The core of Amit Goswami’s argument in his ‘Creative Evolution’ is that consciousness is an active force in ‘creation’. And at the heart of that argument is the argument of tangled hierarchies. I had to reread what he says about it to be able to halfway understand, so I’ll just quote him here for easier reference (p. 121):
Behold the causal circularity of the role of the observer in quantum measurement. The observer, the subject, chooses the manifest state of the collapsed object(s); but without the manifested collapsed objects, including the observer, the experience of the subject does not arise either. This circular logic of the dependent co-arising of the subject and object(s) is called tangled hierarchy.
Goswami found this concept in a book that made quite a splash in the 80’s: Goedel, Escher, Bach: an eternal Golden Braid, by D.R. Hofstadter (1980). I read that book several times back then – or what I could understand of it. It contains an awful lot of difficult mathematics. I’ll be looking up the tangled hierarchy there and see if that helps our case.
The way Goswami goes about explaining the arising of consciousness is circular in a way that makes more sense to me than the way science explains the same.
Science basically says that consciousness arose as a side effect of evolution. Similarly the increasing complexity of nature – the arrow of time in biology (Ch. 11), which is opposed to the increasing entropy (chaos) in the universe – is explained by science as nothing more than a side effect of evolution. Science says this is powered by the sun. Amit Goswami counters that the energy of the sun is enough to maintain the status quo in terms of life being sustained, but not enough to explain increasing complexity. That takes more energy. Unless you’re with Goswami on this one: he says there’s unconscious processing that takes place (in local consciousness I presume) that suddenly leaps into a decision. Because it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take energy – says Goswami. Why doesn’t it take energy? Because as long as nothing is aware, the quantum waves aren’t collapsed and all the possibilities are still there.
As might have been predicted – I’m with Goswami on this one. I think explaining consciousness as a side effect of evolution, the result of mere chance, sounds like a spiritual form of perpetual motion. I have no problem with the sun as the mother of all life, indeed Blavatsky had her a mother to all life on earth spiritually as well. But her physical energy alone supplying everything needed for consciousness? I’m not so sure.
So far computer science and artificial intelligence are very good at creating all kinds of interesting computer programs and robots to make our lives easier. The big question is: can they be AWARE? Goswami quotes mathematicians who say that a computer cannot process meaning – it would simply take up too much calculation power. The next question of course is: how come we CAN process meaning?
Goswami goes right back to that first cell. It arose, he says, out of a blue print that is present in consciousness (sort of an archetype, or a Platonic Idea) that gets activated as soon as the proper ingredients and conditions are there. Consciousness then chooses to ‘collapse’ the necessary DNA, RNA, cell boundary and supporting proteins. It’s sort of a Jack in the Box causality going on here – the chances increased by the presence of consciousness. In essence: that first cell comes into being because it observes itself, collapsing a blue print already present in universal consciousness.
From a mathematicians standpoint the question here is: how to deal with statistics. Low probability events happen all the time. That is: throw the dice enough and you will see low probability events happening. A nice way to illustrate this – when they started to use computer shuffled card sets in bridge (a card game with four players) – the previously rare games became much more common. Hand shuffled cards have a far more regular structure than when they are truly randomly organized. When we think of a random set of cards, we expect there to not be too many cards of the same color in a line. From a computer’s perspective – and that of statistics – each possible order of the cards has the same probability.
To say that evolution and chance of this sort can explain everything, is at best a bit cold. But it’s also a bit like saying – anybody with a brush is capable (given enough time) to create a Picasso, so there’s no underlying intelligence necessary to make one. After all – evolution is a selection mechanism, not an actively creative force. But obviously a Picasso does need the help of the paints, concepts and culture of the day to be able to transcend them and come up with something new. Similarly, the creativity of Quantum Spirituality doesn’t stand in relation to creation like a magician who creates out of nothing. Instead it’s more like an artist working with the available material to create something new.
