Consciousness as Generator,
by Jack Ferguson (Copyright, 2000)

This paper follows experiential and neurological evidence in suggesting that consciousness is a pattern generator and proposes a hypothetical model where patterns form sensations, perceptions and representations .

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"It is as if the Milky Way entered upon some cosmic dance. Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one; a shifting harmony of subpatterns."

- Sherrington, The Integrative Action of the Nervous System

From an epistemological viewpoint, I propose that the experience of consciousness is the processing of patterns, where processing is the neural generation and organization of sensory, perceptual and cognitive data into patterns according to the laws of association. The laws of association are descriptions of perceptual organization according to contiguity, cause-effect, figure-ground, contrast, gestalts, and so on, enabling identification and differentiation into images or representations. This method avoids the Cartesian paradox of content filled consciousness because there would be no distinction between the generation and processing of patterns and consciousness itself. "They" are not different beings; "they" are ontologically identical. For example, brain damaged children cannot follow patterned outlines nor separate embedded shapes from patterned backgrounds. "The brain injured children started and stopped anywhere in the pattern, or made disconnected bits of it isolated from one another." (Vernon, 1963) In undamaged brains, patterns are the result of processing sensory data, data being subsets, into gestalts emerging from (1) dots to lines: "As he (viewer) watches them (dots), the organization may undergo change from one pattern to another, but there is always pattern and form in the way in which the dots are perceived." (Travers, 1963) The viewer’s perceptual architecture imposes the linear pattern on the dots, i.e., consciousness of the dots is the process of their generation and organization. There is evidence that lines are detected at the cellular level. "For cells of this kind (complex cortical) any straight-line stimulus (a slit, bar, or edge) is sufficient to cause some kind of response, as long as the specific orientation is maintained…"(Levinthal, 1983) "The organization of receptor cells suggests sensory impulses are processed into patterns." (Levinthal) (2) Lines into shapes: "Simulations with the RF-LISSOM model show that such preorganization can account for newborn face preferences, providing a computational framework for examining how genetic influences interact with experience to construct a complex system." (Benard,2000) Rather than innate figures, perhaps mom's face was
"connected" with the shape of the breast, be it termed "meme," "imprint, " "reflex" or "empirical association." Either way, association kicks in at some point and organizes both innate and learned patterns.

The evidence suggests that human consciousness starts at the micro and continues towards the macro: neural patterns organize by association into sensory patterns that combine in some animals and man to reach a threshold of perception. Depending of the environment, human perceptions organize into cognitive patterns including analysis, synthesis, etc. Cognitive patterns containing all previous patterns as subsets, organize into behavioral patterns, and behavioral into sociological, historical, scientific patterns, and so on through the laws of association. "The term central pattern generators has been used to refer to the neural circuitry responsible for generating rhythmic patterns of behavior as seen in walking…and can be reorganized to function in more than one task; that is, they are flexible." (Rosenzweig, 1996)

Perhaps the brain is an organ with a core program similar to a fractal generator. If so, it somehow imposes patterns on sense data; however, we recognize that each consciousness is genetically and environmentally unique. Therefore, consciousness would be the ongoing generating and processing of patterns into unique sets. Sets would be formed and bound by particular associations. A set would be unlimited in the amount of its patterns. The processing of patterns into sets would overlap into other sets of patterns through the laws of association, infinitely. For example, I can conceive from my perceptions of seashores filled with unlimited sand particles. Upon examination, each sand particle has a unique pattern. When I set it down, it recombines into a continuous perception of an endless beach with unlimited, shifting patterns consisting of contours, hues, colors, textures, formations, smells, pressures, some beyond description. I could measure and map it into numeric and graphic patterns. I have to conclude that consciousness resembles a fractal generator program synthesizing or analyzing patterns into an continuum of sets held together by the neural superglue labeled "association."

