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How working memory could give rise to consciousness
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Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#62My way of reasoning on this is unscientific - but it is intuitive. It might be a starting place.
Consider physics as an analogy.
The level of detail dictates the right physics to use. Aerospace engineering can use continuous formulae to predict what’ll happen. But when you deal in a few atoms as in chip design, quantum effects dominate. Sub-atomic particles (quarks et al) are different again.
This makes deriving a universal physics elusive.
So it likely is with consciousness and how the brain achieves what it achieves.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#63In 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…
Yeah, binning conscious and unconscious as two categorical classes is probably wrong. There are likely gradations, especially in the context of working memory over time.
The subconscious and unconscious are different, and the subconscious has it's own working memory that the conscious can't access.
An interesting read is Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow that explains cognitive systems, 1 is subconscious and fast and the other is conscious and slow
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#64In 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…
Yes I think it’s a linguistic confusion more than anything else. To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that. Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a se…
You can be aware and react subconsciously too.
The difference between conscious and subconscious is deliberation and speed.
The subconscious relies on shortcuts, the conscious takes more effort, at least when talking about cognition that seems to be the case.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I think it’s a linguistic confusion more than anything else. To me, consciousness is not generally that you can be aware (conscious) of things around you and can react to them, lots of things can do that. Consciousness is a shorthand for saying that something is conscious of itself, or conscious of its own consciousness. It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a se…
> It is the meta-ability to observe its own perceptions and thoughts. And a sense of self, a sense that the observer is the same over time. Which is kind of strange because folks who achieve insight examining their own perceptions and thoughts seem to dissolve the barrier between self and not-self.
Not always, ego death states are not needed.
Meta-cognition is a common skill a lot of highly intelligent people possess but of course if you don't have it you can still be highly intelligent, just not as aware.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#66Working 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.
I agree, but attention is what is missing I think.
Consciousness is merely the awareness of existence, while attention is the process that works with the working memory.
To me, consciousness is a log file that is partially in working memory and has logged the current state of the system.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah. "Cogito, ergo sum" is obviously wrong if we think about it for even a moment. It's a thought terminating tautology at best. A) Just because there is thinking it does not follow that there is an "I" doing it. B) Perceiving something does not in and of itself prove that either the thing or the perciever are "real". Some things are real without being perceived, and some things are perceived that aren't real. C) Eve…
I didn’t argue “I think therefore I am.” I argued “experience therefore consciousness.” No “I” nor “think” nor “am” To use your language, perceiving something does in fact necessarily imply there is perception happening. You’re jumping to Descartes (who was wrong), I am pointing to Nagel (who is correct but not in a way that’s very helpful answering the corollary questions of consciousness) You presumably know consci…
> You presumably know consciousness exists at least in the case of you.
Just because I "know" something, that doesn't make it true. Or to use the "experience therefore consciousness" version:
Experiencing something doesn't imply that either the subject or object are objectively real. Humans regularly experience unreality (books, games, movies, hallucinations), and the assumption that you exist because you feel that you do is no more valid than the assumption that Mickey Mouse is real because you feel that you have seen him.
To restate more directly, there can be no "objective" reality without others to validate it. Otherwise its only "subjective" reality.
It's been a long time, but I think Hegel really misses the mark. (You mean Hegel rather than Nagel, right?) I think he argued against doubting your own perception, but anyone who has ever taken LSD, or met a mentally ill person, can tell you that there are miles between perception and reality. The way we percieve the self is unlikely to be any more reliable than the way we percieve Mickey Mouse.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t argue “I think therefore I am.” I argued “experience therefore consciousness.” No “I” nor “think” nor “am” To use your language, perceiving something does in fact necessarily imply there is perception happening. You’re jumping to Descartes (who was wrong), I am pointing to Nagel (who is correct but not in a way that’s very helpful answering the corollary questions of consciousness) You presumably know consci…
> You presumably know consciousness exists at least in the case of you. Just because I "know" something, that doesn't make it true. Or to use the "experience therefore consciousness" version: Experiencing something doesn't imply that either the subject or object are objectively real. Humans regularly experience unreality (books, games, movies, hallucinations), and the assumption that you exist because you feel that y…
Again, I didn't say anything about "objectively real" anything.
Your knowledge of consciousness existing within you is inherently subjective. And yet it's the truest thing any one of us can possibly know (per your point, a simple molecule ingested by mouth can distort nearly everything except the fact of consciousness). No matter how distorted the external/internal data that populates consciousness, the backdrop of consciousness is certainly there.
And no, I mean Nagel, not Hegel.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness. I'm not saying brains are the only way to produce consciousness, just that the evidence shows that they are the way animals do here on Earth. It is extremely unlikely that there is something else involved. > There is certainly much of physics remaining to be discovered, but in the specific regime covering the particles and forces that make up human…
I'm not saying brains are the only way to produce consciousness, just that the evidence shows that they are the way animals do here on Earth.
On some views, the brain may be a particularly complex organisation, localisation, or exemplar of consciousness, rather than its ultimate origin. That would include any brains here on earth.
It is extremely unlikely that there is something else involved.
Well, that's clearly a view to be expected of a hardcore physicalist like Carroll but the quoted text seems somewhat circular as it insists on a framework that seems not to really get to grips with the Hard Problem.
Re: How working memory could give rise to consciousness
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness. I'm not saying brains are the only way to produce consciousness, just that the evidence shows that they are the way animals do here on Earth. It is extremely unlikely that there is something else involved. > There is certainly much of physics remaining to be discovered, but in the specific regime covering the particles and forces that make up human…
I'm not saying brains are the only way to produce consciousness, just that the evidence shows that they are the way animals do here on Earth. On some views, the brain may be a particularly complex organisation, localisation, or exemplar of consciousness, rather than its ultimate origin. That would include any brains here on earth. It is extremely unlikely that there is something else involved. Well, that's clearly a…
> Without dramatically upending our understanding of quantum field theory, there is no room for any new influences that could bear on the problem of consciousness.
This kind of intellectual arrogance and blindness is exactly how people believed that the earth is the center of the universe, and that only human beings have souls. There is nothing new to be learned from their dogmatic opinions.