This creativity is used to explain significant jumps like the creation of the single cell, multicellular organisms like ourselves arising out of single cell organisms like yeast, land animals arising out of sea animals etc.
Scientists would say that everything except that first cell (which they can’t really explain) can be reduced to environmental stresses. It’s no stretch to believe that in a stressful environment a lot of processes in the cell get threatened. But an organism has very little room for variety in essential things like how to process food, or maintaining the cell wall. Any organism that saves energy on those will simply die out. So the only wiggle room as it were is in the reproduction of the genes. So a higher rate of mutation in stressful circumstances is very easily explained from the perspective of evolution. No need for unconscious processing etc. Just environmental stresses leading to increased mutation rates, leading to a lot of death (which was likely anyhow) and a few evolving to adapt to the new circumstances. And then thriving.
I think I’ve given enough examples now to show that some of Goswami’s arguments are convincing, or at least more convincing to me than those of science. On the other hand he does seem to attack evolutionary theory on more fronts than necessary. This does not threaten his main point though: that quantum mechanics combined with the theory of evolution is a viable interpretation of the scientific data that keeps room for consciousness and awareness as primary forces in the universe. The conclusion: there is a goal to evolution – the evolution of consciousness to ever higher levels of complexity and wisdom.
This is an interesting conversation. Allow me to play the devil’s (science) advocate…
“…‘Creative Evolution’ is that consciousness is an active force in ‘creation’.”
To me, it seems Goswami theories are pretty standard creationism, sprinkled with a bit of jargon imported by quantum theory. As such, it suffers from the usual weaknesses of creationist theories: who created the creator? Of course I know the standard answer: the creator created himself. Fortunately other theories do not rely on such circular thinking.
“Behold the causal circularity of the role of the observer in quantum measurement. The observer, the subject, chooses the manifest state of the collapsed object(s); but without the manifested collapsed objects, including the observer, the experience of the subject does not arise either. This circular logic of the dependent co-arising of the subject and object(s) is called tangled hierarchy.”
I wonder how the observer chooses the state of the collapsed object. Here Goswami is most probably distorting quantum theory. That the state collapses upon observation is compatible with certain quantic theories, but not that the observer chooses anything. That would be a violation of the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
The rest of the arguments resembles Descarte’s cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I exist. In this case observo ergo sum: I observe therefore I (and the universe) am. How he goes from this to explaining evolution seems to me a tall order.
“The way Goswami goes about explaining the arising of consciousness is circular in a way that makes more sense to me than the way science explains the same.”
I hope you can help me, because I had difficulties understanding how Goswami connects the dots of his reasoning.
“Similarly the increasing complexity of nature – the arrow of time in biology (Ch. 11), which is opposed to the increasing entropy (chaos) in the universe – is explained by science as nothing more than a side effect of evolution.”
There is an apparent paradox between the second law of thermodynamics (increasing entropy), and the increasing complexity of life. This apparent paradox is easily explained when one takes into account not only the increasingly complex living organisms, but also the environment where they live. Life is very efficient at increasing entropy. It will forage for energy and use it until total exhaustion. An environment devoid of living organisms can often maintain a much lower level of entropy than an environment teeming with life which will quickly exhaust its energetic resources.
It has also been shown that ecosystems that are much more rich and complex are also much more efficient at exploiting and diluting energy. The drive for increasing life complexity is thus another expression of the second law of thermodynamics, because it maximizes the production of entropy in the environment.
“Science says this is powered by the sun. Amit Goswami counters that the energy of the sun is enough to maintain the status quo in terms of life being sustained, but not enough to explain increasing complexity.”
I’m very curious to know which arguments or data Goswami uses to support that assertion. How can he know which level of energy is sufficient to sustain life, but insufficient to increase it’s complexity?
