"T he Na tu r e of C onsciousne ss

T he Str uc tur e of Lif e and th e M ean ing of Ma tter"

(20 06)

by Piero Scaruffi

ISBN 0-9765531-1-2

A comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Cognitive Science, Neurobiology, Linguistics,

Philosophy of Mind, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Physics, Relativity, Thermodynamics,
Evolutionism, theories of dreams, theories of emotions and theories of consciousness.

1. Preface
2. Mind and Matter
3. Machine Intelligence
4. Cognition: A General Property of Matter
5. Common Sense: Engineering the Mind
6. Connectionism and Neural Machines
7. Inside the Brain
8. Memory: The Mind's Growth
9. Dreams
10. Emotions
11. Ecological Realism: The Embodied Mind
12. The Evolution of Life: Of Designers and Design
13. The Physics Of Life
14. Altruism: From Endosymbiosis to Sociobiology
15. Language: Minds Speak
16. The History of Language: Why We Speak
17. Metaphor: How We Speak
18. Pragmatics: What We Speak
19. Meaning: Journey to the Center of the Mind
20. Self-organization and the Science of Emergence
21. The New Physics: The Ubiquitous Asymmetry
22. A History of Consciousness
23. Consciousness: the Factory of Illusions
24. A Physics Of Consciousness
25. The Self and Free Will: Do We Think or Are We Thought
26. Finale

27. Alphabetical Index

Preface

Preface

By the time you finish reading this book you will be a different
person. I am not claiming that this book will change the way you
think and act. I am simply referring to the fact that the cells
in your body, including the neurons of your brain, are
continuously changing. By the time you finish reading this book
you will "literally" be a different body and a different brain.
Every word that you read is having an effect on the connections
between your neurons. And every breath you take is pacing the
metabolism of your cells. This book is about what just happened
to you.

As with any book worth reading, the goal of this book is to fill
a gap. In my case, the gap is a lack of books that provide an
interdisciplinary account of the studies on the mind being
conducted around the world. While many books carry that label,
most of them focus on the one or two disciplines or theories that
the author intends to defend or attack.

First and foremost, my book aims at providing an accessible and

stimulating introduction to those studies across a number of
disciplines: Philosophy, Psychology, Computer Science,
Mathematics, Biology, Neurology and Physics. This book contains a
brief description of every single modern theory (about
Consciousness, Cognition and Life) of which I am aware.

This book was originally born to provide an overview for ordinary

humans of the philosophical mind-body debate, of neurological
models of the brain, of computational theories of cognition
(Artificial Intelligence, Connectionism), of post-Darwinian
biology, of theories on memory, reasoning, learning, emotions,
common sense, dreams, language, metaphor, of modern Physics
(Quantum Theory, Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics, Relativity
Theory), and, last but not least, consciousness. It was
originally meant as a compendium of the scientific ideas that are
likely to shape the intellectual scenario of the third
millennium. And I was its original reader.

This book also offers a humble personal opinion on what the

solution to the mystery of consciousness may be. But that is not
the centerpiece of the book.

A popular question of our times is "what is the meaning of life?"

I always found that question misleading, because first we should
be able to answer the more basic question "what is the meaning of
matter?" This book can’t answer either, but at least tries to
make the connection.
Physics has explained everything we have found in the universe.
We know how the universe started and how it will end. We know
what drives it. We know what makes it. Our knowledge of
fundamental forces and elementary particles is increasing daily.
Two things remain to be explained: how am I alive and how do I
think. What does it take for something to be alive and to think?
Can we "build" a machine that thinks and is alive? What is
thought (consciousness)? And what is life? Physics provides no
answer. Historically, it never tried to give an answer. Life and
thought were considered beyond the reach of formulas. Today,
instead, scientists from different disciplines view living and
thinking as physical phenomena to be studied the same way we
study galaxies and electricity. The most important revolution of
our century could be the idea that thinking and living can be
explained by mathematical formulas, just like any other phenomena
in the universe. Science may never be the same again, literally.
Any scientific theory that does not provide a credible account
for consciousness and life is faulted from the beginning, as it
ignores the two phenomena its own existence depends upon. We are
alive and we are conscious: we know that much.

We live in an age in which the study of consciousness, cognition

and life is no longer philosophical speculation. It is, instead,
affecting a growing number of disciplines. For the first time in
history there is a convergence of specialists (neurologists,
biologists, physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists,
psychologists) onto one subject.

A new view of nature is slowly emerging, which encompasses both

galaxies and neurons, gravitation and life, molecules and
emotions. In what represents the culmination of centuries of
studying nature, humankind is now approaching the thorniest
subject of all: ourselves. We are part of nature, but,
historically, Science left us in the background, limiting our
role to the one of observers.

For a long time we humans have enjoyed this privileged status.

But we seem capable no longer of eluding the fundamental issue:
that what we have been studying for all these centuries is but
us, albeit disguised under theories of the universe and of
elementary particles (theories of what "we" see). And now it is
about time that we focus on the real subject. The human mind
appears to us as the ultimate and most refined product of life.
And life appears to us as the ultimate and most refined product
of matter. Now we need a theory of the universe in which
consciousness, cognition and life are not oddities, but building
blocks.

The fact that we do not have yet a good theory of mind probably
means that we do not have a good theory of the universe.
Consciousness is perhaps the great mystery of the universe. And
the reason may very well lie in a fundamental inadequacy of our
Science to explain natural phenomena. In a sense, the new science
of mind is doing more than just studying mind: it is indirectly
reformulating the program of Science in general.
At every point in the history of Science, a paradigm shift
allowed to explain previously unexplained phenomena.

