COGSCI Lecture 2: Consciousness

The Mind-Body Problem

The nature of the mind-body or mind-brain connection; Philosophical question

Monism

Only one kind of substance in the universe

Idealism

Everything —including the material world— is actually the mind; Only mental substances exist (Branch of monism)

Materialism

Everything that exists —including the mind— is actually physical; Only physical substances exist (Branch of monism); Most cognitive scientists hold this view

Dualism

Belief in the existence of both mental and physical substances

Functionalism

holds that we need to emphasize function, to understand how things produce their effects

Intelligence & Physical Symbol System (PSS) Hypothesis

✧ One of central ideas of philosophy of artificial intelligence
✧ Proposed in 1975 by computer scientists Herbert Simon and Allen Newell
✧ Holds that all intelligent behavior essentially involves transforming
physical symbols according to rules
✧ A physical symbol system is basically an abstract characterization of a
digital computer

Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment

Scenario: a person who does not understand Chinese isolated in a room with a book containing detailed instructions for manipulating Chinese symbols. When Chinese text is passed into the room, the person follows the book's instructions to produce Chinese symbols that, to fluent Chinese speakers outside the room, appear to be appropriate responses

✧ Tries to show that the physical symbol system hypothesis is
completely mistaken
✧ Describes a situation in which symbols are manipulated to
produce exactly the right outputs, but where there seems to be
no genuine understanding and no genuine intelligence

Neural correlates of consciousness

Neuroscientists generally hold that consciousness results from the coordinated activity of a population of neurons

Global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness

Consciousness emerges when incoming sensory information is broadcast globally to multiple cognitive systems

Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

Consciousness arises from neural integration and complexity

Two types of consciousness

Access Consciousness

related to accessibIlity of information

The hard problem of consciousness

IIT and the zip and zap technique