First, I would like to state — as a theoretical physicist who is
partners with another theoretical physicist — that the blog I took this
from, BackReAction, is painfully cute. It’s run by two theoretical
physicists who are married, and their tagline says, “Events on the world
lines of two theoretical physicists, from the horizon to timelike
infinity.” Oh, stop being so cute; you’re killing me.
From their post on the 2011 FQXi Conference, which is an
international and inter-disciplinary meeting on the nature of time, they wrote:
David Eagleman gave a very engaging talk about how our brains slice
time and process information without confusing causality. The
difficulty is that the time which different sensory inputs needs to
reach your brain differs by the type and location of input, and also
the time needed for processing that might differ from one part of the
brain to the next. I learned for example that the processing of
auditory information is faster than that of visual information. So
what your brain does to sort out the mess is that it waits till all
information has arrived, then presents you with the result and calls
it “right now,” just that at this point it might be something like
100ms in the past actually.
Even more interesting is that your brain, well trained by evolution,
goes to lengths to correct for mismatches. Eagleman told us for
example that in the early days of TV broadcast, producers were worried
that they wouldn’t be able to send audio and video sufficiently
synchronized. Yet it turned out, that up to 20ms or so your brain
erases a mismatch between audio and video. If it gets larger, all of a
sudden you’ll notice it.
Eagleman told us about several experiments they’ve made, but this one
I found the most interesting: They let people push a button that would
turn on a light. Then they delayed the light signal by some small
amount of time 50ms or so past pushing the button (I might recall the
numbers wrong, but the order of magnitude should be okay). People
don’t notice any delay because, so the explanation, the brain levels
it out. Now they insert one signal that comes without delay. What
happens? People think the light went on before they even pushed the
button and, since the causality doesn’t make sense, claim it wasn’t
them! (Can you write an app for that?) Eagleman says that the brains
ability to maintain temporal order, or failure to do so, might be a
possible root of schizophrenia (roughly: you talk to yourself but get
the time order wrong, so you believe somebody else is talking) and
they’re doing some studies on that.
As someone who is intensely interested in the theoretics of time travel,
and also has been effected by schizophrenia (well, technically, my
doctors are calling it schizoaffective disorder, which is
undifferentiated schizophrenia and bipolar disorders coexisting
simultaneously) for over a decade, I find this hypothesis of
schizophrenia as a sort of neuro-chronological disorder oddly sensible
and yet equally astounding.
However, the idea that neurological processes which are normally quite
resource intensive, such as visual information processing, could occur
so fast as to cause a schizophrenic person to believe, to use the DSM
stereotype, that “someone else is doing it” or that “the thoughts
originate from an outside source” requires further inquiry. In other
words, how is it, precisely, that these processes could occur “faster”,
to use the rather inelegant language of this linear neuroscientific
model, in a schizophrenic brain?
Now, at this point, I’m just throwing things out there as ideas, and I
would like to state that I am not a neuroscientist. But could these
processes be tied to a dual-state time vector?
Many physicists throughout recent decades have postulated theories of
“quantum consciousness”, a laRoger Penrose’s Orchestrated Objective
Reduction theory, which he rather curiously arrived at via Godel’s
Incompleteness Theorem. That theory is controversial. However, recently
some neurological processes have been shown to have quantum effects on
the macroscopic scale.
Many other neurological processes are likely
relegated to the realm of classical mechanics. I would like to delve a
little deeper into this idea that schizophrenia is a result of a
chronological disconnection (dare I say, time out of joint?) from the
perspective of a physicist.
Before I go on, I would like to briefly summarize the concept of a
dual-state vector. For those not familiar, here’s a paper from Arxiv
which covers the dual-state vector formalism.
It’s only six pages,
but if you’re thinking, “tl;dr”, then the abstract explains the idea
quite concisely: “The Two-State Vector Formalism describes a quantum
system at a particular time by two quantum states: the usual one,
evolving forward in time, defined by the results of a complete
measurement at the earlier time, and by the quantum state evolving
backward in time, defined by the results of a complete measurement at a
later time.” It’s a way for information, at the quantum scale, to
determine and be determined by both its past and its future simultaneously.
So let’s go back again to Eagleman’s theory that schizophrenia is a
result of the brain erroneously perceiving events which occur to quickly
in a linear timeframe as the work of some outside entity. There is
trouble here, in that this hypothesis falls within the range of what
David Dennet terms Orwellian or Stanlinesque, which is explained and
rectified in his Multiple Drafts Model of consciousness:
Daniel Dennett‘s Multiple Drafts Model of Consciousness is a
physicalist theory of consciousness based upon
cognitivism, which views the mind in terms of information
processing. The theory is described in depth in his book,
Consciousness Explained, published in 1991. As the title states,
the book proposes a high-level explanation of consciousness which is
consistent with support for the possibility of strong AI.
