Perceptual Consciousness and Cognitive Access from the Perspective of Capacity-Unlimited Working Memory

Theories of consciousness divide over whether perceptual consciousness is rich or sparse in specific representational content and whether it requires cognitive access. These two issues are often treated in tandem because of a shared assumption that the representational capacity of cognitive access is fairly limited. Recent research on working memory challenges this shared assumption. This paper argues that abandoning the assumption undermines post-cue-based “overflow” arguments, according to which perceptual conscious is rich and does not require cognitive access. Abandoning it also dissociates the rich/sparse debate from the access question. The paper then explores attempts to reformulate overflow theses in ways that don’t require the assumption of limited capacity. Finally, it discusses the problem of relating seemingly non-probabilistic perceptual consciousness to the probabilistic representations posited by the models that challenge conceptions of cognitive access as capacity-limited

Concepts of visual consciousness and their measurement.

Although visual consciousness can be manipulated easily (e.g., by visual masking), it is unresolved whether it can be assessed accurately with behavioral measures such as discrimination ability and self-report. Older theories of visual consciousness postulated a sensory threshold and distinguished between subjective and objective thresholds. In contrast, newer theories distinguish among three aspects: phenomenal, access, and reflexive consciousness. This review shows that discrimination ability and self-report differ in their sensitivity to these aspects. Therefore, both need to be assessed in the study of visual consciousness

Quotational higher-order thought theory

© 2015. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Due to their reliance on constitutive higher-order representing to generate the qualities of which the subject is consciously aware, I argue that the major existing higher-order representational theories of consciousness insulate us from our first-order sensory states. In fact on these views we are never properly conscious of our sensory states at all. In their place I offer a new higher-order theory of consciousness, with a view to making us suitably intimate with our sensory states in experience. This theory relies on the idea of ‘quoting’ sensory qualities, so is dubbed the ‘quotational higher-order thought theory’. I argue that it can capture something of the idea that we are ‘acquainted’ with our conscious states without slipping beyond the pale for naturalists, whilst also providing satisfying treatments of traditional problems for higher-order theories concerning representational mismatch. The theory achieves this by abandoning a representational mechanism for mental intentionality, in favour of one based on ‘embedding’Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Consciousness Without Constraint: Open String Theory - One Loose End

Utilizing string and chaos theory as a template, dreaming-waking consciousness opens to the collective unconscious where dreams access universal information in a metaphorical black hole of the psyche. This experiential study of crossover theories, scientific disciplines, and unified consciousness illustrates how insights unconstrained by preconceptions are developed at the most basic levels of awareness. Physics overlaps with concepts of immortality and infinity. Insights emerge in a fluid, unconstrained dimension of consciousness. An Alice in Wonderland allegory analogizes the process of discovering truths from other planes. Alice's curiosity impels her to decode scientific metaphors and clues, spinning and unfolding them into a quantum realm of branes and brains. As an investigative tool, vignettes illustrate Visual Associative Recognition Memory based on entangled quantum consciousness. In this dream-science narrative, logic and insight combine to pursue the proverbial "one loose end," while surface research produces applications that may help trigger insights relevant to theories of string and consciousness

Neuroscience of consciousness: cognition, physics and philosophy of decoding the human brain: Neurociencia de la conciencia: cognición, física y filosofía de la descodificación del cerebro humano

The biophysical roots of consciousness have been the subject of an ongoing debate for centuries. In order to understand the data, create novel experimental methodologies, and increase our ability to investigate this phenomenon of interest, the proposed theories must lead to empirical, repeatable, and testifiable studies. Contemporary theories of consciousness often do not relate to one another, and none of them has been distinguished as complete or proven empirically so far. The aim of this study is an investigation into some of the possible approaches that could merge neuronal brain activity with the laws of physics and some philosophical principles that may be associated with the emergence of consciousness in the first place. As a result, the relationship between consciousness and attention, working memory, access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness is evaluated. The contrast between conscious and unconscious perception, perceived visual inputs and subliminal ones is investigated to facilitate a discussion about the neural correlates of self-awareness. Consciousness as a global broadcast of information to integrated brain modules is being considered, as well as viewing a brain as a parallel information processor linked to attention inputs. Relationship between consciousness and attention is explored, as well as attention without consciousness and vice versa. Implications and shortcomings of the proposed approaches based on brain science, philosophy and quantum physics are also covered to shed some more light on this ever present experience of being conscious that everyone seems to self-witness but no one manages to adequately explain. &nbsp

