between the vanilla & the metaphysical

on social media, the last week has been an interesting one for consciousness. from Anil Seth's pushback againat panpsychism, we see some interesting discussion coming out of it re: the legitimacy of consciousness research. and independently there's also been some relevant discussion by serious AI researchers too.

to recap, a certain pop media article claimed that panpsychism i.e. roughly the idea that simple creatures / plants may be conscious to some degree, is gaining academic credibility. i thought my response was a bit harsh, but one notable 'tweet' may be Adrian Owen's, which openly called panpsychism 'nonsense'. hurray, Adrian~

in truth, much as i agree, i do worry a bit that this may become a war between the disciplines. whereas in neuroscience panpsychism is generally written off, in philosophy some seriously people do take it seriously. some have now expressed the worry that they may get caught in the cross-fire.

that's a point that i think some scientists without my unhealthy level of philosophical bent may not appreciate initially. why would anyone be so crazy to think consciousness is everywhere? in a way, it all goes back to the issue of the hard problem. when it comes to qualia, i.e. the subjective, ineffable, qualitative, phenomenological aspects of conscious experiences, e.g. the redness of red when you see red.... that sort of thing is just not easy to model with an usual reverse engineering approach. when we write programs to do things like humans, we look through the lines of codes, where does it ever say that red has to look a certain qualitative way? why does it have to feel anything at all? it's not clear if there is something it is like to be the program. why isn't color just a wavelength, that is just different from the others? why does it have to feel this very specific way? if there is such a thing as subjective experiences for a program, to be represented by some numbers, the program will work just fine if we had swapped these numbers for red vs green. so long as such 'labels' are consitent, the program will work just fine. but our subjective experiences don't seem to work that way. and because it is so hard to pin down what may be the mechanisms / basis, some radical solutions like panpsychism are considered live possibilities by serious philosophers - maybe qualia is a fundamental property of physical stuff so we can't explain it in simpler mechanistic terms.

to some people, this problem about subjective qualia is a nonsensical problem. it's not even the kind of problem that scientists should be concerned with. to a certain extent, i sympathize. but at the same time, i think it is a legitimate thing - and maybe even important thing - for philosophers to ponder about. to some extent, their jobs are different in nature from ours. it's just good to keep the two businesses separate (in terms of evaluating what's right within each field).

but when philosophers working on these issues start to pretend that certain scientific theories support their worldview (e.g. panpsychism), then we get into trouble. as it turns out, the science itself doesn't support their views. it's just that some scientists endorse their views. but there's a world of difference between an empirically supported scientific theory, vs a theory endorsed by empirical scientists - the latter does not need to be a scientific theory at all. when philosophers cite such poor evidence as supporting their view, i fear it cheapens their philosophy, and they are asking for the backfiring.

so, all good. no need to worry about zombies for now (i.e. roughly creatures who functionally behave like us but have no subjective qualitative experiences). let's assume they don't exists - which is my tentative stance in our recent Science paper by the way, that qualia empirically correlates with certain neural computation in humans, so we should assume they do as such for now.

but there's another worry, from the opposite end. when we try to do this as a Hard Science, do we end up studying consciousness at all? or, are we just studying good old perception or attention, but we call it conscious perception just to sound sexy and cool?

this is the question brought up in a great post by @neurograce, which i find really thoughtful and fair. in truth, that's something i worry about a lot too. i thought i was to reply more directly onto @neurograce's blog, but i think the discussion on twitter more or less took care of it, with some useful input from Ken Miller too, and @neurograce kindly reflected it all on her blog - which i highly recommend.

in essence, the answer is: yes there is a meaningful work to be done, even if we aren't concerned with qualia and zombies and all that. it is just a basic neurobiological question why some processes in the brain are conscious, in the sense that we can talk/think about them, and why some processes are not. a science of the mind is incomplete if we can't say what makes the difference. however, the danger is that we need to make sure when we are talking about unconscious processes, we aren't just talking about feeble, weak, processes. for otherwise, we would just be equating consciousness with stregnth of perception. and in that case we can just talk about perception and do without the loaded c-word. there is something more to it than just strong perception though; there are very powerful forms of unconscious perception, as in the neurological phenomenon of blindsight. conscious perception just seems to be a different sort of process. mapping out the difference is meaningful work. we don't have a perfect solution as to how to do this yet. there's not yet a consensus; it's ongoing, so @neurograce's skepticism & critiques are very much welcome.

we can likewise frame this as a challenge to AI researchers: can we characterize different forms of processing, each of which somewhat similarly powerful, but some allows the system to reflect upon and report of them, and some are more opague to such introspection? like Yoshua Bengio (see this), i do think we may be getting there.... if we are careful not to confound it with other psychological phenomena such as attention, language, depth of processing etc. that is, we really need to make sure we are honing in on the critical mechanisms truly necessary and sufficient to make the difference between the conscious vs unconscious.