Dennett describes the Multiple Drafts theory as first-person
operationalism. As he states it:
The Multiple Drafts model makes [the procedure of] “writing it down”
in memory criterial for consciousness: that is what it is for the
“given” to be “taken” … There is no reality of conscious
experience independent of the effects of various vehicles of content
on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on
memory).^[1]^
Dennett’s thesis is that our modern understanding of consciousness is
unduly influenced by the ideas of René Descartes. To show why, he
starts with a description of the phi illusion. In this experiment,
two different coloured lights, with an angular separation of a few
degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between
the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is
flashed appears to move across to the position of the second light.
Furthermore, the light seems to change colour as it moves across the
visual field. A green light will appear to turn red as it seems to
move across to the position of a red light. Dennett asks how we could
see the light change colour before the second light is observed.
Dennett claims that conventional explanations of the colour change
boil down to either Orwellian or Stalinesque hypotheses, which he
says are the result of Descartes’ continued influence on our vision of
the mind. In an Orwellian hypothesis, the subject comes to one
conclusion, then goes back and changes that memory in light of
subsequent events. This is akin to George Orwell‘s Nineteen
Eighty-Four, where records of the past are routinely altered. In a
Stalinesque hypothesis, the two events would be reconciled prior to
entering the subject’s consciousness, with the final result presented
as fully resolved. This is akin to Joseph Stalin‘s show
trials, where the verdict has been decided in advance and the trial
is just a rote presentation.
[W]e can suppose, both theorists have exactly the same theory of
what happens in your brain; they agree about just where and when in
the brain the mistaken content enters the causal pathways; they just
disagree about whether that location is to be deemed
pre-experiential or post-experiential. […] [T]hey even agree about
how it ought to “feel” to subjects: Subjects should be unable to
tell the difference between misbegotten experiences and immediately
misremembered experiences. [p. 125, original emphasis.]
Dennett argues that there is no principled basis for picking one of
these theories over the other, because they share a common error in
supposing that there is a special time and place where unconscious
processing becomes consciously experienced, entering into what Dennett
calls the “Cartesian theatre“. Both theories require us to cleanly
divide a sequence of perceptions and reactions into before and after
the instant that they reach the seat of consciousness, but he denies
that there is any such moment, as it would lead to infinite regress.
Instead, he asserts that there is no privileged place in the brain
where consciousness happens.
Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial finish
line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the
order of arrival equals the order of “presentation” in experience
because what happens there is what you are conscious of. […]
Many theorists would insist that they have explicitly rejected such
an obviously bad idea. But […] the persuasive imagery of the
Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and
scientists alike—even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced
and exorcized. [p. 107, original emphasis.]
With no theatre, there is no screen, hence no reason to re-present
data after it has already been analysed. Dennett says that, “the
Multiple Drafts model goes on to claim that the brain does not bother
‘constructing’ any representations that go to the trouble of ‘filling
in’ the blanks. That would be a waste of time and (shall we say?)
paint. The judgement is already in so we can get on with other tasks!”
According to the model, there are a variety of sensory inputs from a
given event and also a variety of interpretations of these inputs. The
sensory inputs arrive in the brain and are interpreted at different
times, so a given event can give rise to a succession of
discriminations, constituting the equivalent of multiple drafts of a
story. As soon as each discrimination is accomplished, it becomes
available for eliciting a behaviour; it does not have to wait to be
presented at the theatre.
Like a number of other theories, the Multiple Drafts model understands
conscious experience as taking time to occur, such that percepts do
not instantaneously arise in the mind in their full richness. The
distinction is that Dennett’s theory denies any clear and unambiguous
boundary separating conscious experiences from all other processing.
According to Dennett, consciousness is to be found in the actions
and flows of information from place to place, rather than some
singular view containing our experience. There is no central
experiencer who confers a durable stamp of approval on any particular
draft.
Different parts of the neural processing assert more or less control
at different times. For something to reach consciousness is akin to
becoming famous, in that it must leave behind consequences by which it
is remembered. To put it another way, consciousness is the property of
having enough influence to affect what the mouth will say and the
hands will do. Which inputs are “edited” into our drafts is not an
exogenous act of supervision, but part of the self-organizing
functioning of the network, and at the same level as the circuitry
that conveys information bottom-up.
The conscious self is taken to exist as an abstraction visible at the
level of the intentional stance, akin to a body of mass having a
“centre of gravity”. Analogously, Dennett refers to the self as the
“centre of narrative gravity”, a story we tell ourselves about our
experiences. Consciousness exists, but not independently of behaviour
and behavioural disposition, which can be studied through
heterophenomenology.