Also, increased complexity is a product of natural evolution. And you can’t have life without natural evolution, it’s just like saying that one can sing without breathing, it’s just impossible to take both apart. In order to live, an organism needs to constantly copy its genetic material (to reproduce, grow, or to synthesize proteins, etc). Every time there is replication of genetic material, there is evolution. So to pretend that one can have life without evolution (and accompanying complexity increase) does not make much sense. If the sun is enough to support life, then it’s also enough to support evolution, and subsequent complexity increase.
Darwin’s theory of evolution does not require any additional energy to explain an increase in complexity beyond the necessary to maintain life. This is another advantage of over Goswami’s theory.
“Because it’s unconscious, it doesn’t take energy – says Goswami. Why doesn’t it take energy? Because as long as nothing is aware, the quantum waves aren’t collapsed and all the possibilities are still there.”
I hope that Goswami remembers that in quantum mechanics the collapsing of states has nothing to do with awareness but with measure (i.e. interaction). The measuring agent does not need to be aware or even alive, a machine or simple particle is sufficient to do the job. But I’m probably missing on what he means.
“So far computer science and artificial intelligence are very good at creating all kinds of interesting computer programs and robots to make our lives easier. The big question is: can they be AWARE? Goswami quotes mathematicians who say that a computer cannot process meaning – it would simply take up too much calculation power. The next question of course is: how come we CAN process meaning?”
I wonder again what are the arguments behind these kind of assertions… Why would processing of meaning take “too much calculation power”? Or is it that Goswami arbitrarily assigns a high cost to whatever he wishes to keep transcendent?
Does Goswami actually believe that our own brains have enough computing power to process meaning? Because if so, then there is an interesting chain of consequences: since our nervous system develops from non existent to the adult level of complexity, there is a whole chunk of development where the developing fetus (or child, depending or where Goswami puts the limit) will not have enough computational power to process meaning and be aware. Consciousness would then emerge late in the development of the human from within the growing nervous system (which is also my opinion on that issue). But I guess Goswami rather thinks that our brains can’t process meaning and awareness? Which is which?
“Goswami goes right back to that first cell. It arose, he says, out of a blue print that is present in consciousness (sort of an archetype, or a Platonic Idea) that gets activated as soon as the proper ingredients and conditions are there.”
I would be interested in knowing where the blueprint comes from. Saying that it was already in a consciousness does not explain much, just adds one step into the process.
“Consciousness then chooses to ‘collapse’ the necessary DNA, RNA, cell boundary and supporting proteins. It’s sort of a Jack in the Box causality going on here – the chances increased by the presence of consciousness. In essence: that first cell comes into being because it observes itself, collapsing a blue print already present in universal consciousness.”
So the present computers do not have computational power to process meaning and create awareness, but the first cell has consciousness? I wonder where the computer processing power of that cell comes from, unless Goswami uses that argument when it suits him, and then ignores it when it doesn’t.
“To say that evolution and chance of this sort can explain everything, is at best a bit cold. But it’s also a bit like saying – anybody with a brush is capable (given enough time) to create a Picasso, so there’s no underlying intelligence necessary to make one. After all – evolution is a selection mechanism, not an actively creative force.”
You are absolutely right, but the creative forces are there: creation of diversity through production of mutations, and a set of constraints that orients selection. That’s where the creative source is. If you like the art analogy: painters love to create constraints (Picasso had his blue period, for instance), and try different things within the limitations of those constraints. That’s often where new things emerge. Without external or self imposed constraints, the artist can’t give coherence to his trials. I guess a discussion of creativity would be interesting. In Goswami model the consciousness creativity is not explained, since the blueprint is already there (without explanation), and consciousness just limits itself to implement it. From that perspective, natural selection provides much more insights into the creative forces shaping the evolution of life.
“But obviously a Picasso does need the help of the paints, concepts and culture of the day to be able to transcend them and come up with something new. Similarly, the creativity of Quantum Spirituality doesn’t stand in relation to creation like a magician who creates out of nothing. Instead it’s more like an artist working with the available material to create something new.”
