The Emergence of Consciousness in a Physical Universe

Abstract

Consciousness appears so mysterious and hard to formulate within physical sciences because the present day scientific thinking excludes certain element of reality from its consideration. The primary missing element is the reality of information in the physical universe as an intrinsic causal correlate of observable physical states. Another missing element is a general formalism of information processing that is universally applicable to the processing resulting from each physical interaction. As shown, the formalism further enables a general mechanism to construct arbitrary structured and abstract semantics or object description in modular hierarchy as well as a powerful mechanism of population coding to represent arbitrary precision and variations in object description resolving the combinatorial problem. Here, a semantic content, or simply semantics, is equivalent (\(\equiv\)) to what the information of correlation expresses, and treated as a value to enable its formal processing. The primary motive here is to lay down a formal account of information (semantic) processing that leads to bridging the conceptual gap between the objectively observable elements in nature and the subjective consciousness. It is shown that the qualities we associate with consciousness are causally represented semantics of relation that a represented agency holds with other objects within a dynamically evolving semantic structure, where the state of the population of physical systems (neurons) representing the structure holds causal powers to effect appropriate behavior. Since the information arises from natural causal correlation, the consciousness forms an undeniable reality of existence. It is derived here how a semantic value equivalent to 'a self as an observer of objects and controller of actions' is representable. If the semantic components of a conscious experience, such as the self, the objects of experience, and the relation of experience attributing the self as the owner or experience are causally represented by a system's state having causal influence in action, then it suffices to bridge the gap between the objective reality and the subjective consciousness. That is, the semantic value corresponding to the thoughts and senses is the reality of nature the semantics of self relates to as the owner. Moreover, the semantics of'self as an observer and controller of action' is itself shown to form a part of observed objects giving rise to self awareness.