2 What drives people, organizations and companies?
The paradigm of consciousness and leadership
2.1 Some key concepts of a new ontology
The ideas proposed in this book are based on a new paradigm, or at least a less mainstream paradigm, explained in earlier work (Baets and Oldenboom, 2009). As a basis for formulating a new paradigm for understanding complex systems in general and management in particular, as well as to develop an adequate research model, I first summarize some fundamental concepts, often developed in other sciences than those of economy, management or social sciences, but equal y applicable in complex social systems. These concepts are explored further throughout this book but initial insight into them will give context to their relevance as we proceed.
• Holism: The approach developed and proposed is contained in the holistic paradigm and in the way it is used here, draws from Ken Wilber’s (2000) theories. He defines holism as an eternal dynamic interaction between four “spheres”: two external (individual and collective), and two internal (individual and collective). They are as follows: The mechanical (external) individual sphere; the mechanical (external) collective sphere; the internal collective sphere (common values), the internal individual sphere (emotions and consciousness). See diagram in Chapter 5. Clearly, in reductionist and rational approaches, the external individual sphere receives all the attention. “Classical” ecological scientific movements are especial y interested in the collective, but always external, sphere. More recent scientific interests attempt to go beyond that, by including more values and emotions (slowly introducing the concept of consciousness). Holism, as defined by Wilber, is evidently founded on a constructivist approach i.e. the way people create meaning through individual constructs. Constructs are filters we use to create order and meaning.
• The proposed ontology fits clearly the reality of the sciences of complexity in the definition of physical chemist and Nobel Laureate, Ilya Prigogine’s study of dynamic non-linear systems. In particular, he was always very interested in two important aspects: the role of time and behavior far from equilibrium. He il ustrated the constructive role of time, as expressed in the principle of the irreversibility of time, in complex processes. This principle il ustrates why in complex systems it is not possible to extrapolate the future from the past. Complex systems are extremely sensitive to the initial conditions. Minimal changes in these conditions can have major influences on the further development of the process. Final y, Prigogine identifies the most productive state of a (complex) system as one that is far away from equilibrium – “order at the edge of chaos”.
• John Hol and, a pioneer in artificial life and agent systems, has developed a complex adaptive systems approach (CAS) called agent based simulations. This approach simulates the interaction between different agents and, consequently, simulates emergent behavior in those kinds of systems. An agent, according to Hol and, is a mini software program. Each agent has characteristics. It is necessary to define the field of action (the limits of the system) and to identify a minimum of interaction rules (and exchange rules). Then it is necessary to make the system iterate and simulate the dynamic interaction of those agents. The agents meet each other, interact, exchange (and so learn) and, step by step, form a global behavior with qualities that emerge from the interaction itself.
• Synchronicity, according to Wolfgang Pauli, appears in all the sciences and the techniques in which simultaneity (two events happening at the same time) plays a role. It is necessary to take into account that this is not about causal coherence, from cause to effect, but about coincidence as occurring together in time. This has to be considered as potential y useful, even if we cannot explain the more profound cause of the simultaneity. We must remember that we always speak of a synchronicity if the events concerned happen in the same period of time. The relationships therefore, to use Jung’s words, become a-causal.
• The implication of these observations is that the phenomenon of “entanglement” (non–locality), including a real activity at a distance, is not simply epistemological. It is, in effect, ontological by nature (Polkinghorne, 1990) and can be called “a quantum interpretation” .
• Sheldrake and Bohm (1982) broached the subject of “implicit order” as something like solid ground underneath time, a totality from which each movement is projected in explicit order. For everything seen, there is something in implicit order at the origin of this projection. If there are many repetitions of an event then behind it is a built constant component. A sort of (fixed) link is born. Through this process, the forms from the past can continue to live in the present. This is more or less what Sheldrake cal s morphogenetic fields, created by morphogenetic resonance.
• Ayurveda considers the human being as a self-organizing system composed of many simple elements which are, when taken independently, very stupid, but which together form a formidable distributed intelligence. In parallel, a company can be considered a network of “simple” elements which “know” what they must know to be able to form effective networks with others.
• The ontological nature of this quantum structure forces us to look again at our approach to organizations and their management, and on a wider scale, at our economic theory. The understanding of management must therefore be based on the “carrying along” of quantum structures, synchronicity, morphogenetic fields and individual space for self– organization.
