. Yet another discovery was that the brain was arranged hierarchically. Some modules have submodules with their own submodules.

“The perks of brain modularity are that it saves energy when resources are scarce, allows for specialized parallel cognitive processing when time is limited, makes it easier to alter functionality when new survival pressures arise, and allows us to learn a variety of new skills.”

Also, humans “possess highly integrative modules, which allow us to combine information from various modules into abstract thoughts.”

Because the matter which makes up the brain changes with some frequency through metabolism, replication, and repair, the functionality of the brain resides in its organization, and that “organization must be independent of the material particles that make up a living system.”

Like most biological systems, brains have a layered architecture. Levels are in series, but layers are in parallel, and can work independently and simultaneously. Information which is passed upwards is abstracted. “The purpose of each layer is to serve the layer above it while concealing the processes of the lower layer.” The lower layers are the most fixed and automatic. The higher layers are the most modifiable and least automatic. Evolution built the higher layers on the lower. “Overall, a layered architecture is ideal for complex systems because it is easily fixable, less costly, more flexible, and evolvable.”

Roger Sperry said,“View the brain objectively for what it is, namely, a mechanism for governing motor activity.” The brain is a motor control system for the body, which uses thinking, planning, remembering, learning, and cognition to guide its actions. “The more experiences you have had, the more choices your brain can simulate.”

“It is the mid-brain that supports the basic capacity for conscious subjective experiences.” It sustains emotional and motivational feelings, including “seeking, fear, rage, lust, care, grief, and play.” The frontal lobe controls such emotions. “Losing modules causes losses in specific funtionalities, but the mind keeps on producing a continuous conscious stream as if nothing changed. The only things that have changed is the contents of that stream. Not only does this provide evidence that the brain operates in a modular fashion, but it also suggest that independent modules can each produce a unique form of consciousness.”

From our understanding of quantum mechanics, we now know that objectivity does not just pertain to what is inherent entirely in a material system, but to what is inherent in a system-observer pair. “By the mere fact of measuring you are introducing subjectivity into the system.” This is complementarity, and it is an important concept in approaching the mind/brain problem. Howard Pattee pointed out that “it was the belief that human consciousness ultimately collapsed the wave function that produce the problem of Schrodinger’s cat.” But Pattee suggested that natural mechanisms far simpler than human consciousness could do this, and he proposed that the gap between inanimate and living matter resulted from “a process equivalent to quantum measurement that began with self-replication at the origin of life.” In other words, subjectivity was born with life, not with consciousness, which was a later elaboration. He stated, “Duality is a necessary and inherent property of any entity capable of evolving” and “if we want to understand the idea of consciousness, something fully formed in evolved living systems, we must first understand what makes a living system alive and evolvable in the first place.”

“Any living thing that ‘records’ information is introducing a form of subjectivity into the system.” A symbol is arbitrary, so while natural laws are inexorable and universal, rules that apply to symbols can be changed and are arbitrary. Pattee asserted that “it is precisely this natural symbol-matter articulation that makes life distinct from non-living physical systems.”

Biosemiotics is the semiotics of living systems. Semiotic systems pair signs and meanings with a code which is included within the system itself, and not imposed externally. Such assignments are arbitrary, like sounds for meanings in language, and came into existence through random molecular resorting. In other words, matter can self-organize in another way besides the laws of physics or evolution. “In its informational (subjective) mode, DNA follows rules, not the laws of physics.”

“There can be no self-awareness without a self. The first steps must be toward a delimited self.” Consciousness of such a self is further down the road, and is a relatively simple matter of perceiving an already existing self. Thus consciousness depends upon discrete living systems.

“Living matter is distinct from inanimate matter because it has taken an entirely different course. Inanimate matter abides by physical laws. Life from the get-go has thrown its lot in with rules, codes, and the arbitrariness of symbolic information.” Pattee asserted, “Our models of living organisms will never eliminate the distinction between the self and the universe, because life began with this separation and evolution requires it.”

“Neural circuits are structures with a double life: they carry symbolic information, which is subject to arbitrary rules, yet they posses a material structure that is subject to the laws of physics.” With competing modules comes selective awareness, or selective signal enhancement through attention by means of a control layer.

So the machine metaphor no longer works to explain consciousness. “Brains aren’t like machines; machines are like brains with something missing. Polanyi pointed out that humans evolved through natural selection, whereas machines are made by humans. They exist only as the product of highly evolved living matter, and are the end product of evolution, not the beginning.”

[bennyboy]

With all due respect, it seems to me that almost every single point you've quoted suffers from the kinds of philosophical question-begging I was talking about. I can make a specific list if you like, but if I'm thorough it will be quite the mighty wall of text.

[Belacqua]

In his introduction, the author states that he wants “to examine how matter makes minds.”  He thinks “consciousness is an instinct.  Many organisms, not just humans, come with it, ready-made.”  Further, he states, “We are each a confederation of rather independent modules, orchestrated to work together.”

It turned out that I had too much fun over the weekend to work on the book, but I hope to get back to it soon. In the meantime, thank you for this summary. 

The goal, “to examine how matter makes minds” is just what we want. The statement that “consciousness is an instinct" is, I guess, stating that it is something we do naturally, without the need for training? The statement that “We are each a confederation of rather independent modules, orchestrated to work together” I think is well-accepted these days. No argument there. 

the author lists several of the important scientific discoveries about consciousness from the last century

These are all important discoveries. The ones you list, 1 through 4, seem to me to be discoveries about how the brain works. How those facts about the brain give rise to consciousness is what we're working on, so it'll be interesting to see the connection. 

