Their research is based on the insight, backed up by a philosophical theory of consciousness called higher-order thought, that when you are conscious of something, you can confidently judge what you saw. Say you come to my lab and I show you a number of fake six-letter words such as XTNVMT and ask you to remember as much about them as possible. After you have seen these training words, I tell you that they are actually generated by some fixed rules (for example, that an X is always followed by a T). Next, I show you similar nonsense words you have not seen before, and you have to judge whether you think each test word obeys the same unknown rules as do the training words you have just seen. It is well known that you will do much better than chance even though you feel that you are guessing. You are not conscious of the grammatical rules, yet something in your brain knows whether or not the test words follow the rules, without you feeling confident about this knowledge.
Persaud and his colleagues varied this game in a very clever way, relying on people’s instinct to make money. In this variant, every time you decide whether or not the word follows the unknown rule you bet either $1 or $2 on your decision. If you’re right, you get to keep the money, and if you’re wrong, you lose it. You clearly should wager high if you are confident that the six-letter word either follows or does not follow the rule. The Oxford volunteers confounded these expectations. In most trials they made the correct choices, but they placed low wagers. The volunteers thus failed to convert their above-chance performance on the yes-no decisions into money. Their failure to reap a profit despite performing better than expected by pure guessing indicates that the subjects were using unconscious processing. One advantage of the wagering measure is that it does not force subjects to focus their consciousness on what they are conscious of, in the process perturbing the very phenomenon that scientists wish to measure.
Ironically, the leitmotif of Western philosophy since the days of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, “know thyself,” could have been put to pecuniary use if subjects would have learned to trust their gut instincts and bet on something about which they were not yet conscious. I leave it to others to figure out whether such unconscious thought patterns have contributed to the abysmal state of the financial markets and our retirement accounts.
Instead of arguing with people about whether or not they are conscious of grammatical rules or when these rules are violated, wagering means that we can study consciousness without having an agreed-on formal definition of consciousness.
Both the brain-based measure and the wagering technique are far from ideal instruments to infer the presence or absence of feelings in any creature, whether healthy human adult or baby, monkey or bee. The situation is a bit analogous to detecting a black hole. You can’t see it directly, as it sucks up all matter and all radiation. Yet its position can be inferred by the gravitational effect it exerts on nearby stars. I have no doubt that science will develop better consciousness meters. And herein lies progress, for what can be measured has a much better chance of being understood by us than does something that can only be argued about. Hence the motto of this essay.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Measure More, Argue Less".
This article was originally published with the title Measure More, Argue Less.
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Add CommentThis is a key finding as to understanding consciousness. Indeed, much seems to be going on, unfortunately the wrong way, when studying the latter and claiming that patients under anesthesia are "unconscious" and plowing along with much hypotheses and theories! In fact, these patient are in a state of "faintness" but NOT unconsciousness!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCheck this out:
& Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, argues that the highest function of lifeconsciousnessis likely a quantum phenomenon too. This is illustrated, he says, through anesthetics. The brain of a patient under anesthesia continues to operate actively, but without a conscious mind at work. What enables anesthetics such as xenon or isoflurane gas to switch off the conscious mind?
http://xenophilius.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/theory-and-evidence-for-natural-quantum-computing-as-the-cause-of-consciousness/
The subject under discussion is not consciousness. It is communication. Do animals lack consciousness? Do beliefs indicate consciousness of another dimension? We prefer to accept our experience of awareness as consciousness and include any idea as a perception of consciousness. Descartes was wrong. Awareness identifies self. It is evidence of perception, limited by the ability to perceive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we could truly communicate we might be able to understand the difference between reality and belief.
There are degrees of communication. There has been no evidence of degrees of consciousness.
Christof Koch is a very clever scientist and has revealed amazing things about the conscious mind and brain. But he's committed, seemingly, to one particular ontology and might be missing the actual underlying reality. Still I agree with his basic conclusion - we need better ways of measuring consciousness. Contra the commet above there are degrees of consciousness - as subjective self-examination revealed ages ago. Now let's find a way of objectively measuring that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProf. Tim Wilson of Virginia is quoted often about a statistic that
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistalks of the rates of information processing (absorption) by brain:
brain processes about 40 bits of info per second consciously
whereas the unconscious processing is eleven million bits per second.
These numbers were given in his 2002 book "Strangers to Ourselves."
Even if the actual numbers are approximate, the enormous difference in
the order of magnitude is highly significant as it can explain several
things that are related to the function of brain - e.g. dream content,
feelings of deja vu, intuition, some decision making, sudden answers
coming to the mind to problems well-churned in the brain earlier etc.
When I asked for a clarification as to how he arrived at these
numbers, Prof Wilson responded to me as follows:
"I actually got those figures from an interesting book by
Norretranders called The User Illusion. I think we need to be careful
about using these numbers too literally; it is difficult to tell how
many independent inputs the brain can process. Nonetheless I think
the general point is true, namely that the amount of information we
can process exceeds what we can attend to consciously."
Later I found that Dr. Tor N�rretranders book 'User Illusion" was a
translation of his original Danish version published in 1991! And I
do not know how Norretranders arrived at those numbers almost twenty years ago!!
Prof. J. A. Bargh's and others' work at New York University in 1996 on
the influence of subliminal information on the later behavior of
students is well-known. We have many recent publications on the
significance of unconscious in decision making. But how can one go
about quantifying the amount of info. absorbed (processed) by the
conscious and unconscious brain activity?
Can Prof. Christof Koch throw light on this please and
also cite a reference regarding the information processing speeds of
brain consciously and unconsciously?
thanks and regards
The low bit rate seems a bit odd in my mind. Visual consciousness surely represents a large fraction of the information input and is at least in the millions of bits for any one gestalt. 10-40 bits of abstracted information I can believe but the contents of primary consciousness seems very detailed. The difference between what can be measured and experienced is huge.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a father of a PVS ,Have to tell all that in my openion most of the persistent vegetative state,MCS and LiS have consciousness at some scale but they have no way to show this. My son Jawad Pasha is still without motor function but now we see him responding every voice and happening.The whole system of brain demaged treatment is working on negative theories.I request caregivers to take more care of their patients.These helpless afraid innocent people need more care and your love and care can bring them back but it can take many years,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree what measured is just communication, consciousness has always been there. In facts, I believe consciousness is not in our body(not in any religious way).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are inching to some success and our son Jawad Pasha now seems to be fully conscious. We have got almost a control on his Seizure/Fits but we still know nothing about regaining of motor function. His health is very good but effects of passing almost 5 years on bed are now becomming visible. I am afraid we can loose this all due to very less sources of rehab available to us here at Pakistan. However I feel that we got benifet of having less information about a Persistent Vegetative State term.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo the reader
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're an idiot to be so arrogant as to actually think you could ever measure anything. Put certainty on something that even allows certainty to be possible? Your brain is too feeble to ever fully comprehend or understand even the how of consciousness to it's greatest lengths.
How about this though, say you understood EVERYTHING intellectually - you would only have the HOW, and not the WHY. You will never have the why, not matter how much you understand anything in the entirety of your existence.
Get over yourself