💡
Week 2
Date @13/01/2025 → 17/01/2025
courses 💡 Consciousness, free will and real-world-behaviour
Week 2:
- Empirical approaches to consciousness
Table of contents
Hoorcollege 1: 13-01-25
1. The science of consciousness
1. The problems of consciousness
2. Definition of consciousness
3. Different from other scientific endeavors
4. Unconscious ‘zombie’ systems
2. Studying consciousness
1. The contrastive approach
2. States vs contents
3. A cookbook recipe
1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3: classic studies on semantic processing
4. Challenges to contrastive approach
1. Consciousness manipulation
2. Consciousness measure
3. Example: blindsight
4. Blindsight-like behavior
5. The measurement problem
Hoorcollege 2: 15-01-2025
1. Neuroanatomy
1. Subcortical structures
2. Brainstem
3. Thalamus
4. Primary visual cortex
5. Prefrontal cortex vs posterior cortical hot zone
Week 2 1
, 6. Feedforward vs. recurrent processing
8. Global ignition or local recurrency
2. Competing theories
1. Global neuronal workspace theory
2. Recurrent processing thoory and integrated information theory
3. Neurophysiology
1. Gamma synchrony
2. ERP: late positivity vs early negativity
3. Activated EEG
Practice questions
Hoorcollege 1: 13-01-25
1. The science of consciousness
1. The problems of consciousness
problems of other minds: impossible to know how another being’s/person experience is like
you can’t know if other people have consciousness
qualia: is-likeness of conscious experience, raw feeling, subjective first-person view
hard to describe or explain how it feels
what does it feel like to see red
explanatory gap: How can you link subjective experiences with workings in the brain → Hard
problem of consciousness
2. Definition of consciousness
When it is ‘like-something’ consciousness is present
Whatever exists from a first-person perspective, when someone is not in a dreamless sleep
Any experience (any modality) can be part of consciousness
3. Different from other scientific endeavors
consciousness is subjective (1st person) and cannot be observed from the outside (3rd person)
no unequivocal link with observable functions
even if you know everything about the functions of a system, it may be unclear whether the system is
conscious
Week 2 2
, 4. Unconscious ‘zombie’ systems
Philosophical zombies:
physically identical: behaves just like us, but lacking conscious experience
if philosophical zombies were possible → consciousness is non-material (follows from the premise)
Dualism: consciousness is nonphysical, seperate from the brain, and thus beyond the scope of the
sciences
Materialisme: consciousness is physical and can be understood by understanding the physical
workings of the brain and body
The zombie within: unconscious zombie systems
idea: dorsal stream without consciousness
but this distinction between ventral and dorsal strea is quite outdated
blindsight: no problem with eyes but in teh brain, can still avid obstacles even though he reports that
he is not conscious of obstacles
‘Yes It can’-study: suggest that any cognitive function can be performed unconscious
2. Studying consciousness
1. The contrastive approach
Most followed in studying neuroscience
isolate process: compare situations with this process and without
Week 2 3
, difference = mechanism/marker/correlates
Knowing this does not close the explanatory gap or offer a solution to the hard problem
You know which processes are involved in consciousness but does not explain how or why
2. States vs contents
difference in state
states enabling consciousness (awake) or not (dreamless sleep)
difference is big: to extreme to just explain consciousness
Week 2 4
Week 2
Date @13/01/2025 → 17/01/2025
courses 💡 Consciousness, free will and real-world-behaviour
Week 2:
- Empirical approaches to consciousness
Table of contents
Hoorcollege 1: 13-01-25
1. The science of consciousness
1. The problems of consciousness
2. Definition of consciousness
3. Different from other scientific endeavors
4. Unconscious ‘zombie’ systems
2. Studying consciousness
1. The contrastive approach
2. States vs contents
3. A cookbook recipe
1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3: classic studies on semantic processing
4. Challenges to contrastive approach
1. Consciousness manipulation
2. Consciousness measure
3. Example: blindsight
4. Blindsight-like behavior
5. The measurement problem
Hoorcollege 2: 15-01-2025
1. Neuroanatomy
1. Subcortical structures
2. Brainstem
3. Thalamus
4. Primary visual cortex
5. Prefrontal cortex vs posterior cortical hot zone
Week 2 1
, 6. Feedforward vs. recurrent processing
8. Global ignition or local recurrency
2. Competing theories
1. Global neuronal workspace theory
2. Recurrent processing thoory and integrated information theory
3. Neurophysiology
1. Gamma synchrony
2. ERP: late positivity vs early negativity
3. Activated EEG
Practice questions
Hoorcollege 1: 13-01-25
1. The science of consciousness
1. The problems of consciousness
problems of other minds: impossible to know how another being’s/person experience is like
you can’t know if other people have consciousness
qualia: is-likeness of conscious experience, raw feeling, subjective first-person view
hard to describe or explain how it feels
what does it feel like to see red
explanatory gap: How can you link subjective experiences with workings in the brain → Hard
problem of consciousness
2. Definition of consciousness
When it is ‘like-something’ consciousness is present
Whatever exists from a first-person perspective, when someone is not in a dreamless sleep
Any experience (any modality) can be part of consciousness
3. Different from other scientific endeavors
consciousness is subjective (1st person) and cannot be observed from the outside (3rd person)
no unequivocal link with observable functions
even if you know everything about the functions of a system, it may be unclear whether the system is
conscious
Week 2 2
, 4. Unconscious ‘zombie’ systems
Philosophical zombies:
physically identical: behaves just like us, but lacking conscious experience
if philosophical zombies were possible → consciousness is non-material (follows from the premise)
Dualism: consciousness is nonphysical, seperate from the brain, and thus beyond the scope of the
sciences
Materialisme: consciousness is physical and can be understood by understanding the physical
workings of the brain and body
The zombie within: unconscious zombie systems
idea: dorsal stream without consciousness
but this distinction between ventral and dorsal strea is quite outdated
blindsight: no problem with eyes but in teh brain, can still avid obstacles even though he reports that
he is not conscious of obstacles
‘Yes It can’-study: suggest that any cognitive function can be performed unconscious
2. Studying consciousness
1. The contrastive approach
Most followed in studying neuroscience
isolate process: compare situations with this process and without
Week 2 3
, difference = mechanism/marker/correlates
Knowing this does not close the explanatory gap or offer a solution to the hard problem
You know which processes are involved in consciousness but does not explain how or why
2. States vs contents
difference in state
states enabling consciousness (awake) or not (dreamless sleep)
difference is big: to extreme to just explain consciousness
Week 2 4