Gazzanina and Roger Sperry studied such split-brain patients together. From such studies, Sperry concluded that conscious experience is a property of brain activity which is:

1) nonreductive (it can’t be broken down into its parts),
2) dynamic (it changes in response to neural activity),
3) and emergent (it is more than the sum of the processes that produce it).
He also concluded “it could not exist apart from the brain.”

The nonreductive part is where the trouble starts, I'd say. This is where we see that the parts (brain activity) don't add up in any clear way to consciousness. 

The dynamic part is surely true; changes in brain states translate -- somehow -- to changes in consciousness.

The emergent part is the difficult part. How does it emerge is the question at hand. 

No doubt there are spooky people out there who claim that minds exist without brains. But nobody here is claiming that, I don't think. I'd go further, or define it a bit differently, to say that minds require bodies.

More and more progress was made assigning specific functions to specific brain areas through a study of patients [...]

The center part of the summary addresses how the brain has various parts and functions, layered architecture, etc. This all seems undeniable to me. It may well have something to tell us about how consciousness emerges from brain events. 

Biosemiotics is the semiotics of living systems. Semiotic systems pair signs and meanings with a code which is included within the system itself, and not imposed externally. Such assignments are arbitrary, like sounds for meanings in language, and came into existence through random molecular resorting. In other words, matter can self-organize in another way besides the laws of physics or evolution. “In its informational (subjective) mode, DNA follows rules, not the laws of physics.”

Here we get back to the type of thing addressed by the p-zombie problem. A computer also uses semiotics, or code, to store and process information. Yet they don't have consciousness, by definition.

I had never heard that matter can do things not according to the laws of physics. That's something I'll look forward to reading more about. 

Consciousness of such a self is further down the road, and is a relatively simple matter of perceiving an already existing self.

Oh dear. This is where the red lights come on.

To say it's "a relatively simple matter of perceiving" something is not self-evident to me. Because the whole thing we're working on is how we perceive things in consciousness. 

There are unexpectedly difficult questions here. E.g. what is a self? 

“Brains aren’t like machines; machines are like brains with something missing.

This is good. I guess it all boils down to what the "something" is. 

Again, I haven't read the book yet. I'm still left with a number of questions. And I'm afraid that the key terms people use remain unexplained. The fact that the mind is "emergent" for example. Or that the brain does its thing and then "we" perceive it. How do those things happen? 

Maybe I'll get more from a closer reading of the book. 

[bennyboy]

Maybe I'll get more from a closer reading of the book. 

I greatly admire your optimism (or your irony).

[Belacqua]

Maybe I'll get more from a closer reading of the book. 

I greatly admire your optimism (or your irony).

I live in hope!

Though perhaps less than yesterday.

[bennyboy]

I don't mean to be rude to Thoreauvian, and I've actually read some of the books he's talking about. Broca's Brain was fascinating, as is neuroscience in general.

However, I think it's easy once a world view has been fully subscribed to to just consider it a done deal, and to make statements by fiat from that point forward. Everything needs to be kept in its context, and if you want it to transcend that context, you need to build a bridge. That's what science hasn't done yet-- built a bridge between computational models (including biological ones) and the ability to experience qualia. And my reason for thinking that won't happen is simple-- qualia cannot be observed unless you define them in objective terms that makes the term meaningless: "Qualia are those brain functions which involve activity X in brain regions Y and Z."

[Alan V]

Biosemiotics is the semiotics of living systems. Semiotic systems pair signs and meanings with a code which is included within the system itself, and not imposed externally. Such assignments are arbitrary, like sounds for meanings in language, and came into existence through random molecular resorting. In other words, matter can self-organize in another way besides the laws of physics or evolution. “In its informational (subjective) mode, DNA follows rules, not the laws of physics.”

Here we get back to the type of thing addressed by the p-zombie problem. A computer also uses semiotics, or code, to store and process information. Yet they don't have consciousness, by definition.

No, a computer is not a semiotic system, because it has its code imposed from without.

Some life can undoubtedly work entirely chemically and reflexively, but I would guess only at a rather primitive level. The reason for this seems rather obvious to me, though it was not covered in the book because it was addressing human consciousness. More complex lifeforms have to adapt to more complex environmental conditions. They can't blunder about blindly, at least not for long if they are competing with conscious creatures. If you think evolution could program p-zombies from scratch, I would have to ask why they should prefer living over dying. If you say dying is painful or against such creatures' self-interest, you have already conceded the necessity for internal states. And an indifferent or hostile environment will not do the programming for them. They must be self-organized, which mean they must have instincts and ultimately internal states to guide them.

You can read the book and see if you can understand and express the details more clearly on these and a range of other points. Your emphasis might be entirely different than mine, given what I could understand.

---

With all due respect, it seems to me that almost every single point you've quoted suffers from the kinds of philosophical question-begging I was talking about.  I can make a specific list if you like, but if I'm thorough it will be quite the mighty wall of text.

Sorry Bennyboy, but you are now on ignore since I don't care for your superior attitude toward cutting edge scientific research.  This isn't really about philosophy at all, you see. Unless they are really contributing in some way, philosophers are not required.

Perhaps Belaqua will continue to field your confusions.

[Abaddon_ire]

Alright, I have lurked this thread long enough. The question posed is"why do we enjoy poetry From the perspective of neuroscience?".

Implicit in the question is an unwarranted assumption.

I don't enjoy poetry at all, mostly I ignore it as irrelevant fluff.

The notion that "we" enjoy poetry as a global truth is utter bollocks. One only has to say the words "iambic pentameter" and I instantly teleport to a different universe.

The claim that poetry has universal appeal is flat out wrong.