Home page
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Structure
of consciousness
Welcome
to my web site which relates conscious
experience to a self-referential process
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Organisation
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The site has nine principal pages, with
links below, a number of secondary pages linked to each principal page,
and some supplementary, or support, pages. All pages are directly
accessible from the menu.
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Concepts from many disciplines
are brought together in an attempt to provide a viable basis for the
scientific study of consciousness. This is analogous to
the construction of a jigsaw.
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1. Certain preconceptions about consciousness are discarded.
In particular it is necessary to discard the idea that the most primitive
form of consciousness is perceptual.
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2. It is argued that the main function
of consciousness is predicting the effect of
my actions on me. Such predictions involve
self-reference, which
depends upon an implicit self-model.
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3. The self-referential
process is identified as producing conscious
experience.
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4. The early development
of self-reference in infancy is traced. A
shift in motivational criteria
in four-month old babies enables them to express action
outcomes as changes in the observed world.
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5. It is argued that refinements
in the implicit self- and world-models have provided the driving
force in the evolution of self-reference.
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6. Fundamental differences in the
operation of brains and computers
are identified, leading to the conclusion that self-referential
and algorithmic processes are distinct.
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7. It is argued that the self-referential process is maintained by the thalamocortical/ basal ganglia loop.
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8. It is argued that a necessary (but not sufficient) condition
for a robot to become self-referential is that it be self-sensing.
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| 9.
A summary of conclusions is provided.
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| Comments and suggestions
for improving and adding material to this are welcome: please send e-mails to discuss@con-structure.org.uk
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Author:
Doug Newman
Site last uploaded: January 2007
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