Sean Welsh’s scientific contributions

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Publications (7)


Why Is Anything Conscious?
  • Preprint

December 2024

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33 Reads

Michael Timothy Bennett

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Sean Welsh

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Fig. 4 Overview of stages and orders of self.
Why Is Anything Conscious?
  • Preprint
  • File available

September 2024

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408 Reads

We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally-selected, self-organising, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a mathematical formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence and specific needs. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which can only be differentiated from each other by the qualitative aspect of information processing. Selection pressures favour systems that can 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 real world interventions. This produces a range of qualitative classifiers (interoceptive and exteroceptive) that motivate specific actions and determine priorities and preferences. Building upon the seminal distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness, our radical claim here is that phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness is likely very common, but the reverse is implausible. To put it provocatively: Nature does not like zombies. We formally describe the multilayered architecture of self-organisation from rocks to Einstein, illustrating how our argument applies in the real world. We claim that access consciousness at the human level is impossible without the ability to hierarchically model i) the self, ii) the world/others and iii) the self as modelled by others. Phenomenal consciousness is therefore required for human-level functionality. Our proposal lays the foundations of a formal science of consciousness, deeply connected with natural selection rather than abstract thinking, closer to human fact than zombie fiction.

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Why Nature Does Not Like Zombies – Unifying Lower and Higher Order Theories of Consciousness: A Computational Approach

June 2024

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11 Reads

We tackle the hard problem of consciousness taking the naturally-selected, self-organising, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a mathematical formalism describing how biological systems self-organise to hierarchically interpret unlabelled sensory information according to valence and specific needs. Such interpretations imply behavioural policies which can only be differentiated from each other by the qualitative aspect of information processing. Selection pressures favour systems that can 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 real world interventions. This produces a range of qualitative classifiers (interoceptive and exteroceptive) that motivate specific actions and determine priorities and preferences. Building upon the seminal distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness, our radical claim here is that phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness is likely very common, but the reverse is implausible. To put it provocatively: Nature does not like zombies. We formally describe the multilayered architecture of self-organisation from rocks to Einstein, illustrating how our argument applies in the real world. We claim that access consciousness at the human level is impossible without the ability to hierarchically model i) the self, ii) the world/others and iii) the self as modelled by others. Phenomenal consciousness is therefore required for human-level functionality. Our proposal lays the foundations of a formal science of consciousness, deeply connected with natural selection rather than abstract thinking, closer to human fact than zombie fiction.


The Phenomenal Is Functional: A Unified Theory of Consciousness and Computation

December 2023

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142 Reads

p> Please note this is a draft on which we are seeking feedback. Substantial changes and a third author are likely be added to the next version. The hard problem of consciousness asks why there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. We address this from 1st principles, by constructing a formalism that unifies lower and higher order theories of consciousness. We assume pancomputationalism and hold that the environment learns organisms that exhibit fit behaviour via the algorithm we call natural selection. Selection learns organisms that learn to classify causes, facilitating adaptation. Recent experimental and mathematical computer science elucidates how. Scaling this capacity implies a progressively higher order of ``causal identity'' facilitating reafference and P-consciousness, then self awareness and A-consciousness, and then meta self awareness. We then use this to resolve the hard problem in precise terms. First, we deny that a philosophical zombie is in all circumstances as capable as a P-conscious being. This is because a variable presupposes an object to which a value is assigned. Whether X causes Y depends on the choice of X, so causality is learned by learning X such that X causes Y, not by presupposing X and then learning if X causes Y (presupposing rather than inferring abstractions can reduce sample efficiency in learning). However, learning is a discriminatory process that requires states be differentiated by value. Without objects, variables or values, there is only quality. By this we mean an organism is attracted to or repulsed by a physical state. Learning reduces quality into objects by constructing policies classifying cause of affect (``representations'' are just behaviour triggered by phenomenal content). Where selection pressures require an organism classify its own interventions, that policy (a ``1st order causal identity'') has a quality that persists across interventions, and so there is something it is like to be that organism. Thus organisms have P-consciousness because it allows them to adapt with greater sample efficiency, and infer the cause of affect. We then argue neither P nor A-consciousness alone are remarkable, but when P-consciousness gives rise to A-consciousness we obtain ``H-consciousness'' (what Boltuc argues is the crux of the hard problem). This occurs when selection pressures require organism o infer organism u 's prediction of o 's interventions a ``2nd order causal identity'' approximating intent). A-consciousness is the contents of 2nd order causal identities, and by predicting another's prediction of one's own 1st order causal identities it becomes possible to know what one knows and feels, and act upon this information to communicate meaning in the Gricean sense. Thus P and A-consciousness are two aspects of H-concsiousness, the process of learning and acting in accord with a hierarchy of causal identities that simplify the environment into classifiers of cause and affect. We call this the psychophysical principle of causality.</p


The Phenomenal Is Functional: A Unified Theory of Consciousness and Computation

December 2023

·

38 Reads

p> Please note this is a draft on which we are seeking feedback. Substantial changes and a third author are likely be added to the next version. The hard problem of consciousness asks why there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. We address this from 1st principles, by constructing a formalism that unifies lower and higher order theories of consciousness. We assume pancomputationalism and hold that the environment learns organisms that exhibit fit behaviour via the algorithm we call natural selection. Selection learns organisms that learn to classify causes, facilitating adaptation. Recent experimental and mathematical computer science elucidates how. Scaling this capacity implies a progressively higher order of ``causal identity'' facilitating reafference and P-consciousness, then self awareness and A-consciousness, and then meta self awareness. We then use this to resolve the hard problem in precise terms. First, we deny that a philosophical zombie is in all circumstances as capable as a P-conscious being. This is because a variable presupposes an object to which a value is assigned. Whether X causes Y depends on the choice of X, so causality is learned by learning X such that X causes Y, not by presupposing X and then learning if X causes Y (presupposing rather than inferring abstractions can reduce sample efficiency in learning). However, learning is a discriminatory process that requires states be differentiated by value. Without objects, variables or values, there is only quality. By this we mean an organism is attracted to or repulsed by a physical state. Learning reduces quality into objects by constructing policies classifying cause of affect (``representations'' are just behaviour triggered by phenomenal content). Where selection pressures require an organism classify its own interventions, that policy (a ``1st order causal identity'') has a quality that persists across interventions, and so there is something it is like to be that organism. Thus organisms have P-consciousness because it allows them to adapt with greater sample efficiency, and infer the cause of affect. We then argue neither P nor A-consciousness alone are remarkable, but when P-consciousness gives rise to A-consciousness we obtain ``H-consciousness'' (what Boltuc argues is the crux of the hard problem). This occurs when selection pressures require organism o infer organism u 's prediction of o 's interventions a ``2nd order causal identity'' approximating intent). A-consciousness is the contents of 2nd order causal identities, and by predicting another's prediction of one's own 1st order causal identities it becomes possible to know what one knows and feels, and act upon this information to communicate meaning in the Gricean sense. Thus P and A-consciousness are two aspects of H-concsiousness, the process of learning and acting in accord with a hierarchy of causal identities that simplify the environment into classifiers of cause and affect. We call this the psychophysical principle of causality.</p