Combs’s Chaotic Attractor and Autopoietic Systems

Consciousness researcher and systems theorist Allan Combs uses nonlinear dynamics, and more specifically chaos theory, to understand how all the elements of conscious experience “cling together to form the many states and structures of consciousness that characterize the onflow of our experiential lives” (Combs, 2022). In doing so, Combs channels William James: “This multitude of ideas, existing absolutely, yet clinging together, and weaving an endless carpet of themselves, …like dominoes in ceaseless change, or the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope—whence do they get their fantastic laws of clinging, and why do they cling in just the shapes they do?” (James, 1890).

Consciousness as a Chaotic Attractor

“We live in a nonlinear universe,” Combs says, which means that “nothing turns out exactly as one might expect based on projections from the past.” While this is true in physics and astronomy, it is “even more true in the realms of biological systems and the mind.” What results is “the emergence of novel interacting elements,” which is “an essential feature of countless real-world events.” Moreover, in chaotic systems, like the weather, while there are recognizable general patterns, “it is impossible to make precise predictions about future behavior”—local or moment-to-moment details are always unpredictable.

The action of chaotic systems can be mapped topologically as attractors, that is, as recognizable mathematical patterns that repeat or almost repeat themselves indefinitely. But systems that can be represented as chaotic attractors never repeat themselves precisely. “Many complex systems of a biological nature, such as the metabolic rhythms of a living cell, EEG responses to sensory stimuli, and circadian sleep cycles, are in a strict sense always novel. That is, they are never exactly the same twice.” Even the action of a healthy human heart shows variation from beat to beat (Combs, 2022).

According to Combs, consciousness, the onflow of experience, “fits the bill nicely as a chaotic-like attractor.” To begin with, it is always in motion, dynamic, and ever-changing. Moreover, like all chaotic attractors, it displays a recognizable pattern; yet, it is never exactly the same during different cycles. Indeed, this unique feature of each person's onflow of experience is what James considered to be the basic signature of an individual personality. “Each of us, for instance, experiences unique patterns of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, and so on, that replay in roughly the same way day in and day out.” But never precisely the same. Thus, consciousness as a chaotic attractor is ever-changing yet identifiable, “in a fashion that amounts to a distinct signature of the individual's experiential life.”

Consciousness as an Autopoietic System

Combs recruits the concept of “autopoiesis” to help explain consciousness. Autopoiesis means capable of generating and maintaining itself by producing its own parts—“auto” meaning “self” and “poiesis” meaning “creation” or “production” (Maturana & Varela, 1980)—a concept applied widely in understanding biological systems, such as the self-maintaining biochemistry of living cells.

Assuming consciousness, as James had it, is “the onflow of thoughts, memories, and emotions that recreate themselves as they go along, ‘clinging together, and weaving an endless carpet of themselves’ … [then] this description fits the notion of a chaotic autopoietic attractor.” For example, Combs cites how “joy, anger, and sadness tend to sustain themselves by creating their own self-perpetuating internal conditions.” Emotional states self-propagate, he says, “thereby creating coherent self-organizing streams of experience,” with each such state accompanied by its own neurochemistry, which also contributes to its resilience (Combs, 2022).

In addition, cognitive patterns by which we understand the world exemplify the mind as a complex, self-creating autopoietic system. The mind also exhibits features of a chaotic system on the “edge of chaos” or “the brink of change,” characterized by “periods of relative stability punctuated by phases of instability, or increased chaotic behavior, after which they may return to their original state, or transition (bifurcate) to a new attractor pattern” (Combs, 2022).