Position Paper #4 (Until revised as required by new evidence.) An Inference About Consciousness (g.s. according to eh) Every reader acts as a participant in a series of transactions with the writer. The act of forming sounds, words and meaning from a string of symbols requires some foundation of similar experience. The reader must then attempt to interpret the intent of the author through layers of inference. That, in turn, requires some experience with the subject matter, but experiences differ. I once heard about a young lady who tasted her first carbonated beverage. When asked how she liked it, she replied, "It tastes like when your foot's asleep." We attempt to achieve understanding by means of metaphors related to shared experiences. Korzybski wrote about subjects beyond the experience of most of his readers. I offer as an example one sentence which, depending upon the reader's experience, could have many interpretations. "Since 'knowledge', then, is not the first order un-speakable objective level, whether as an object, a feeling.; structure, and so relations, becomes the only possible content of 'knowledge' _and of meanings_. (Science and Sanity, 2nd Edition, [1941] p.22) The content of knowledge consists only of information related to structure, if I interpret correctly (at least part of) what he says. He goes on to say that structure carries with it connotations of relation. Elsewhere he adds order to the content of knowledge. While denying the "is" of identity, he suggests that readers can begin understanding whatever-goes-on from negative premises, by stating what "is not." Readers might attempt to find a lost pair of glasses by exhaustively determining where they are not, but I think Korzybski had something of greater consequence to elaborate. Structure defies simple verbal definition without resorting to words like relations, order and organization. We formulate ideas of material structures by experiencing _units_ made of pieces. [Our experiences represent abstractions of a low order, but abstractions none the less.] We can see the effects of structure in simple mechanical objects. A beaver dam functions as a unit, but the structure does not require exacting relationships. By comparison, the masonry arch functions as a unit and provides the structure (unit) made of stone or brick with emergent properties not found in the pieces themselves. An arch spanning a doorway will easily support more weight than one long rock or brick slab of similar dimensions. Material structures consist of pieces positioned to function as units which may display emergent properties. The history of science tells us about the structure of matter. In that sense, it tells us about how we acquire knowledge of matter. Like a giant puzzle composed of only abstract pieces, experiments for many years resulted in negative premises. Experimenters could only tell which propositions did not fit the data, as this fragment of the history of chemistry illustrates. After 1808 heated disputes raged about the composition of water. Before 1808 experimenters knew that hydrogen and oxygen joined by weight in the ratio of about 1:8 to form water. Some of the disputes came about because the scientific community had not decided what to use as a standard for weight used to determine the ratios. After 1808 they also knew that hydrogen and oxygen joined by volume, 2 volumes of hydrogen and 1 of volume of oxygen reacted to create 2 volumes of water vapor. These disparate facts didn't fit any model that the leading chemists of the day could accept. In 1811 Amadeo Avogadro concluded that he could account for the formation of water, both by weight and by volume, if he could maintain that equal volumes of gases contained equal numbers of "molecules." By molecules Avogadro meant structured functional units. Unfortunately he used the term "molecule" in at least 4 different (and ambiguous) ways. No one had a clear idea of the differences between simple material units, single atoms, diatomic molecules (like hydrogen gas), molecules made of dissimilar atoms, and molecules as fundamental units of structure. Avogadro could, account for the weight-volume relationships of many gaseous reactions by invoking these different kinds of molecules. He confused everyone. It took more than 40 years to generate enough solid experimental evidence which would lead others 1) to straighten out his nomenclature, and 2) to accept his proposal. Eventually scientists came to accept molecules as units of matter which consist of more than one atom, but even today I suspect that they do not understand the potential epistemological significance of molecules as opposed to atoms. The content of knowledge consists of structure, order and relation. Molecules, as the smallest units of compounds, do account for the weight and volume relationships of the elements which combine to form them. Proving that molecules consist only of combinations of those atoms, in no way accounts for the "emergent" properties of those compounds. Take water as an example. No amount of study, of hydrogen or oxygen as elements with specific physical properties will allow us to predict the fact that their chemical combination, _water_ will expand when it freezes. We cannot predict its freezing point, its boiling point or that water acts as a solvent for a wide variety of other compounds and elements. Given the present state of knowledge, we cannot predict the properties of any molecule given only the physical properties of the elemental forms of the atoms which compose them. (1) Molecular properties result from changes in electronic configuration which affect the atoms entering into chemical bonding to form a specific molecule. Determining the different physical, chemical and biological properties new molecules exhibit, makes chemistry a challenging occupation, one which might