The challenge, now, is to explain why we are here.

And what we are.

Ultimately, this book is about the gap between "I" and "me".

This book was begun in 1997. It was published as "Thinking about

Thought" in 2003. It has been greatly revised and expanded since
then. This new edition includes material that originally appeared
on my website www.scaruffi.com. Click on "Science" and register to
the monthly newsletter if you wish to receive future updates.

The website is also the easiest way to find out my email address.
I welcome feedback from readers, whether it is typos or opinions.

Piero Scaruffi

Redwood City, November 2006

How To Read This Book

I think that all readers will be interested in the main ideas

surveyed within each chapter, but probably most readers will not
be interested in the details of each and every chapter.

Each chapter contains a short introduction to the subject, and

then a series of paragraphs that summarize the theories of the
main specialists in the field.

I rarely take sides. I summarize a scholar's work and let you

decide.

(I apologize with the scholars: a one-page summary of their work

is, of course, a very superficial reading of their theories. The
goal of this book is to offer "breadth", not "depth").

As you advance into the chapter, the theories get more difficult
and sometimes repetitive. Depending on your level of interest,
you may want to absorb all the details or just skip to the next
chapter.

My own ideas are usually left for the end of each chapter.
Needless to say, you don't miss much if you skip my ideas.

I have a feeling that, for most readers, the best way to read
this book is in many stages: first surf the chapters (focusing on
the first half of each chapter), then re-read the book going a
bit further within each chapter.
A generous bibliography at the end of each chapter should help
you select what you want to read next, depending on what
intrigued you most (titles in bold are those recommended for
beginners).

The core material on Cognitive Science is divided into chapters

that roughly correspond to cognitive faculties (memory, dreams,
emotions, language, etc). But the "peripheral" chapters are no
less important, and in fact, take up most of the book. There is a
first chapter devoted to a survey of Philosophy of Mind, followed
by three chapters on Machine Intelligence. There is a lengthy
chapter on Physics flanked by three chapters on Biology.

Beginning with a survey of Philosophy may not be the best way to

introduce a book that promotes a new science. While Philosophy
matters less when hard data are available, philosophers of mind
did frame the problem. The reader probably has her own strong
opinion on what consciousness is and where it comes from. After
reading the first chapter and the different theories of all those
philosophers, the reader with strong opinions will probably
realize that her convictions are a bit amateurish. Thus that
first chapter may be helpful to "clear the air".

Ditto for Machine Intelligence. Whether "intelligent" (or,

better, conscious) machines are feasible or not, the program of
building one has forced people to think about what consciousness
is and where it comes from. The fact that we are not even close
to building one such machine means that either it is impossible
or we are still in the dark.

The chapters on Biology provide the kind of general knowledge

that is needed to situate cognition in the proper context. Our
brain acts in a world. An organism does not live in an empty
universe. The origin of life and its evolution are also relevant.
The nature of altruism (that seems to defy the essence of
Darwinism) is important to understand our mind. The physical and
mathematical theories of life are basically abstracting general
principles applicable to other fields (possibly neurobiology
itself). Throughout these chapters I introduce the basic facts of
life (e.g., the genetic code, DNA, the structure of the cell,
etc).

The chapter on the brain is relatively straightforward: it

summarizes what we know about the structure and functioning of
the brain. Ditto for the three chapters on Biology. Both
Neurology and Biology are essential to understand the "what" and
the "why" of cognition.

The chapter on Physics is essential. Every other chapter is

useful for its philosophical, biological, mathematical or
psychological speculations, but, at the end of the day, it is
Physics that best summarizes our knowledge of the universe. Thus
it is Physics that eventually has to incorporate a theory of
life, cognition and consciousness. Anybody who has an opinion on
 life, cognition or consciousness without being fluent in Quantum
Mechanics and Relativity is simply bluffing.

The character of these chapters varies wildly.

Depending on your background and interests, the first three or

four chapters may excite you or put you to sleep. Whichever it
turns out to be, do not assume that the rest of the chapters are
of the same kind. In a sense, each one reflects the style and
method of the discipline that it summarizes.

Previous readers consistently praised the second half of the book

and criticized the first half. I still think that the first (more
technical) half is necessary to understand the context of the
second (more speculative) half. Books that only deal with life or
consciousness are not educating the reader: they are merely
teasing the reader.

About Me

Few people have the qualifications to write such an ambitious

survey of a brand new discipline. I confess I am not one of them.
After leading the Olivetti Artificial Intelligence Center for
several years, in 1995-96 I spent two years at Stanford
University studying Cognitive Science (a visiting scholarship
kindly granted by Robert Engelmore at the Knowledge Engineering
Laboratory). That was, in retrospect, the beginning of this book.
I simply gathered information from all disciplines with the aim
of working out a synthesis of sorts. I guess it will remain the
goal of my life, although I have missed my chance of working
inside the Academia.

My background is a mess. I graduated in Mathematics but my thesis

was on theoretical Physics (that’s where I got my introduction to
Quantum and Relativity Physics). I worked in the software
industry and eventually did research on Artificial Intelligence.

In my other lives, I write about music, cinema and literature, and I am

working on a history of knowledge from the beginning of human civilization to
our days. I have published poetry. I have traveled to more than 100 countries.