Seminar & Panel Discussion: What is consciousness and what is it good for?
Description
1:30-2:30pm: Michael Graziano, PhD; Professor of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute; What is consciousness and what is it good for? (abstract below)
2:30-2:45pm: Short Break
2:45-4:00pm: Short commentaries by Daniel Dennett, Michael Cohen, and Josh Tenenbaum, followed by a panel discussion
Abstract: Neuroscientists understand the basic principles of how the brain processes information. But how does it become subjectively aware of at least some of that information? What is consciousness? In my lab we are developing a theoretical and experimental approach to these questions that we call the Attention Schema theory (AST). The theory seeks to explain how an information-processing machine could act the way people do, insisting it has consciousness, describing consciousness in the ways that we do, and attributing similar properties to others. AST is a theory of how a machine insists it is more than a machine, even though it is not. The theory begins with attention, a mechanistic method of handling data. Some signals are enhanced at the expense of other signals and are more deeply processed. In the theory, the brain does more than just use attention. It also monitors attention. It constructs information – incomplete, schematic, sometimes even inaccurate information – about what attention is, what the consequences of attention are, and what its own attention is doing at any moment. This “attention schema” is used to help control attention, much as the “body schema,” the brain’s internal simulation of the body, is used to help control the body. Based on the information in the attention schema, the brain concludes that it has a non-physical, subjective awareness. Awareness is a caricature of attention. In this theory, we ascribe awareness to ourselves just as we attribute awareness to others. In both cases, its function is to model the process of attention. In this talk I will outline the theory and briefly describe some of the experimental evidence.
Speaker Bio
The Graziano lab focuses on a mechanistic theory of consciousness, the Attention Schema Theory (AST). The theory seeks to explain how an information-processing machine such as the brain can insist it has consciousness, describe consciousness in the magicalist ways that people often do, assign a high degree of confidence to those assertions, and attribute a similar property of consciousness to others in a social context. The contention of the theory is that we are such machines, and we lack an easy internal way of understanding why we claim to be conscious. Introspection -- cognitive access to internal information -- is constrained by the fact that the brain's internal models tend to be schematic and efficient rather than strictly accurate. The theory also seeks to explain how that quirky self model, that leads us to think we have conscious experience, might serve adaptive cognitive functions, like any other simplified but useful model that the brain constructs. AST is notable for its ability to connect to and synergize with other cognitive neuroscience theories of consciousness such as the global workspace theory, higher order thought theory, and the illusionist perspective.