Consciousness samenvatting
Topics Covered
Blindsight
Bundle theory of the self
Cartesian Theatre
Categories of meditation
Relationship between consciousness and attention
Change blindness
Chinese Room argument
Cognitive Biases (e.g., Dualism; Teleological thinking; Anthropomorphism)
Covert / Overt Attention
Descartes’ theory on the relationship between conscious mind and body
Discriminating reality from imagination
Embodied cognition
Evolution & Natural selection
Evolutionary views on consciousness and work by Dawkins, Darwin, Lamarck, and Nagel
Evolutionary psychology (by-product vs adaptation; ultimate vs. proximate explanations)
Explanatory Gap
Free will (the problem of)
Global Workspace Theory of Baars
GOFAI and connectionism
Hallucinations
Hard problem
Hobson’s AIM model of sleep
How psychedelics affect cognitive processes
How rich, complete are internal representations of the visual environment
Hume’s concept of the self
Impact of Altered State of Consciousness
Intelligence without representation
Interactionism
Libet and the relative timing of conscious willing and overt action
Libet’s stimulation of the brain of patients
Mary, the color scientist
Memetics (meme-theory)
Monism approaches to consciousness
Multiple personalities
Near-Death Experience
Out-Of-Body Experience
Parapsychological studies and methodological shortcomings
Phantom pain
Philosophers’ zombie
Predictive Processing
Psi phenomena
Qualia
REM/NREM sleep
Signal Detection Theory
Spatial attention & neglect
Split Brain
Subjective scaling of altered states
The binding problem
The concept of epiphenomenalism
The definition of consciousness
The goal of meditation
,The Mirror test (self-recognition)
The Retro-Selective Theory of Dreams
The sensorimotor theory of O’Regan and Noë
Theories of attention
Thought Experiments (in philosophy)
Turing’s 1950 paper
Visual forms in drug-induced hallucinations
Visual illusions
Wegner and the relationship between consciously perceived will and voluntary action
William James and the “stream of consciousness”
Lecture 1: The problem
1. Philosophy of Consciousness
2. Qualia
3. Illusions
1. Philosophy of Consciousness
• Phenomenology, Introspection
• Psychophysics (Wilhelm Wundt)
• Behaviorism (James Watson)
• Cognitive revolution
• Cognitive neuroscience, 4E cognition, functionalism
• Predictive Processing
● Easy problems: the mechanisms (e.g., attention, memory) which can be addressed
by mainstream cognitive science
● Hard problem: how physical processes in brain give rise to subjective experience
“The Explanatory Gap” is a label for the idea that we cannot explain consciousness in
terms of brain activity. There are many different formulations of the explanatory gap, but all
discussion about it assumes that there is only one gap, which consists of the absence of a
deductive explanation.
2. Qualia
Qualia ‘Thought-experiments’:
● are typically used in philosophy to make arguments, to clarify concepts and to
debunk reasoning fallacies
● a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person.
● Subjective experience
● a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person.
● Subjective experience
● Relates to objective processes differently according to different approaches
● Little disagreement about existence but strong disagreement about properties, nature
● So, how “raw”, “immediate”, personal is conscious experience?
, Mary the color scientist
What it’s like to be a bat
zombi zimbo
• Phenomenal Consciousness (P): experience of something it is like to be in that state
• Access Consciousness (A): reportability of that experience
3. Illusions
• Illusions teach us something about the way we perceive the world
• Dissociation between perceptual input and subjective experience
• Perception vs. Cognition (cognitive penetrability)
Brain compensates for change in perception caused by saccadic eye movements
inattentional blindness
• We attend and integrate information very selectively
• Rich phenomenal experience is to some degree illusion (contra Cartesian Theatre)
• Richness of available vs. processed information
• Supports ecological approaches, world as representation and memory of its own
• Prediction vs. truth
inactive view of cognition and perception:
• Perception is not having an internal image of the world
• World serves as its own memory
• Perception = integration of sensorimotor contingencies = action control perception
is not having an internal image of the world, but the world works as its own memory
perception is the integration of sensory motor
is perceiving = acting? is het waarnemen van de wereld genoeg om het bewust mee
te krijgen of moet je er op handelen
Lecture 2: The brain
Part I – Location / Neural Correlates of Consciousness
Get to know the most common standpoints on the role of the brain in consciousness
Identity Theorists & Eliminative Materialists: “Consciousness IS brain activity” (we
kunnen consciousness begrijpen adhv het brein)
New Mysterians: “We can never understand consciousness, even with the most detailed
and subtle understanding of brain function possible” Based on dualistic ideas. (we kunnen
consciousness NIET begrijpen adhv het brein)
Extended Minders: (but for a different reason) Consciousness must include the person’s
history, the world around them, and the brain’s interactions with that world. “Consciousness
does not happen in the brain” Noë, 2009 (we kunnen consciousness NIET begrijpen adhv
