Arthur Reber
University of British Columbia, Psychology, Department Member
First, the chapter examines the research methods used in the past to look for the evolutionary origins of other forms, functions, and behaviors—specifically vision, memory, and affect. We find that searching for the roots in primitive... more
First, the chapter examines the research methods used in the past to look for the evolutionary origins of other forms, functions, and behaviors—specifically vision, memory, and affect. We find that searching for the roots in primitive species has been standard operating procedure and wonder why there is a reluctance to do this with consciousness—noting that the category error is the culprit. The formal Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model is presented, followed by a look at the species under consideration—the prokaryotes and archaea, the simplest of unicellular organisms. An in-depth review of the remarkable lives of these creatures is presented examining the perhaps startling array of functions they carry out, including sensing, perceiving, learning, memory, decision-making, and communication. The lines of criticism that will certainly be used against the CBC are introduced and, as before, prophylactic arguments are presented.
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The term tacit knowledge was first brought into the social scientist's lexicon by the philosopher Michael Polanyi. Polanyi, who wrote extensively on the role of consciousness in creativity and in the process of doing science, used the... more
The term tacit knowledge was first brought into the social scientist's lexicon by the philosopher Michael Polanyi. Polanyi, who wrote extensively on the role of consciousness in creativity and in the process of doing science, used the term in a manner that extended its standard, nontechnical connotations. Rather than simply having it refer to knowledge that is implied, Polanyi used it to refer to knowledge that was personal, private, and, importantly, knowledge that was not necessarily available for conscious introspection. This last meaning is the one that has had dramatic impact in contemporary psychology—although in many writings tacit has been replaced by the synonymous term implicit. However, no matter which term is used, the notion has become of considerable importance since it is now understood that a good deal of knowledge, as Polanyi suggested, is acquired and held largely independent of awareness. Moreover, the underlying neurological mechanisms that are responsible for acquisition and retention of implicit or tacit knowledge appear to be remarkably robust and to function virtually normally in individuals with several psychological and neurological disorders than compromise conscious, top-down processes.
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In this paper, we follow the evolutionary origins of cells as unicellular organisms and their evolution towards multicellularity, with a focus on plants and animals, both of which have two basic types of organismal self-identities: the... more
In this paper, we follow the evolutionary origins of cells as unicellular organisms and their evolution towards multicellularity, with a focus on plants and animals, both of which have two basic types of organismal self-identities: the immunological and the neuronal. Most cells of the animal immune system and its mesenchymal tissues are amoeba-like without flagella or cilia and form only loose cell–cell contacts. On the other hand, neuronal and epithelial cells are typically ciliated and assemble epithelial or neuronal synapses. In contrast, walled cells of higher plants lack flagella or cilia. However, lower plants up to the gymnosperm tree Ginkgo biloba have flagellated sperm cells. In our symbiotic concept of eukaryogenesis, the first ancient eukaryotic cells emerged from the merger of a large amoeba-like host cell with a small flagellated guest cell which later transformed into the eukaryotic nucleus. This duality at the origin of the eukaryotic cell matches with the duality of ...
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This chapter presents a broad-based overview of the history of implicit learning and related functions. It focuses on the work of Arthur S. Reber, who carried out the first experiments in the middle 1960s (hence the subtitle of the... more
This chapter presents a broad-based overview of the history of implicit learning and related functions. It focuses on the work of Arthur S. Reber, who carried out the first experiments in the middle 1960s (hence the subtitle of the volume) examining the process by which knowledge of a complexly structured domain, in this case an artificial grammar, comes to be acquired without awareness of either the process or the products of learning. In addition, it outlines how these studies slowly became highly cited ones and how they link up with a variety of other domains in the social sciences. Importantly, it delves into how the study of the cognitive unconscious fits within classic models of evolutionary biology and blends easily with the cellular basis of consciousness, a recently proposed theory by Reber that ties together implicit functions with the origins of minds, arguing that feelings, awareness, and sentience are an inherent feature of all life.
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The long-standing philosophical argument generally known as “hardware independent functionalism” is presented. This position maintains that consciousness is at its heart computational and any artifact that carried out all the causal... more
The long-standing philosophical argument generally known as “hardware independent functionalism” is presented. This position maintains that consciousness is at its heart computational and any artifact that carried out all the causal functions of a mind would become conscious. This position is critiqued and shown to be hopelessly flawed. There is a long discussion on the “other minds” problem (i.e., “How do we know whether another entity, organism, person is in fact conscious?”). Included is an equally long review of Tom Nagel’s famous question (“What’s it like to be a bat?”) applied to robots and this is followed up with a review of John Searle’s “Chinese Room”—a thought experiment, now over 35 years old, which lays bare the futility of the functionalist’s position. It is acknowledged that there is a firm, almost compelling tendency to endow artifacts like human-appearing robots with sentience, and the reasons for this are discussed. The chapter ends with a summary.
