Attention Schema Theory of Consciousness

[Magical Realist]

Very enlightening podcast interview with Dr. Michael Graziano on what consciousness is and why it is important to us. Strips away assumptions about the hard problem and dualism to reveal consciousness as an attention schema or model we build in the brain about ourselves and other minds. Promising future applications to the creation of conscious AI. Well worth a listen..

https://player.fm/series/the-consciousne...l-graziano

[Syne]

That's called theory of mind.

[C C]

Very enlightening podcast interview with Dr. Michael Graziano on what consciousness is and why it is important to us. Strips away assumptions about the hard problem and dualism to reveal consciousness as an attention schema or model we build in the brain about ourselves and other minds. Promising future applications to the creation of conscious AI. Well worth a listen..

https://player.fm/series/the-consciousne...l-graziano

But the AST is not a theory of how the brain has experiences. It is a theory of how a machine makes claims – how it claims to have experiences – and being stuck in a logic loop, or captive to its own internal information, it cannot escape making those claims.

So the hard problem of consciousness actually remains untouched (detour around phenomenal experience as usual). Cognitive organisms and machines are in effect treated as p-zombies (regardless of how that may be obscured by assorted techno-babble). Among the items explained is how zombies can be reporting or making claims about manifestations in senses, feelings, and thoughts even if such was fiction.

In the old days, certain strands of behaviorism took a similar approach (ignore the internal states because they're metaphysics -- unaccountable by science). What's changed here is that researchers and theorists have moved from outside to inside the cognitive apparatus to depict what's taking place in terms of causal relationships and systemic blueprints. With the old "pretend the inexplicable isn't there" methodology being revived under that camouflage. As well, it covers up and eludes the embarrassment that was arguably more acknowledged back in the days of the positivism era. Once metaphysical realism returned, some science spokes-people became a touch more emboldened that science could eventually account for everything.

AST is consistent with the perspective called illusionism (Frankish, 2016). The term “illusion,” however, may have connotations that are not quite apt for this theory. Three issues with that label arise. First, many people equate an illusion with something dismissable or harmful. If we can see through the illusion, we are better off. Yet in the AST, the attention schema is a well-functioning internal model. It is not normally dysregulated or in error. Second, most people tend to equate an illusion with a mirage. A mirage falsely indicates the presence of something that actually does not exist. If consciousness is an illusion, then by implication nothing real is present behind the illusion. There is no “there” there. But in the AST, that is not so. Consciousness is a good, if detail-poor, account of something real: attention. We do have attention, a physical and mechanistic process that emerges from the interactions of neurons. When we claim to be subjectively conscious of something, we are providing a slightly schematized version of the literal truth. There is, indeed, a “there” there. Third, an illusion is experienced by something. Those who call consciousness an illusion are extremely careful to define what they mean by “experience” so as to avoid circularity. But the AST is not a theory of how the brain has experiences. It is a theory of how a machine makes claims – how it claims to have experiences – and being stuck in a logic loop, or captive to its own internal information, it cannot escape making those claims. In the theory, an attention schema did not evolve so that we could walk around claiming to have consciousness. Instead it evolved because it has fundamental adaptive uses in perception, cognition, and social interaction.

[Magical Realist]

That's called theory of mind.

An attention schema is not a theory of mind. It does not happen at the conceptual level of thoughts and beliefs that are learned. It is constructed at the level of information processing like perception and memory are.

"In the AST, subjective experience, or consciousness, or the ineffable mental possession of something, is a simplified construct that is a fairly good, if detail poor, description of the act of attending to something. The internal model of attention is not constructed at a higher cognitive level. It is not a cognitive self theory. It is not learned. Instead, it is constructed beneath the level of cognition and is automatic, much like the internal model of the apple and the internal model of the self. You cannot help constructing those models in those particular ways. In that sense, one could call the attention schema a perception-like model of attention, to distinguish it from a higher-order cognitive model such as a belief or an intellectually reasoned theory."----
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory

[Syne]

Conceptual level? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals

[Magical Realist]

Conceptual level? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals

Theory of mind as you cited it has to do with humans not animals.

"The existence of theory of mind in animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called "mind-reading""

[Magical Realist]

So the hard problem of consciousness actually remains untouched (detour around phenomenal experience as usual).

The trick this time seems to be a furtive substitution of consciousness with attention, reducing such to a sort of roving spotlight over otherwise unconscious processes. But attention itself, as the experience of phenomenal qualities and states, is not explained. Or rather is just assumed to be a matter of machine processing like the processes it highlights. The gap between the brain function and the actual private experience of a qualia is not bridged and is left as is. Somehow our telling ourselves a story of being conscious of the color red creates the illusion of the red sensation in our brains.

[C C]

So the hard problem of consciousness actually remains untouched (detour around phenomenal experience as usual).

The trick this time seems to be a furtive substitution of consciousness with attention, reducing such to a sort of roving spotlight over otherwise unconscious processes. But attention itself, as the experience of phenomenal qualities and states, is not explained. Or rather is just assumed to be a matter of machine processing like the processes it highlights. The gap between the brain function and the actual private experience of a qualia is not bridged and is left as is. Somehow our telling ourselves a story of being conscious of the color red creates the illusion of the red sensation in our brains.

IOW, magic. In the contemporary era, it has always been a situation of "special" processes and mechanistic relationships conjuring appearances not constituted of properties that existed beforehand (including that very capacity of an appearance to "show" itself period, to a roving cognitive procedure establishing contact with the information operations).

Transferring such conjuring to a supposedly different set of word descriptions doesn't eliminate this "magic" that the corresponding biological substrate or machine substrate depends upon to make appearances (now called illusion) possible. The mainstream understanding of matter in the physical sciences lacks precursor characteristics that could explain the emergence of appearances in a non-magical or non-brute manner. (Which is to say, the power to "show existing stuff as anything at all" as opposed to the "not even nothingness" that normally pervades the universe in terms of what matter is to itself... the conventional anti-panphenomenalism conception of matter.)

[Syne]

Conceptual level? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals

Theory of mind as you cited it has to do with humans not animals.

"The existence of theory of mind in animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called "mind-reading""

Animals might have theory of mind, as they can certainly anticipate others and do things like only steal food when not being looked at. Both imply some notion or instinct telling them what the possible reaction is likely to be. And if a rudimentary theory of mind exists in animals, it's the basis for the more complex form in humans. If you think this kind of anticipation is "constructed at a higher cognitive level", that seems unjustified.

[confused2]

Let us look at someone who is an expert in some (almost any) field. Take tennis (for example). Do professional tennis players think "She's gong to send the ball back to this side of the court."? My guess is that their 'thinking' is in the language of their field of expertise. Are chess masters thinking "two squares forward and one to either side."? Certainly as an expert (my claim) in circuit design my analysis was in the native language of circuit analysis.

By the very nature of philosophy the native language of philosophy is in(for example) English. Anything in (western) philosophy that can't be spoken or written (for example in English) simply doesn't exist leading to the self-fulfilling analysis that language is the (only) key to the door that leads to 'higher thoughts'.

I may have to regroup before looking at the similarities and differences between 'higher thoughts' and anything that might be called 'expertise'.