Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain?
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Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain?
To be clear, we are not talking about people with no brain, but we are talking about humans who have lost up to 99% of their brain or were born without 99% of their brain. They have some brain, but they only have about 1%-10% of an average human brain, very roughly speaking.
Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain such cases of people obtaining or retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain?
My answer is this: Since there is no validated theory of consciousness that can resolve the hard problem of consciousness for humans with average-sized brains, then of course there isn't one that can likewise explain apparent consciousness (i.e. solve the hard problem of consciousness) in people with abnormally tiny brains and/or severely damaged brains.
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
I would go with you. Any theory of consciousness will account for any and all conscious beings. In this case, I think it's the adaptability and reconfigurability of the brain that is achieving this impressive display of function while severely limited (compared with most other human brains).Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:17 pm Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain such cases of people obtaining or retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain?
My answer is this: Since there is no validated theory of consciousness that can resolve the hard problem of consciousness for humans with average-sized brains, then of course there isn't one that can likewise explain apparent consciousness (i.e. solve the hard problem of consciousness) in people with abnormally tiny brains and/or severely damaged brains.
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
"[C]onsciousness is generated in the upper brainstem."
—Mark Solms: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 02714/full
"[Solms] first suggests that “affective consciousness” is derived from brainstem mechanisms that control and receive input from the autonomic body, and that “cognitive consciousness” is derived from cortical mechanisms that receive and send information to and from the sensorimotor body. This in itself is not so radical, but he goes on to propose that all of our cortically-based sensory and perceptual experiences are imbued with consciousness only by the affective processes that exist to govern our internal bodily needs. Solms therefore makes the radical claim that consciousness is a function of the upper brainstem. He proposes that the upper brainstem is intrinsically conscious and the cortex is intrinsically unconscious and is only permeated with consciousness from the brainstem."
(Berlin, Heather. "The Brainstem Begs the Question: Petitio Principii." Neuropsychoanalysis 15/1 (2013): 25–29. p. 25)
The brainstem theory isn't accepted by many neuroscientists. For example, Joseph LeDoux, a leading expert on emotions, rejects it:
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"As I argue in this book, subcortical circuits provide nonconscious ingredients that contribute to feelings of fear and anxiety, but are themselves not the source of such feelings. The main difference between my view and Panksepp’s is, therefore, whether subcortical systems are directly responsible for primitive emotional feelings or instead are responsible for nonconscious factors that are integrated with other information in cortical areas to give rise to conscious feelings. What Panksepp calls cognitive feelings are, I maintain, what feelings are. The subcortical states are, as he also says at times, “truly unconscious” and thus not feelings at all. They are, in my view, nonconscious motivational states."
(LeDoux, Joseph. Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking, 2015. pp. 129-30)
"SUBCORTICAL THEORIES OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The views of consciousness discussed above are highly corticocentric. Some argue against this approach. For example, it is known that decortication does not eliminate purposeful goal-directed behavior in animals. But one could just as easily argue that this means that consciousness is not required for goal-directed behavior. Indeed, as discussed in previous chapters, consciousness is not a requirement for using incentive stimuli to guide instrumental (goal-directed) behavior, or for behavior to be reinforced by its consequences. Another point that is used to argue against cortical views of consciousness is the fact that children born without a cortex can still exhibit conscious awareness. However, much evidence has demonstrated that malfunctions of brain development can be compensated for, and when this happens, all rules are off in terms of what goes where in the brain. The genetic program that builds the brain typically follows a plan that puts functional circuits in assigned places. But when that plan is disrupted, key functions are wired into alternative locations. If the visual cortex is damaged, for example, vision is handled by what is normally the auditory cortex. If the left hemisphere (the language hemisphere in most people) fails to develop, the right hemisphere takes over many language functions. The survival of consciousness in the absence of a normal cortex does not mean that consciousness is normally managed by subcortical areas.
In this context we should also revisit the theories of emotional consciousness by Damasio and Panksepp discussed in the previous chapter. Recall that they distinguished a primitive form of consciousness and a cognitive form. The primitive forms they postulate are in essence subcortical hypotheses of first-order phenomenal consciousness since they propose that these subcortical states do not have to be cognitively accessed in order to be consciously experienced as emotions. Then, through cognitive consciousness and its tools (such as working memory, attention, memory, and language), these primitive states can be elaborated and accessed, and thus consciously experienced, as full-blown emotions.
