Consciousness: Thursday 25 April 13

Consciousness
Thursday 25 April 13
Consciousness
Describe consciousness in two sentences. We could ask how does the brain make
consciousness?
..or how does consciousness arise in the brain? ..or we could hold off, and ask what this consciousness
word refers to in the rst place
Caution: people tend to mean very different things when talking about consciousness
Two of many meanings: Access Consciousness Phenomenal Consciousness
Information available, or potentially available, for report
Present Experience
Here/NowI
There are other uses of this word too. . .

Topic 1: Access Consciousness
Access Consciousness
Tip-of-the-tongue states illustrate access consciousness

When people distinguish between an Unconscious or Subconscious and a domain of the Conscious, they are using the notion of Access Consciousness
Sigmund Freuds Psycholanalytic theory of the unconscious is not part of the scientic mainstream. Nevertheless, it has been very inuential.
One Scientic Theory of Access Consciousness: Global Workspace Theory
Selective attention controls the spotlight that selects what will be in the bright spot on stage
Backstage is unconscious
The audience is unconscious
In the Theater of Consciousness - a useful theoretical metaphor --- only the bright spot on stage is conscious (because consciousness is very limited in capacity) --- sensory inputs compete for access to the conscious bright spot; so do output plans; --- the "theater stage" corresponds to Working Memory; --- all other parts are unconscious, including longterm memory, the automatic processes of language, and events going on backstage. (The capacity of unconsciousness is 10 enormous.) -- the theater metaphor has been turned into several testable models.
From Carl Carpenter, A New Model of Consciousnes, Sci & Con Rev.2006.
Global Workspace Theory Lots of processing is unconscious, e.g. early stages of word recognition Some products of unconscious processing become globally available (think of these that are in the spotlight) This shows up as massively distributed activation over wide areas of the brain.
Dehaene et al (2001): Presented words that were either masked (i.e. very brief presentation followed by a distracting stimulus) or clearly visible.
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Dehaene et al (2001): Presented words that were either masked (i.e. very brief presentation followed by a distracting stimulus) or clearly visible. Masked words (not consciously seen) activated regions known to be involved in word recognition
Dehaene et al (2001): Presented words that were either masked (i.e. very brief presentation followed by a distracting stimulus) or clearly visible. Words that were clearly seen (consciously) activated much wider networks distributed throughout the brain Results are consistent with Global Workspace Theory
Experimental results:
ERP = Event Related Potential: obtained through EEG measurement (not fMRI)
From Dehaene et al, 2001

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The Global Workspace Theory lies squarely within those cognitivist approaches that understand mind to be best described as information processing. Food for thought: what kinds of facts about a person and their behavior can this kind of approach potentially deal with? Are there aspects to the person they can not deal with?
Subliminal Advertising
In 1957, James Vicary held a news conference to announce that he had developed a powerful new way to inuence consumers: subliminal projection. Messages were ashed very briey on a cinema screen Hungry? Eat Popcorn!, Drink Coca Cola, etc. He claimed amazing effectiveness, and the mainstream media bought into such claims in droves
The results were not obtained using scientic methods, and were not published in scientic journals. In 1962, he admitted the whole thing was a gimmick. But the popular belief in the power of hidden messages lives on, despite everything
Lose weight Seduce others Get rich quick Be effective and successful
Brainwashing Satanic messages in rock music Neuro Linguistic Programming
*NLP is not neuroscience, not linguistics, and not programming

Topic 2: Qualia and the Hard Question
David Chalmers has tried to untangle some of this, by distinguishing between the easy problems of consciousness, and the hard question of consciousness (his Scientic American article is required reading for this week!!!)
Easy Question 1: Why do we have access consciousness to some information and not to other According to Chalmers, issues of access consciousness belong to the set of easy questions about consciousness NOT because the questions are really easy, but because we can imagine how we might some day have a scientic account of them, using the kind of science we have now
Another easy issue in studying consciousness: How does brain activity differ as we move through states of sleep, waking, hypnosis, coma, drugs, madness, etc
Easy Question 2: What are the Neural Correlates of Consciousness?
Why might it be important to recognize brain signatures of different states of consciousness?
These are known as the Neural Correlates of Consciousness.

Neural Correlates of Consciousness, e.g. Christoph Koch
Another potentially easy problem of consciousness:

E.g. we know that some visual information is processed in the dorsal (where) stream, and some in the ventral (what) stream. But we are not aware of any separation of information. How come we are unaware of this apparent separation? (This is known as the binding problem).
We dont (yet) know the full answer to this, but we can imagine nding an adequate answer (e.g. synchronization among distinct brain areas)
Phenomenal Consciousness
The hard question: Why does anything feel like anything at all? How do we incorporate subjective experience into a scientic picture?
Qualia
Redness: what it feels like to see red Pain: what it feels like to feel pain Those aspects of experience which are inherently subjective Qualia seem to play no causal role in any explanation of brains and behaviour we have provided so far Ineffable, intrinsic, private, directly presented to consciousness
Zombies?
Could there be a person who was physically indistinguishable from any of us, but entirely lacking in this subjective world of qualia? Would they be conscious? Or would they be Zombies? What role does this subjective world of raw feeling play?
Introduction to Cognitive Science, COMP 20090
Thought experiment to help you think about qualia:
Mary is a neuroscientist who knows pretty much everything there is to know about colour. But Mary has been kept in a black and white environment all her life.
Q: What do you know about colour that Mary does not????

