Hidden Spring
"A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience"
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What Hacker News says
- I read an interesting book about consciousness recently: The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.
Solms argues, I think convincingly, that consciousness fundamentally has to do with emotions and not cognition. Consciousness is not produced by the cortex but rather by the brainstem, where signals from all over the body converge (e.g. pain, hunger, itchiness, etc).
If that argument is true then a petri-dish of neurons is unlikely to be conscious, even it performs some analogue of visual processing.
The book makes other arguments that I found less convincing. For example that consciousness is "felt homeostasis" and that a fairly simple system (somewhat more complex than a thermometer) will be conscious, albeit minimally.
- > Philosophical mumbo-jumbo.
Would you expand on that? Having done a small amount of learning adjacent to this work, I’d like to find out more.
I was introduced to Friston’s work through “The Hidden Spring” by Mark Solms [0]. It seems well grounded in theory that there exist certain materials that maintain a specific range of entropy (S). Within some of those materials (i.e. biological), there are meta materials that enhance entropy maintenance by forming communication/processing networks. These networks are bounded in certain ways, say within the behaviors exhibited by a single cell organism, to much more broadly between neurons of an animal that has them. People then get hung up on what is meant by Bayesian and “Markov blankets.” [1]
Stipulating thoughts arise from biological underpinnings rather than something supernatural doesn’t strike me as “mumbo jumbo.” Applying math based on a well defined (but may well be incorrect) physics theory to define the meta material from which thoughts arise seems to be a quantization that may lead to stronger links between biology and psychology. To the degree that consciousness is primarily a psychologically defined phenomena, this is work that could reduce much mumbo jumbo.
0. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Spring-Journey-Source-Consciou...
1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/04/god-help-us-lets-try-t...
- I had a similar reaction. I very much enjoyed reading On Intelligence shortly after it was published and was eagerly waiting for A Thousand Brains, but it left me with a conflicting impression. I found some of the details I was looking for missing and it seemed like the book was sort of all over the place (especially in the second half). I was reading another book on related topic (how the brain operates and why/how the consciousness has evolved) at about the same time (The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness) and had a much more positive impression with a good picture on what the author was trying to convey.
- Check out Chapter 11 of The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.
In it he identifies subjective experience, for example perceiving the colour red, as an observational perspective.
He reminds us that we can also experience vision objectively, with the right lab equipment, e.g. by listening to spike trains travelling from the retina down the optic nerve.
Say we do the latter. We can then legitimately ask what the same process looks like from the point of view of the system/subject/patient. Answer, vivid red.
So spike trains and redness are differing valid perspectives on the same underlying physical process, namely vision. One doesn't arise from the other; they are both products of vision.
- If you are looking for information about current research into consciousness, there is a book, The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms.
He gave a talk organised by The Royal Institution that talked about case studies that explore where consciousness comes from.
I hope this is helpful.
- I find it hard to discuss consciousness without first trying to come of a definition of it. Is self-awareness a condition for consciousness, or even the ability to contemplate consciousness? That being said I liked "the hidden spring" by Mark Solms which puts emotion at the core of consciousness. A very interesting premise that seems to be backed up by research (though I don't know nearly enough of it to evaluate). This allows for a much broader concept of consciousness and consciousness as a spectrum, which fits better with my own beliefs :)
