So calling the thalamus the seat of consciousness is like saying the water comes from the valve because if that stuck closed no water flows.
Pardon the semantic argument, but:
Saying the thalamus is not the seat of consciousness is like saying Washington D. C. is not the seat of US government because voting constituents live all over the country or because Wall Street is a powerful lobbying group. Washington D. C. is considered the seat of US government because although disparate forces influence the decision making process in Washington, the actual process of combining these disparate influences into a coherent unitary final decision happens through the mechanisms present in Washington D. C.
I’ll pardon it but I won’t engage with it. I think saying it’s the seat of consciousness makes you sound like you don’t know what’s going on, when actually you do. I could be right or wrong.
Okay fine, I’ll engage a little. I do love this shit, even though I try not to spend time on it because it’s a mess with little payoff (unless the aforementioned debate over AI consciousness starts to seem relevant to our odds of survival—which it well might).
I don’t think your DC as the seat of government metaphor goes through. DC is indeed the seat of government. The thalamus isn’t in charge of consciousness, it’s just a valve (but far more sophisticated; an arena of competition) that someone else turns: the cortex and basal ganglia, in elaborate collaboration. The thalamus is the mechanism by which their decisions are enforced; it doesn’t seem to play a large role in deciding what’s attended.
I do think having easy to understand language is important and advantageous. If everytime someone tried talking about the US government we got a long-winded nuancing that technically we are in a democracy and the people in Washington D. C. aren’t in control of the US government that would cause confusion.
an arena of competition
This really doesn’t seem to clash with the Washington D. C. metaphor; many people consider the power politics of the US government to be a competitive activity.
The broader issue is locality of events in time and space. Take sports competition: a common saying is that wins are made in the gym. There is a causal chain that leads back from any event to previous events not local in space which, with enough compute, have a knowable deterministic effect on the event’s outcome. We still don’t say that an MMA match takes place in the respective training gyms of the fighters, the fight happens in the octagon. That is where the disparate influences on the outcome of the fight converge in time and space to resolve conflicts to a unitary resolution.
As a more practical matter, what do you make of the studies I mentioned that produce awareness in either unresponsive human patients or anesthetized animals with only stimulation of the thalamus? That seems very powerfully indicative that the thalamus is where consciousness is happening.
What I make of those studies is that stimulating the thalamus activates the whole corticothalemic loop. The non-specific or activating nuclei of the thalamus switch on matched areas of cortex. The thalamus has a powerful regulatory role, but it’s not making decisions, it’s enforcing them. The government that sits in DC is making decisions and that’s why we call it the seat of the government. Your metaphor simply does not go through and it makes you sound confused.
The government’s decisions are influenced from elsewhere, and they are enacted elsewhere. But the thalamist’s role is much less like the Congress or Senate and much more like the people who enact and enforce the decisions made by those governing bodies. The decisions about what becomes conscious are made elsewhere, in the conjunction of the cortex and basal ganglia. Decisions about whether to be conscious or unconscious or made in subthalamic nuclei, and again only enforced or enacted by the thalamus.
There you said the thalamus is where consciousness is happening. That is just flat wrong. It’s a system phenomenon. Trending towards statements like that is why it’s a mistake to say any place is the seat of consciousness; it leads to very wrong conceptions and statements like that.
Government largely happens in DC. Consciousness largely happens throughout thalamocortical loops.
The reason I thought this is worth mentioning is that talking about a seat of consciousness confuses the whole phenomenon of consciousness. It implies that consciousness is some little add-on happening in some little corner of the brain, when that’s not right at all; consciousness is a highly complex phenomena involving much of the brain’s higher functions.
What I make of those studies is that stimulating the thalamus activates the whole corticothalemic loop.
Yes, precisely, but the inverse is not the case. It seems to make a strong argument that the loops “start” in the thalamus and that the thalamus has a primary role.
There you said the thalamus is where consciousness is happening. That is just flat wrong. It’s a system phenomenon.
Literally every empirical phenomenon is a system phenomenon at some level. Everything is the undifferentiated Brahman according to the Kharmic religions, and they’re basically right in some sense. But we make abstractions for events which are local in space and time.