het brein)
Topics Covered
Blindsight
Bundle theory of the self
Cartesian Theatre
Categories of meditation
Relationship between consciousness and attention
Change blindness
Chinese Room argument
Cognitive Biases (e.g., Dualism; Teleological thinking; Anthropomorphism)
Covert / Overt Attention
Descartes’ theory on the relationship between conscious mind and body
Discriminating reality from imagination
Embodied cognition
Evolution & Natural selection
Evolutionary views on consciousness and work by Dawkins, Darwin, Lamarck, and Nagel
Evolutionary psychology (by-product vs adaptation; ultimate vs. proximate explanations)
Explanatory Gap
Free will (the problem of)
Global Workspace Theory of Baars
GOFAI and connectionism
Hallucinations
Hard problem
Hobson’s AIM model of sleep
How psychedelics affect cognitive processes
How rich, complete are internal representations of the visual environment
Hume’s concept of the self
Impact of Altered State of Consciousness
Intelligence without representation
Interactionism
Libet and the relative timing of conscious willing and overt action
Libet’s stimulation of the brain of patients
Mary, the color scientist
Memetics (meme-theory)
Monism approaches to consciousness
Multiple personalities
Near-Death Experience
Out-Of-Body Experience
Parapsychological studies and methodological shortcomings
Phantom pain
Philosophers’ zombie
Predictive Processing
Psi phenomena
Qualia
REM/NREM sleep
Signal Detection Theory
Spatial attention & neglect
Split Brain
Subjective scaling of altered states
The binding problem
The concept of epiphenomenalism
The definition of consciousness
The goal of meditation
,The Mirror test (self-recognition)
The Retro-Selective Theory of Dreams
The sensorimotor theory of O’Regan and Noë
Theories of attention
Thought Experiments (in philosophy)
Turing’s 1950 paper
Visual forms in drug-induced hallucinations
Visual illusions
Wegner and the relationship between consciously perceived will and voluntary action
William James and the “stream of consciousness”
Lecture 1: The problem
1. Philosophy of Consciousness
2. Qualia
3. Illusions
1. Philosophy of Consciousness
• Phenomenology, Introspection
• Psychophysics (Wilhelm Wundt)
• Behaviorism (James Watson)
• Cognitive revolution
• Cognitive neuroscience, 4E cognition, functionalism
• Predictive Processing
● Easy problems: the mechanisms (e.g., attention, memory) which can be addressed
by mainstream cognitive science
● Hard problem: how physical processes in brain give rise to subjective experience
“The Explanatory Gap” is a label for the idea that we cannot explain consciousness in
terms of brain activity. There are many different formulations of the explanatory gap, but all
discussion about it assumes that there is only one gap, which consists of the absence of a
deductive explanation.
2. Qualia
Qualia ‘Thought-experiments’:
● are typically used in philosophy to make arguments, to clarify concepts and to
debunk reasoning fallacies
● a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person.
● Subjective experience
● a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person.
● Subjective experience
● Relates to objective processes differently according to different approaches
● Little disagreement about existence but strong disagreement about properties, nature
● So, how “raw”, “immediate”, personal is conscious experience?
, Mary the color scientist
What it’s like to be a bat
zombi zimbo
• Phenomenal Consciousness (P): experience of something it is like to be in that state
• Access Consciousness (A): reportability of that experience
3. Illusions
• Illusions teach us something about the way we perceive the world
• Dissociation between perceptual input and subjective experience
• Perception vs. Cognition (cognitive penetrability)
Brain compensates for change in perception caused by saccadic eye movements
inattentional blindness
• We attend and integrate information very selectively
• Rich phenomenal experience is to some degree illusion (contra Cartesian Theatre)
• Richness of available vs. processed information
• Supports ecological approaches, world as representation and memory of its own
• Prediction vs. truth
inactive view of cognition and perception:
• Perception is not having an internal image of the world
• World serves as its own memory
• Perception = integration of sensorimotor contingencies = action control perception
is not having an internal image of the world, but the world works as its own memory
perception is the integration of sensory motor
is perceiving = acting? is het waarnemen van de wereld genoeg om het bewust mee
te krijgen of moet je er op handelen
Lecture 2: The brain
Part I – Location / Neural Correlates of Consciousness
Get to know the most common standpoints on the role of the brain in consciousness
Identity Theorists & Eliminative Materialists: “Consciousness IS brain activity” (we
kunnen consciousness begrijpen adhv het brein)
New Mysterians: “We can never understand consciousness, even with the most detailed
and subtle understanding of brain function possible” Based on dualistic ideas. (we kunnen
consciousness NIET begrijpen adhv het brein)
Extended Minders: (but for a different reason) Consciousness must include the person’s
history, the world around them, and the brain’s interactions with that world. “Consciousness
does not happen in the brain” Noë, 2009 (we kunnen consciousness NIET begrijpen adhv
het brein)
