Neuroscience of Consciousness in 2022

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Күн бұрын

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@wp9860 Жыл бұрын

My understanding of IIT isn't much more than what I have gleaned from this lecture. I could very well have it wrong. If I am correct, then IIT is a theory of physics. This point seemed reiterated throughout the lecture. Physics explains behavior. Richard Feynman made a key distinction about this idea in the first of his famous four lectures on physics. He gave three models of gravitation as "explained" by physics. He cited Kepler's law that a planet orbiting the sun sweeps out equal areas of arc in equal times. He gave the Newtonian formulation that is the classical equation of gravity involving the mass of each object, their distance apart, and the gravitation constant that students of physics are taught. The third model I no longer remember but the specifics are unimportant. He then goes on to show that all three models were equivalent. Each could be derived from the other. The next thing he said was what's on point here. All of these models tell us how bodies (masses) behave under the influence of gravity. But, none of them tell us what gravity is. Could it be some wind like force acting on all bodies? No. That would have a directional bias. Even Einstein's notion of the "bending" of space-time was found lacking. What really does that mean, anyway? The distinction that is very critical about our understanding of consciousness is this distinction between behavior and ontology, ontology being the study of the nature or essence of something - what it is. After following the lecturer's chain of causality of perception, say vision - what is the red that I experience that filled one of the lecturer's slides at one point during the presentation? What is that first person experience of red, or pain, or wind in one's face? This is what the the philosopher David Chalmers characterized as, "The hard Problem Of Consciousness." Chalmers distinguished this from the easy problem of consciousness, which deals with all the correlates or causal connections that may (underscore "may") give rise to conscious experience. I am quite confident that Chalmers would say that everything discussed in this lecture addresses only his easy problem of consciousness. IIT and all other theories of consciousness still suffer this explanatory gap. This is not to say that the science presented here isn't impressive. It is. But, we still lack a complete explanation of consciousness.

@SwimGGP 4 ай бұрын

I watched for the first 21 minutes until he started talking about IIT. Had it not been for Koch's overpromoting IIT instead of ART it is unlikely that IIT would have reached the popularity. The speaker would greatly benefit by studying Grossberg's work. I learned more about consciousness 20 years ago than what is presented in this talk.

@SwimGGP 4 ай бұрын

A theory of consciousness is useless unless it teaches you what gives rise to consciousness and why anaesthesia knocks it out. The answer relates to the interaction between the bottom-up and the top-down patterns of neural activity.

@kamalmichael 7 ай бұрын

good grief. If you are really saying ,switching on things in a certain way ,gives you the colour red ? Well lets switch on a similar set of switches in a computer and let it experience the colour red. Better still , lets print out the code , the moment the computer experiences red, so we can claim the code on the paper is experiencing red.