We perceive colour, shape, sound and touch 'bound together' in a single experience. The following arguments about this binding phenomenon are raised: (1) The individual signals passing from neurone to neurone are not bound together, whether as elements of information or physically. (2) Within a single cell, binding in terms of bringing together of information is potentially feasible. A physical substrate may also be available. (3) It is therefore proposed that a bound conscious experience must be a property of an (...) individual cell, not of a group of cells. Since it is unlikely that one specific neurone is conscious, it is suggested that every neurone has a version of our consciousness, or at least some form of sentience. However absurd this may seem it appears to be consistent with the available evidence; arguably the only explanation that is. It probably does not alter the way we should expect to experience the world, but may help to explain the ways we seem to differ from digital computers and some of the paradoxes seen in mental illness. It predicts non-digital features of intracellular computation, for which there is already evidence, and which should be open to further experimental exploration. The arguments given may well prove flawed or the conclusion biologically or physically untenable, but the idea is raised for discussion not least because a formal demonstration that it is invalid may help to identify more fruitful avenues. (shrink)

Giving an account of the relation between evolution and consciousness is painted as posing a dilemma between panpsychism, with minimal consciousness in every grain of matter, and radical emergence, with consciousness appearing as from nowhere in living structures. Panpsychism has been seen as suffering from a combination problem and radical emergence as unjustified in physics. The underpinning of physics now lies in field theory, which may provide a way out on both sides. Only, and always, in a field theory account (...) do influences at different points in spacetime combine in the same indivisible event. Radical emergence is also inherent to field theory. Moreover, by providing rich patterns of influence involving both discrete identities and quantitative values, field theory might provide a basis for sensed propositional meaning with subjects and predicates. Ordered condensed matter within living tissue may support unusual emergent dynamic units uniquely suited to building representations of the world with sensed meaning. The evolution of consciousness may then be seen as a tractable biological problem centred on increasingly sophisticated ways for external world dynamics to be mirrored by internal representations with semantic content, based in field relations within condensed matter with genetically encoded complex order. (shrink)

It is argued that both neuroscience and physics point towards a similar re-assessment of our concepts of space, time and 'reality', which, by removing some apparent paradoxes, may lead to a view which can provide a natural place for consciousness and language within biophysics. There are reasons to believe that relationships between entities in experiential space and time and in modern physicists' space and time are quite different, neither corresponding to our geometric schooling. The elements of the universe may be (...) better described not as 'particles' but as dynamic processes giving rise, where they interface with each other, to the transfer, and at least in some cases experience, of 'pure'or 'active'information, the mental and physical just reflecting different standpoints. Although this analy-sis draws on general features of quantum dynamics, it is argued that purely quantum level events (and their 'interpretations') are unlikely to be relevant to the understanding of consciousness. The processes that might be able to give rise, within brain cells, to an experience like ours are briefly reviewed. It is suggested that the elementary signals that are integrated to generate a spatial experience may have features more in common with words than pixels. It is further suggested that the laws of integration of words in language may provide useful clues to the way biophysical integration of signals in neurons relates to integration of elements in experiential space. (shrink)