Radical disruptions of self-consciousness

Millière, Raphaël; Metzinger, Thomas

doi:10.33735/phimisci.2020.i.50

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In order to avoid the dissolution of its boundaries, what the organism does is make predictions across many timescales to produce autopoietic 5 actions that minimize the tendency towards entropy (Friston & Buzsáki, 2016). It is perhaps these relatively uncontroversial axioms on which the free energy principle is founded that has made it so appealing to philosophers and scientists alike (Allen & Friston, 2018;Clark, 2013;Milliere & Metzinger, 2020;Wacongne et al, 2011).…”

Section: Predictive Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Predictive processing accounts of the self are in the early stages (Milliere & Metzinger, 2020), and there is still not widespread agreement among scientists on a definition of the self. Nevertheless, assuming a predictive brain, we can draw some tentative conclusions.…”

Section: The Inferred Hierarchical Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although there are clear conceptual similarities, there are also important differences between our account and predictive processing models of psychedelics. Highlighting some of these may help guide future research on the intersection of meditation and psychedelics (for recent examples see, Millière et al, 2018;Milliere & Metzinger, 2020;Smigielski et al, 2019). Below we focus on the recent predictive processing model of psychedelics termed relaxed beliefs under psychedelics, or REBUS for short (Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2019).…”

Section: Dissolving or Disappearing: Psychedelics And Meditationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

Laukkonen¹,

Slagter²

2020

Preprint

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How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of meditation under the predictive processing view of living organisms. We start from relatively simple axioms. First, the brain is an organ that serves to predict based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic. Second, meditation serves to bring one closer to the here and now by disengaging from anticipatory processes. We propose that practicing meditation therefore gradually reduces predictive processing, in particular counterfactual cognition—the tendency to construct abstract and temporally deep representations—until all conceptual processing falls away. Our Many-to-One account also places three main styles of meditation (focused attention, open monitoring, and non-dual meditation) on a single continuum, where each technique progressively relinquishes increasingly engrained habits of prediction, including the self. This deconstruction can also make the above processes more transparent to awareness, permitting certain insights into one’s mind. Our review suggests that our framework is consistent with the current state of empirical and (neuro)phenomenological evidence in contemplative science, and is ultimately illuminating about the plasticity of the predictive mind. It also serves to highlight that contemplative science can fruitfully go beyond cognitive enhancement, attention, and emotion regulation, to its more traditional goal of removing past conditioning and creating conditions for potentially profound insights. Experimental rigor, neurophenomenology, and no-report paradigms combined with neuroimaging are needed to further our understanding of how different styles of meditation affect predictive processing and the self, and the plasticity of the predictive mind more generally.

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Section: Predictive Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Inferred Hierarchical Selfmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dissolving or Disappearing: Psychedelics And Meditationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

Laukkonen¹,

Slagter²

2020

Preprint

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“…The role of action for self-representation is also being explored with PP; in particular, sensory attenuation (manifested, e.g., in our inability to tickle ourselves) in action has received a new explanation in terms of precision optimization (Brown, Adams et al 2013, Van Doorn, Paton et al 2015, Vasser, Cleeremans et al 2019). This overall approach to self-related inference may be extended to models of the philosophically recalcitrant topic of the self (Limanowski and Blankenburg 2013, Apps and Tsakiris 2014, Hohwy and Michael 2017; two recent collections have several relevant PP contributions on this topic De Preester 2018, Milliere andMetzinger 2020). Indeed, ambitious applications of PP have begun to account for the subjective experiences of embodied selfhood as arising from active inference of interoceptive states, where such inference is motivated by the control or regulation of the hidden causes of these states rather than by their accurate representation (Seth 2015a, Seth 2015b, Wiese 2015).…”

Section: Predictive and Explanatory Power Of Pp As A Systematic Basismentioning

confidence: 99%

Predictive processing as a systematic basis for identifying the neural correlates of consciousness

Hohwy¹,

Seth²

2020

Preprint

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The search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of a systematic, principled foundation that can endow putative neural correlates with greater predictive and explanatory value. Here, we propose the predictive processing framework for brain function as a promising candidate for providing this systematic foundation. The proposal is motivated by that framework’s ability to address three general challenges to finding the neural correlates of consciousness, and to satisfy two constraints common to many theories of consciousness. Implementing the search for neural correlates of consciousness through the lens of predictive processing delivers strong potential for predictive and explanatory value through detailed, systematic mappings between neural substrates and phenomenological structure. We conclude that the predictive processing framework, precisely because it at the outset is not itself a theory of consciousness, has significant potential for advancing the neuroscience of consciousness.

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“…IWMT's primary focus is explaining means by which biological systems may generate phenomenality, or experience as a subjective point of view (Williford et al, 2018;Feiten, 2020). However, IWMT suggests that a variety of higher order and meta-cognitive capacities may be required in order to obtain coherent subjectivity-although not necessarily involving either access or explicit selfconsciousness (Milliere and Metzinger, 2020)-and thereby an experienced world. More specifically, IWMT's primary claims are as follows:…”

Section: The Enduring Problems Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of consciousness: Combining Integrated Information and Global Neuronal Workspace Theories with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework; towards solving the Hard problem and characterizing agentic causation

Safron¹

2019

Preprint

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The Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework (FEP-AI) begins with the understanding that persisting systems must regulate environmental exchanges and prevent entropic accumulation. In FEP-AI, minds and brains are predictive controllers for autonomous systems, where action-driven perception is realized as probabilistic inference. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) begins with considering the preconditions for a system to intrinsically exist, as well as axioms regarding the nature of consciousness. IIT has produced controversy because of its surprising entailments: quasi-panpsychism; subjectivity without referents or dynamics; and the possibility of fully-intelligent-yet-unconscious brain simulations. Here, I describe how these controversies might be resolved by integrating IIT with FEP-AI, where integrated information only entails consciousness for systems with perspectival reference frames capable of generating models with spatial, temporal, and causal coherence for self and world. Without that connection with external reality, systems could have arbitrarily high amounts of integrated information, but nonetheless would not entail subjective experience. I further describe how an integration of these frameworks may contribute to their evolution as unified systems theories and models of emergent causation. Then, inspired by both Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) and the Harmonic Brain Modes framework, I describe how streams of consciousness may emerge as an evolving generation of sensorimotor predictions, with the precise composition of experiences depending on the integration abilities of synchronous complexes as self-organizing harmonic modes (SOHMs). These integrating dynamics may be particularly likely to occur via richly connected subnetworks affording body-centric sources of phenomenal binding and executive control. Along these connectivity backbones, SOHMs are proposed to implement loopy message passing (cf. turbo-codes) over predictive (autoencoding) networks, so generating maximum a posteriori estimates as coherent vectors governing neural evolution, with alpha frequencies generating basic awareness, and cross-frequency phase-coupling within theta frequencies for access consciousness and volitional control. These dynamic cores of integrated information also function as global workspaces, centered on posterior cortices, but capable of being entrained with frontal cortices and interoceptive hierarchies, so affording agentic causation. Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) represents a synthetic approach to understanding minds that reveals compatibility between leading theories of consciousness, so enabling inferential synergy.

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Radical disruptions of self-consciousness

Abstract: This special issue is about something most of us might find very hard to conceive: states of consciousness in which self-consciousness is radically disrupted or altogether missing.

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind

Predictive processing as a systematic basis for identifying the neural correlates of consciousness

An Integrated World Modeling Theory (IWMT) of consciousness: Combining Integrated Information and Global Neuronal Workspace Theories with the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference Framework; towards solving the Hard problem and characterizing agentic causation

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