2.2 Consciousness: the fifth floor (dimension) in the house of knowing (what is the “hard” and the “easy” problem?)
Key to our understanding of management is consciousness, in this sense awareness, and in particular the role that consciousness plays in organizations (see Baets, 2008, for a more contextual overview). In her interesting interview series of a number of neuroscientists and philosophers, Susan Blackmore (2005) identifies two main schools of thought around consciousness. The one school is based on the idea that the brain is a coder/decoder (neuronal actions) and hence, the challenge of consciousness study is to understand how the brain deals with issues like feeling, color, senses, etc. These scientists study brain operations and they consider the problem of consciousness residing in the physical world.
The second school of thought attempts to understand the “first person” perspective. They try to explore how things feel, and they accept that one’s “internal movie” has color, music and feelings. According to those scientists, consciousness cannot be reduced to a fixed space-time environment. The study of consciousness for those scientists cannot be conducted via classical “third person” research tools. Let’s develop a few of these ideas further.
Bernard Baars (1988 and 1997) accepts that being conscious is activating the best or winning combination of neurons (as opposed to being not conscious). He refers to the theatrical metaphor developed in the Vedantic scriptures and ideas of Plato. Consciousness is what is in the bright spotlight area of the stage. The thalamus is the machinery. This view on science denies emotions. But aren’t emotions part of consciousness?
Francis Crick (1994) claims that the hardest problem is understanding how qualia are generated by the brain. Qualia are instances of subjective consciousness that describe the perception of the redness of red, the taste of wine or the sensation of sand between your toes. Daniel Dennett eventual y suggests (as befitting a real behaviorist) to get rid of qualia altogether. For Dennett, it is all about behavior. For Crick, being conscious or not conscious has everything to do with brain activity. Consciousness and awareness go hand in hand.
Dennett (1987, 1991, 1996, 2003) is one of the best known opponents of the brain activity school, but at the same time, he pays a great deal of attention to behavior. Subjective experience is hard to understand; it is a point of view, a reflective capacity. People have powerful seductive intuitions that are just wrong. From a third person perspective, you approach consciousness from the outside, not from the inside. According to Dennett we are put into a physical world, where there is no mystery. To him, dualism, the conviction that mental activity is separate from the physical human, is hopeless. Dennett is an absolute materialist and argues that one cannot trust common sense. The point is to categorize the phenomenology of consciousness and explain it. But he does agree that first person research is useful in the stage of discovery, not in the context of justification. But aren’t we still in the stage of discovery? Do we have any reasonable understanding yet of how to explain consciousness from a third person perspective? And if not, should we not start with some more explorative research?
Patricia Churchland (1986, 2002) and Paul Churchland (1984, 1996) express the view that we have not made real progress in understanding consciousness, since we do not truly know how information is coded in the brain. For them, consciousness is all about how the brain performs the coding. For them, the brain builds a model and there is a difference between inner and outer (dualism). Though one would possibly put the Churchlands in the first school of thought, they also have interesting ideas that open doors to a more quantum interpretation. According to them, there is more than just wave theory in sound. Heat of a coffee cup is similar to mean molecular kinetic energy, but it is not just correlated. There is something akin to neural correlation, or a better description would be “interconnectedness”. Sensations are energies and this “energy” interpretation of consciousness opens doors for a non-causal model of understanding.
Koch (1999, 2003) refers to il usion and the fact that sometimes we see and sometimes we don’t. This possibility to see “different” is what he cal s consciousness. It is an experience; it is not just what we see, but the feeling that goes with it. It is not the retina that makes the difference, but that which gives rise to the subjective feeling. However, he feels that the only way ahead would be to get the neural correlation right.
Searle (1992, 1997, 2004) takes an interesting middle ground but does not make much progress. Consciousness only exists as something experienced, enjoyed, hence it has a first person ontology. We now try to have an epistemological y objective science about a domain that is ontological y subjective. That is a real dilemma. If we explore the synchronization of massive neuron firings over large areas of the thalamo-cortical system, would this get us anywhere close to understanding consciousness? Searle continues to be positioned between the concepts of the brain mechanism creating a system of rational agency, and the presupposition of freedom of experience.
Ned Block (1997) defines consciousness as the Technicolor phenomenology “what it is like”. He defines phenomenological consciousness on the one hand, and access consciousness on the other. The latter form, involving the unconscious, vivid image states, etc, is suppressed. But he admits that studying the phenomenological consciousness alters that same consciousness. This creates issues around the research methods used. According to him, you can have phenomenology that is not completely part of us, just as much as you can have observations that do not connect.
