Zoomposium with Mark Solms: “Expedition to the sources of consciousness. The feelings as the embodiment of consciousness.”
1. Information about the person and his scientific research work
This time we had the great honor and pleasure of talking to the very well-known South African neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Mark Solms, who has continued and successfully applied his own discipline, “neuropsychoanalysis” in the sense of Sigmund Freud, in another very exciting interview from our Zoomposium theme blog “Cognitive Neuroscience and Epistemology”.
He is “Head of the Department of Neuropsychology at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and since 2005 Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, as well as editor and translator of Sigmund Freud’s Complete Neuroscientific Works. Solms strives for a synthesis of neurology and psychoanalysis and was founding editor of the journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis, whose advisory board includes brain researchers such as Antonio Damasio and Wolf Singer.” (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Solms)
2. Interview questions: “The sources of consciousness or why Freud’s emotions are still important — with Prof. Mark Solms”
1. As editor and translator of Sigmund Freud’s Complete Neuroscientific Works and founding editor of the international journal “Neuro-Psychoanalysis”, you can be regarded as the initiator and co-founder of a new research direction of “neuropsychoanalysis”.
Let us first talk briefly about psychoanalysis. Nowadays it is perhaps more in need of explanation than in earlier times, even if its founder Sigmund Freud is still good for a bestseller (think of “Der Trafikant” by Robert Seethaler).
Malicious tongues claim that psychoanalysis is irrefutable by design, because it explains criticism of it through repression, which in turn confirms it. Dietrich Schwanitz writes in his bestseller “Bildung. Everything you need to know”, Dietrich Schwanitz even writes about psychoanalysis: “It even created the problems it sold itself as the solution to.”
Where does psychoanalysis stand today and what benefits can we still derive from it?
Another point of criticism of psychoanalysis is its alleged lack of empirical verifiability. Sigmund Freud himself had already described his vision in his book “Entwurf einer Psychologie” (1895/1950) that the findings of psychoanalysis should also be verifiable using the methods of the natural sciences.
Do you believe that this goal has been achieved through the groundbreaking results of imaging techniques in cognitive neuroscience or are we still a long way from being able to trace the psyche (emotions and affects, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma, conscious and unconscious problem-solving processes) back to the physique (neuronal activities and processes)?
In “neuropsychoanalysis”, you now combine the methods of brain research with ideas from psychoanalysis.
How should we imagine this and what are your research goals?
2. in your book “The Hidden Spring — A Journey to the Source of Consciousness” (2022), you try to get back to the possible “sources of consciousness” in order to offer an alternative solution to the “hard problem of consciousness”:
“The hard problem of consciousness is said to be the biggest unsolved puzzle of contemporary neuroscience, if not all science. The solution proposed in this book is a radical departure from conventional approaches. Since the cerebral cortex is the seat of intelligence, almost everybody thinks that it is also the seat of consciousness. I disagree; consciousness is far more primitive than that. It arises from a part of the brain that humans share with fishes. This is the `hidden spring’ of the title. Consciousness should not be confused with intelligence. It is perfectly possible to feel pain without any reflection as to what the pain is about. Likewise, the urge to eat — a feeling of hunger — need not imply any intellectual comprehension of the exigencies of life. Consciousness in its elemental form, namely raw feeling, is a surprisingly simple function.”
Does this mean that we have been looking in the “wrong places” because we have always equated consciousness with cognitive (human) intelligence and have only ever located it in the cortex?
On the other hand, there are philosophers who distinguish between consciousness (in the sense of inner experience) and intelligence. Peter Bieri, for example, writes: “There are countless feedback mechanisms in an organism [that lead to intelligent behavior — A. S.] without the slightest experience: why couldn’t our entire self-model be present, but no experience?”
Is consciousness a pure luxury and basically superfluous for the progress of the world? (see “zombie problem”)
Shouldn’t we perhaps, as suggested in your book, pay more attention to feelings and affects or also to embodiment and embeddedness when explaining the phenomenon of consciousness in order to prevent this neurocentrism in the cerebral cortex?
Is it perhaps only our anthropocentric viewpoint that blocks our access to the problem, if we always start from our human consciousness and consciousness in general is perhaps a much “simpler function”: “Consciousness in its elemental form, namely raw feeling, is a surprisingly simple function.”?
Or does this point of view already make you a panpsychist?
3. But if this is the case and the naturalistic principles may also apply to consciousness, would it not also be theoretically possible to simulate a form of “artificial consciousness” (“AC/DC = artificial consciousness/digtital consciousness”) on a machine that not only has a corresponding algorithm, but also sensorimotor inputs, backpropagation for its predictive coding/procsesing and affective feedback loops?
Based on Antonio Damasio’s “Theory of Consciousness”, could it perhaps be possible to develop a corresponding “construction manual for artificial consciousness” from the 3 stages for the development of consciousness: 1. “fundamental protoself”, 2. “core consciousness” and 3. “extended consciousness”, if the feelings and affects of unsupervised and reinforcement learning of machines are taken into account accordingly?
4. A paper “How and Why Consciousness Arises: Some Considerations from Physics and Physiology” (2018) emerged from your collaboration with Karl Friston, the renowned British neuroscientist at University College London, who works on mathematical models for imaging techniques in cognitive neuroscience and brain mapping.
In this and in another article “The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Free Energy Principle” (2019), you try to make the concept of the “free energy principle” developed by Karl Friston fruitful for solving the “hard problem of consciousness”.
Could you briefly explain the concept of the “free energy principle” and why you think it is a possible solution to the “hard problem”?
In your opinion, is it possible to derive a conclusive functionalism for the “free energy principle” or “predictive coding/processing” based on the concept of “extended homeostasis”, which also explicitly includes feelings/effects?
If this functionalism were applicable, what does this mean for the possible technological possibilities of a “multiple realizability” in the form of the above-mentioned “artificial consciousness” on machines?
You have also looked closely at the meaning of dreams. Do you think that a highly developed AI could dream? “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” as in the dystopian novel by US author Philip K. Dick from 1968.
More at: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2024/05/12/sources-of-consciousness/
Full interview:
