In this article, the concept of working memory accounts for not consciousness but the accessibility, stability and reportability of certain contents.
For example, when I am reading very carefully, I may not be concentrating on the ambient sounds, my bodily position, my peripheral vision, and the environment of the room. These contents may not have to be retained in working memory in any way as relevant information for the current activity. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that these are unconscious in nature. They can be part of the background of consciousness.
Hence, there is the danger that the author assumes "being available for cognitive manipulation or verbal report" to be synonymous with "being conscious." This is quite an assumption and not one arrived at from the working memory model.
Yeah, binning conscious and unconscious as two categorical classes is probably wrong. There are likely gradations, especially in the context of working memory over time.
> How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?
Through engineering.
This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. Throughout our entire history as a species, we've been building things long, long before we had the tools to understand them. We built bridges and massive cathedrals before we invented geometry. We built and optimized steam engines for a century before we developed the language of fluid dynamics to understand why those designs were optimal.
Engineering very frequently is far ahead of the science needed to explain it.
As far as consciousness goes, personally I think it's an emergent property that will arise on its own when conditions are right. It will take a lot of experimentation to establish the right conditions, and then generations of study to figure out why those conditions were ideal for consciousness to emerge.
Because realistically we can't learn about consciousness with a sample size of one (us). We need to study other consciousnesses to understand the why and hows.
Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works.
Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the phenomena, but creation can definitely happen before we can explain it.
What makes this most interesting from my point of view is that this is a specific enough theory that it might be amenable to experimental investigation.
Consciousness is the echo chamber of the quantum domain, temporally propagating through cognitive technology. Memory and temporal propagation (awareness) give consciousness something to do, which makes it topically interesting and addressable.
The quantum domain has a tremendous information density which scales through entanglement (by the tens of thousands or even millions in our neurons) allowing the ultra high definition holographic experience we (many of us) are familiar with.
When quantum holographic memory is understood, consciousness will be better understood. The qubit is a dead end, this will be the indicator of scientific progress.
Does living working memory bifurcate to logical and physical maps as happens to compute memory on kernel bring up after MMU and core coherence? That being the case an owl may know what it is like to be a bat.
The physical nervous system is one map, and the consciousness the “moment of continuity” (like a “moment of force” in physical systems). The memory (learned inference) is another map. Consciousness animates and iteratively influences in between.
You can fantasize that you are an owl or a bat, doing so well enough can be quite convincing. Remember, wings are arms and hands (look at a skeletal picture, you will see what I mean.)
I think you'd have great difficulty in doing either, as you are imagining what you think it might be like to be one of these animals are are almost certainly unable to encompass what they might feel it to be like; the case of bats is literally the subject of Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
This is what I came here for. Every article or commenter that attempts to deduce the roots of consciousness should first start by defining it. I have yet to see anyone even bother to seriously try.
If I spent all my time trying to figure out the fundamental forces involved in floopityjoop, but refused to ever define exactly what a floopityjoop was, you would not only ignore me you'd probably either laugh at me or feel pity.
I've seen this bouncing around since the early 90s, with New Agey people like Danah Zohar, and probably predates even that. There never seemed to be a whole lot to it; not much more than "well, consciousness is weird, and quantum is weird, therefore consciousness is quantum". Or maybe "well, quantum is trendy, and I'd like to make a buck, therefore..."
Should link to the original article:
https://theconversation.com/consciousness-how-working-memory...
In this article, the concept of working memory accounts for not consciousness but the accessibility, stability and reportability of certain contents. For example, when I am reading very carefully, I may not be concentrating on the ambient sounds, my bodily position, my peripheral vision, and the environment of the room. These contents may not have to be retained in working memory in any way as relevant information for the current activity. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that these are unconscious in nature. They can be part of the background of consciousness. Hence, there is the danger that the author assumes "being available for cognitive manipulation or verbal report" to be synonymous with "being conscious." This is quite an assumption and not one arrived at from the working memory model.
Yeah, binning conscious and unconscious as two categorical classes is probably wrong. There are likely gradations, especially in the context of working memory over time.
We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how.
So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it?
How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?
> How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?
Through engineering.
This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. Throughout our entire history as a species, we've been building things long, long before we had the tools to understand them. We built bridges and massive cathedrals before we invented geometry. We built and optimized steam engines for a century before we developed the language of fluid dynamics to understand why those designs were optimal.
Engineering very frequently is far ahead of the science needed to explain it.
As far as consciousness goes, personally I think it's an emergent property that will arise on its own when conditions are right. It will take a lot of experimentation to establish the right conditions, and then generations of study to figure out why those conditions were ideal for consciousness to emerge.
Because realistically we can't learn about consciousness with a sample size of one (us). We need to study other consciousnesses to understand the why and hows.
Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works.
Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the phenomena, but creation can definitely happen before we can explain it.
https://archive.ph/VZ43n
What makes this most interesting from my point of view is that this is a specific enough theory that it might be amenable to experimental investigation.
It does not.
Consciousness is the echo chamber of the quantum domain, temporally propagating through cognitive technology. Memory and temporal propagation (awareness) give consciousness something to do, which makes it topically interesting and addressable.
The quantum domain has a tremendous information density which scales through entanglement (by the tens of thousands or even millions in our neurons) allowing the ultra high definition holographic experience we (many of us) are familiar with.
When quantum holographic memory is understood, consciousness will be better understood. The qubit is a dead end, this will be the indicator of scientific progress.
Does living working memory bifurcate to logical and physical maps as happens to compute memory on kernel bring up after MMU and core coherence? That being the case an owl may know what it is like to be a bat.
The physical nervous system is one map, and the consciousness the “moment of continuity” (like a “moment of force” in physical systems). The memory (learned inference) is another map. Consciousness animates and iteratively influences in between.
You can fantasize that you are an owl or a bat, doing so well enough can be quite convincing. Remember, wings are arms and hands (look at a skeletal picture, you will see what I mean.)
I think you'd have great difficulty in doing either, as you are imagining what you think it might be like to be one of these animals are are almost certainly unable to encompass what they might feel it to be like; the case of bats is literally the subject of Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
Woo!
Do you have any references for these claims?
I’m also curious how you define consciousness.
> I’m also curious how you define consciousness.
This is what I came here for. Every article or commenter that attempts to deduce the roots of consciousness should first start by defining it. I have yet to see anyone even bother to seriously try.
If I spent all my time trying to figure out the fundamental forces involved in floopityjoop, but refused to ever define exactly what a floopityjoop was, you would not only ignore me you'd probably either laugh at me or feel pity.
Very interesting. Do you have any links to material along these lines?
It conjecture, but in my opinion there's something about our brain based on the evidence.
Three pounds of meat in one human brain can do things an entire datacenter of AI can't. Like fold clothing.
> Consciousness is the echo chamber of the quantum domain
[citation needed]
I've seen this bouncing around since the early 90s, with New Agey people like Danah Zohar, and probably predates even that. There never seemed to be a whole lot to it; not much more than "well, consciousness is weird, and quantum is weird, therefore consciousness is quantum". Or maybe "well, quantum is trendy, and I'd like to make a buck, therefore..."
FWIW the only place I EVER see the phrase "citation needed" is on HN. That's not a good or a bad thing: it's simply an observation.
Pretty sure it originated with the Wikipedia annotation. See e.g. https://xkcd.com/285/ from 2007.
With apologies to the above post if I'm wrong, I've seen it as a polite way of saying, "bullshit."
> I've seen it as a polite way of saying, "bullshit."
Only if they can't provide a reliable citation.