Reviewer's Denise RQ: Consciousness and Controlled Hallucinations

Introduction

• Third experience of anesthesia; feeling of detachment and coldness
• Difference between waking from deep sleep and anesthesia
  • Anesthesia: complete oblivion, loss of sense of time
• Consciousness: One of the greatest mysteries in science and philosophy
  • Generated by billions of neurons in the brain

Importance of Understanding Consciousness

• Consciousness encompasses the entirety of personal experience
• Importance in suffering and joy, and implications for other animals and AI
• Conscious AI prospects are remote; tied to being living organisms
• Consciousness vs. Intelligence: Not the same
• Consciousness: Controlled hallucinations by living bodies

Advances in Consciousness Research

• Past 25 years: significant scientific progress
• Comparison to understanding life via physics and chemistry
• Aim: explain consciousness in terms of brain and body processes

Properties of Consciousness

1. Experiences of the world around us:

• Multisensory, panoramic, 3D, immersive experiences

2. Experience of self:

• Lead character in the inner movie, personal identity

Brain as a Prediction Engine

• Brain locked inside skull, only receives indirect electrical impulses
• Perception: Informed guesswork combining sensory signals with prior expectations
• Examples of perception as guesswork:
  1. Visual Illusion (A and B patches): Same shade, but brain sees them differently due to prior expectations.
  2. Audio Illusion (Brexit statement): Best guess changes perception even without change in sensory input

Active, Constructive Perception

• Perception depends on predictions as much, if not more, than sensory signals
• We actively generate our perception of the world
• Example with Virtual Reality and Google’s Deep Dream: Simulation of strong perceptual predictions mimicking hallucinations

Self as a Controlled Hallucination

• Experience of self is a controlled hallucination by the brain
• Aspects of self-experience:
  • Having a body and being a body
  • Perceiving the world from a first-person view
  • Intending and causing actions
  • Continuity and identity over time

Experiments Demonstrating Body Perception

1. Rubber Hand Illusion:

• Fake hand perceived as part of body when real hand is hidden and both strokes synchronized

2. Virtual Reality Hand Animation:

• Virtual hand synced with heartbeat strengthens sense of body ownership

Interoception: Perception from Within

• Tells brain about internal state (heart, blood pressure)
• Different from external object perception; about control and regulation
• Basic experiences of being self tied to biological survival mechanisms

Implications for Conscious Self-Experience

• Conscious experiences depend on predictive perception mechanisms
• Experiences grounded in biological survival drives

Key Takeaways

1. Misperception of self: Insights into psychiatry and neurology
2. Biological basis of consciousness: Cannot be reduced to AI
3. Diversity in consciousness: Human experience is one of many possible forms

• Greater sense of understanding, wonder, and connection to nature

Conclusion

• Embrace new understanding of ourselves
• End of consciousness: Nothing to fear