By Tam Hunt, University of California, Santa Barbara
Why is my awareness here, while yours is over there? Why is
the universe split in two for each of us, into a subject and an infinity of
objects? How is each of us our own center of experience, receiving information
about the rest of the world out there? Why are some things conscious and others
apparently not? Is a rat conscious? A gnat? A bacterium?
These questions are all aspects of the ancient “mind-body
problem,” which asks, essentially: What is the relationship between mind and
matter? It’s resisted a generally satisfying conclusion for thousands of years.
The mind-body problem enjoyed a major rebranding over the
last two decades. Now it’s generally known as the hard problem of
consciousness, after philosopher David Chalmers coined this term in a now
classic paper and further explored it in his 1996 book, “The Conscious Mind: In
Search of a Fundamental Theory.”
Chalmers thought the mind-body problem should be called
“hard” in comparison to what, with tongue in cheek, he called the “easy”
problems of neuroscience: How do neurons and the brain work at the physical
level? Of course they’re not actually easy at all. But his point was that
they’re relatively easy compared to the truly difficult problem of explaining
how consciousness relates to matter.
Over the last decade, my colleague, University of
California, Santa Barbara psychology professor Jonathan Schooler and I have
developed what we call a resonance theory of consciousness. We suggest that
resonance – another word for synchronized vibrations – is at the heart of not
only human consciousness but also animal consciousness and of physical reality
more generally. It sounds like something the hippies might have dreamed up –
it’s all vibrations, man! – but stick with me.
All about the vibrations
All things in our universe are constantly in motion,
vibrating. Even objects that appear to be stationary are in fact vibrating,
oscillating, resonating, at various frequencies. Resonance is a type of motion,
characterized by oscillation between two states. And ultimately all matter is
just vibrations of various underlying fields. As such, at every scale, all of
nature vibrates.
Something interesting happens when different vibrating
things come together: They will often start, after a little while, to vibrate
together at the same frequency. They “sync up,” sometimes in ways that can seem
mysterious. This is described as the phenomenon of spontaneous
self-organization.
Mathematician Steven Strogatz provides various examples from
physics, biology, chemistry and neuroscience to illustrate sync – his term for
resonance – in his 2003 book “Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos in the
Universe, Nature, and Daily Life,” including:
– When fireflies of certain species come together in large
gatherings, they start flashing in sync, in ways that can still seem a little
mystifying.
– Lasers are produced when photons of the same power and
frequency sync up.
– The moon’s rotation is exactly synced with its orbit
around the Earth such that we always see the same face.
Examining resonance leads to potentially deep insights about
the nature of consciousness and about the universe more generally.
Sync inside your skull
Neuroscientists have identified sync in their research, too.
Large-scale neuron firing occurs in human brains at measurable frequencies,
with mammalian consciousness thought to be commonly associated with various
kinds of neuronal sync.
For example, German neurophysiologist Pascal Fries has
explored the ways in which various electrical patterns sync in the brain to
produce different types of human consciousness.
Fries focuses on gamma, beta and theta waves. These labels
refer to the speed of electrical oscillations in the brain, measured by
electrodes placed on the outside of the skull. Groups of neurons produce these
oscillations as they use electrochemical impulses to communicate with each
other. It’s the speed and voltage of these signals that, when averaged, produce
EEG waves that can be measured at signature cycles per second.
Gamma waves are associated with large-scale coordinated
activities like perception, meditation or focused consciousness; beta with
maximum brain activity or arousal; and theta with relaxation or daydreaming.
These three wave types work together to produce, or at least facilitate,
various types of human consciousness, according to Fries. But the exact
relationship between electrical brain waves and consciousness is still very
much up for debate.
Fries calls his concept communication through coherence. For
him, it’s all about neuronal synchronization. Synchronization, in terms of
shared electrical oscillation rates, allows for smooth communication between
neurons and groups of neurons. Without this kind of synchronized coherence,
inputs arrive at random phases of the neuron excitability cycle and are
ineffective, or at least much less effective, in communication.
A resonance theory of consciousness
Our resonance theory builds upon the work of Fries and many
others, with a broader approach that can help to explain not only human and
mammalian consciousness, but also consciousness more broadly.
Based on the observed behavior of the entities that surround
us, from electrons to atoms to molecules, to bacteria to mice, bats, rats, and
on, we suggest that all things may be viewed as at least a little conscious.
This sounds strange at first blush, but panpsychism – the view that all matter
has some associated consciousness – is an increasingly accepted position with
respect to the nature of consciousness.
The panpsychist argues that consciousness did not emerge at
some point during evolution. Rather, it’s always associated with matter and
vice versa – they’re two sides of the same coin. But the large majority of the
mind associated with the various types of matter in our universe is extremely
rudimentary. An electron or an atom, for example, enjoys just a tiny amount of
consciousness. But as matter becomes more interconnected and rich, so does the
mind, and vice versa, according to this way of thinking.
Biological organisms can quickly exchange information
through various biophysical pathways, both electrical and electrochemical.
Non-biological structures can only exchange information internally using
heat/thermal pathways – much slower and far less rich in information in
comparison. Living things leverage their speedier information flows into
larger-scale consciousness than what would occur in similar-size things like
boulders or piles of sand, for example. There’s much greater internal
connection and thus far more “going on” in biological structures than in a
boulder or a pile of sand.
Under our approach, boulders and piles of sand are mere
aggregates, just collections of highly rudimentary conscious entities at the
atomic or molecular level only. That’s in contrast to what happens in
biological life forms where the combinations of these micro-conscious entities
together create a higher level macro-conscious entity. For us, this combination
process is the hallmark of biological life.
The central thesis of our approach is this: the particular
linkages that allow for large-scale consciousness – like those humans and other
mammals enjoy – result from a shared resonance among many smaller constituents.
The speed of the resonant waves that are present is the limiting factor that
determines the size of each conscious entity in each moment.
As a particular shared resonance expands to more and more
constituents, the new conscious entity that results from this resonance and
combination grows larger and more complex. So the shared resonance in a human
brain that achieves gamma synchrony, for example, includes a far larger number
of neurons and neuronal connections than is the case for beta or theta rhythms
alone.
What about larger inter-organism resonance like the cloud of
fireflies with their little lights flashing in sync? Researchers think their
bioluminescent resonance arises due to internal biological oscillators that
automatically result in each firefly syncing up with its neighbors.
Is this group of fireflies enjoying a higher level of group
consciousness? Probably not, since we can explain the phenomenon without
recourse to any intelligence or consciousness. But in biological structures
with the right kind of information pathways and processing power, these
tendencies toward self-organization can and often do produce larger-scale
conscious entities.
Our resonance theory of consciousness attempts to provide a
unified framework that includes neuroscience, as well as more fundamental
questions of neurobiology and biophysics, and also the philosophy of mind. It
gets to the heart of the differences that matter when it comes to consciousness
and the evolution of physical systems.
It is all about vibrations, but it’s also about the type of
vibrations and, most importantly, about shared vibrations.
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