Panksepp and his collaborator Marie Vandekerckhove describe subcortical states of affective consciousness as “implicit procedural (perhaps truly unconscious), sensory-perceptual and affective states organized at subcortical neuronal levels.” But they also argue that subcortical emotional states “give us a specific feeling of personal identity and continuity without explicit reflective awareness or understanding of what is happening.” The states are thus implicit (“truly unconscious” and lack “reflective awareness”) and, at the same time, are also consciously experienced (“give us a specific feeling”). It’s hard to know what the conscious experience of a “truly unconscious” emotional state that does not enter reflective awareness might be like, but in arguing that the states are a “prereflective” form of “unknowing . . . consciousness,” they are presumably referring to something like Block’s unaccessed phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness in the conventional sense (the sense in which we are aware of experiencing something) seems to depend on cortical processes. This is assumed by Block’s first-order theory as well as the other information-processing theories discussed above. The processes under discussion in these theories are part of the same general cortical information-processing system. The well-established role of the visual cortex in working memory, including attention, and other cognitive functions thus provide a framework for testing where in the cortical system conscious awareness emerges from information processing. Thus, the processes are grounded in well-established circuit interactions between the visual cortex and the prefrontal and parietal cortices, and the debate is fundamentally about where in that cortical processing system consciousness emerges.
Less clear is how subcortical circuits give rise to conscious states. Why does activity in body-sensing or command system circuits give rise to conscious states, but activity in adjacent areas that control breathing, heartbeat, or reflex movements to pain or loud noise or sudden visual stimuli does not? One could make a case that the subcortical body-sensing circuits in Damasio’s theory and subcortical emotion command circuits in Panksepp’s theory stand in a somewhat similar relationship to cognitive consciousness as the visual cortex does. That is, the subcortical areas create first-order phenomenal experiences and then, by way of connections from the subcortical areas to cortical areas, cognitive access to the subcortical processes could be possible. But that’s the easy part. The hard part in any first-order theory is explaining how the first-order state, independent of cognitive access, is consciously experienced on its own, something that has proven difficult in visual cortex and that is likely to be even harder to nail down in the brainstem.
Even if it could be shown in humans that some sort of primitive consciousness can be sustained by the brainstem, demonstrating that such states of consciousness exist in animals would face all the hurdles discussed so far. As we’ve seen, in animals hypothetical conscious states have to be tested by nonverbal responses, which leads to a formidable measurement problem: It is very difficult to distinguish whether nonverbal responses are based on conscious versus nonconscious processes without a verbal response as a contrast. The use of commentary keys and other clever experimental wizardry can generate evidence consistent with the idea of metacognition in animals, but even those conducting the studies acknowledge that a gap remains between establishing metacognition and proving animal consciousness."
(LeDoux, Joseph. Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Viking, 2015. pp. 174-6)
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And here's somebody else who rejects the brainstem theory:
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"[Björn] Merker (2007 ["Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicine"]) identifies phenomenal consciousness with a set of serial, limited-capacity representations in the upper brain-stem, where motivational and sensory information are integrated in the final common pathway for the online control of behavior. One strand of evidence said to support the view is apparently-purposive behavior displayed by surgically decorticated animals. Another is the emotional responsiveness of children born without a neocortex, who smile at caregivers, giggle when tickled, fuss and cry when upset, and so on. This suggestion can be dealt with quite briskly. But it needs at least to be addressed, because people in the animal-consciousness literature often cite it in support of their views.
We have already seen in Chapter 3 that online visual control of action in humans takes place independently of consciousness; so it is unclear why sensorimotor action in decorticated animals should count as evidence of consciousness. Indeed, it is surely clear that it shouldn’t. For we have direct evidence from the human case, not only that sensorimotor activity doesn’t depend on consciousness, but also that a functioning
neocortex is necessary for consciousness. Thus people who have had primary visual cortex destroyed become blind; those who have lost auditory cortex become deaf, and so on. It seems Merker must claim that phenomenal consciousness persists in such cases (supported by representations in the brain-stem) but in a way that is inaccessible to the people themselves.
