Physical Reduction of Purgation.

a) Neurological and physiological underpinnings of the flow diagram:

1. The variables in the lower sector:
   These variables represent the feeling that the heart is opening against a restriction or knot. These restrictions to the opening of the heart cause stress. When stress is rapidly rising to high levels, anxiety or fear of the unknown and fear of death develops. This leads to prayer. Ten hours later at the end of the dark night all restrictions or knots have been released through forgiveness and the heart is fully open; all stress, fear, and anxiety have vanished. What could be the neurophysiological correlates of this sequence that underlies the changing horizon of core consciousness during this 10-hour experience of purgation?
   • Neurophysiologists, such as Joseph LeDoux, now know that fear and anxiety have their biological correlates in the limbic-brainstem system, specifically in archaic parts of the brain, particularly the amygdala and its central and lateral nucleuses and the stria terminalis. The central nucleus of the amygdala has projections to the autonomic nervous system, including nerves associated with the heart, particularly the vagus nerve. However, the sequence for purgation goes in the opposite direction: During my experience of purgation the heart opened against a restriction first, then stress, anxiety, and fear arose. Nevertheless, because of the bidirectionality of neuronal signaling in the amygdala, it is possible that there are also projections from the vagus nerve to the amygdala. It may be possible that this prediction could be tested (see Section VII.Part4.a below).
   • As discussed in Section VII.Part1.c, above, KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness represent a somatosensory mental image and are directly related to the way the muscles of the heart operate (Sherrington 1906). These muscles, like all parts of the body, are nonconsciously being monitored by what Damasio (1999) calls the proto-self. This nonconcious information is eventually converted into the somatosensory mental image associated with my core consciousness.
2. The upper sector of the model represents thought processing:
   The cognitive mechanism includes variables such as processing rate, working memory, and retention time in working memory. These have their neural correlates in the thalamocortical system.
3. The transducers intermediate between the above two sectors,
   The transducers bring about an integration and coordination between the two sectors. They are the six variables for prayer and attention or attentional processing. According to David LaBerge, Attentional processing is associated with the superior colliculus and the thalmus.
4. Conjecture concerning blood flow in the vascular network:
   During stress and emotion hormones [chemicals, peptides] are released. These hormones could increase cardiac output, dilate blood vessels, increase blood pressure, and increase oxygenization of the lungs. This would allow the cardiovascular system to greatly increase its ability to irrigate the organism with nutrients, remove debris, and, hence, to function optimally. This would have the purpose of preparing the organism and its nervous system for the experience of mystical union. This conjecture is prompted by the fact that I was internally driven to drink huge amounts of water during purgation while I was on the flight from Los Angeles to Boston [see An Engineer's Story at Section II]. The time that is needed to accomplish this cleaning process may be one of the causes of the delay associated with the overshoot in the simulation of the variable, PsychicStress (see Figure 1). A Guyton Model analysis could eventually confirm or reject this conjecture.

b) Solution to Chalmers' hard problem for the case of core consciousness:

The first-person analysis: Feedback Phenomenology, a new phenomenological method based on Forrester-style system dynamics, is used to make a transcendental-phenomenological reduction of core consciousness during purgation. The eidetic reduction structures core consciousness during purgation as a multiloop nonlinear feedback system. System dynamics calls that structure a flow diagram. The state variables of the flow diagram identify a somatosensory mental image, which is an intentional object of purgation. The mathematical model associated with the flow diagram can accurately simulate 23 aspects of core consciousness over purgation's 10-hour period.

At present, the first-person model has 38 variables, arranged in two sectors: the cognitive mechanism sector (CMS) and the limbic-brainstem and neurocirculatory system sector (LBNS). Jackendoff (1987) called the former the computational mind and the latter the phenomenological mind. The eleven variables of the CMS are nonconscious. Of the remaining 27 variables in the LBNS, 23 are conscious.

The model of the CMS incorporates feedback and redundancy from engineering; Miller's (1956) concepts from information theory concerning channel capacity, recoding, and 'the magical number 7'; and the retrieval accuracy of working memory concept developed by Schouten (1967) and others. The model for the LBNS incorporates feedback loops associated with somatosensory mental imagery of an opening heart restricted by knots. This imagery is the intentionality of consciousness during purgation. The 23 conscious variables in the feedback loops associated with this imagery include HeartOpenness, KnotsInHeart, HeartRigidity, FearOfDeath, PsychicStress, Attention, PrayerIntensity, PrayerTrueness, ForgivenessResponse, etc.

The third-person analysis: Here are key insights:

1. Physical correlates for the somatosensory mental imagery are based on the following insight from Sherrington (1906):

   "...the contractions of particular sets of muscles in the heart must entail the suppression of activity of other muscles for coordinated movements of the heart to emerge."

2. The protoself (Damasio 1999) monitored tensions and movements in those antagonistic heart muscles. The imagination then generated a dynamic image that had its correlates in those muscles. For example, the sympathetic system drives the muscles that increase cardiac output. Consciousness interprets this activity as "heart opening." Therefore, I have used HeartOpenness as the name of the state variable representing this particular aspect of consciousness in the system dynamics model. On the other hand, the parasympathetic system inhibits muscles that increase cardiac output. Consciousness interprets this activity as "knots in the heart." So KnotsInHeart is the state variable here. The reification of the image in heart muscles allows such a phantom-like somatosensory mental imagery to be modeled and simulated throughout a 10 hour period.
3. The inverse relation between PsychicStress and HeartUnfoldmentRate have correlates in heart muscle inhibition due to neural projections from the amygdala to the vagus.
4. The first-person flow diagram for purgation details the ideation, mediating processes, reinforcement, and reward between a stimulus and a response associated with heart muscles that provides the mystic-to-be with the conditioned learning needed to later convey important aspects of the sacred core of religion.
5. The six variables for prayer and attention act like transducers. Their intensity and trueness determine the integrity and coordination between the CMS and the LBNS.
6. The above items indicate only my present insights into the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) for purgation. One of the long term aims of the third-person analysis is to match the first-person model of consciousness with a third-person Guyton Model analysis (Guyton 1972, 1988). The Guyton Model is a computerized ''extensive model of the entire circulatory system first developed in 1971 and continually updated since. ... Basically, the model consists of about 500 equations covering circulatory dynamics, body fluid control, and the various systems that control the circulation, including nervous, hormonal, and local tissue controls.''

As the above neural correlates of consciousness during purgation become more and more detailed, more insights concerning neurophysiological tests of the solution to the hard problem will emerge. One example of such a test is the prediction of bidirectionality at a specific neural projection, (Guyton 1991) based on the direction of causality in the first-person flow diagram.

Summary:

1. The prototype, the above solution to the hard problem for the case of core consciousness, satisfies the three steps of a scientific investigation (Searle 2000):
   • Firstly, it develops the theory that, like the nervous system, core consciousness is a multiloop nonlinear feedback system.
   • Secondly, it shows how the theory can be used to indicate some of the key neural correlates of core consciousness for the case of purgation.
   • Thirdly, it indicates one of the ways that the theory will be tested, using the case of purgation.
2. The solution goes to the heart of the crisis of Western culture: From a scientific perspective it agrees with Searle's (2000) philosophical position regarding the resolution of the mind-body problem: biological naturalism; But from a Husserlian philosophical perspective it also reveals the meaning of the solution.
3. My approach to the solution to the hard problem and its underlying theory of core consciousness combines and integrates what Searle (2000) labels as the two research approaches to a theory of consciousness: the building block theory and the unified field theory.

Arlen Wolpert
February 6,2002
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr444.html

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