The psychological origins of the Hard Problem: How our consciousness is shaping the neuroscience of consciousness

The field of consciousness studies contains a substantial number of coexisting neurocognitive theories of consciousness. These theories vary in their initial definitions of what consciousness is, biasing scientific methods and measurement of the phenomenon, resulting in a divided science. Definitions of consciousness tend to vary along two lines: Either consciousness is seemingly reducible to physical and functional processes, indicating what is called access consciousness; or it constitutes a seemingly irreducible experience, indicating phenomenal consciousness. These two types of definitions correspond to two opposing camps on what is referred to as the hard problem of consciousness, also called the explanatory gap. While much effort has been spent by each camp either criticizing or defending the hard problem, little work has been done to explain why the two camps vary along these lines. In other words, there is a gap between our positions on the explanatory gap, which I label the “meta-gap”. In the current paper I contribute to bridging the meta-gap by attempting to explain and reconcile this basic disagreement in the field. By performing targeted literature searches, I answer seven research questions which serve as stepping stones to take us from problematic features of the field, to individual differences between researchers as a reason for these problems. My analysis of these individual differences results in two hypothesized psychological constructs: Internal and external explanatory focus. I conclude by indicating that solving the meta-gap involves becoming aware of our individual dispositions towards choosing different explanatory targets for consciousness.Masteroppgave i psykologiMAPSYK360INTL-HFINTL-KMDINTL-SVINTL-JUSMAPS-PSYKINTL-MNINTL-MEDINTL-PSY

A Design of Global Workspace Model with Attention: Simulations of Attentional Blink and Lag-1 Sparing

There are many developed theories and implemented arti ̄cial systems in the area of machine consciousness, while none has achieved that. For a possible approach, we are interested in implementing a system by integrating di®erent theories. Along this way, this paper proposes a model based on the global workspace theory and attention mechanism, and providing a fundamental framework for our future work. To examine this model, two experiments are conducted. The ̄rst one demonstrates the agent's ability to shift attention over multiple stimuli, which accounts for the dynamics of conscious content. Another experiment of simulations of attentional blink and lag-1 sparing, which are two well-studied e®ects in psychology and neuroscience of attention and consciousness, aims to justify the agent's compatibility with human brains. In summary, the main contributions of this paper are (1) Adaptation of the global workspace framework by separated workspace nodes, reducing unnecessary computation but retaining the potential of global availability; (2) Embedding attention mechanism into the global workspace framework as the competition mechanism for the consciousness access; (3) Proposing a synchronization mechanism in the global workspace for supporting lag-1 sparing effect, retaining the attentional blink effect

Presentational Character and Higher Order Thoughts

Experiences, by definition, have phenomenal character. But many experiences have a specific type of phenomenal character: presentational character. While both visual experience and conscious thought make us aware of their objects, only in visual experience do objects seem present before the mind and available for direct access. I argue that Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories of consciousness have a particularly steep hill to climb in accommodating presentational character

Prevailing theories of consciousness are challenged by novel cross-modal associations acquired between subliminal stimuli

While theories of consciousness differ substantially, the ‘conscious access hypothesis’, which aligns consciousness with the global accessibility of information across cortical regions, is present in many of the prevailing frameworks. This account holds that consciousness is necessary to integrate information arising from independent functions such as the specialist processing required by different senses. We directly tested this account by evaluating the potential for associative learning between novel pairs of subliminal stimuli presented in different sensory modalities. First, pairs of subliminal stimuli were presented and then their association assessed by examining the ability of the first stimulus to prime classification of the second. In Experiments 1-4 the stimuli were word-pairs consisting of a male name preceding either a creative or uncreative profession. Participants were subliminally exposed to two name-profession pairs where one name was paired with a creative profession and the other an uncreative profession. A supraliminal task followed requiring the timed classification of one of those two professions. The target profession was preceded by either the name with which it had been subliminally paired (concordant) or the alternate name (discordant). Experiment 1 presented stimuli auditorily, Experiment 2 visually, and Experiment 3 presented names auditorily and professions visually. All three experiments revealed the same inverse priming effect with concordant test pairs associated with significantly slower classification judgements. Experiment 4 sought to establish if learning would be more efficient with supraliminal stimuli and found evidence that a different strategy is adopted when stimuli are consciously perceived. Finally, Experiment 5 replicated the unconscious cross-modal association achieved in Experiment 3 utilising non-linguistic stimuli. The results demonstrate the acquisition of novel cross-modal associations between stimuli which are not consciously perceived and thus challenge the global access hypothesis and those theories embracing it