Consciousness

Question 1

Are there minds according to Behaviourism?

Answer 1

Maybe.

But only behaviour should be studied and “mind-talk” should thus be translated into behavior to be studied

Question 2

Are there minds according to computationalism?

Answer 2

Yes.

And they can be implemented anywhere

Question 3

Are there minds according to connectionism?

Answer 3

Yes.

And for what we know now they depend on brain-linke structures

Question 4

Are thre minds according to predictive processing?

Answer 4

Yes.

And they are dependent on brains that build models of the world (and update them based on prediction error)

Question 5

What is the attentional blink?

Answer 5

A phenomenon or experiment where the participant fails to detect a second target stimulus when it has been presented in a close temporal proximity to the first target.
This effect of missing the second stimuli often only occurs when the first target has been successfully detected.
* When T2 appears within a short interval (about 200-500 milliseconds) after T1, the likelihood of detecting T2 drops significantly. This interval is referred to as the “blink” period.

Question 6

What is conscious awareness? (Related to the attentional blink)

Answer 6

The attentional blink highlights the interplay between attention and conscious perception. Even when T2 is presented and enters the sensory system, it may not reach conscious awareness due to the attentional limitations imposed by processing T1.

Question 7

What is a contrastive analysis?

Answer 7

Contrastive analysis is a research method used to pinpoint the differences between conscious and unconscious brain states. It involves comparing brain activity associated with conscious experiences to brain activity when the same stimuli are not consciously perceived.
* The brain activity of whether the stimuli was perceived or not is recorded either by fMRI, EEG or MEG.

Question 8

Which parts of the brain is more active when we consciously see a stimuli than when we haven’t?

Answer 8

The fronto-parietal area is where we see most as well as the visual cortex.

Question 9

Who is Thomas Nagel?

Answer 9

Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher from the 1930’s, and is most known for his critique of material reductionist accounts of the mind in relation to his book “What it is like to be a bat”

Question 10

What was Thomas Nagels belief of consciousness?

Answer 10

Nagel’s point is that consciousness inherently involves subjectivity. To be conscious is to have experiences that have a specific, qualitative character from the first-person perspective - “Something it is like”

EXAMPLE: In his paper, Nagel uses the example of a bat to illustrate his point. He argues that even if we understand all the physical processes and behaviors of a bat, we cannot fully comprehend what it is like to be a bat. The bat’s experience of the world, particularly through echolocation, is fundamentally different from human experience, highlighting the subjective nature of consciousness.

Nagel’s critique suggests that any purely reductive or functional account of the mind will be incomplete because it leaves out the essential feature of consciousness: the subjective experience.

Question 11

What is Thomas Nagels belief of machines having consciousness?

Answer 11

Nagel points out that functional and intentional descriptions could theoretically apply to robots or automata that behave like humans but lack any subjective experience. This means such descriptions are insufficient for capturing what it means to be conscious.

Nagel’s critique suggests that any purely reductive or functional account of the mind will be incomplete because it leaves out the essential feature of consciousness: the subjective experience.

Question 12

What are the two kinds of consciousness and how are they defined?

Answer 12

Phenomenal consciousness:
* Related to the content (Semantics)
* Related to the “feel”
* Does not fit an input-output model

Access
* Availability to other systems, e.g. reasoning, memory, vision etc.
* Fits and input-output model.

Question 13

Is conscious experience possible/expected in Behaviourism?

Answer 13

Strategy: Translate metal words into behaviour: X desires P e.g: If X is in the vicinity of P, X will try to obtain P

Issue: How do we operationalise conscious experience? (How would it manifest in behaviour?)
* Behaviourism struggles with operationalizing conscious experience because it focuses solely on observable behavior. Conscious experience, by definition, involves subjective phenomena (qualia) that are not directly observable. Thus, behaviorism has difficulty explaining how subjective experiences manifest in behavior without reducing them to mere behavioral patterns

Question 14

Is conscious experience possible/expected in Computationalism?