US federal governance or a match of fisticuffs in an arena are complex system phenomena with many disparate influences but the language and abstractions we use place these things at a particular place and time because that is where these influences converge in time and space and resolve their conflicts.
(I think our discussion has become perfectly looped at this point.)
Pardon the semantic argument, but:
Saying the thalamus is not the seat of consciousness is like saying Washington D. C. is not the seat of US government because voting constituents live all over the country or because Wall Street is a powerful lobbying group. Washington D. C. is considered the seat of US government because although disparate forces influence the decision making process in Washington, the actual process of combining these disparate influences into a coherent unitary final decision happens through the mechanisms present in Washington D. C.
I’ll pardon it but I won’t engage with it. I think saying it’s the seat of consciousness makes you sound like you don’t know what’s going on, when actually you do. I could be right or wrong.
Okay fine, I’ll engage a little. I do love this shit, even though I try not to spend time on it because it’s a mess with little payoff (unless the aforementioned debate over AI consciousness starts to seem relevant to our odds of survival—which it well might).
I don’t think your DC as the seat of government metaphor goes through. DC is indeed the seat of government. The thalamus isn’t in charge of consciousness, it’s just a valve (but far more sophisticated; an arena of competition) that someone else turns: the cortex and basal ganglia, in elaborate collaboration. The thalamus is the mechanism by which their decisions are enforced; it doesn’t seem to play a large role in deciding what’s attended.
I do think having easy to understand language is important and advantageous. If everytime someone tried talking about the US government we got a long-winded nuancing that technically we are in a democracy and the people in Washington D. C. aren’t in control of the US government that would cause confusion.
This really doesn’t seem to clash with the Washington D. C. metaphor; many people consider the power politics of the US government to be a competitive activity.
The broader issue is locality of events in time and space. Take sports competition: a common saying is that wins are made in the gym. There is a causal chain that leads back from any event to previous events not local in space which, with enough compute, have a knowable deterministic effect on the event’s outcome. We still don’t say that an MMA match takes place in the respective training gyms of the fighters, the fight happens in the octagon. That is where the disparate influences on the outcome of the fight converge in time and space to resolve conflicts to a unitary resolution.
As a more practical matter, what do you make of the studies I mentioned that produce awareness in either unresponsive human patients or anesthetized animals with only stimulation of the thalamus? That seems very powerfully indicative that the thalamus is where consciousness is happening.
What I make of those studies is that stimulating the thalamus activates the whole corticothalemic loop. The non-specific or activating nuclei of the thalamus switch on matched areas of cortex. The thalamus has a powerful regulatory role, but it’s not making decisions, it’s enforcing them. The government that sits in DC is making decisions and that’s why we call it the seat of the government. Your metaphor simply does not go through and it makes you sound confused.
The government’s decisions are influenced from elsewhere, and they are enacted elsewhere. But the thalamist’s role is much less like the Congress or Senate and much more like the people who enact and enforce the decisions made by those governing bodies. The decisions about what becomes conscious are made elsewhere, in the conjunction of the cortex and basal ganglia. Decisions about whether to be conscious or unconscious or made in subthalamic nuclei, and again only enforced or enacted by the thalamus.
There you said the thalamus is where consciousness is happening. That is just flat wrong. It’s a system phenomenon. Trending towards statements like that is why it’s a mistake to say any place is the seat of consciousness; it leads to very wrong conceptions and statements like that.
Government largely happens in DC. Consciousness largely happens throughout thalamocortical loops.
The reason I thought this is worth mentioning is that talking about a seat of consciousness confuses the whole phenomenon of consciousness. It implies that consciousness is some little add-on happening in some little corner of the brain, when that’s not right at all; consciousness is a highly complex phenomena involving much of the brain’s higher functions.
Yes, precisely, but the inverse is not the case. It seems to make a strong argument that the loops “start” in the thalamus and that the thalamus has a primary role.
Literally every empirical phenomenon is a system phenomenon at some level. Everything is the undifferentiated Brahman according to the Kharmic religions, and they’re basically right in some sense. But we make abstractions for events which are local in space and time.
US federal governance or a match of fisticuffs in an arena are complex system phenomena with many disparate influences but the language and abstractions we use place these things at a particular place and time because that is where these influences converge in time and space and resolve their conflicts.
(I think our discussion has become perfectly looped at this point.)