This is a bit at odds with the blueprint theory, but why not. One would need to explain what are the limits, constraints around which this consciousness has to work, and compare those which guide natural selection.
“This creativity is used to explain significant jumps like the creation of the single cell, multicellular organisms like ourselves arising out of single cell organisms like yeast, land animals arising out of sea animals etc.”
I guess we come back to the blueprint model? Again the issue is that the blueprint model does not explain much (where does the blueprint come from), whereas evolution through natural selection has no particular difficulties with this.
Also, one would have to qualify what do jumps mean. One has never seen a chicken emerge from a snake’s egg, and there is no reason to believe that such events ever happened. I have yet to see a good example of “sudden” jump that can’t be explained by gradual evolution. Most of the jumpiness of past evolution can be simply explained by issues with the fossil record (which are slowly being addressed as new discoveries are made, for instance in relation to the link between birds and dinosaurs).
“Scientists would say that everything except that first cell (which they can’t really explain) can be reduced to environmental stresses.”
Why is the first cell so difficult to explain, from the point of view of science? And let us not forget that a cell is already a quite advanced organism. The primordial life activities probably did not even have enclosing membranes, but were more like free floating organic compounds with enzymatic activity. You are right that as of yet, there is no solid theory on the first organisms, but as far as I know, there is no indication that this is an intractable problem for science…
“quantum mechanics combined with the theory of evolution is a viable interpretation of the scientific data that keeps room for consciousness and awareness as primary forces in the universe. The conclusion: there is a goal to evolution – the evolution of consciousness to ever higher levels of complexity and wisdom.”
Even if one accepts the tangled hierarchy theory, I still do not see how that explains anything in terms of emergence of life and its evolution. The tangled hierarchy just seems to provide a God hole from which the conventional creationist explanation can operate. I would for instance be interested to see how the tangled hierarchy would explain the aquatic to land transition, etc. Specially considering that quantic phenomena are important at lower physical scales, but not those at which life is concerned. Is quantum spirituality for instance actually producing the mutations it wants, or just selecting those it finds interesting? Is anything said about the way quantum spirituality guides events apart from the “choosing of wave states”?
Also, Goswami does not seem to explain how tangled hierarchies could explain processing of meaning and awareness. I just don’t see how both connect.
Among creationist theories, some say that any evolution on earth was enforced by a consciousness, whereas others suggest that there was an initial “will”, and that everything since then happened according to the laws of physics. Goswami theory seems to belong to the first set, with a “shepherding” consciousness that wishes to create another consciousness (or a more advanced version of itself?).
There are three problems with this:
– it does not explain the original consciousness, and as such is not really an explicative theory, but a god’s hole
– there are alternative and perfectly satisfactory ways of explaining increasing complexity without needing such a deus ex machina
– it would seem that this consciousness is very bad at doing its job
For me, the most interesting aspect is the third: If this consciousness really is pushing for more consciousness, then why did it take so long to produce something like the human consciousness? Complex organisms such as mammals, dinosaurs and birds have existed for dozens if not hundreds of millions of years. Monkeys themselves exist since about senventy million of years. In all that time, the building blocks to assemble something like a modern human were already there, but no consciousness similar to ours appeared. Dinosaurs, which are just as sophisticated as we are, dominated the world for about two hundred million years, and never bothered to develop a consciousness equivalent to us.
Even if you take the case of the monkeys, the oldest common ancestor between the chimpanzee and us lived about 6-7 millions of years. So at most six million years of evolution where required to produce human level consciousness. Monkeys have existed for at least ten times that length of time. Was this consciousness slacking off?
Considering how fast the evolution of body plans can happen, the fact that human level consciousness took so long to appear seems to me an indication that consciousness as people usually define is not a “goal” of evolution. I just don’t see any evidence for directed evolution. And let us not forget that the plant kingdom seems to be doing fine without it. Is consciousness playing favorites with the animal kingdom?
