Perhaps Art Can Help Explore Consciousness

It often seems as if science has explained the basics of how the world works, and the remaining mysteries are interesting details that aren’t directly related to daily life. Questions about the very beginning of the universe or what’s going on in black holes may be interesting and fundamental to an ultimate theory of everything, but it’s hard to believe they have practical application.

However, history shows that solving such mysteries can change our understanding in such profound ways that it cascades through our lives in unexpected ways. So, we need to be careful with the still limited understanding we have of reality and be aware of places where we still have things to learn. Some mysteries, because they are at the edge of science, may benefit from other modes of thinking, even if only to make sure the right questions are being asked.

An example of this sort of limited knowledge is the challenge of understanding consciousness, and in particular, how it relates to material reality. In other words, is consciousness strictly a result of physical, material processes, or does it result from something outside of these?

At one time this might have been considered a somewhat abstract question, with application to only a few, narrow places in medicine. However, with the advent of AI, these questions may become fundamental influences in the future of our species.

Many believe that the material is all there is, that the brain (generally neuroscience) is sufficient for explaining everything we observe about the mind, including the nature of consciousness and self-awareness.

Others believe that there probably is something more than just the physical involved, that even if the brain is necessary for everything we observe about the mind, the material brain is still not sufficient to explain everything.

Such views involve assertions about the relationship between the physical and immaterial aspects of reality, and perhaps whether immaterial things even exist. Of course, this is not the only place such questions have come up.

For example, one question that has challenged thinkers for centuries, if not millenia, is whether mathematics is discovered or invented. In other words, when mathematicians work out some ideas, are they discovering truths that existed previously to the mathematician doing that work, or did the mathematician invent the idea, so that the concept didn’t have any existence before the work was done? There is currently no agreement among experts in these topics.

Another example has to do with the relationship between mathematics and the physical sciences. Although we generally take it for granted that math is effective in describing and often predicting the behavior of physical systems, it’s not at all clear why that should be the case. Why does physical reality behave in a way that can be described by math? Again, there is currently no generally agreed upon answer to this question.

These two questions are related to each other, but not necessarily to consciousness. A third example illustrates the puzzling relationship between consciousness and the physical world.

While quantum physics is complex because of the mathematics involved, it is also mysterious because of the fact that it seems to only describe possibilities, not specific results. However, whenever measurements are made, the outcomes are always specific results. In other words, when a measurement is made, the range of possibilities described by the math collapses to a single result. When looked at closely, the reality seems to be that the collapse happens when an observer becomes aware of the measurement. In other words, the observer is necessary to move from math to a concrete result. Why this should be the case, and what the relationship is between the math and a conscious observer, is still a mystery that is called the “measurement problem”.

Other possible relationships may exist between consciousness and math itself. One model for consciousness is something called Integrated Information Theory (IIT), and while other models of consciousness may not be so explicitly mathematical, they still often end up being some sort of symbolic representation.

These examples are all instances of great uncertainties, and between them cover the space of mathematics, consciousness, and physical reality. Recognition of these questions raises the question of whether we can be certain of any conclusions in this space.

One of the challenges with reasoning about such things is that these are essentially metaphysical questions because they go beyond what is well understood about physical systems. As such, traditional science often struggles to address such questions and take them into account when formulating models and doing experiments.

In fact, science has a history of struggling with discoveries that seem religious, even when they have nothing to do with religion or spirituality. For example, one reason the Big Bang theory of the beginning of the universe was initially unpopular was that many cosmologists thought it was importing religious ideas into physics. Another example is that the idea that glacial outburst floods tore across the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last ice age was initially rejected in part because such a catastrophic view was thought to imply a Biblical flood. And even Einstein, expressing his dislike of quantum entanglement, described it as “spooky action at a distance”, using spiritual terminology to deprecate it.

Today, similar comments are made by scientists who describe theories of consciousness that involve metaphysics as being too much like religion to deserve serious consideration. However, given the great uncertainties described earlier, it seems we should keep an open mind about the nature of reality beyond the physical.

While it’s good to keep an open mind with scientific explorations, another possibility is to explore the space with other ways of thinking. For example, humans have used art to represent and communicate ideas in ways that speak to us differently than the way science does. Perhaps because of this, some consciousness researchers have noticed that narratives (eg, movies and literature) sometimes do a good job of exploring the issues at hand in a way that helps guide the traditional scientific efforts.

Could photography be used this way? I think so, and find that creating pictures that are inspired by some of the concepts around consciousness and artificial intelligence helps me to think about these topics in different ways. This may or may not be helpful to anyone else, but as I continue to learn about both consciousness and photography, it seems a fruitful exercise to work on them together.