as the work becomes more rigorous, the concepts become better defined in cognitive/computational terms, can we just bypass the historical baggage, and avoid the c-word altogether? i think we shoulnd't, because there are already theories of consciousness that are explicitly as such, and some of them can be meaningfully arbitrated. it is odd for those doing this work to pretend we are not studying consciousness per se.

but above all, i also feel we can't sidestep it & pretend there isn't such a problem in the first place. we owe it to the rest of the field to fix this mess. people are going to talk about consciouenss and related issues. as we see in this recent debate between experts of the fear circuit like Michael Fanselow and Joe Ledoux (click the links to see their respective arguments), these are genuine problems, with real clinical and practical implications. between worrying about the metaphysical, lofty hard problems, vs going vanilla to avoid being too controversial, i fear we have not really done our jobs. amid all the pop media noise, we made it look like there are no serious scientific answers to these basic questions. it is time to do our parts.

on combat, part 2; my argument with Stan Dehaene over 13 years ago

.... i was a young postdoc then. like, relatively young even for a postdoc. i was 25. and that's just after 3-4 years of living in an English-speaking country.

some uber-rich people / expats will tell u that Hong Kong people speak English. in reality if you are the average people, outside of the classroom, the most you ever hear are the occasional single English words inserted in Cantonese banters. my English was... ok. or maybe i could even dare say, good, by the standard of a local Hong Kong student. i could talk. but man, it was tiring to talk all day in English. so... that was what i was saying in a previous post. when i figured that you can ask tough questions after talks, or just talk about science, it was a great relief.  instead of not talking at all, to be point of having my office-mates thinking i was anti-social, finally i could interact with people in English! it was just way way way easier than talking about soap operas that i haven't seen, or jokes that i wouldn't ever get, in a pub. you could even read the stuff to prepare before hand~

so in 2005 i had already been living in England for 3-4 years, and was used to that way of talking - always arguing about science. i don't have much of other sorts of vocabulary, frankly. it was ASSC9 (the meetig of the only professional society for scientific studies of consciousness), in Caltech. it was my first time in LA, my current 'home', when i first met people like Christof Koch, Frank Tong, Nao Tsuchiya, Stan Dehaene, Alva Noe, Giulio Tononi, Bruno Breitmeyer etc

i won the James Prize, for a paper that really wasn't that good, in hindsight. i was to subsequently stop doing any of this 'Libet clock' stuff. but still, the paper remains my most cited to date. well at least i get to tell people that i published one of my least favorite papers in Science~

Stan was the president, or president-elect, or something, of ASSC. so he gave a presidential address, talking about how his neuroscience experiments supported the global workspace view. some of you are too young too know, some just don't remember. but back then, this neuronal global workspace thing was huge. it's like, the shining light. it still is, to my mind.

straight away, after his presidential lecture, i gave my James talk. it wasn't exactly prepared or intended as such, but i ended up spending the whole hour criticizing Stan's work, occasionally using the very same figures he had just presented to illustrate what was wrong. the main arguments are summarized here. and then there is a bit of this.

the written works linked above were, of coz, a lot more toned down. but with jetlag, and just winning a prize and everything, on stage it just went straight to my head. and i've always improvised too much in my talks.... i was sheer hostile. it was not really very professional.

i don't think i ever apologized to Stan per se. (sorry, Stan!). but to his credit, even right after the talk, he spent time discussing with me, taking my points seriously. and later on, when i was visiting Paris to do another project, he invited me to give a talk in his lab. he even cited my work, and talked about it positively, in his later papers as well as in his book.

i'd like to think my challenge to the global workspace view has made it stronger. that it could withstand challenges like that is a sign that something is right about it. i had really thought, when i controlled for those performance confounds i was obsessed with, all the prefrontal activations would go away! but they didn't. i've been on the other side to know what the arguments are.

but in any case,  above all i think the field's tolerance to my junenvile behavior is a reflection of its strength too. there is never ever a justification to talk so aggressively & dismissively to colleagues in the way i did. but on the whole, we deal with criticisms objectively, constructively. we take what is useful, and make the most out of it. we realize our limitations, and try to do better. we try our best to not take things personally, becoz there's just no point in doing so. this is how we roll. always has been. 

in fact, i still stand by some of my arguments then too. i still don't fully agree with the global workspace view. but -

thanks, Stan, for everything, and also for everything you've done for the field.

it is in this light that i think people should read Dehaene, Lau, Kouider (2017) Science.

is the use of torture gaining academic credibility?

