Michael Graziano: The Attention Schema Theory of Consciousness | Robinson's Podcast

[@beautaillefer276]

So straightforward and logical. What more could you ask for!?

[@ryanhewitt9902]

This was fantastic. I'm always on the lookout for anything new from Graziano!

[@rodrigolabarre]

Great interview. I've listened to two of his audiobooks and he's very clear in his writings. Something I have found funny is that I didn't remember the two areas in the brain Michael names a lot on his writings but the words STS and TPG got really stucked in my brain, lmao. Idk why but it felt like it happened the same for Robinson. Great podcast, I found it by looking for Sean Carroll a few weeks ago and the questions and guests have been great. Keep it up!

[@goramut]

Like a phantom limb, people can think they have something like freedom, or security, or a happy family life. There is a model we can imagine even though these things are a fiction that we can quickly learn are inaccurate. Fantastic talk!

[@coxric]

This is without a doubt one of the most fascinating conversations I’ve ever watched. I’m familiar with AST insofar as I incorporated it into my upcoming novel, but to hear it (and consciousness itself) discussed so thoroughly and with such vigor and humor was a treat. Like his notion of “white” occupying dual realities in a mind, I see how a person under the spell of cable news might carry their own value system in a similarly dual way: One might believe himself to be moral but take decidedly amoral positions when looking through the lens of politics. So envious of the time you spent with Mr Graziano but also thankful your conversation went on for nearly two hours. New subscriber here!

[@endoalley680]

Wow. What a great opening teaser.

[@tiborkoos188]

Graziano is great

[@AdrianBoyko]

The bottom line in science is also “can you win an argument?” it’s just that the rules of argument are more restrictive in science. In this sense, science is an obvious subset of philosophy.

[@cheri238]

Thank you, Richard and Michael Graziano. A fascinating discussion on conscientious, different theories. "Getting Started in Conscientious." The Bat and Nagel were interesting. Music or literature , self- reflective and emotions. Have you read or listened to Dr. Iian McGilchrist's lectures, "The Emissary and His Master," The Divided Brain, and the Making of the Western World, "The Matter With Things," Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World. It will take the rest of my life to gain more knowledge in all these areas. Congratulations to you both on your accomplishments in your fields.

[@albertusmagnus5829]

Consciousness is a precondition to be conscientious? 🙂

[@ili626]

Love this channel

[@alexandermorrow949]

I struggle with the notion that noticing our conscious experience isn't sufficient to establish the existence of consciousness in the world. It may say absolutely nothing about the underlying causal mechanisms that give rise to qualitative feelings, but the fact the world seems a certain way to us is enough to prove there is seeming in this universe. If I think I am in pain, that is sufficient to actually be in pain. Call it a model if you like, but surely it is a uniquely qualitative model. You can create models that don't have this experiential feeling, be it paper maps or computer programs. Paper maps and computer programs model/represent in virtue of the semantic meaning we ascribe to symbols. Our brains model the world experientially in virtue of neurological processes that don't have their meaning imposed from the outside by people.

[@JackKalvan]

Great interview. And I totally agree with Michael. But a few times he mentions phantom limb as the brain building a model of a limb that isn't there. Isn't phantom limb from the brain using the old model of when the limb WAS there? People born without a limb don't have phantom limb, do they?

[@MrStormcrusher]

So according to Michael we have that thing we experience and we call it consciousness, but this is not exactly consciousness. This is only a bundle of information telling your higher cognition it's the consciousness. You might have something that resembles consciousness, but that's not consciousness. How is that not a consciousness? The experience we have we called consciousness. Sure, if you change the definition of what consciousness is, then you can say we don't have consciousness, and it's just our higher cognition telling us we have it but there's still that thing we experience that even he acknowledges. The only difference is - he's saying this experience is not a consciousness, but something resembling consciousness, and that ultimately we have an illusion of consciousness.

[@gr500music6]

Always wondering about the 200 millisecond delay in our visual system and its relationship to consciousness. Seems to require brain modeling at a most basic level by forcing us to live an imagined fifth of a second out in a future we can't see. This is the batter's problem when facing a pitcher who can hurl a baseball at 150 fps. The ball he is looking to hit becomes imaginary/modeled 30 feet out from the plate.

