Comment by alecst | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecst | Hacker News Reader

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I only skimmed the abstract but I wanted to start a conversation around this idea:

> The platform theory holds that the brain enters a conscious operation mode, whenever mental representations of stimuli, associations, concepts, memories, and experiences are effortfully maintained (in working memory) and actively manipulated.

If anyone is familiar with certain Buddhist meditations called "jhana" then you know that you can be really in the flow of experience without really maintaining effort or trying to manipulate the experience.

Is there a sliding scale for consciousness allowed by this definition? In other words: does this imply that with less effort or less manipulation that one is less conscious, or are they defining consciousness in a binary way?

And is there some way to reconcile deep Buddhist meditations with the platform theory? Are they using different definitions of "effort" and "manipulation" than immediately come to mind?

I am giving these guys the benefit of the doubt that they know about meditation experience. It's the first thing I'd look into if I were a consciousness researcher.

You might be interested in the work of Thomas Metzinger [0]. He works on consciousness and addresses some of the issues you mention regarding effort & different states that people have experienced/described w/ meditation etc. Eg [1] works towards profiling "pure awareness" experiences among meditators of various stripes. Scroll down to '(3) Peer-reviewed articles' on his page for addl recent research.

He has a dense academic tome called "being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity" that works through a theory of an 'emergent phenomenological self' [2]. A shorter book discussing the issues is "ego tunnel: the science of the mind & the myth of the self" [3]. It is intended for lay audience & is very readable. fun stuff.

[0] https://www.philosophie-e.fb05.uni-mainz.de/institutes/theor... [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... [3] https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...

Just got the book [3], plus a few copies for my friends. Thanks. :-)

I mean it does take a certain amount of effort to reach first jhana. I don't know if I'd say it takes "effort" to maintain it, but if you lose focus for long enough you will fall out of it. I've never personally experienced the higher jhanas so I can't speak to what they are like.

1st jhana is (partially) defined by vitakka and vicara, directing and holding attention (in some translations/schools of thought). But it's not effortful in the way most people would think, no. The higher jhana are more self sustaining.

I think there is often this mixup in academia between "consciousness" and "conscious experience (of the world)". Jhana is a highly manipulated state, after all you have to train for a long time, and learn how to set up the conditions of the mind just right to be able to access jhanic consciousness. It's not easily achieved by most people. That said, one of the features of jhana is that the deeper you go, the less the mind fabricates experience and presents it to consciousness. External objects fade, sensations fade, thoughts fade, and yet it's an intensely conscious state. I don't think this goes against this theory, as long as you make the caveat that they're talking about having conscious experiences of the world, rather than generalising about consciousness and altered states of consciousness, although whether they believe that themselves, or agree at all, I don't know.

Maybe you're interpreting the words "effort" and "manipulation" too strictly. During a meditation session, the brain could still be doing the activities from the definition, even though you might not feel like you're doing much at all.

Or, conversely, perhaps during meditation you're less conscious.

NB: I'm not an expert on anything related to this.

> is there some way to reconcile deep Buddhist meditations with the platform theory?

Isn't Buddhism the most non-dogmatic religions out there?

> Are they using different definitions of "effort" and "manipulation" than immediately come to mind?

I'm sure they mean biological/non-conscious effort, otherwise most people would rarely be conscious at all.

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