Methodologies for Identifying the Neural Correlates of Consciousness

Rees, Geraint; Frith, Chris

doi:10.1002/9781119132363.ch42

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…There are several conceptual and methodological obstacles in characterizing NCCs (and making inferences upon them) which are beyond the scope of this chapter-there are entire books on the matter, e.g., see (Metzinger, 2000). One of the most critical conceptual issues-after defining what does (and does not) count as correlation-is that mere correlations can hardly provide any solid explanation of the origins of the association (Koch, Massimini, Boly, & Tononi, 2016;Rees & Frith, 2017).…”

Section: From Neural Correlates To Models Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine Consciousness and the Global Workspace Theory

Haqiqatkhah¹

2019

Preprint

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The past century has seen a resurgence of interest in the study of consciousness among scholars of various fields, from philosophy to psychology and neuroscience. Since the birth of Artificial Intelligence in the 1950s, the study of consciousness in machines has received an increasing amount of attention in computer science that gave rise to the new field of machine consciousness (MC). Meanwhile, interdisciplinary research in philosophy, neuroscience, and cognitive science has advanced neurocognitive theories for consciousness. Among many models proposed for consciousness, the Global Workspace Theory (GWT) is a promising theory of consciousness that has received a staggering amount of philosophical and empirical support in the past decades. This dissertation discusses the GWT and its potentials for MC from a mechanistic point of view. To do so, Chapter 1 gives an overview of the philosophical study of consciousness and the history of MC. Then, in Chapter 2, mechanistic explanations and tri-level models are introduced, which provide a robust framework to construct and assay various theories of consciousness. In Chapter 3, neural correlates (and thereby, neurocognitive theories) of consciousness are introduced. This chapter presents the GWT in details and, along with its strengths, discusses the philosophical issues it raises. Chapter 4 addresses two computational implementations of the GWT (viz., IDA and LIDA) which satisfy specific goals of MC. Finally, in Chapter 5, one of the philosophical problems of MC, namely, the Frame Problem (FP), is introduced. It is argued that the architectures based on the GWT are immune to the FP. The chapter concludes that the GWT is capable of "solving" the FP, and discusses its implications for MC and the computational theory of mind. Chapter 6 wraps up the dissertation by reviewing the content.

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Section: From Neural Correlates To Models Of Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%