The Vocabulary of Consciousness Studies includes a lot of overlapping concepts
Phenomenal Consciousness Awareness Attention

3 overlapping concepts, difcult to keep apart
Attention: unilateral neglect

After unilateral brain damage (typically a stroke) some patients display unilateral neglect, in which half of the visual eld is ignored.
3) Hemi-field Neglect as an Atttention Disorder

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Unilateral Neglect
Follows damage to one side of the brain Visual processing is unimpaired, but the patient cannot attend to one side of their visual eld They may apply makeup to one side of the face only ..or ignore food on one side of their plate.

Controlled Versus Automatic Processes
Controlled processes intentional effort; full conscious awareness; Require consume many attentional resources; performed
serially; relatively slow
Automatic Processes or no intention or effort; occur outside of Little conscious awareness; do not require a lot of attention,
performed by parallel processing; fast
Controlled Versus Automatic Processes tasks that start off as controlled Many processes eventually become automatic ones
Automatization The process by which a procedure changes from
being highly conscious to being relatively automatic
Differences between automatic and controlled processes
Read through this list of color names as quickly as possible. Read from right to left across each line Red! ! Blue! ! Yellow! Yellow! Red! ! Green! Blue! ! Green! Red! ! Green Yellow Blue
Differences between automatic and controlled processes Name as quickly as possible the color of ink in which each word is printed. Name from left to right across each line. Red ! ! Yellow! Blue ! Blue ! Red ! Yellow Green Blue! Green! Yellow Green Red
This is known as the Stroop effect.

Who studies consciousness?

Cognitive Scientists/ Neuroscientists Psychiatrists Psychologists Philosophers (phenomenology) Psychoanalysts Contemplative traditions Poets? Physicists????
If science restricts itself to objective accounts of observable entities, can there ever be a science of consciousness? Is consciousness inherently subjective?
If we rule the subjective out of bounds, do we thereby abandon all hope of ever having a science that can address * suffering? * meaning? * value? * feelings? This should appear as something of a (worthwhile) challenge.
One major up-and-coming approach within Cognitive Science sees mind -- NOT as a product of brains, BUT as co-extensive with life itself.
Subject~Object Subjective~Objective Mental~Physical Mind~{body/brain}
The scientic treatment of consciousness is not just another topic. Dealing with this will fundamentally alter our understanding of our selves and the cosmos. Things are just taking off . . .
My own take on the Consciousness issue (or rather, subjective experience) was the subject of a pub talk that is online at http://www.alchemistcafedublin.com/?p=73
Spare a thought for the alchemist!
Cognitive Science has clearly made lots of progress in lots of diverse areas. What important aspects of human experience has it failed to help with? (I suggest 3)
Outstanding Mysteries 1: We spend 1/3 to 1/4 of our lives in this state. We do not know why.
SLEEP
The nature of any satisfactory theory is going to depend on the kind of theory of consciousness you adopt.
Outstanding Mysteries 2: Our understanding of our sexual nature has always been hugely inuenced by the normative concerns of society.
SEX
We have no worthwhile account of the range of variation in desire, nor any theory worth having of how sex affects our lives
Outstanding Mysteries 3: Without a solid theory of mind, we can have no meaningful theory of mental illness
MADNESS
Before the current approach, a common metaphor sometimes employed to treat those whose behavior was odd or eccentric, was to regard them as possessed, or touched. Replacing that with a metaphor of bodily illness is a rst step, but that too is hugely insufcient.
Others?

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Consciousness

Two of many meanings: Access Consciousness Phenomenal Consciousness

Information available, or potentially available, for report

There are other uses of this word too. . .

Topic 1: Access Consciousness

Tip-of-the-tongue states illustrate access consciousness

One Scientic Theory of Access Consciousness: Global Workspace Theory

The audience is unconscious

From Dehaene et al, 2001

Brainwashing Satanic messages in rock music Neuro Linguistic Programming

*NLP is not neuroscience, not linguistics, and not programming

Topic 2: Qualia and the Hard Question

Easy Question 2: What are the Neural Correlates of Consciousness?

Why might it be important to recognize brain signatures of different states of consciousness?

These are known as the Neural Correlates of Consciousness.

Neural Correlates of Consciousness, e.g. Christoph Koch

Another potentially easy problem of consciousness:

Thought experiment to help you think about qualia:

Q: What do you know about colour that Mary does not????

Introduction to Cognitive Science, COMP 20090

The Vocabulary of Consciousness Studies includes a lot of overlapping concepts

Phenomenal Consciousness Awareness Attention

Attention: unilateral neglect

3) Hemi-field Neglect as an Atttention Disorder

Introduction to Cognitive Science, COMP 20090

Introduction to Cognitive Science, COMP 20090

Controlled Versus Automatic Processes

Automatization The process by which a procedure changes from

being highly conscious to being relatively automatic

Differences between automatic and controlled processes

This is known as the Stroop effect.

Who studies consciousness?

Subject~Object Subjective~Objective Mental~Physical Mind~{body/brain}

Spare a thought for the alchemist!

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