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Why Is Anything Conscious?

Michael Timothy Bennett, Sean Welsh, Anna Ciaunica

TL;DR

This paper reframes the hard problem of consciousness from the perspective of embodied, naturally selected organisms and offers a formal framework in which self-organisation hierarchically interprets unlabelled sensory inputs via valence. It proposes relevance realisation through causal learning, tying the emergence of phenomenal and access consciousness to a layered development of first-, second-, and third-order selves, grounded in a psychophysical principle of causality. The main contributions include a concrete, non-dualistic formalism linking embodiment, valence-driven learning, and hierarchies of self to unify lower- and higher-order theories of consciousness, along with a staged evolutionary narrative from simple hard-wired systems to humans. The framework aims to establish a formal science of consciousness rooted in natural selection, suggesting that phenomenal experience is foundational and that philosophical zombies are impossible within this account, with practical implications for understanding cognition across the phylogenetic spectrum.

Abstract

We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally selected, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which are differentiated from each other only by the qualitative aspect of information processing. Natural selection favours systems that intervene in the world to achieve homeostatic and reproductive goals. Quality is a property arising in such systems to link cause to affect to motivate interventions. This produces interoceptive and exteroceptive classifiers and determines priorities. In formalising the seminal distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness, we claim that access consciousness at the human level requires the ability to hierarchically model i) the self, ii) the world/others and iii) the self as modelled by others, and that this requires phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal without access consciousness is likely common, but the reverse is implausible. To put it provocatively: death grounds meaning, and Nature does not like zombies. We then describe the multilayered architecture of self-organisation from rocks to Einstein, illustrating how our argument applies. Our proposal lays the foundation of a formal science of consciousness, closer to human fact than zombie fiction.

Why Is Anything Conscious?

TL;DR

This paper reframes the hard problem of consciousness from the perspective of embodied, naturally selected organisms and offers a formal framework in which self-organisation hierarchically interprets unlabelled sensory inputs via valence. It proposes relevance realisation through causal learning, tying the emergence of phenomenal and access consciousness to a layered development of first-, second-, and third-order selves, grounded in a psychophysical principle of causality. The main contributions include a concrete, non-dualistic formalism linking embodiment, valence-driven learning, and hierarchies of self to unify lower- and higher-order theories of consciousness, along with a staged evolutionary narrative from simple hard-wired systems to humans. The framework aims to establish a formal science of consciousness rooted in natural selection, suggesting that phenomenal experience is foundational and that philosophical zombies are impossible within this account, with practical implications for understanding cognition across the phylogenetic spectrum.

Abstract

We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally selected, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which are differentiated from each other only by the qualitative aspect of information processing. Natural selection favours systems that intervene in the world to achieve homeostatic and reproductive goals. Quality is a property arising in such systems to link cause to affect to motivate interventions. This produces interoceptive and exteroceptive classifiers and determines priorities. In formalising the seminal distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness, we claim that access consciousness at the human level requires the ability to hierarchically model i) the self, ii) the world/others and iii) the self as modelled by others, and that this requires phenomenal consciousness. Phenomenal without access consciousness is likely common, but the reverse is implausible. To put it provocatively: death grounds meaning, and Nature does not like zombies. We then describe the multilayered architecture of self-organisation from rocks to Einstein, illustrating how our argument applies. Our proposal lays the foundation of a formal science of consciousness, closer to human fact than zombie fiction.
Paper Structure (27 sections, 4 theorems, 4 equations, 4 figures)

This paper contains 27 sections, 4 theorems, 4 equations, 4 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Back to Foundations
  3. Natural Selection and Embodiment
  4. Self-Organising Systems as Self and World Constraints
  5. Inference
  6. Learning
  7. Relevance Realisation Through Causal Learning
  8. The Psychophysical Principle of Causality
  9. Relevant Causal Identities
  10. Ascribing Intent to Other Objects
  11. Preconditions
  12. Realising Lower Order States And Higher Order Meta Representations
  13. Multi-Layered Self-Organisation
  14. The First Order Self
  15. The Second Order Selves
  16. ...and 12 more sections

Key Result

Proposition 1

Assume $\alpha \sqsubset \omega$. The weakness proxy sufficient to maximise the probability that a parent $\omega$ is learned from a child $\alpha$Assume there exist correct policies for $\omega$, because otherwise there would be no point in trying to learn it..

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Visual intuition for a 1ST order self. The organism constructs a causal identity for itself and can relate that to observed events.
  • Figure 2: Visual intuition for a 2ND order self. The organism constructs a causal identity for itself, and for another object, and the causal identity for the other object includes a prediction of the organism itself from that object's perspective. This would occur, for example, if one was a predator trying to predict the movements of prey in response to one's own actions. It is an extension of the 1ST order self.
  • Figure 3: Visual intuition for a 3RD order self. The organism constructs a 2ND order self for its 2ND order self, and so becomes aware that it is aware.
  • Figure 4: Overview of stages and orders of self.

Theorems & Definitions (24)

  • Definition 1: environment
  • Definition 2: abstraction layer
  • Definition 3: $\mathfrak{v}$-task
  • Definition 4: inference
  • Definition 5: learning
  • Definition 6: organism
  • Definition 7: protosymbol system
  • Definition 8: interpretation
  • Definition 9: to affect
  • Definition 10: intervention
  • ...and 14 more