Similar problems attach to Merker’s (2007) claims of consciousness in hydrocephalic children, who possess little or no cortex. For as we also noted in Chapter 3, emotion-expressive behavior of the sort exhibited by these children is directly caused by subcortical affective systems independently of consciousness. Although it might be compelling to observers of the children’s behavior that they are experiencing conscious emotions in response to stimuli (especially when those observers are the children’s caregivers, as was for the case for the survey data collected by Aleman & Merker 2014 ["Consciousness without cortex: A hydranencephaly family survey"]), we know that behavior of just this sort can be caused unconsciously. Indeed, cases of pathological laughter or crying in humans generally result from lesions to the higher-level cortical systems that would normally inhibit such behavior, thereby releasing the subcortical behavioral network in question (Lauterbach et al. 2013 ["Toward a more precise, clinically-informed pathophysiology of pathological laughing and crying"])."
(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 77-8)
"In summary, the data cited by Merker (2007) are readily explicable by known properties of the human brain without requiring any appeal to consciousness. In addition, the theory itself makes no attempt at explaining the puzzling properties of phenomenal consciousness or known facts about consciousness in humans. So the brain-stem account has little to be said for it."
(Carruthers, Peter. Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. pp. 79-80)
<QUOTE
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
Many would object that they are begging the question by presupposing that there actually are cases of phenomenally conscious cortexless humans or animals. For it may well be that the behavior of cortexless humans or animals can be fully explained without any appeal to phenomenal consciousness.
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
This would seem to be a duplicated thread.Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:17 pm Among other discussion questions and points, a previous forum topic by @arjand listed several cases of people with 90%-98% of their brain missing or lost but who live relatively normally, meaning they are able to move, walk, talk, learn, and communicate. By all accounts, they appear when awake--at least roughly speaking--to be as conscious as the average awake human, and as conscious as you and I, despite missing the vast majority of their brain.
To be clear, we are not talking about people with no brain, but we are talking about humans who have lost up to 99% of their brain or were born without 99% of their brain. They have some brain, but they only have about 1%-10% of an average human brain, very roughly speaking.
Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain such cases of people obtaining or retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain?
My answer is this: Since there is no validated theory of consciousness that can resolve the hard problem of consciousness for humans with average-sized brains, then of course there isn't one that can likewise explain apparent consciousness (i.e. solve the hard problem of consciousness) in people with abnormally tiny brains and/or severely damaged brains.
The phenomoneon of which you speak requires no theory or explanation. There is little substance to the media reports, and all reports are of people with brains of some kind but all with massively reduced capacity.
SInce we cannot directly conclude that anyone but ourselves is conscious it begs the question whether consciousness in such cases is of the same quality. Most usually loss of brain matter has the most tragic circumstances.
I really think this thread requires some citation of these cases.
Conversely we have masses of evidence of mental impairment and (presumably) loss of consciousness with people suffering a range of diseases and injuries to the brain. One such major disease Alzheimers - we witness to disappearance of the personality as the disease advances. Sufferers lose the ability to find words; understand how to use knives and forks; stop recognising their own children; fail in simply tasks such as put on a par of trousers, and worse until they forget how to breath and then die.
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
The degree of mental disability depends on how incomplete the brain in question is and what parts are missing.Protagoras wrote: ↑July 16th, 2021, 11:27 amSo how does it show up on a CT,as smaller,different shape,bits missing?
And does the person with the "incomplete" brain have any symptoms?
By the way, I noticed that I was wrong when I said "no brain means empty skull", because in cases of hydranencephaly the hollow space inside the skull is filled with fluid.