Answer 14

Strategy: Information processing task

Issue: Is conscious exprience information processing? Does it fit into an input-output model? Why would there be something it is like to process information?
* Computational models often rely on input-output frameworks, which may not account for the intrinsic quality of subjective experience

Question 15

Is conscious experience possible/expected in Connectionism?

Answer 15

Strategy: Build brain-like networks can emulate mindful behaviour
* Example: Creating artificial neural networks that can perform tasks similar to human cognition

Issue: Even if we accept that semantics emerge from the distributed networks as high-dimensional vectors, how and why would a brain-like model instantiate conscious experience?
* While connectionist models can explain how semantic understanding might emerge from neural activity, they do not inherently explain how or why these processes would give rise to conscious experience.
* it’s unclear how and why these models would have subjective experiences, as opposed to merely simulating them.

Question 16

Is conscious experience possible/expected in Predictive processing?

Answer 16

**Strategy: ** Model the mind as hierachical structure doing information processing
* Example: The brain continuously generates and updates predictions about incoming sensory information to minimize prediction error.

Issue: Why is subjective experience bound to arise from hierrachical information processing, even if these model are created from a first-person perspective?
* They still face the challenge of explaining why these processes should be accompanied by subjective experience. The first-person perspective remains a crucial gap—why does hierarchical information processing result in a qualitative, phenomenal aspect of consciousness?

Question 17

What is the cognitive domain?

Answer 17

Where all information is being processed and what enables us to do things, but not necessarily experienced or conscious of us doing it.

E.g. moving your arm or scratching you chin, it is something we do but we might not be conscious of us doing it.

Question 18

What is the phenomenal domain?

Answer 18

The peculiar phenomenal aspect of consciousness.
The “whatit is like” from the first person perspective - to be conscious.

This is where all our conscious actions etc. happens

Question 19

Explain the deflationary view on consciousness

Answer 19

What it is like to be conscious is merely how our mental life appears to us.

Experimentally, if an individual denies experiencing anything, we should conclude the individual was not conscious of the stimulus.

Here we have access to all of our consciousness however, it is a small part of our whole system, but non-the less we have access to all of it if needed/wanted.

Question 20

Explain the inflationary view on consciousness

Answer 20

Explaining the phenomenal domain is the real task. And it is a difficult task

The cognitive domain is driven mainly by access consciousness and the phenomenal domain is driven by phenomenal consciousness.

Here we do not have access to all of out phenomenoal or consciousness as some of it lies outside of our grasp. However simply because we aren’t actively conscious of something, doesn’t mean it hasn’t reaced our consciousness.
* EXAMPLE: Think back to the attentional blink, simply because the participant didn’t report the T2 stimuli, doesn’t mean they didn’t see it, but they simply isn’t consciously aware of it and therefore didn’t report it even if their unconsiousness did register it. (Something along those lines)

Question 21

Consciousness is an epiphenomenon?

Answer 21

Epiphenomenon: A secondary phenomenon is one that occurs alongside a primary phenomenon (the mind’s functional workings), but has no causal connection to world, i.e. conscious experience is a by-product of the mind

Question 22

Do we need to be able to report to be conscious?

Answer 22

Some may argue that even though we in the attentional blink experiment, did see number five or second stimuli, but did not say it mean that we aren’t conscious?
Inattentional blindness

Question 23

The crux of the matter - Paradigms conscious experience?

Sum up of the model and why the paradigms does not explain consciousness

Answer 23

The paradigms all try to explain goal-directed behaviour and cognitive function, but the struggle to account for phenomenal consciousness - the “what it is like” aspect of experience.

The core issue
* The core issue is understanding the function of phenomenal consciousness.
* Why does subjective experience arise at all?
* The paradigms mentioned typically focus on explaining behavior and cognitive functions without necessarily providing an answer to why phenomenal consciousness exists.