Leading theory on consciousness at start of 20th century
Behaviourism
What took over from behaviourism
Cognitive psychology
Ecological fallacy
Group data cannot be applied to every individual in this group
3 perspectives on consciousness
- Philosophy: Analytical philosophy, phenomenology (Meaningful terms, what it looks like and feels like)
- Neuroscience: Anatomy and functional processes (Can only show correlation so still a bit hypothetical)
- Cognitive Science: Experimental psychology and computer science
6 features of consciousness (Philosophy)
- Qualitative character: Raw, what if feels like, phenomenal content
- Intentionality: Being about something, Representing something, Aspects of consciousness that can be put into language
-Not to be confused with intentions (Intentionality doesn’t always lie in the power of the individual) - Subjectivity/ privacy: Epistemic stance (Notion that consciousness can only be known from the inside, that our conscious processes are private)
- Unity: Integrated experience- We see things as a complete whole
-Psychedelic drugs reduce unity - Transparency: Like seeing through glasses without being able to recognise them, we dont experience the process giving rise to consciousness
- Dynamic flow: Ever changing process that cannot be stopped
-Paying attention to/ reporting on consciousness changes it
New thought experiment
If you record action potentials and replated these exact signals on their brain
-Would subject experience the same conscious states?
Disciplinary frame of consciousness (reductionistic and neurobiological)
-Dominant research at the moment
-Subjective phenomenon of consciousness cannot be studied within the objective framework of science
3 dimensions for neurobiological theories
- Mode of explanation (Aim):
-Mechanism (Using smaller parts)
-Unification (Looking at bigger picture) - Mechanism of explanation (Tool):
-Causal vs functional (Difference doesnt make sense because functional is also causal - Target of explanation
- Quality vs quantity of consciousness
Access consciousness
Consciousness as availability for information processing
-Thirst has a function to prevent death of organisms
-This info has to be made available to the system
Conclusion of Signorelli’s paper
-How do we explain consciousness
To fully explain what it means to be conscious we first need to know what it means to explain something
2 most common consciousness theories
- Global Workspace Theory: Consciousness arises when info is made available to many systems- Access consciousness and content
- Integrated Information Theory (IIT): Favoured by neurologists, explains consciousness as complexity of info processing (Higher the complexity and the lower the predictability of brain processes, the higher the correlation with consciousness)
-Said to implicitly express some form of panpsychism
Neuroscience of consciousness
-Many masked visual paradigms not investigating consciousness but experimenting reportability
-New tasks done not requiring to report consciousness (Targets posterior rather than frontal areas)
-To understand consciousness look at temporal and parietal lobes (back of brain)
Consciousness explanandum- What you want to explain
-Access
-Content
-Emotion
-Phenomenal features
-Self-conscious
-State
Functions of consciousness
-Attention
-Emotion
-Interoception
-Metacognition
-Perceptual binding
-Self
-Task relevance
-Working memory
Different perspectives on consciousness and their parts of the brain
IIT: Posterior- phenomenal consciousness
GWT: Frontal- Access consciousness
Problem of introspection
-Consciousness is constantly changing- Difficult to empirically inspect
-Paying attention to a conscious state changes it and memory of states will be distorted
Monk case study tasks
-Focus on external sensory perception, episodic memory and bodily sensations
-Formal meditation to reach a state of content-minimised awareness
Results from the monks meditation
-Subjective report: Monk was not aware of any mental content or sensory events, Didn’t experience self, time and space
-Could be classified as a state of disconnected consciousness )Sharp decrease in alpha EEG power and decoupling between dorsal attention network and sensory cortex)
-These states lack internal mentation and associated with interrupted self-related processes
-Stable attentional state associated with increase in connectivity within the dorsal attention network and increase in theta power
Hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers)
-Finding a third-person explanation of the subjective experience
-Based on intuitions/ lack of imagination
-We will never have a reductionist account (Never be able to explain the phenomenal aspects)
-Advocated for natural dualism: Argue reality is composed of 2 sets of irreducible properties of info- Functional/psychological structure of info and the phenomenal structure of consciousness
-Argued for panpsychism: Belief that consciousness is everywhere and that it served the irreducible intrinsic nature that grounds physical properties
-Dual aspect monism (related to panpsychism): Consciousness and physics as 2 aspects of a single underlying reality
IIT assumptions
Consciousness has a physical basis and can be mathematically measured
How consciousness emerges according to IIT
From the way in which info is processed within a system (eg. networks of neurons)- The more connected systems have higher levels of consciousness
Lebniz’s monadology
Machine that can think, feel and perceive like humans
-So big that you can walk around in it and see its mechanical parts but non of these explain perception
-Perception can only be understood by the whole and not the sum of its parts
-No reductionistic account for consciousness therefore we cannot understand it by looking at the cells and neurons
Watson (behaviourist) and consciousness
Said introspection and words like “feeling” had no clear definition and therefore no place in science
Wundt and consciousness
Similar view to Watson (behaviourist) but said at least some perceptions could be observed scientifically