According to Chalmers (in Lanza, 2009) however, the so called “easy” problem of consciousness is to explore:
• The ability to discriminate, categorize and react to environmental stimuli
• The integration of information by a cognitive system
• The reportability of mental states
• The ability of a system to access its own internal states
• The focus of attention
• The deliberate control of behavior
• The difference between wakefulness and sleep
The easy problem is about control and which part of the brain does what. It is about finding mechanisms. Understanding this “easy” problem would not bring us any closer to explaining consciousness or understanding how we transform seeing into experiencing: What is the feeling of the color red? Why is working with one person more motivating for me than working with another? How does the architecture of a building make me feel happy, energetic or depressed?
Biocentrism (Lanza, 2009) squarely brings up the fundamental problems that remain in the acceptance of an “external” reality and defines seven principles that link up the observer and the role of consciousness in the experience.
What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it existed, would – by definition – have to exist in space. But according to Lanza this is meaningless because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind. Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another. The behavior of subatomic particles – or even all particles and objects – are inextricably linked to their being an observer present. Without the presence of a conscious observer they exist at best in an undetermined state of probability waves. Let us therefore explore the researchers of consciousness that share this view on what consciousness is, before making an attempt to define consciousness and design a measurement approach.
David Chalmers (2004, 2009) is widely known for his attempts to understand consciousness from a first person perspective. How do things feel? Consciousness for him is subjective data. The hard problem according to him, is understanding subjective experience. The processes in the brain are not the feeling itself. Descartes, with his cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am – has in a way defined consciousness: the mind (this overwhelming energy and power) creates consciousness. The connection between brain processes and conscious experience is, according to him, certainly not causal. Consciousness cannot be reduced to a fixed time-space concept, but it is a fundamental feature of the world.
For Chalmers consciousness is a non-physical thing interacting with the physical world. It gives life meaning and it gives life the interesting room for value. This interpretation of consciousness finds an ontological home in quantum mechanics.
Stuart Hameroff (Hameroff et al, 1996, 1998, 1999) supports the Chalmers idea. Consciousness is fundamental to the universal part of our reality, like mass or charge. It is just there. According to him, if qualia -individual instances of conscious experience – would exist, they would exist at the lowest level of existence; at the Planck level where space-time is not smooth any more but quantized. At this fundamental level, qualia are embedded as patterns in this fundamental granularity of space-time geometry that makes up the universe. It is suggested that platonic values in mathematics as well as ethics and aesthetics were embedded there. We know two sets of laws: the Newton laws at the macroscopic level and laws of quantum mechanics at small scales. How small is small? Where does the col apse of the wave function happen? All this has to do with consciousness.
Ramachandran (1998, 2004) considers qualia as equal to consciousness. Qualia deal with the experience of the redness of red. But qualia need a self that knows that it knows, and that it is required to know.
Qualia are linked to the spinal cord experience, but at the same time grow over the simple feeling of pain, for instance. The self is able to hold a “meta-wareness” .
Roger Penrose (2002) argues that our minds do non-algorithmic things anyway. They have an other logic (a particular col apse of the wave function). There is a type of quantum computing taking place in the brain. He refers to this as quantum computing in microtubules (a protein structure). For Penrose, consciousness is quantum processing. For example, when you are presented with a restaurant menu, you filter according to your preferred dishes, and, when you make your final choice, a col apse in the quantum wave function occurs. Quantum coherence and entanglement may be essential features of life. Consciousness dances on the edge between the quantum world and the classical world. The more we are in contact with the subconscious world of enlightenment, the happier we can be. The universe at the Planck scale is non-local, it exists holographical y, indefinitely.
LaBerge (1985, 1990) sees consciousness as having a fractal nature. For him lucid dreaming is consciousness since dreams are experiences. The physical reality is only a hypothesis that allows communication. In an awakened state only 25% of the viewers see things like the change of an actress in a movie or the goril a in the basketball video. Any approach to consciousness must entail questions of self-transformation; we have to understand the experiences. Metzinger (2003) goes a step further. Consciousness for him, as opposed to all other states, is a physical one, a biological and chemical one which is known from the outside, from a third person view. The first person view is one that is rooted in experience, but he suggests that the most adequate way to research this would be via correlates. That is what I will develop further in this book. Understanding consciousness requires training in order to see experience without the “self”. The self can be very misleading. One should strive for introspection without attempting to relate it to the known or familiar, and without creating theories. But this goes against the tradition of Western neurosciences. Metzinger questions whether indigenous wisdom, more soul related wisdom, would be all that wrong. For him demystification of society can lead to “desolidarization” of society and classical science offers little defense against that. Shouldn’t we be more interested in conscious culture, conscious ethics and possibly a conscious organization?