It would seem that the starting point of pattern generation is the immediate a priori separation and segregation of patterns. As stated, "Hubel and Wiesel discovered cortical cells that detect edges and slits and moving lines in a cat’s visual cortex." (Levinthal, 1983), (Crowder, 1992) Along the visual pathway are on + and off - ganglion cell. (Levinthal) This cellular recognition of difference is obviously fundamental to survival. With identification comes logical significance as described by the law of identity and difference. So, there is some evidence of a native Boolean logic in our neural circuitry:
A ~A
+ -
- +
This intuition does not have to be stated in a proposition because obviously animals can identify patterns and recognize their differences. My dog barks at the strange pattern moving at it until it recognizes me, then it wags its tail. From my dog’s perspective, I must be a composite of behavioral, figurative, linguistic, somatic patterns; a set of associated perceptual patterns differentiated and combined over time. So the difference between human and other animals could be in the formation of cognitive sets. Where human consciousness is the fluid formation of unlimited sets of other cognitive sets, animals consciousness is the assembly of singular perceptual sets. In this way, the quantitative becomes qualitative: cognitive sets are encoded representations built from perceptions that can be transmitted to the next generation. Because they are disconnected from the original sensory sets, i.e., they are abstractions. Clearly, we move and recombine abstractions through the imagination and shape our perceptions in novel ways. For example, some people perceive a disease as caused by the devil. Perhaps, the imagination is a process of reversal and disassociation of the conceptual or misconceptual back into the perceptual and sensory pathways. Evidence for this is manifested in psychosomatic illnesses where imaginary diseases manifest the disease patterns.
The difference between human and animal:
H consciousness:

A consciousness:
{ ? [perceptual sets (sensory sets)]}

Example:
*Biological:"Feline"*®
Legend:
** = cognitive systems (sets)
++-*
E+
E+ [P1(s+s+s+s+) +(s+s+s) +(s+s+s+s+s) +(s+s)]
E+ (S/N+N+N+N/+/ N+N/)

Or stated in another form:

E - (/N+N+N+N/+/ N+N/)=(S1)
E- [(S1+S2 +S4+)+(S5+S7)] = [P1]
E+ = C1
E- *C1+C908762+C3- C22*=SY1
+ R + R -
Legend:
R=relationships (rules)
N=neural event /N+/ = neural set
S=sensation (S+) = sense set
P=perception [P+] = perceptual set
C=cognition = conceptual set
SY=cognitive system *SY* = system set
E=emotional charge (+pleasure/ -pain)

Each element has according to the law of difference a negation or ~S, ~P, ~C, ~SY at the cellular, sensory, perceptual and cognitive levels. If the cat lost its tail, then the sensory and perceptual patterns are disassociated, but not at the conceptual level. When C1 is connected with C2+C3+C4…a system *S* of ideas is formed, be it biology or economics where the difference between them rest in their cognitive and behavioral patterns. "Patterns of sexual behaviour (often strongly influenced by religious beliefs and prescriptions) in different societies have determined the organisational character of the society - from the nuclear family (now apparently in decline) in most Western countries and the extended family of earlier periods." (Allott, 1999) For example, this entire explanation utilizes linguistic patterns that have multiple embedded auditory, graphic, phonic, and behavioral patterns. The formation of discrete composites such as P1 is inaccurate because associations are constantly connecting or disconnecting within P1. For example, the composite concept "cat" will have very different embedded perceptual and sensory patterns depending on location. In China, "cat" is a food item and terminates in taste pleasure patterns while "cat" in the US terminates in observable linguistic, tactile, auditory, and emotional patterns with the exclusion of taste patterns. Taste itself occurs through patterns: "only central analysis of the pattern of responses across several neurons reveals the identity of the stimulus." (Rosenzweig, 1996) This supports the findings (point 2) reported by Leventahl. There seems to be mounting evidence that all the senses are organized around pattern formations. Taste discrimination is…"complex and probably depends upon a code in which different patterns of nerve messages combine in the brain to give the final sensation." (Atlas, 1980, p.89) And "smell seems to be different combinations of molecules (that) would simulate a certain ‘pattern’ of response in the receptor sites, and the brain might then interpret the patterns of incoming nerve impulses as being a particular smell," (Atlas, p. 91) and "different proportions and concentrations of these scents in the inhaled air could then give rise to thousands of quite different smells to be perceived by the brain." (Atlas, p. 91) Again, I propose that these patterns are united under a generalized fractal program generator, i.e., the brain.

This fractal model is useful to explain some perceptual problems such as the "duck-rabbit figure paradox." (Gregory, 1997) Both figures have patterns associated with position. When in one position, the ground line is associated with the duck pattern, and when shifted, the association with the rabbit kicks in. When turned so that no ground lines are associated with those patterns, the identity does not kick in unless one’s imagination can turn the figures over. To digress, perhaps, turning things over in the imagination originated in standing on our heads.

In conclusion, I have attempted to explain experiential consciousness as a fractal pattern generator which utilizes its patterns as a cognitive tools.

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