offer some insight into our considerations of epistemology. [Nearly a century after Avogadro, physicists discovered that the addition of slow neutrons the nucleus of specific atoms would result in atomic transmutation. By the addition of sub-atomic building blocks to atomic nuclei, we can achieve transmutation, turning one element into another. The change in properties is not predictable from the study of either neutrons or the element to be transformed.] The emergent properties of simple atomic structures (molecules like water) appear with nothing extra added. The properties of water do not come from any metaphysical consideration. We can disassemble simple molecules and put them back together. The properties associated with water disappear when we take the molecule apart and reappear upon recombination. The combination and disassembly of simple molecules proceeds reversibly, in the sense that we can put atoms together and take them apart again and again without changing either atomic properties or molecular properties of the elements or the compounds. The process proves extremely difficult with more complex molecules, but in every case so far tested, the principles remain the same. We can describe to a large extent the elements and the atoms which compose complex compounds. We fail to predict the properties of different molecules made up solely of atoms. Complex molecules don't undergo readily reversible reactions like water molecules. Hydrogen and oxygen only form one stable compound under ordinary conditions. Compounds containing carbon, in addition to hydrogen and oxygen can join to form thousands of different molecules. Scientists can take them apart and put them back together again, but it requires much more painstaking and stringent control. Chemists can synthesize some very complex molecules which have the characteristics necessary to replace their naturally occuring counterparts. No complex chemical yet synthesized requires any metaphysical ingredients. The molecules extracted from biological systems do not have different constituent atoms from those which chemists synthesize. Synthetic molecules replace natually occurring ones. Human growth hormone synthesized by genetically altered bacteria will increase the growth of children who do not synthesize enough of their own. No metaphysical ingredients needed. We do find examples of collections of chemicals which function as a unit. The virus represents a highly organized unit collection of chemicals which can reproduce themselves. They lack the ability to reproduce outside a functional respiring cell. More than a decade ago, scientists carefully dissected a type of virus, using chemical methods instead of a scalpel and forceps. They produced two types of biological "chemicals", the outside protein coat of the virus and the inner genetic materials of the virus. When solutions containing only one of these constituents was injected into suitable host cells, it to damage the host cells. When the two solutions were combined and injected, host cells suffered from the normal course of virus infection and additional viral particles appeared as the result of reproduction. By analogy from the emergent properties of sub-atomic nuclear addition and the emergent properties resulting from atomic combination, any collection of various molecules which forms a unit could have unpredictable emergent properties. Scientific concensus has not yet pronounced viruses as full fledged free living organisms. They can reproduce, but they lack sufficient complexity to live and reproduce outside a host cell. We do find cells composed of ordinary chemicals. Cells do function as units. No one has found anything metaphysical about the simplest forms of living bacteria, the protista. It seems reasonable to infer that the process we call life refers to an emergent property of a sufficiently complex combination of ordinary molecules which function as a unit. Examples of successively complex structures in other one celled forms of life exist. Scientists find gradations from single cells to simple cellular colonies (the sponges) to cells which form organs in complex life forms. People consist of colonies of different types of cells which form organs. People also exist as functional units, different from their parents and their siblings. The functional human being has a brain composed of huge numbers of interactive neurons. Unpredictable emergent properties occur as the result of adding simple parts to increasingly complex collections, whether in terms of subatomic particles to nuclei, atoms to molecules, or molecules to cells. It seems reasonable to infer that the process we call consciousness refers to an emergent property of a brain composed of cells (neurons) of sufficient number and complex interconnection. We cannot predict the emergent properties of transmutated atoms, of molecules, or of living cells, with any degree of success. We have studied emergent properties as they become apparent to our senses. We know something about single atoms. We know about diatomic molecules, like hydrogen and oxygen. Scientists can generalize about many heteroatomic molecular families. We study families of molecules in order to determine how altering the atoms one at a time affects the properties of the molecule. Scientists seek to understand the complexity of life and aspire to understand consciousness. For now we compare material structures of similar orders of complexity to arrive at today's limited knowledge. Understanding emergent properties will take more time. ----------------- (1) The problem works the other way around with equal facility. We can describe the physical and chemical properties of water at length, but we cannot predict the properties of its constituent atoms from the properties of the compound. ------------------ End of Position Paper #4.