Conscious agent networks: Formal analysis and application to cognition

Fields, Chris; Hoffman, Donald D.; Prakash, Chetan; Singh, Manish

doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2017.10.003

Cited by 39 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 120 publications

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“…Hohwy 2015). It would be interesting to see whether such predictive processes (more specifically: their Markov-blanket) define a topological closure operation within a structure that relates sensory inputs to motor outputs (Friston 2013;Hoffman et al 2015, Fields et al 2018. If this could be shown, this would lend support to identify the mechanisms described by statistical decision theory with the "object-generating" process that was represented in terms of the projector calculus in this work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Consciousness and topologically structured phenomenal spaces

Prentner

2019

Consciousness and Cognition

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There are strong reasons to believe that our conscious inner life is structured, suggested both by introspection as well as scientific psychology. One of the most salient structural characteristics of conscious experiences is known as unity of consciousness. In this contribution, we wish to demonstrate how features of experience that pertain to the unity of consciousness could be made precise in terms of mathematical relations that hold between phenomenal objects.Based on phenomenological considerations, we first outline three such features. These are (i) environmental embedding, (ii) the mutual constraint between local and global representations, and (iii) a top-down process of object formation in consciousness. We then introduce a formal model based on the notion of phenomenal space, defined in terms of a set of quasi-elementary and extended entities. We describe the structure of phenomenal space by appealing to mereological and topological concepts, and we outline a projector-based calculus to account for the idea that the structure of phenomenal space is ultimately dynamical.Using the above concepts, one could approach the mind-matter problem by relating environmentally embedded agents to the topologically well-defined objects that result from decompositions of phenomenal space. We conclude our discussion by putting it into the context of some recent theoretical questions that appear in cognitive science and consciousness studies. We opt for the possibility to regard the phenomenon of consciousness not in terms of a singular transition that happens between "brain" and "mind" but rather in terms of a series of transitions between structured layers of experience.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Consciousness and topologically structured phenomenal spaces

Prentner

2019

Consciousness and Cognition

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“…Fields, Hoffman, Prakash, and Singh [ 55 ] offer the fullest account of Hoffman’s model so far, but it is outside the present paper’s scope to review this substantial work fully, beyond noting points of contact with the model proposed here.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modelling Consciousness within Mental Monism: An Automata-Theoretic Approach

Lloyd

2020

Entropy

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Models of consciousness are usually developed within physical monist or dualistic frameworks, in which the structure and dynamics of the mind are derived from the workings of the physical brain. Little attention has been given to modelling consciousness within a mental monist framework, deriving the structure and dynamics of the mental world from primitive mental constituents only—with no neural substrate. Mental monism is gaining attention as a candidate solution to Chalmers’ Hard Problem on philosophical grounds, and it is therefore timely to examine possible formal models of consciousness within it. Here, I argue that the austere ontology of mental monism places certain constraints on possible models of consciousness, and propose a minimal set of hypotheses that a model of consciousness (within mental monism) should respect. From those hypotheses, it would be possible to construct many formal models that permit universal computation in the mental world, through cellular automata. We need further hypotheses to define transition rules for particular models, and I propose a transition rule with the unusual property of deep copying in the time dimension.

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“…I have proposed that reality is an infinite social network of interacting conscious agents: each conscious agent has a set of possible conscious experiences; given its experiences, it can choose how to affect the experiences of other conscious agents . Conscious agents are computationally universal, can cooperate to accomplish complex tasks, and can combine to form new conscious agents . A conscious agent can use some of its experiences as an interface to the vast network of conscious agents.…”

Section: What Is Behind Our Interface?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…7 Conscious agents are computationally universal, can cooperate to accomplish complex tasks, and can combine to form new conscious agents. 8 A conscious agent can use some of its experiences as an interface to the vast network of conscious agents. I call this theory of reality conscious realism.…”

Section: What Is Behind Our Interface?mentioning

confidence: 99%