Informatic a 2 1 (1997) 683-68 7 68 3 
Consciousness and Process 
Andrej Ule 
Philosophical Department, 
Faculty of Arts, 
University of Ljubljana, 
Aškerèeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 
Keywords: consciousness, processes, characteristic qualities, modality, potentiaHty, Wittgenstein, patterns, sensitivity, information 
Edited by: Rudi Murn Received: April 24, 1997 Revised : November 3, 1997 Accepted: November 12, 1997 
I wonder if is it possible to combine the view that consciousness is a How of naental states with the view that it is not a process. I believe this combination is possible and necessary for a correct understanding and explanation of consciousness. I distinguish between a process (information­processing) and a non-process ('at ieast not time-processed) side (aspect) of consciousness: The first consists of the neural information-process, the flow of sensations and the change of feehngs. The second Ues in the conception and representation of processing potentials of states of affairs, events and processes. The unity of process and non-process sides of consciousness Ues in the a\vareness of time as an imaginary process that is the basis of ali other processes. 

 Wittgenstein' s challenge: consciousness is not an inner process. 
The idea of consciousness as a kind of "inner process", a flow of "inner states" of an organism is very common in everyday's thinking, in science and philosophy. We often speak of the "flovv of ideas", "flow of emotions", etc. We find this idea very often in philosophy, in psy­chology, in cognitive science, etc. James characterized consciousness as the continuous process of attention and intention (vohtion). He introduced the metaphor of the "stream of consciousness" (James 1950). Later, the idea of consciousness as an information process in the brain became the leading idea in the cognitive sci­ence. 
The essence of this idea is: consciousness is a chain of inner states of a cognitive system of which the cog­nitive system is aware. This change is a permanent change of those inner states of the cognitive system which have the quality of awareness. Understanding this process depends on special philosophical stand­points. 
For dualists, mental states are intrinsically inner states of each person, i. e., they are not penetrable by other people. The process of consciousness of a per­son is inaccessible to other people and is self-evident to the given person. For dualists, these facts indicate that inner states and the stream of consciousness are essentially immaterial. For materialist philosophers, mental states are certain states of neural structures in the brain. The process of consciousness is a neural process in the brain. 
Diaz recently presented a semi-phenomenological theory of the stream of consciousness. He assumes a "neutral monist ontology according to which conscious phenomena are both brain- and mental- states of a pe­culiar information ciass; namely, patterned processes that call for meaningful correlations but not for mu­tual reduction" (Diaz 1996, p. 714). This is a middle standpoint between dualism and materialism. 
If someone told me "Wait for me by the bank", and I asked: "Did you, as you were saying the word, mean this bank?" then I was referring to the time of speak­ing, not to an experience at that time. The question would be meaningless if it referred to a hidden state of meaning within us (Wittgenstein, 1976, p. 216f). The same would be true if someone asks me: "Did you in­tend to say such-and-such to him on your way to meet him?". The question refers to a definite time of walk­ing but not to the experience (of intending) during that time (ibid.).^ 
^In connectionism the "inner states" of a neural net structure are diffuse and mainly implicit; the inner processes are hoHs­tic and synergetic (Rumeihart, McClelland, 1986). VVe cannot identify everyday mental states (i.e., states of believing, think­ing, experiencing šomething, etc.) with some definite real inner states of neural nets in the brain. There is a difference betvveen phenomenological inner states on the mental surface and their implementation in neural nets. Some proponents of connection­isfn deny the usual conceptions of mental phenomena, especially intentional mental states. They are part of a "radically false the­ory" (Churchland, 1981, p. 67). In the classical computational theory of mind we have a relatively closer connection of the manifest mental phenomena and their implementation in the 

Wittgenstein drew the following conclusions from this apparently purely verbal reasoning: 
"The intention with which one acts does not 'ac­company' the action any more than the thought 'ac­companies' speech. Thought and intention are neither 'articulated' nor 'non-articulated'; to be compared nei­ther with a single note which sounds during the acting or speaking, nor with a tune."(ibid.).... 
"Meaning is not a process which accompanies a word. For no process could have the consequences of meaning. (Similarly, I think, it could be said: a calcu­lation is not an experiment, for no experiment could have the peculiar consequences of a multiplication)." (ibid., p. 218). 
Thinking, intending, meaning something are not real states or processes, i. e., some states and pro­cesses that have some given duration in time. They do not "happen in the mind" (or in the brain). 
