Towards a Science of Consciousness 1966 — "Tucson II"

Conference Report

Mike King
London Guildhall University

'Dancing Wu Li Masters' was the thought that came to my mind on joining some of the world's leading physicists, neuroscientists, parapsychologists and philosophers on the dance floor at the end of the Tucson conference. In fact the local band were so impressed by the party spirit that they asked what club we belonged to, and could they join — 'Consciousness!' somebody shouted back to their puzzlement.

The second major conference on consciousness was held in April 1996 in Tucson Arizona, bringing together nearly one thousand delegates and speakers from a wide variety of disciplines. Having worked in the interdisciplinary area of computers and the arts for over ten years I am used to hearing and speaking across conventional boundaries of interest, but Tucson went beyond my experience. Though many speakers and delegates may have had entrenched positions, the debate was extraordinarily open, and probably augers well for science as a whole, even if studies in consciousness as a fully-fledged discipline never emerges. In fact, though the sciences, mainly in the form of cognitive science, neurobiology, quantum mechanics and computing, dominated the conference, many other disciplines were well represented including psychology, parapsychology, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and the arts.

I'll come back to the arts, and in particular to the relevance to visual computing, but first a summary of the key debates in consciousness, as presented at Tucson. A concept receiving much attention was the idea, from philosopher Michael Chalmers, that one can divide the territory into 'easy' and 'hard' problems: the so-called easy ones are those that are at least in principle amenable to conventional science, while the hard ones relate to the subjective problems of consciousness such as qualia (the redness of red, the painfulness of pain) and the unity of conscious experience. Some, such as philosopher Daniel Dennet who is currently working with cognitive robots, dismiss the hard problems and want to focus on perception. His plenary address included an admission that he felt like 'the cop at Woodstock,' but his audience took this cheerfully, with only the occasional later jibe at his status of 'zombie.' The zombie problem (how do you distinguish a functional equivalent of a human that is without consciousness from an ordinary human) has had almost as much mileage in studies in consciousness as John Searle's Chinese Room had in earlier debates on Artificial Intelligence. Searle, also a plenary speaker, took the middle view that while consciousness was 'caused' by brain processes and was therefore amenable to conventional science, problems such as qualia were important. The most radical developments however take us back to The Dancing Wu Li Masters, or rather to the theme of the book (first published in 1979 and preceded by Fritjof Capra's Tao of Physics), which is that quantum theory brings conventional science up against the brick wall of the subjective. With quantum theory the observer, and hence consciousness, are brought into science — in addition the phenomena of quantum indeterminism and quantum holism appear to have parallels with free will and the unity of conscious experience. These parallels have been debated for a long time, but it is the partnership of Roger Penrose (Oxford) and Stuart Hameroff (Arizona) that suggest a location in the brain where quantum mechanical effects might form the seat of consciousness. Normally quantum effects happen on far too small a scale to impinge on biological systems, but the work of Penrose and Hameroff seems to be able to defend itself against the reductionists and other disbelievers at the conference. Time will tell ...

My second surprise, after the breadth and openness of debate, was how well the visual arts were represented. There was an exhibition room of artworks on the theme of consciousness, a prize awarded for best entry, and the conference even has a resident artist whose work appears on posters and tee-shirts. There were five poster presentations listed under the 'Art' category in the proceedings (comprising research abstracts), though many other speakers dealt with the subject, one of the best being by Fariba Bogzaran in a parallel session on lucid dreaming. (Some of her prints and paintings were also in the exhibition, and I believe that she was one of the prizewinners.) Bogzaran's work investigates the relationship between the imagery experienced by lucid dreamers when asked to pursue the 'spiritual' in their dreams, and their paintings, and also the strange consonances between these paintings and those of certain artists such as Matta and Gordon Onslow-Ford who were not lucid dreamers. Many of the slides that she showed seem to deal with an art that comes almost from consciousness itself. Another interesting (poster) presentation was by Fanchon Frölich (widow of the great physicist) who showed collaborative paintings.

Another welcome surprise was to see Roy Ascott make a poster presentation, bringing the subject matter of the conference squarely into the orbit of the electronic arts, or visual computing. Roy sees the Internet and virtual reality as a whole shift in consciousness for mankind, and seems to share interests with a delegate I met called Jennifer Cobb, a theologian who writes on similar themes for Wired.

In conclusion I would like to comment on the significance of Studies in Consciousness to visual computing. In an odd way consciousness is both irrelevant to any discipline, and at the same time central to it — debates on consciousness may get us nowhere (at least in terms of answering the so-called hard problems) yet the intellectual fallout will probably fructify much of the sciences and arts. For example, many groups are attempting to build conscious computers: these developments will undoubtedly affect the sort of systems we work with in visual computing. Detailed work on the visual perceptual apparatus will affect computer graphics systems and probably lead to direct coupling (as in Neuromancer); research into neurobiology, REM sleep, and lucid dreaming will affect the whole field of visualisation. Consciousness research will also provide artists with subject matter for the digital image, and finally, the gradual restoration of the subjective in science will change the way that art and science interact. After all art is a way of making the subjective and personal into the objective and universal.

Select Bibliography

Journal of Consciousness Studies - controversies in the sciences and humanities, Thorverton UK: Imprint Academic
This is the key journal for the emerging discipline of consciousness research, and includes all the research abstracts for both the Tucson conferences.

Dennet, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1991
Dennet does not in fact explain consciousness in this book, but it is valuable for a lucid account of the problems, and his own theories are no more to be dismissed than many others.

Penrose, Roger, Shadows of the Mind - A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 1994
Although some of the material in this book has been updated in presentations at Tucson II, it remains a good account of quantum theory, the possible 'non-computability' of mind, and how microtubules may be the quantum seat of consciousness in the brain.

King, Mike 'Artificial Consciousness — Artificial Art' in Mealing, Stuart (Ed.) Computers and Art, Intellect, 1996
This is an expanded version of a panel paper given at ISEA '95 in Montreal, and deals with the electronic art of William Latham, Harold Cohen, and others dealing with evolutionary and AI approaches. The link to artificial consciousness is made through developments in artificial creativity, and the question of artificial life.