[@kylerodd2342]

It’s because vision is modeled in the brain. Batters can see the ball moving slower than your average person. It’s not imaginary. It’s a dilation of duration dependent on the speed at which the batter is acclimated to. In other words, the better than specify more information in the visual field of perception. Perception isn’t in the mind but out in the world.

[@gr500music6]

Hi. Thanks for the reply, Kyle! My understanding is that there's a hard-wired 200 ms delay between when light falls on the retina and when the optic nerve turns it into data in the brain - and that everyone has this transmission delay. And therefore we can't "see" something immediately, in the physical sense. I'm sure good batters get better at predicting where the ball is going to be around the plate based on where they could actually have last seen it, which is about half way between the mound and the plate at 100 mph - if the above is correct. Ted Williams used to say he could see the stitching on the ball, but then....

[@kylerodd2342]

@@gr500music6 I am skeptical about this idea of “data.” Seems “magical.” I would be inclined to think that visual perception is continuous and not discrete. I’m skeptical to say that our vision operates on a fps basis. Rather that, sure we may see everything at a 200ms delay but we would still see the ball the whole way. And despite the delay the important thing I’m trying to highlight is the relative speed of the perception; how fast or slow the continuous image moves relative to our own actions. This is also why I mentioned dilation of time in terms of perception. I’m thinking in terms of topological stretching of time rather than increasing the rate of fps if that makes sense.

[@AndreasMiller1]

Question: Just because something is simplified, does it have to be wrong. If someone shows a picture of an apple I'm correct saying it's an apple even though it's not a 3D apple grown on a tree.

[@helencahn7293]

It is a matter of survival that we do not perceive all the complexity and poorly defined aspects of the world. We do not have that planet sized brain. I find great wonder in how well nature constructed such a brain as we can form models that have made life possible. No need for superstition or other magic qualities of dualist thinking is necessary to feel that all life is special.

[@jeff__w]

30:31 “I know it's there. Well, actually, there isn’t red or green but there is something. There’s something way more complicated and way more physically specific, this mixture of wavelengths, and then *the brain builds a simplified model of it* and then your cognition gets hold of that model and then you claim that this is absolutely true.” I really liked this brilliant talk by Michael Graziano but I found his resort to “models” unfortunate because it obfuscates something in a field in need of _more_ clarity, not less. The brain _isn’t_ “building a simplified model” of anything-what we call “red” or “green” (or any mixture of wavelengths) ) _is_ what we see, with our particular visual apparatus, when we’re attending to that kind of stimulus. (If we had different visual apparatus, such as that of butterflies that are pentachromatic, we’d probably see it differently.) You can, perhaps, get that more easily when talking about touch: a person feeling the roughness of sandpaper isn’t “building a model,” simplified or otherwise, of the texture of the sandpaper-that’s just the sensation of the sandpaper, given the tactile apparatus of the person as a human being. Similarly, when Graziano says “The phantom limb is the brain building a model of the missing limb…” it clearly is not. The person can experience a missing limb in very much the same way he or she experiences the limb that was once there; the person isn’t “building a model” when his existing limb itches-the itching is a description of the bodily sensation experienced when the nerves enervating from the arm are stimulated in certain ways-and the person can experience the same sensations even in the absence of the arm, giving rise to a “phantom limb” phenomenon. Invoking the “building of a model” adds nothing to the analysis.

[@bofbob1]

It's interesting, but I don't really understand how he avoids the conclusion just being plain ol' solipsism. I seem to recall Bertrand Russell writing about how the expansion of scientific technique that accompanied industrialism had led philosophers and scientists to think mostly in terms of power and hardly ever in terms of truth. Which I suppose is reflected in the quote Michael cites of "all models are wrong, but some are useful". Are we OK just chucking truth out the window as if it didn't matter at all? What's the relationship, if any, between utility and truth? If anyone has any reading recommendations on those topics (for a lay person like me), I'd be much obliged.