We have to be cautious not to overemphasize Wittgenstein's criticism of some mental states and mental processes. Wittgenstein did not deny mental states or mental processes in general. He accepted emotional states and emotional processes, perceptual states and processes, pain states, etc. (Wittgenstein, ibid, p. 59, footnote), but he denied real processes of "higher mental acts": thinking, intending, believ­ing, meaning something. Wittgenstein criticized also the idea of some "inner mechanisms in the brain" be­cause this idea is subject to the so-called grammatical mistake of speaking about inner states and inner pro­cesses. Instead of that, he proposed to understand higher mental acts as some necessary "grammatical" parts of human life-form, namely of the life-form where language is the essential constituent. 
"An intention is embedded in its situation, in hu­man customs and institutions. If the technique of the game of chess did not exist, I could not intend to play a game of chess. In so far as I do intend the construc­tion of a sentence in advance, that is made possible by the fact that I can speak the language in question." (Wittgenstein, 1976, §337). 
Wittgenstein's criticism of the idea of private mental states and of mental processes is Wittgenstein's chal­lenge to modern philosophy of mind, and to cognitive science, both of which depend especially on the idea of consciousness as a "mental process" (as the flow of "mental states"). To speak of inner-, mental-, brain states or processes leads us to some logico-grammatical paradoxes. This mode of speech indicates that a large portion of conceptual naVvete is bound up with the idea of mental states and mental processes. 
I wonder if is it possible to combine the view that consciousness is a flow of mental states with the view that it is not a process. I believe this combination is possible and necessary for a correct understanding and explanation of consciousness. Consciousness has 
representational strcture of brain. 
A. Ule 

two aspects, one of which is process and the other is non-process. It is not only one of them. Here, I try to give only some first insights into this idea. 
2 General characteristics of processes 
It is very hard to give a clear notion of processes.will give only an informal description of some prop­erties of processes that are relevant from my point of view. Processes are usually conceived as some se­quences of changes of states of a system (e.g. a sys­tem of some properties and relations of material ob­jects, a sj'stem of mental phenomena) with a given pattern of changes. The first important property of processes is that at least some qualities (traits) of the states of a system that appear in processes change in time.Stationary states are events. Wc can in princi­ple conceive of stationary states as elementary pro­cesses, too. Processes are then conceived of as onto-logically fundamental (hke Whitehead (1929)). Quali­ties of states that give rise recurrently and consistently to the pattern of change, are characteristic qualities of a process. The most general referential process of changes is the time-process that gives measure to ali other real processes.^ 
The second important property of most real pro­cesses is the continuity of change of some characteristic qualities of the states. Each state could be presented by a valued state of affairs in a given moment of time. It could be formally described by some properties of the state (characteristic properties of the state). Ma­terial states are determined by the characteristic prop­erties and relations of some material objects, men­tal states by some characteristic qualities of mental phenomena in a given time-interval. Sometimes time-intervals can be reduced to time-points (we get instant-states). Characteristic qualities and their changes in Sciences are often given by some bounded and differen­tiable mathematical functions (of time and other vari­ables). In the social sciences and humanities, we need some more descriptive and qualitative methods of find­ing the characteristic qualities of processes. In each èase, we have to distinguish a process itself from its cognition by humans. 
Commonly-encountered real processes are very com­plex. They consist of many simpler real processes and corresponding simpler real states. The measure of complexity for states and processes depends on the context, on the properties of the system of states and its connection with larger systems of states. However, concerning the state of a given system, we can speak 
^A similar idea can be found in AristQtle's Physics (Book 4, 219B), where he defines time as the "number of motion in respect of 'before' and 'after'." Aristotle considered motion to be any process. 
of simple states and siraple processes. Siraple states are determined by some finitely-many, well-determined characteristics or characteristic quahties of the system to which the states belong. They could be the proper­ties or relations of some material things, fields, space­time points, etc. or the quaHties of some psychological phenomena of a person at a given time. 
The conceptual necessity of a referent system of states in conceiving a process is not onIy a mental, theoretical or grammatical means of the knowledge of processes, but also depicts a real dependency of the process on a larger context of events or states that give some identity or quality to a process. A process is not only a pure succession of changes of events, but has its own holistic character that differentiates the pro­cess from other real or possible processes of a similar kind. In the material world, the causal nets or lawlike connections among the successive states or successive phases of a process give the necessary holistic character to a physical process. We cannot find similar determi­nations of mental processes, because the appropriate causal links and laws of nature are not known (or not known yet) to us. However, we "feel" the individual qualities of different mental processes in us (e.g., the process of pains, a change of emotions) and their dif­ferences. I will not discuss here the question of what are the causes or grounds for this kind of feehng. I will consider the modal properties of the process that come out of its holistic determination or appearance. 
