Search results for "Electromagnetic theories of consciousness"

How Can the Protoconsciousness Hypothesis Contribute to Philosophical Theories of Consciousness and the Self?

2014

In his William James lectures on Dream Consciousness, Allan Hobson provides a rich and multi-faceted introduction to state-of-the-art findings from sleep and dream research, as well as an overview of his own wide-ranging contributions to this field. It is no exaggeration to say that his work has shaped contemporary theories of sleep and dreaming like no other. But he has done even more: by showing how his work on dreaming fits into broader theories of consciousness (Hobson et al. 2000) and psychotic wake states (Hobson 1999), he has repeatedly emphasized its implications for the theoretical understanding of consciousness itself. His long-standing willingness to connect the fields of sleep a…

In Situ Representations and Access Consciousness in Neural Blackboard or Workspace Architectures

2018

Phenomenal theories of consciousness assert that consciousness is based on specific neural correlates in the brain, which can be separated from all cognitive functions we can perform. If so, the search for robot consciousness seems to be doomed. By contrast, theories of functional or access consciousness assert that consciousness can be studied only with forms of cognitive access, given by cognitive processes. Consequently, consciousness and cognitive access cannot be fully dissociated. Here, the global features of cognitive access of consciousness are discussed based on neural blackboard or (global) workspace architectures, combined with content addressable or "in situ" representations as …

2020

Abstract This article discusses a hypothesis recently put forward by Kanai et al., according to which information generation constitutes a functional basis of, and a sufficient condition for, consciousness. Information generation involves the ability to compress and subsequently decompress information, potentially after a temporal delay and adapted to current purposes. I will argue that information generation should not be regarded as a sufficient condition for consciousness, but could serve as what I will call a “minimal unifying model of consciousness.” A minimal unifying model (MUM) specifies at least one necessary feature of consciousness, characterizes it in a determinable way, and sho…

SEAI: Social Emotional Artificial Intelligence Based on Damasio’s Theory of Mind

2018

A socially intelligent robot must be capable to extract meaningful information in real-time from the social environment and react accordingly with coherent human-like behaviour. Moreover, it should be able to internalise this information, to reason on it at a higher abstract level, build its own opinions independently and then automatically bias the decision-making according to its unique experience. In the last decades, neuroscience research highlighted the link between the evolution of such complex behaviour and the evolution of a certain level of consciousness, which cannot leave out of a body that feels emotions as discriminants and prompters. In order to develop cognitive systems for s…

How to integrate dreaming into a general theory of consciousness—A critical review of existing positions and suggestions for future research

2011

In this paper, we address the different ways in which dream research can contribute to interdisciplinary consciousness research. As a second global state of consciousness aside from wakefulness, dreaming is an important contrast condition for theories of waking consciousness. However, programmatic suggestions for integrating dreaming into broader theories of consciousness, for instance by regarding dreams as a model system of standard or pathological wake states, have not yielded straightforward results. We review existing proposals for using dreaming as a model system, taking into account concerns about the concept of modeling and the adequacy and practical feasibility of dreaming as a mod…