Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
I'm a functionalist. I think the mind and consciousness is about what the brain does, rather than its particular composition, or some other attribute. Which means that if another system did the same or similar things, it would make sense to say it was conscious. Consciousness is as consciousness does. Functionalism has some advantages over … Continue reading What is a non-functional account of consciousness supposed to be?
Is studying conscious experience different from studying behavior? In a number of recent conversations I've had, the distinction between experience and behavior has come up. There's a strong sentiment that we can study behavior scientifically, including all the intermediate mental states that enable it. But experience is seen as something distinct from that, something that … Continue reading Experience and behavior
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 that content becomes conscious when it is globally broadcast throughout the brain, HOT when a … Continue reading The response schema
SelfAwarePatterns 