Each process gives different possibihties for changes of states (of a system) according to the properties of the states and the nature of the process. Some pro­cesses are deterministic. The possibihties for changes of states depend only on some initial conditions of the original states. The process of rapping between bilhard balls is described by a mechanical system of states. Each state and change to another state could be com­pletely described by the relative positions, masses, changes in relative position, i.e., motions, velocities, etc. of ali the balls that make up a system of billiard balls in a given moment of time. The causal charac­ter of this process could be given by the initial state of the system (by the initial impulses and initial ve­locities of ali the bilhard-balls). Here, the possibihties of a state depend on the initial conditions of the sys­tem. The same state (and the same change of state, hence "state-change") could be the result of different initial conditions. The states that follow a given state (or the state-change that follow a given state-change) are, at least in principle, completely determined by the given state (resp. state-change). Many physical processes are not completely fixed by their initial con­ditions. Each state depends not only on the previ­ous state, but also on some undetermined additional conditions in the given time-moment or is uncondi­tioned to some degree. For example, the microphysical states and processes in quantum mechanics are uncon-
Informatic a 2 1 (1997) 683-68 7 68 5 

ditioned. However, also in this èase the possibihties for a state-change are given by the nature of the process. The possibihties for a state-change themselves change by process and through time. Each new state that appeared in a process bears some new set of possibil­ities (giving rise to new probabilities) for the change into another state of the system. I call this set of pos­sibihties potential for change of a state. It depends generally on the characteristics of the given state, the initial conditions of a process, the characteristics of the vvhole process, the characteristics of the whole system of states, etc.'^ 
The change of potentials of states is not a real pro­cess because the potentials are not real states of a higher system of states. They are only sets of pos­sibihties of changes for different states. They form the unity of a process, and give its holistic character. We would enter an infinite regress of processes if we stated that each real process owns a higher real process. Sure, we can represent the pseudo-flow of possibihties as a higher formal process, but this is only a formal de­vice for describing the change of possibility and not a reality.'' 
Information systems in nature and some artificial In­formation systems (e.g, the neural nets) could be char­acterized by saying that such systems that are sensi­tive to other processes. The ability to get Information from the environment (or from an input device) is first the ability to react to some significant processes, not to some significant states or simple changes of states. They react to some spatial and temporal pattern of signals, not to singular signals or the momentary in­puts of signals to the system. My thesis is: the evo­lution of life proceeds from simple systems that react only to a narrow set of simple changes, to ever more complex systems that are sensitive to different com­plex processes. They became sensitive to the changes of potentials of states, not only to the changes them­selves. Animals, especially animals with higher devel­oped brains are "aware" of possibihties of movements 
''Richard Feynman expressed this wcll in his discussioii of the forces acting between two protons, when he said tha t these forces depend on as many parameters as possible. (Feynman Lectures, Vol. 2, lecture 37). 
''Modern science, especially quantum mechanics, developed a new view of processes as intrinsically modal phenomena. Mi­croprocesses could be interpreted as "interwoven" into a field of potentiality which is formally described by the complex func­tion ( of states. Schr6dinger's equation is the central law of the temporal evolution of the quantum states. However, in the classical Copenhagen interpretation of the evolution of quan­tum states, they are only "mathematical devices" for calculating physical processes, thus the reference of the so called superposi­tion of quantum states is purely formal, not ontological. There are some other, more ontologically oriented interpretations of quantum mechanics where the concept of quantum potential as a kind of Information potential of microprocesses is emphasized (Bohm, Hiley, 1993). It is a very interesting question wheter the notion of the superposition of possibihties (of a quantum state) in quantum mechanics might be useful in the general theory of the modal characteristics of processes, too. 
of their victims or their natural enemies, not only of their actual movements. This is necessary for survival in the dangerous and dynamic world. A Uon, for exam­ple, is not attentive to the actual mOvement of a gazelle but tries to control its attempts to escape. This means the lion has to be sensitive to the possible movements of the gazelle, not only to the actual movements of the gazelle. Sure, the lion has no idea of possibility, he is not aware of possible movements, but it has somehow to be sensitive to it. 
