How working memory could give rise to consciousness • Hacker News Board

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#41

Post by enugu » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #29

hackingonempty wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is what the brain is doing. I look forward to more precise definitions.

Consciousness is what the body is doing to be viable. Without it we can't walk, eat, reproduce, or do anything. I like to think cost viability reasons explain consciousness. I know people prefer metaphysical or quantum magic explanations, I prefer a prosaic one - cost. It's a mechanism to keep our costs offset by gains. Cost can also explain unity - we die as one organism, not each organ on its own.

A useful test to see the value of definitions, is to check if there are simple programs which become conscious according to the definition. There are very simple programs (Of course, you can be like Daniel Denett and bite the definition bullet - he was talking about 'free-will', not consciounsess and that a chess program has the necessary properties.

But, it makes more sense to take conscious experience as more fundamental, what we are directly aware of, and try to explain everything else with that as the base.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#42

Post by mellosouls » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

hackingonempty wrote: post #27

cloudie78 wrote: post #22

We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how. So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it? How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

Consciousness is what the brain is doing. I look forward to more precise definitions.

That's very imprecise, and not at all convincing.

Eg.

1. The brain "does cognition".

Cognition consciousness.

2. Some philosophical theories have consciousness pre-figuring complex arrangements like the brain.

ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#43

Post by evilduck » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

thansz wrote: post #24

cloudie78 wrote: post #22

We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how. So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it? How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works. Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the…

Seems like the entire field of alchemy and later chemistry was precluded by a "oh wow" or "that's interesting" or "help, I can't breath", not derivations from first principals. Throwing stuff together just to see what happens and then working backwards from interesting outcomes to recreate and understand those interesting outcomes seems like a perfectly valid if not chaotic approach for happening upon artificial consciousness.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#44

Post by therobots927 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

zulux wrote: post #17

therobots927 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting. Do you have any links to material along these lines?

It conjecture, but in my opinion there's something about our brain based on the evidence. Three pounds of meat in one human brain can do things an entire datacenter of AI can't. Like fold clothing.

Found something: https://philarchive.org/archive/FRAAQI

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#45

Post by henry-p » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

This does not recognize the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Even if we find a mechanistic way to explain what is needed for consciousness, it does not give any clue as to why it feels like something to be conscious.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#46

Post by rahimnathwani » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #19

Should link to the original article: https://theconversation.com/consciousness-how-working-memory...

OT but the first sentence on that page has a typo:

  To solve a Rubrik’s cube, you need to engage your working memory.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#47

Post by dinfinity » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:14 PM UTC

albertize wrote: post #8

In this article, the concept of working memory accounts for not consciousness but the accessibility, stability and reportability of certain contents. For example, when I am reading very carefully, I may not be concentrating on the ambient sounds, my bodily position, my peripheral vision, and the environment of the room. These contents may not have to be retained in working memory in any way as relevant information fo…

The article spends multiple paragraphs on exactly this. Did you read it in its entirety?

"This can be a difficult idea to swallow. Imagine you’re looking out at a countryside scene. You see rolling hills, the vibrant sunshine and a herd of cows. You hear the birds, smell the fresh cut grass and feel the wind on your skin. Surely you are conscious of this whole scene all at once. But we know that working memory has a capacity that is far too tiny to fit all of this information in at one time. If consciousness arises from working memory, then how can I be conscious of all this stuff at once?

Indeed, some philosophers and scientists have argued in just this way, saying that consciousness overflows the capacity of working memory. If this is true, it would be a problem for those who think that consciousness arises from working memory."

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#48

Post by d00d0ff000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

mapontosevenths wrote: post #38

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence why I ask In my experience, “intelligence” and “consciousness” are socially defined categories and can’t be viewed objectively There’s too much social weight on those to have a firm definition because the social implications are too grave and nobody is willing to give up their philosophy for a precise definition

Agreed, and just to add to that... It's important. In the past many attempts to define who (or even what) is and is not conscious led to the exclusion of certain classes of human and animal, and from there to atrocity beyond measure. The p-zombie problem is not only fundamental, it may be the single most important question in all of philosophy and science from a "first do no harm" perspective. It's not some academic…

I define consciousness as “the inflection of the potential of existential being.” As my original comment suggests, I claim consciousness as the echo chamber of the quantum domain.

Before you call it “quantum magic” understand that the “potential of existence” is the foundation of existential reality and we are “just inflecting” upon this through the electrochemical biotechnology of our brains.

I propose all life and living systems are “of consciousness” however primitive, and memory, temporal awareness, even sense of self are holographic renderings within this domain.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#49

Post by tsoukase » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

Working memory is exactly like CPU cache. Data must be first moved to WM from mid and longterm storage in brain (RAM and SSD respectively) before being processed by the brain centres.

Consciousness is a process that runs concurrently with the main process and follows it, hence we know about our thought. In this analogy, WM and consciousness have little relation.

Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness

#50

Post by d00d0ff000 » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

lambdaone wrote: post #37

DonaldFisk wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unsure what to make of the post you're replying to, but the idea that there's a connexion between consciousness and quantum phenomena isn't just a New Age idea. Eugene Wigner wasn't New Agey, and he wrote Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, suggesting that wave function collapse only occurs when the consciousness of an an observer becomes aware of the result of a measurement, not the measuring apparatus, which is…

For me the most plausible argument for "quantum consciousness" was made by Roger Penrose. I still don't believe it; we can demonstrate wavefunction collapse using experiments like the delayed-choice quantum eraser without anything conscious being involved (unless you believe in retrocausality or the cosmic conspiracy theory, or in panpsychism, which is really no weirder than the quantum consciousness ideas and also q…

It seems like you disqualify everything that doesn’t talk back (LLMs then?). By my account a stone is dormant quantum consciousness and living systems merely animate this. Awareness and sense of self are manifestations of biotechnology.