Category Archives: Mind and AI

The seven attributes of minimal consciousness

Posted on April 5, 2020 by

I’m still working my way through Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s tome: The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul.  This is the second post of a series on their book.  I’m actually on the last chapter, but that last chapter is … Continue reading →

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The sensitive soul and the rational soul

Posted on March 21, 2020 by

I think examining the evolution of consciousness in animals helps shed light on it in humans.  Admittedly, there are difficulties.  Animals can’t self report using language, which limits just how much of their experience can be garnered from experiments.  Still, … Continue reading →

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The response schema

Posted on March 4, 2020 by

Several months ago Michael Graziano, and colleagues, attempted a synthesis of three families of scientific theories of consciousness: global workspace theory (GWT), higher order theory (HOT), and his own attention schema theory (AST). A quick (crudely simplistic) reminder: GWT posits … Continue reading →

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Do qualia exist? Depends on what we mean by “exist.”

Posted on February 11, 2020 by

The cognitive scientist, Hakwan Lau, whose work I’ve highlighted several times in the last year, has been pondering illusionism recently.  He did a Twitter survey on the relationship between the phenomenal concept strategy (PCS) and illusionism, which inspired my post … Continue reading →

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The phenomenal concept strategy and issues with conceptual isolation

Posted on February 2, 2020 by

I’ve often pondered that the hard problem of consciousness, the perceived problem of understanding how phenomenal consciousness can happen in physical systems, arises due to the fact that our intuitive model of the phenomenal is very different from our intuitive … Continue reading →

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Recurrent processing theory and the function of consciousness

Posted on January 25, 2020 by

Victor Lamme’s recurrent processing theory (RPT) remains on the short list of theories considered plausible by the consciousness science community.  It’s something of a dark horse candidate, without the support of global workspace theory (GWT) or integrated information theory (IIT), … Continue reading →

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Is there a conscious perception finish line?

Posted on January 19, 2020 by

Global workspace theory (GWT) is the proposition that consciousness is composed of contents broadcast throughout the brain.  Various specialty processes compete for the limited capacity of the broadcasting mechanisms, to have their content broadcast to the all the other specialty … Continue reading →

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For animal consciousness, is there a fact of the matter?

Posted on January 18, 2020 by

Peter Carruthers has been blogging this week on the thesis of his new book, Human and Animal Minds: The Consciousness Question Laid to Rest.  I mentioned Carruthers’ book in my post on global workspace theory (GWT), but didn’t get into … Continue reading →

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The issues with higher order theories of consciousness

Posted on January 2, 2020 by

After the global workspace theory (GWT) post, someone asked me if I’m now down on higher order theories (HOT).  It’s fair to say I’m less enthusiastic about them than I used to be.  They still might describe important components of … Continue reading →

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Global workspace theory: consciousness as brain wide information sharing

Posted on December 29, 2019 by

Lately I’ve been reading up on global workspace theory (GWT).  In a survey published last year, among general consciousness enthusiasts, integrated information theory (IIT) was the most popular theory, followed closely by GWT.  However, among active consciousness researchers, GWT was … Continue reading →

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