Also, let me add a point about increasing complexity: evolution is not bound to increase complexity of organisms: increasing complexity only happens when that is required to exploit a new ecological niche. There are plenty of examples where the organisms actually simplified themselves during evolution, because their lifestyle did not require more complexity. Most examples of these include parasites, and you can find examples in plants, animals, etc.
But I think that in reality one of the biggest problems in these discussions are the definition of “consciousness”. I wonder if Goswami tried to define that concept in his book?
Wow – that’s a LONG response. I’ll go into your main points.
The circularity isn’t an issue really. That means that there isn’t a contradiction in the argument. Since Goswami gives plenty of outside facts to collaborate his theory, having an internally consistent theory is a plus.
I agree that the observer doesn’t really choose the outcome. I actually made that point in my first post about this book. However, the observer DOES choose what to measure (speed versus place in the classic Heisenberger experiment). That certainly effects the outcome.
The difference between the first cell and the computer is LIFE. Life has the power to process meaning, because it has consciousness. The difference between life and a computer is precisely that meaning doesn’t get computed (which is all a computer can do after all – however fancy it may get), whereas we have meaning built in. A cell can appreciate food for instance. No computer can do that.
So the idea that consciousness is something that transcends matter is fundamental to Goswami’s interpretation of life and quantum physics. Consciousness as manifested in biology is fundamentally self-referent – that is: various aspects of it depend on the others to survive. The chicken and egg problem. In the cell it’s the way the DNA depends on the RNA and proteins for existence, and yet they depend on the DNA. Goswami predicts that there will never be a process discovered that explains how one came before the other, because there was a quantum choice necessary to manifest both (this makes his theory falsifiable btw).
As for going farther towards explaining Goswami – let me permit you to suggest buying the book 🙂 (and if you do, please buy it through a link on my review page – I get a cut) Though I do have at least one other post on the subject planned.
Goswami gives the following three characteristics of consciousness (p. 32, quoting his own earlier works on quantum spirituality 1989 and 1993):
– consciousness is the ground of all being
– this choosing consciousness is unitive and nonlocal – that is, it communicates its choice without using signals – and is the same for all of us. In other words, the choosing consciousness is objective.
– In the event of a quantum collapse, consciousness becomes “self-referent” in us, not only giving us the sensation of the manifest object but also of the experience of a self – a subject that senses the object as separate from itself.
Perhaps entropy and consciousness are in a way complementary. As order in the physical universe decreases, the unitive force of consciousness increases. Put another way, as discreetness(separation) of energy levels become less distinct, non-locality(connection) becomes enhanced. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Maybe the energy from the Sun is not enough in and of itself. However we live as much in an ocean of mass/gravity as we do in an ocean of energy. Where the sun fails, I think mass/gravity aggregated as matter implements pendulums/levers that are the basis of mechanisms (atoms molecules). Mechanisms are powerful transposers. Just a little difference fed into them can be distributed or collected to affect one or many balances producing movement or changing motion (the shape of flow ?).
I don’t know what the honorable gentleman means by consciousness. I would simply encapsulate some of its attributes as experience. Hierarchies are a different issue. We “can” encapsulate degrees of abstraction (verb) in terms of a primary machine. Mechanism bound closely to the machine are high frequency. Frequency then produces the capacity for harmonics. Harmonics in machines and mechanisms give rise to the capacity for abstraction (verb). Hierarchical encapsulations of harmonics give rise to novelty.
Respectfully
Respectfully, hierarchies may be tangled. The idea that they are monolithic is really a presumption. The confusion is understandable. Those in the scientific disciplines (I assume) think in terms of organic systems, and the word system is just an omnibus carrier of vague encapsulations.
Now, if one substitutes the word metabolism for the word system and does so in all cases, then entanglement becomes self evident, does it not?
This is interesting. Dependent co-arising (Goswami’s “tangled hierarchy) is one of the primary doctrines of Buddhism.