The document explores current ideas about consciousness through examining philosophical and scientific perspectives. It discusses how consciousness may emerge from complex interactions between invisible movers like information, perception, language, thought, and experience. These interactions are depicted in diagrams showing how mind emergence increases with complexity, from non-life to invertebrates to vertebrates. The document suggests consciousness results from recursive feedback loops and self-organizing processes within a system, with the mind not separate from the body.

1. Consciousness
An exploration of some current
ideas
By Sabin Densmore, 03/19/2014

2. Preface & Personal Bias
I’m barely beginning to understand the questions, let alone have any
answers.
I do not believe in the supernatural and therefore exclude supernatural
explanations for human-centric questions.
Careful observation of nature and experience as humans understand them
can provide answers to a lot of the questions we have about the nature of
consciousness.
I see science as a way of democratizing knowledge.
Philosophy and science do not address the same questions, but are
complementary.
 Philosophy is “why.” E.g., “In order to …”
 Science is “how.” E.g., “By means of …”

3. Pre- and post-Cartesian thoughts
on mind
“Man’s percepti-
-ons are not bound
-ed by organs of
perception. he per-
-ceives more than
sense (tho’ ever
so acute) can
discover”
- William Blake
“It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one,
just as it is not necessary to ask whether wax and its
shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each
thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if
one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is
properly spoken of is the actuality”
- Aristotle
The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the
materialism of business and the aloofness of
"intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of
knowledge and practice--all testify to the necessity of
seeing mind-body as an integral whole.
- John Dewey

4. What is mind?*
* Shown here are the five most recent I've read; this is a vast field. For further information, check out
Daniel Dennet.
Bateson Juarerro &
Deacon
Hofstadter Laszlo Maturana &
Varela
Aggregate of
Interacting Parts
Emergent Iterative
feedback loop
Internal aspect
of connectivity
within a matrix
Emergent
Triggered by
differences that
make a
difference
Result of
reciprocal
connection
between self-
organizing
processes
Ouroboros No gap
between
subject and
object
Result of self-
perpetuating and
cyclical
combination of
language and
experience
Requires
collateral energy
Entropy is
constrained

5. What’s in common: Invisible
Movers
My term. They do not have properties in the way we think of properties. I.e., they have no mass, no
volume, and no shape. They don’t take up spaceThey do have value, can impact the perceived
world, and make a difference in the way in which we live (Bateson, 1972; Deacon, 2013).
Messages
 Information received and set by or to a perceiver; Can be sense-based or meta
Perception
 The act or ability of interpreting a message; Can act beyond 5-senses (e.g. “Someone is watching me!”)
Language
 The format through which a message is understood; Symbol-based & Social; Allows for the shared experience of
living (Maturana/Varela)
Thought
 Emergent activity associated with understanding a message; Dependent on physical and chemical activity; not
caused by it
Experience
 Way in which living beings adapt to environment; Embedded in thought/memory based on activities-in-time

6. Most Complex
Vertebrates
Invertebrates
Least Complex
Diagram of mind Emergence
Third-order
Awareness of being aware of being in an
environment
Second-order
Awareness of being in an environment.
First-order
Awareness of body
Non Life
Tim
e
Chemoton
*
* Model of chemical life emergence (Ganti, 1971)
Entropy

7. Diagram of mind-body Activity
Messages
Metaphysical Senses
Physical Senses
Perception
ResponseExperience
Language

8. References
1. Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Cresskill: Hampton
Press, Inc.
2. Deacon, T. W. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New
York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
3. Juarrero, A. (1999). Dynamics in Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
4. Laszlo, E. (1972). Introduction to Systems Philosophy. New York, NY: Harper
Torchbooks.
5. Maturana, H. R., & Varela, F. J. (1987). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological
Roots of Human Understanding. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
6. Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of
Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
7. Varela, F. J. (1992). Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.