O’Regan (2011), an influential experimental psychologist, states that people should give up the idea that consciousness is a single thing that emerges from some brain process. Our continuous perception of the world is an il usion; if there is nothing there, you wonder what there is (like the light inside the fridge). The firing of nerves couldn’t possibly be the cause of visual experience. Experience is not simply in the brain, but it is something the brain can do. Experience is observing something new, it is movement, it is action, at least for the more perceptual forms of feeling (for “feeling happy” that might be a different story). Redness is how you move the eye; there is nothing real y red. For O’Regan, it is all about brain capacity and about focus, not about brain function. We get little bits of information from external sources and then create a rich internal representation which becomes our experience. It is all part of an activity, not a simple transfer. Small changes are often not observed. There is no real seeing, but only interrogation, and that creates the image. The “I” is merely a social construct. This view on consciousness allows us to move into a workable understanding of consciousness in organizations, and opens doors not just to measure or represent consciousness, but equal y to work towards a more conscious organization.
Varela (1992) sees that consciousness research is ruled out on a behavioral level for scientific political reasons. There is a methodological issue with science that relates to the scientific tradition. Buddhism, for instance, does allow the reporting of feelings very precisely. Hence science should go a different route if it is to understand consciousness. Consciousness feels so personal, is so singular and given our embodiment, is a neurophenomenological issue. Furthermore, people’s consciousness develops in relation to the consciousness of others. Velmans (2000, 2003) builds on the concept of embodiment. Consciousness is not in the brain but is embodied with outside embedding, and it consists of real energies. For reductionist scientists, consciousness has to be a state of the brain. It is a fundamental y dualistic concept but this still does not resemble simple experience.
In fact, this second school of thought suggests that consciousness is a new kind of dimension, a first person sensation that cannot be understood with classical third person research (that cannot be understood in a Newtonian paradigm). Third person research is based on reductionism, measurement, and inside-outside understanding of reality and rationality. Third person research typical y takes place in a three dimensional Newtonian reality of absolute time and space. But scientists (and in particular quantum mechanics) suggest another type of reality – a quantum reality (Baets, 2006) that is based on non-locality, synchronicity and entanglement. This is a world of waves being a multitude of possibilities until measurement (or observation) col apses the wave into a particle – a particular state created by observation. (Polkinghorn, 1990) It is the observer – you and me – that seems to create at any given moment, out of all the different possible states, the one that is chosen. Out of all the different possible sounds, we select the one we like most in a piece of music. From all the different possible sensations the color red can give, we chose that one that we like most in a given situation.
These scientists give meaning to the research done by the Bogdanovs (Bogdanov and Bogdanov, 2006) who explore the very basis of nature: what happens beyond the Wall of Planck? Since the Wall of Planck is the smallest possibly value in nature, this discovery is mathematical. Their exploration suggests the existence of a fifth dimension that could be a fourth dimension of space expressed in imaginary (complex) time. Beyond the Wall of Planck and hence also before the Wal , time and space would come together. This would be the world in which things “are” (time and space independent). This state, being the fifth dimension, could be a state of consciousness. This definition of consciousness would perfectly fit the definition that some old traditions (like Ayurveda) give. All understanding is constructed on a number of levels of understanding. In classical sciences these different levels are: mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology. In noetic sciences (www.noetic.org) those levels are: fractal algebra, energy physics, vibrational chemistry (both based on quantum mechanics), noetic biology (interconnected cel s) and energy psychology (perceptions and energy fields). In an ancient wisdom tradition like Ayurveda, those levels are: matter form, ether and astral body, energy level, desire, capacity to think (conceptualization), intelligence and intuition, and final y consciousness. Consciousness is described as the highest state of being, the highest floor of knowing; the ultimate being.
In this definition of consciousness third person research will not be able to clarify what consciousness is, let alone how it would influence corporate behavior, happiness, etc. This understanding of consciousness would mean that within the classical three dimensional Newtonian world, things cannot have a consciousness. At the same time, consciousness cannot be Newtonian. It is clear that consciousness is a multi-faceted concept that is of crucial importance for a better understanding of the link between organizations and their well-being. In this book, I would like to focus on Hameroff’s “definition” which at least comes closest to being a definition. For him, consciousness is fundamental to the universal (the everything) part of our reality, just like mass, or a charge: it is just there, which in a way is Chalmers’ idea. If qualia are fundamental to consciousness, they must exist at the lowest level of existence; at the Planck level where space-time is not smooth any more but quantized. One could refer to it as granularity at a fundamental level. In nature, there are two sets of laws. If Newton’s laws apply at the macroscopic level and the laws of quantum mechanics apply at small scales, then the question is how small is smal , and where does the wave function col apse? This question is related to consciousness. Again, consciousness is a form of quantum processing where choices are continual y made, as in the restaurant menu example. Eventual y this can be measured and visualized by a combination of algorithmic and non-algorithmic processes. Consciousness spans the quantum world and the classical world.