Humans and perhaps also some other highly devel­oped animals (apes, dolphins, wales) also have the abil­ity for conscious sensitivity to potential dimensions of some processes in the environment (and in the organ­isms themselves). They can really be aware of pro­cesses and their inner flows of possibilities. Humans possess a symbolic system (language) for representing processes and their potentials. Thus, we can think about them. We create ideas of possibilities, make ex­pectations, plans, hypotheses. We can articulate our fears. This activity is frequently a conscious mental activity. Human consciousness is the highest achieve­ment of the natural evolution of the sensitivity of some systems to processes. 

3 Is consciousness a process? 
It seems that consciousness is a process in a system that can represent other processes, especially their pat­tern of potential changes. Consciousness can represent some alternative to a given process, not only a fixed process. If the flow of mental states was only a kind of a process, then, by our reasoning, it vvould be a chain of changes of a certain system of mental states. There would also be a pseudo-process of changes of mental state (potentials that is internally "linked" to the process of consciousness. We could conceivepf con­sciousness as a "system" which is incredibly sensitive to the "potential aspects" of the events in the world. We can comprehend this sensitivity as a similarity be­tween the inner possibilities of change of mental states and the possibilities in the processes that a conscious being is aware of. A "conscious brain" must be enor­mously flexible to acquire similarity between its own inner processes and different outer processes simulta­neously. Some PD P models and neural-net models of the brain could help us in modelling that kind of flex­ibility. 
However, even the human ability of consciousness for depicting (some) potential aspects of processes has its non-process aspect. The ability of conscious beings to perceive or be aware of some potential Eispects of processes is more than any process, more than any state (of brain or elsewhere). This ability of con­sciousness is not only sensitivity to potential aspects of events respectively to the Information aspects of the events, but it also represents those possibilities to the A. Ule 
brain and to the human being. The conscious repre­sentation of some possibilities to the brain, or better, to the human being, has some internally-logical as­pects which are neither real states nor processes. They are no real parts of mental states or mental processes either. 
It is not enough to find some appropriate "symbols" for this representation; one has to put them in an ap­propriate logical frame, where certain possibilia actu­ally "appear" as possibilities of states-changes, and certain Information as contents. This surpasses the powers of any state, and of any process. We became really aware of possibilia and Information, not being merely sensible to them, only with the help of a com­plex language-system that knows different forms of logic frames of events. At this point, I see a deep mean­ing of Witggenstein's theses that language games are necessary to the human mind and consciousness, and the reason why he denied the process nature of some mental acts. 
I conclude that consciousness is two-sided: process and non-process. The process (aspect) of conscious­ness lies in the neural information-processing, in the flow of sensations and the change of feelings. The non-process aspect of consciousness lies in the conceiving and representing of processes, especially in represent­ing the potentials for change of states of affairs and events and in representing the holistic traits of pro­cesses. These "traits" lie over the real processes. We can get to them only through abstraction from states, from processes. 
My last thesis is: the unity of process and non-process sides of consciousness lies in the awareness of the time. It is consistent with some theses in phe­nomenology on the time-consciousness (Husserl, 1928). We conceive time as an imaginary process that under-lied ali other processes. The "feeling" of pure succes­sion of time-moments is not a real process. It is only the time-dimension for representating processes in con­sciousness. Our consciousness of events or processes is necessarily consciousness of some events (processes) in time. It includes necessarily a modal frame of Identifi­cation and diferentiation of processes. A conscious pre­sentation of processes refers explicitely or implicitely to some future processes which can happen. We refer also to some possible processes which could happen in­stead of those which actually happens or which have happend. Consciousness of time is thus the indication of our ability to be aware of processes in a modal sense, that means to be aware of their possibilia and to be aware of this ability itself. 


References 
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[3] Diaz, J.-L.	 1996. The stream revisited: a process model of phenomenological consciousness. In S. R. Hameroff, A. W. Kasniak, A. C. Scott, Toward a Science of Consciousness. The First Tucson Dis­cussions and Debates. MIT, Cambridge/MA 
[4] Feynmann, R.P. 1964. The Feynmann Lectures in Physics, Vol. 2, Addison Wesley, Redwood City: 
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[6] Hilmy, S. S.: Wittgenstein and behaviourism. In: Grazer Phil. Studien, vol. 33-34, 1989 
[7] Husserl,	 E. 1928: Vorlesungen zur Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewui3tseins (ed. by M. Heidegger), Niemayer Veri., Halle 
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[11] Whitehead, A. N. 1929. Process and ReaHty. The Macmillan Co., Cambridge 
[12] Wittgenstein,	 L. 1976. Philosophical Investiga­tions. B. Blackwell, Oxford 
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