That Eagleman’s hypothesis is Orwellian or Stalinesque has difficult
implications for free will, which, as we shall see, arise from a linear
understanding of time and dependence upon linear causality. Phrased
succinctly, the physics of classical mechanics as applied to
neurophysiology supply no basis for a person’s ability to alter their
stream of consciousness
through mental effort; the mechanistic
determinism of classical physics rules out the possibility of free will.
Hypotheses which can be classified as Orwellian or Stalinesque not only
depend hopelessly upon linear causality, but also imply that there is no
mechanism for concerted alteration of consciousness, maintaining the
impossibility of free will — something which modern studies in
neurophysiology have shown is not the case,
i.e. self-directed neuroplasticity.
If we were to view certain neurological processes (and again, I do not
know which ones, nor do I think anyone else knows yet) as wavefronts
propagating through a field, we could imagine the dominant consciousness
within a brain as the wavefront with the highest strength. Similarly,
the “outside entities” in the consciousness of a schizophrenic brain
could be seen as lesser wavefronts piggybacking on the dominant one,
like a skier behind a powerboat. However, the problem again shifts to
being temporal: How is it that lesser wavefronts could arrive before
the dominant one? In other words, how could the skier arrive before the
boat? And, in addition to these problems, we have yet another temporal
problem in light of Dennet’s Multiple Drafts model: If consciousness is
the cause and effect of consciousness, this nearly raises it to godlike
status; consciousness becomes a sort of prime mover in the sense of
Aristotle’s primum movens
and St. Thomas Aquinas’ dreadfully
ignorant Cosmological Arguments. (Hey, dude, I don’t care if your
confusion earned you sainthood, but there’s this thing called
Perturbation Theory in quantum mechanics, and it explains that
zero-point fluctuations of the inflaton field generate density
perturbations and that zero-point fluctuations of the metric field
likewise generate primordial gravitational waves…)
As a result of these problems, I think a model of consciousness which
allows for anti-temporal effects is pertinent. And to go back to my
original idea of dual-state time vectors: If a quantum system can
determine and be determined by both its past and its future
simultaneously, future neurological processes can create the current
neurological processes which cause the future ones. This solves the
temporal issues of lesser wavefronts arriving before the dominant
wavefront, as well as the problem in Dennet’s model where consciousness
creates consciousness (and it’s turtles all the way down…).
If we accept a modified version of Dennet’s Multiple Drafts Model with
quantum effects, in which schizophrenia is caused by dual-state time
vectors causing lesser wavefronts to arrive before or at the same time
as dominant ones, we have new problems to be dealt with. First,
consistent characterizations of schizophrenic voices and hallucinations
are not addressed. I can personally attest that I have heard a
middle-aged, British, male voice narrating nearly all my actions and
thoughts for the past decade, quite consistently. That is, this voice
has not changed character or tone, and other schizophrenics report
similar experiences of recurrent hallucinations. (And, also
interestingly, female-bodied schizophrenics report more male voices, and
male-bodied schizophrenics report more female voices.) This fact is
quite troublesome: either it is that all wavefronts within the brain
are a consciousness in and of themselves, or else if they are not
their own consciousness there is little reason for these wavefronts to
not manifest macroscopically as noise or random hallucinations (which do
also occur, but do not delegitimise the tenacity of consistent
hallucinations). However, if each wavefront is its own consciousness, it
would seem plausible that the dominant consciousness could shift between
wavefronts, which is obviously not the case, i.e. schizophrenia is not
multiple personality disorder. So why is it that these alternate waves
remain distinct and separate?
It could be that the dominance of the main wavefront does in fact
shift occasionally to another wavefront, which might account for
fluctuations in paranoia. That is, suddenly the consciousness of a
schizophrenic is derailed from its dominant wavefront into the rather
informationally limited perspective of a lesser one, which would account
for the characteristically misdirected hyper-vigilant behaviours
associated with paranoia as the brain tries to recuperate from a loss of
previously-held perspective awareness. I’m not sure if I agree with that
idea yet; I’m just throwing it out there. And also, I should briefly
state that other theorists have attempted to use the Quantum Zeno
Effect to explain the coherence of the dominant consciousness, but I
can’t really attest to the veracity of that idea.
Lastly, I would like to state that I feel at once both within a position
of privilege and deprivation while speaking of these ideas. I recognise
that I have better insights into the workings and structures of
schizophrenia as one who endures living with it, yet I cannot help but
doubt my ideas pertaining to its pathogenesis in light of the
neurological systems of self-obfuscation and segmentation — the very
things which I am trying to see and define. It’s tortuously frustrating.