in the last post i said i would talk about a 13-year-old story, about my argument with Stan Dehaene. but something relevant and interesting happened on social media, which makes me feel i should write about this first

long story short: @david_colquhoun is a highly influential pharmacologist, a fellow of the royal society. he made a few remarks on twitter, that much of consciousness science is futile and unfalsifiable. that has gotten a couple of my colleagues worked up. since i work in the US, i have heard this kind of accusations often, and understand where they are coming from. not that i think they are fair, but i pointed out it is true that the popular media often portrait us in unflattering lights; works and ideas discussed there often represent the least rigorous of us. so it is understandable why an outsider may think we are all idiots.

this has gotten my friend Anil Seth to write this excellent piece, to push back on a pop article titled "The idea that everything from spoons to stones are conscious is gaining academic credibility". perhaps what is even more spectacular, however, is the 'meta-push back' on social media (as Dave Chalmers put it). 

the discussion has gotten confusing, but the point as i see it is simple. you can 'define' academic credibility whichever way you like. but if we allow ourselves to cite a few 'prominent' scientists' metaphysical views as support to mean that certain views are gaining 'academic credibility', we will soon enough to be able to say all sorts of crazy stuff is gaining credibility, e.g. climate change denial, anti-semitism, homophobia, use of torture (there *are* psychologists who have done work on this, very prominent ones no less), etc. just because they are scientists doesn't mean everything they say is remotely warranted by the science they do. (i'm focusing on the use of quotes of scientists here; philosophers are a bit different - in some cases it is their jobs to consider far fetched stuff; when we quote scientists as such we are implying it is a scientifically informed opinion).

on top of that, there is this particular worry: in other fields 'prominence' is usually achieved via peer review. but our peer group in the field of consciousness is small. historical reasons mean that many senior scholars achieved their status not via work done directly in the area; their work on consciousness may not be particularly well liked /respected in the field at all. so citing a few 'prominent' scientists' opinion on consciousness is really dangerous business. when it is clear that the overall consensus of the field does not take a view seriously, to claim that it has gain 'credibility' via a few quotes from a few 'serious guys' is just wrong on so many levels. 

all i can say is, this point has probably fallen on many deaf ears. i understand philosophers have different concerns. above all, they probably don't appreciate how this can reflect very badly on the field as a whole, affecting funding, job prospects for junior scientists. they may not care how a scientific giant like Colquhoun sees us. 

e.g. in response Dave Chalmers insisted he didn't think the our image in the popular media affects our funding and jobs. as someone who has seen how things work first hand, and have to actually participate in these competitions, i can only beg to differ. jobs and funding opportunities are often created for a research topic. in the past decades i've seen many jobs and funding opportunities opened specifically for social neuroscience, neuroeconomics, etc. in the US at least, i don't see such openings for consciousness. and i'm not surprised. these decisions are made by senior colleagues who are often outside of the field, and i know how they think of us in general.

Dave rightly pointed out that if we are putting out a lot of good, rigorous work, we should do fine in the end. but our field remains small. so we're back to this problem - how do we grow, since we have to, if our popular image does not really reflect who we are, and is instead hurting our very capacity for growth? 

Tobias Schlicht usefully suggseted this is all just a science politics game, making impact via media / popular influences. if some 'prominent' scholars didn't make that huge buzz back in the 90s, the field as we know it may well not have existed. that's exactly right. the modern reincarnation of our field was created out of sheer stardom. but as we mature as a science, should we still operate the same way? should there be a point where the consensus within our professional society matters more than the opinions of a few 'authorative' figures?

in honesty, i really think it is fine that people entertain far-fetched metaphysical views. they are totally entitled to do that. but the question is whether these subjective viewpoints should dominate our public image, making funding & policy decisions directly or indirectly on our behalf etc, via their 'prominent' status.

to some, maybe stardom & authority will always matter. i once asked an emminent philosopher a simple technical question, and his reply was essentially that: i don't know, but i recently went to a really fancy & exclusive boat trip sponsored by some wealthy tycoon, and many famous people there agreed with me.

in this age of open science, let this naive scientific millenial, a first-generation high school graduate no less, say this: we don't appreciate this arcane way of donig things anymore.

***
ps - a friend pointed out that this piece could be mis-read. the arguments here are intended to target those who claim / give the impression that science increasingly supports panpsychism. i totally respect the philosophical panpsychists; as i've said elsewhere in this blog if not for Dave Chamlers i wouldn't be here doing what i'm doing in the first place. and these arguments are also not targetted at IIT and its proponents either. i have elsewhere argued against them, but that's that. here i'm talking in general about the danger of pretending something is supported by science when it is not. e.g. when i say certain senior scholars' work may not be respected in the field of coz i wasn't thinking of Christof or Giulio specifically. they are veterans in the field. .... guess i'll have to clarify it in a future blogpost further, probably On Combat 3 or something