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14 Implicit versus Explicit Learning Arthur S. Reber, Rhianon Allen, and Paul J. Reber It takes but a moment's reflection to realize that a good bit of our percep-tual and cognitive machinery is chugging away without our awareness.... more
14 Implicit versus Explicit Learning Arthur S. Reber, Rhianon Allen, and Paul J. Reber It takes but a moment's reflection to realize that a good bit of our percep-tual and cognitive machinery is chugging away without our awareness. Two of our most important accomplishments, ...
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Two strategies are used to review the many efforts to solve (or resolve or dissolve) the Hard Problem. One searches for the neurocorrelates of consciousness, the effort to answer the question: “How does the brain make the mind?” The other... more
Two strategies are used to review the many efforts to solve (or resolve or dissolve) the Hard Problem. One searches for the neurocorrelates of consciousness, the effort to answer the question: “How does the brain make the mind?” The other looks for the first appearance of true consciousness in phylogenesis. Both approaches are reviewed and found wanting. The reason is they all begin with human consciousness and use it as the basis for the explorations. This, it is argued, has lead to a “category error” where the H. sap. mind is treated as a distinct type and not as a token on the same existential continuum as other minds. It also reveals the existence of the “emergentist’s dilemma” or the difficulty of determining how consciousness could spring into existence when one cosmic moment before, it didn’t exist. The chapter ends by anticipating criticism of these arguments and of the CBC and providing prophylactic arguments.
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xxi, 831 hal.; 25 cm
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We have a chat with my caterpillar who manages to communicate that not only is he/she conscious but all living species are. I review reasons why no one has put forward this CBC-type model before, the main one being that the theory seems... more
We have a chat with my caterpillar who manages to communicate that not only is he/she conscious but all living species are. I review reasons why no one has put forward this CBC-type model before, the main one being that the theory seems just crazy to most people, and follow up with a defense of anthropomorphism which others see as a confounding factor. There is a segue on fish and whether they feel pain—at least in the same manner as we feel pain as part of an interpreted, unpleasant experience with strong motivational elements. The conclusion is that of course they do—and the group of philosophers and piscine experts who take the stance that they do not are critiqued. The chapter ends with a survey of others who are or might be comfortable with the CBC model, beginning with Darwin who certainly would have embraced it.
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The most widely accepted view in the biopsychological sciences is that the cognitive functions that are diagnostic of mental operations, sentience or, more commonly, consciousness emerged fairly late in evolution, most likely in the... more
The most widely accepted view in the biopsychological sciences is that the cognitive functions that are diagnostic of mental operations, sentience or, more commonly, consciousness emerged fairly late in evolution, most likely in the Cambrian period. Our position dovetails with James's below - subjectivity, feeling, consciousness has a much longer evolutionary history, one that goes back to the first appearance of life. The Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) model is founded on the presumption that sentience and life are coterminous; that all organisms, based on inherent cellular activities via processes that take place in excitable membranes of their cells, are sentient, have subjective experiences and feelings. These, in turn, guide the context-relevant behaviors essential for their survival in often hostile environments in constant flux. The CBC framework is reductionistic, mechanistic, and calls for bottom-up research programs into the evolutionary origin of biological consciousness.
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The CBC model has a number of implications for evolutionary biology, the cognitive neurosciences, consciousness science, micro- and cell-biology, and philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind. A section covers the hierarchical... more
The CBC model has a number of implications for evolutionary biology, the cognitive neurosciences, consciousness science, micro- and cell-biology, and philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind. A section covers the hierarchical nature of evolutionary mechanisms emphasizing why basic, early evolved functions (like awareness) become fixed and stable and are present in all later-evolved species. Special sections cover other, related topics such as reductionism (where a pragmatic form is recommended), the need to avoid an uncomfortable mysterianism that has crept into philosophy, whether plants are also conscious (probably not but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise), ethical considerations of universal sentience, and the possibility of altruism in bacteria. A cluster of specific problems that emerge from the CBC also are discussed, such as how multicellular species emerged, how the sentience of single-celled organisms morphed into the focal awareness of the collective.
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Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a... more
Recently, American Psychologist published a review of the evidence for parapsychology that supported the general claims of psi (the umbrella term often used for anomalous or paranormal phenomena). We present an opposing perspective and a broad-based critique of the entire parapsychology enterprise. Our position is straightforward. Claims made by parapsychologists cannot be true. The effects reported can have no ontological status; the data have no existential value. We examine a variety of reasons for this conclusion based on well-understood scientific principles. In the classic English adynaton, "pigs cannot fly." Hence, data that suggest that they can are necessarily flawed and result from weak methodology or improper data analyses or are Type I errors. So it must be with psi effects. What we find particularly intriguing is that, despite the existential impossibility of psi phenomena and the nearly 150 years of efforts during which there has been, literally, no progress, there are still scientists who continue to embrace the pursuit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
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The book presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are... more
The book presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. There is nothing even close to this thesis in the current literature on consciousness. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists, but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. Other approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically ones based on: (a) the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an artificial intelligence (AI), (b) efforts to discover the neurocorrelates of mental experiences, the so-called Hard Problem, and (c) looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying t...