If we wish to research consciousness as defined here, we will either have to use different research methods (possibly still to be developed; first person research methods) or use a measurable proxy for consciousness using adapted research methods. The measurable proxy we argue for is “coherence”, as worked out in some detail. As will be discussed in more detail, “coherence” is the impact or consequence of consciousness on the individual level.
2.3 Coherence as proxy for consciousness
According to McCraty and Tomasino (2006), the most common definition of coherence is “the quality of being logical y, integrated, consistent and intelligible”, as in a coherent argument. A related meaning is “a logical, orderly and aesthetical y consistent relationship of parts”. If we refer to people’s thoughts (or speech) as coherent, we say that the parts seem to fit together. They are not uttering meaningless nonsense or presenting ideas that don’t make sense as a whole (Ho, 1998). Coherence, hence, refers to wholeness and a global order; out of the interaction of elements, a whole emerges. Coherence includes the idea of local freedom and global cohesion (Ho, 1998). Interestingly, in physics, the concept of coherence is also used to describe the interaction or coupling among different oscil ating systems in which synchronization is the key idea in this concept. This definition of coherence perfectly fits our quantum ontological framework described earlier.
Most of the known scientific research on consciousness and conscious states of mind links consciousness with coherence (on a brain and/or body level). Lehrer et al (2003) report on a UCLA study of Buddhist monks meditating on generating compassionate love. This study exhibited increased coherence. Another study of Zen monks found that the more advanced monks tended to have coherent heart rhythms, while novices did not. Lutz et al (2004) report on a study of long-term Buddhist practitioners. They found that while the practitioners generated a state of “unconditional loving kindness and compassion”, increases in gamma band oscil ation and long-distance phase synchrony were observed. The authors suggest that this increased gamma band oscil ation reflects a change in the quality of moment-to-moment awareness. The characteristic patterns of baseline activity of this group were found to be different from a control group. More research on consciousness, coherence and body impact can be found on, amongst others http://www.mindandlife.org/, and http://www.mum.edu/tm_research/welcome.html. Coherence on a body level – and I will discuss this further – seems to be a reasonable proxy for consciousness.
Coherence, as we develop it here, is a concept that is measurable within a classical paradigm. Coherence is seen as an optimal psychophysiological state: a dynamic systems view of the interrelations between psychological, cognitive and emotional systems, and neural communication networks in the human organism. This is the definition of coherence that HeartMath has used to build their research tool (http://www.heartmath.org).
The feelings we experience as “negative” are indicative of body states in which “life processes struggle for balance and can even be chaotical y out of control” (Damasio, 2003). By contrast, the feelings we experience as “positive” actual y reflect body states in which “the regulation of life processes becomes efficient, or even optimal, free-flowing and easy” (Damasio, 2003). Research (Fredrickson, 2002; Isen, 1999) has shown that positive emotions and attitudes, beyond the fact that it makes you feel pleasant, have a number of objective, interrelated benefits for physiological, psychological and social functioning. Coherence is a particular quality that emerges from the connections between the parts of a system or from the connections among multiple systems. The latter is particularly what we would measure in the organizational analysis (using neural networks).
The HeartMath Institute has developed a theoretical framework and tool to visualize coherence inside the human brain/body system. Psychophysiology refers to the inter-connectedness of the physiological, cognitive and emotional systems, and human behavior. It is now evident that every thought, attitude and emotion has a physiological consequence. In more specific terms, they examine the natural fluctuations in heart rate, known as heart rate variability (HRV). HRV is a product of the dynamic interplay of many of the body’s systems. Short-term (beat-to-beat) changes in heart rate are largely generated and amplified by the interaction between the heart and the brain.
Research on adults has documented a wide array of effects of positive emotions on cognitive processing, behavior, health and well-being. Positive emotions have been found to broaden the scope of perception, cognition and behavior (Fredrickson, 2001, 2005; Isen, 1999), thus enhancing faculties such as creativity (Isen, 1998) and intuition (Bolte, Goschke and Kuhl, 2003). Moreover, the experience of frequent positive emotions has been shown to predict resilience and psychological growth (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh and Larkin, 2003), while an impressive body of research has documented clear links between positive emotions, health status and longevity (Blakeslee and Grossarth-Maticek, 1996; Danner, Snowdon and Friesen, 2001;