"Hydranencephaly is a rare condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent and replaced by sacs filled with cerebrospinal fluid. An infant with hydranencephaly may appear normal at birth. The infant's head size and spontaneous reflexes such as sucking, swallowing, crying, and moving the arms and legs may all seem normal. However, after a few weeks the infant usually becomes irritable and has increased muscle tone. After a few months of life, seizures and hydrocephalus (excessive accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain) may develop. Other symptoms may include visual impairment, lack of growth, deafness, blindness, spastic quadriparesis (paralysis), and intellectual deficits. Hydranencephaly is considered to be an extreme form of porencephaly (a rare disorder characterized by a cyst or cavity in the cerebral hemispheres) and may be caused by vascular infections or traumatic disorders after the 12th week of pregnancy. Diagnosis may be delayed for several months because early behavior appears to be relatively normal. Some infants may have additional abnormalities at birth including seizures, myoclonus (spasm or twitching of a muscle or group of muscles), and respiratory problems."
Source: https://www.ninds.nih.gov/Disorders/All ... ation-Page
Here's an example: (Note that the child isn't completely brainless, because the brainstem and the cerebellum are still there.)
Source: https://radiopaedia.org/articles/hydranencephaly
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Re: Is there a theory of consciousness that can explain cases of people retaining consciousness with only a bit of brain
Thank you for reformulating the question! The discussion of the cited topic didn't result in exact answers to the question but went in diverse other directions (except the contributions by consul that did provide links to theories).Scott wrote: ↑July 15th, 2021, 12:17 pmMy answer is this: Since there is no validated theory of consciousness that can resolve the hard problem of consciousness for humans with average-sized brains, then of course there isn't one that can likewise explain apparent consciousness (i.e. solve the hard problem of consciousness) in people with abnormally tiny brains and/or severely damaged brains.
With regard your answer. A theory would not need to have been validated to be applicable to the mentioned cases. The question was merely intended to discover applicable (potential valid) theories.
I personally believe that consciousness will be explainable. By logic, the origin of consciousness cannot reside within the scope of the individual which means that - from the perspective of an individual - an external factor is required.
The reason is simple: the origin of value cannot be value. (something cannot be the origin of itself)
There are diverse implications with the mentioned logic, and based on that it is most logical that a particle such as the Neutrino particle lays at the foundation of consciousness in which consciousness arises within the scope of interaction between the Neutrino particle and the individual (life-form). Within that interaction, essentially 'meaning' - the origin of the whole of the Universe - is transfered onto the level of the individual.
It is estimated that 10 trillion Neutrino particles fly through every square centimeter of space per second. This includes underground, on the dark side of Earth and even in the center of the Earth.
With the Neutrino-biological cell theory of consciousness, consciousness would arise on biological cell level so it would explain that even with a tiny fraction of a brain, consciousness itself is possible and that the brain is capable of overcoming almost anything just to 'perform'.
With this theory, machines (AI) can potentially become actually alive.
With regard the state of human knowledge and intelligence.
Based on the above theory, I naturally wondered:
1) are biological cells of dinosaurs of a different size and if so, could that indicate a correlation between a change of size and the distance between the Earth and the Sun? In modern life forms, plant and animal alike, all biological cells have approximately the same size, which is 10 microns.
2) is there evidence that Earth life can stay alive further away from Earth and in deep space?
When Earth life would be dependent on Neutrino-biological cell interaction, it may be that Earth life is bound to a region around the Sun.
I then discovered that as of 2021, the farthest distance that an animal, bacteria or insect has traveled in space, is the Moon.
Humans of today are investing trillions of USD for a Mars mission in 2035 but never considered to test whether Earth life is possible further away from Earth.
It may indicate a grave problem with modern scientific advances. The empirical nature of science appears to have resulted in a dogma that is so strong that humans in 2021 didn't even consider that consciousness may originate from the Sun.
The post World War II period is seen as an 'anti-philosophy' era in which philosophy was increasingly placed on a level similar to religions. Essentially, while science originates from philosophy, it has attempted to overcome philosophy.
I addressed the subject in the topic: The idea that life is like a fire
Is there at least one clue that life (consciousness) is independent from the Solar system?
Since there is no evidence for the origin of life, one is to make an assumption. From that perspective it seems logical to question whether it would be valid to assume that life is something independent from the Solar system but for some reason, no one has done so until today (2021).
New question:
When philosophy would have had its due place BEFORE science (as an intellectual pioneer without dogma's to guide itself). Would it have been tested whether Earth life is bound to a region around the Sun?
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