[@kylerodd2342]

Start with an overview of Kant and make your way to Peirce and Deleuze. It seems to me that Michael’s theory is just Kantian without the a priori.

[@bofbob1]

@@kylerodd2342 Thank you!

[@mickymao7313]

Attention self awareness

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

Science is learning how our brains rationalize the world around us in every field of study . This strengthens the word as the most precise tool when supported by weighing measurements of objects for value instead of sir bacon version . Then rerun the theoretical model back through and your not bound by some grand unified theory of everything maths.

[@siarez]

Lmgts, so according to Micheal, if you get kicked in the nuts, the excruciating pain that you'll experience is just an "ill-posed problem"? You can't dismiss the hard problem by saying it is ill-posed.

[@johnrichardson7629]

There is evirobmnral awareness and then there is being aware that you are aware. Once you have that, you are conscious. No ifs, ands or buts. That you can subscribe to erroneous folk theories of What It All Means is beside the point.

[@briancaudill6673]

White is the only color that contrasts to all other colors with definition it's the color that shows the dirt , so therefore it's clean

[@CJ-cd5cd]

The brain is a higher level experience IN consciousness (I.e. a cognition). Graziano is using abstractions of consciousness to explain away consciousness. Knowledge of a brain requires a conscious observer; you can’t remove yourself from the primacy of consciousness, imo.

[@stagasg]

Here's a simple heuristic: If I have to use my _imagination,_ that thing *is* imaginary. If I _don't_ have to use my imagination, and the thing is just there, that thing *is* real. Don't let anyone convince you that the thing you experience is not real and the thing they imagine is.

[@nite3399]

Non-functionally simplistic reasoning, all perception is subjective

[@hghbunger927]

What in the ads ... like every four minutes with this video. Makes it hard to follow the conversation.

[@SpecialistQKD]

Cat reminds me of the Egyptians cats

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

This is my realism but I dont think I grow up aware of this without my Christian non emphasis on physicalism. Hard problem for me thinking this way all my life is that I can act out being good if armed gaurds are on our playground. But it looks exactly like intuitively without data learn to be good for the greater good itself and its indistinguishable until we remove the armed gaurd And at this point we can measure wave function collapse as the actor reveals himself. Or the wave of intuitive good guided something other than lectures in your head and not by fear of armed gaurds. This csn be done by intuitive impulsive action as well. The so called magic is more wave like and it isn't a library of data that I csn draw from based on the fact the world around or idea of self is a model I have to be guided by something other than

[@dadsonworldwide3238]

When I correlate a red apple low entropy state with all 5 senses no one is going to fool me with a purple high entropy stare apple as truly being red not purple. If I'm drugged or damaged you can lol

[@gustafa2170]

He defends eliminatvism because he's trying to save materialism. No, I believe I have experiences because I actually do. It is exactly what's there. Your inability to account for it should change your beliefs about what the world is. Consciousness doesn't go away with this handwaving word salad.

[@nyworker]

It's the recursion stupid, as they say. True there is attention but attention has to originate from something much lower or more fundamental than the higher functions of the brain. As an engineer I scream when I listen to these theories.

[@dogayucel]

and your source for that is?

[@nyworker]

​@@dogayucel It's in the lower brain functions that we share with lower evolved creatures.

[@dogayucel]

​@@nyworker And what leads you to believe that our model of attention is the same as that of lower evolved creatures (which is not an actual term btw)? Yes, evolutionarily primitive organisms also exhibit a form of attention, but that's not the foundation of Graziano's consciousness theory.

[@nyworker]

@@dogayucel No, not at all. I understand that the final product gives us our consciousness or attention to the environment, our emotions, our body sense and our own awareness of our own awareness which leads to communication and shared language. However Mind-Body actually starts as embodiment or Mind-In-Body.

[@dogayucel]

@@nyworker so you’re basically saying that this theory is stupid because you believe in an another theory. You don’t have any proofs for your conclusion statement, which is fine, but your argument is certainly not convincing enough to completely dismiss AST