Knowledge without sensation

[Easy from Israel on the left to hard on the right. At least I think the dots on the left are numbered in Hebrew]

This prompted by reading Chapter XI – The bar tailed godwit and our sense of direction – in reference 1, a book which has been lying around half read for rather too long. A bird which can pull off the impressive feat of commuting between Alaska and New Zealand, with each trip amounting to something like 7,500 miles and taking getting on for 10 days, an average of at least 30mph, at least sometimes non-stop. While reference 2 contains some several years old thoughts on how the conscious experience might take account of orientation and direction.

The story seems to be that a lot of animals – say at least 50 species – both vertebrates (including humans) and invertebrates – can detect the earth’s magnetic field, from which detection they derive a sense of direction. The strength and accuracy of this sense varies a good deal from human to human, from culture to culture. Furthermore, this magnetic field is a very weak field by the standards of today’s domestic equipment, things like refrigerators and televisions, and for at least some of these animals this detection is disrupted by their presence. 

However, while it seems reasonably clear that we and other animals have this sense, it is much less clear how it works, with one camp opting for a quantum solution – to my mind a sign of desperation. For a taste of this debate see reference 3. But implementation is not the present concern, to which end it is enough that we have this capability.

So sticking with humans, we seem to have a sensory capability which does not make it to consciousness in the way of the five regular senses, sight, sound and so on. So I might know where north is, but there is no corresponding sensation, there is nothing else in consciousness. I am not looking at a red brick and saying that this brick is red. Perhaps it is more like looking at Peter and knowing that he is 45 – with that being prior knowledge rather than knowledge derived from his appearance in the here and now. Maybe he looks much younger than he really is. Then there are the pregnant women who are quite confident that they know the sex of the baby that they are carrying, without the intervention of scanners and what-have-you. They have the knowledge, but they may not have the sensation. Maybe knowledge that they could not have, at least could not be conscious of, without language. The suggestion, reported at reference 4, that these confident women are wrong nearly as often as they are right, does not disturb their having knowledge, possibly wrong knowledge, in the absence of sensation. After all, we might, in much the same way, have been wrong about Peter’s age.

It seems likely that consciously knowing that Peter is 45 works better when he is front of one, when one can focus one’s attention on him, get the brain going on the whole subject of Peter, dragging in anything which seems relevant at the time. And perhaps in the same way, a mother is more likely to be confident about the sex of her unborn child when there is enough activity for her to be conscious of the child in general terms.

Another angle might be that mothers do do somewhat better than chance. So if we take 1,000 mothers to be who strongly believe that they are going to have a boy, we reliably find that 666 of them are right. So there is something going on, even if that something is not very reliable. From where I associated to the wisdom of crowds of reference 6. We don’t get things right, but our guesses are normally distributed stabs at the right answer, and if we have enough stabs, the average will be right, or at least near enough.

Consciousness

All of which can be accommodated in the layer structure hypothesised for the LWS-R of reference 7. The sensation lives on one layer, the knowledge of that sensation, more or less in the form of language, lives on another. No big deal about having the one without the other. That said, it is far from clear how LWS-R might encode orientation and direction. What pattern of neuronal activity tells us which way up is? Does this activity only make sense at all when taken with some other activity: one cannot have orientation without having something to orientate. Rather as some argue that you cannot be conscious without having something to be conscious of? From where I associate to the tendency of people, when first placed in a very low stimulus environment – say a completely dark and silent room – to fall asleep for some hours, regardless of the time of day.

One might also think of the various ways in which unconscious processing – of which there is a great deal – is made available – or not – to consciousness, be that in the form of feelings, emotions, thoughts or images. One might think of consciousness as a bit like a join the dots picture. Consciousness being the dots, the whole story being the line. And pushing the analogy a bit further, the line might miss some of the dots. The line is what the brain as a whole really thinks is happening, the dots are just signposting things a bit, more or less accurately. 

Additional information

Australian native peoples have a very strong sense of direction. And many of them have languages which are very direction orientated, making far more use of language which depends on the cardinal directions – north, east, south and west – than we do. And far less use of language which does location in relative terms, that is to say locutions like ‘in front of me’, ‘to the left of that tree’ – rather than something like ‘the book you want is just to the west of my big toe’. Where ‘west’, depending on the context, might be to my left, to my right, behind me or in front of me. If you are going to get along in this world, you really do need a good sense of direction! Maybe all the more likely if you spend most of your time out of doors, in the wide open, very sparsely populated lands of much of Australia. For the language, see, for example reference 5. A reference which is out of its proper & intended order. 

As it happens, the next chapter of the Higgins book – The common octopus and our sense of body – tells us about a man who had lost most of his proprioception – that is to say he could no longer sense his body and had to learn to control it by eye, a life-long, laborious business. A sense of which we are largely unaware, but which is used by the unconscious to move us and our parts about. A life which turned out to be remarkably successful. This man is introduced at reference 8.

While the previous chapter - The trashline orbweaver and our sense of time – tells us about another sense of which we are not directly conscious, our body’s circadian rhythm, the principal external driver for which is light hitting a fairly newly discovered third photoreceptor in the eye. Not directly conscious, but the rhythm does express itself, for example, as a need for sleep. All  nicely introduced at reference 9. A useful antidote to all that stuff on how homeostatis is keeping us on the straight and narrow.

The book going on to end a few pages after the octopus by reminding us that our conscious, human senses only scratch the surface. There is an awful lot of stuff out there which we are missing. Our reality is only a small part of the big picture!

Maybe that is the way it has to be. Maybe consciousness is neurologically expensive and you can only have so much of it. Furthermore, is intended as a filter, to just bring into focus what is needed, what is needed for action. Consciousness has to strike a sensible balance between what there is to process and what needs to be processed. A balance which might be different if the object is recreation rather than action. While I think that Chater, in the book noticed at reference 9, goes in for a very slim-line sort of consciousness, too slim to my mind. Although you would not get that from reference 10, which is focussed on the unconscious, rather than the conscious. 

Conclusion

Having a sense of direction without having a sensation of the originating magnetic field does not seem to pose any new problem for the problem of consciousness – as might have at first appeared.

PS 1: we also get a mention of what sounds like a platypus version of the ampullae of Lorenzi noticed at reference 11.

PS 2: reminded along the way that there have been an awful lot of sunrises and sunsets since life first appeared on earth. Hardly surprising that they should have found their way into the very fabric of life.

References

Reference 1: Sentient: What animals reveal about our senses – Jackie Higgins – 2021.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/orientation.html. 

Reference 3: Transduction of the Geomagnetic Field as Evidenced from Alpha-band Activity in the Human Brain – Wang, C. X., I. A. Hilburn, D.-A. Wu, Y. Mizuhara, C. P. Cousté, J. N. H. Abrams, S. E. Bernstein, A. Matani, S. Shimojo, J. L. Kirschvink – 2019. 

Reference 4: Maternal Intuition of Fetal Gender - Michael McFadzen, David P. Dielentheis, Ronda Kasten, Maharaj Singh, Joe Grundle – 2017.

Reference 5: Guugu Yimithirr cardinal directions - John B. Haviland – 1998. 

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/getting-it-wrong.html. 

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html. 

Reference 8: https://blog.oup.com/2016/06/movement-without-touch-ian-waterman/. 

Reference 9: The rhythms of life: what you body clock means to you! – Foster, Kreitzman – 2014.

Reference 10: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-myth-of-unconscious.html. 

Reference 11: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-dawn-of-darwinian-medicine.html.