Seems like consciousness is rather similar to “the Global Neuronal Workspace”, and qualia are rather similar to “what’s currently in the Workspace”. Is there a reason to reject this way of thinking?
Hmm, my point here was that “your introspective model of your own consciousness” is more-or-less the same as “your internal model of your Global Neuronal Workspace”.
But I’m very hesitant to take the seemingly-obvious next step and say “therefore, your own consciousness is your Global Neuronal Workspace”.
The thing is, an internal model of X doesn’t have to have much in common with X:
In the moving-Mario optical illusion, there’s an internal model in which Mario is moving, but that’s not a veridical reflection of the thing that it’s nominally modeling—Mario is not in fact moving.
Another example (I think from Graziano’s book) is that we have an internal model of “pure whiteness”, but that’s not a veridical reflection of the thing that it’s nominally modeling, because actual white light is a mix of different colors, not “pure”.
I think the consciousness case is an extreme case of that. Out of the various things that people say when describing their own phenomenal consciousness, I think only a very small fraction could be taken to be a veridical description of aspects of their Global Neuronal Workspace.
And when you have features of an internal model of X that are not veridical reflections of features of the actual X, we call that an “illusion”.
(Another thing is: I also think that different people in different cultures can have rather different internal models of their Global Neuronal Workspace, cf. Buddhists rejecting “self” and Julian Jaynes claiming a massive cultural shift in self-models around 1500-500BC.)
Saying that qualia aren’t veridical representations of the properties of external objects, doesnt make them nonveridical in the sense of a hallucination....or nonexistent.
Saying that qualia aren’t veridical representations of the brain , doesnt make nonexistent either.
In fact, both claims strengthen the case for qualia. Them first claim is a rejection of naive realism, and naive realists don’t need qualia.
It seems access consciousness is almost tautologically accounted for by global workspace, and other aspects or meanings of consciousness aren’t addressed by it all.
Seems like consciousness is rather similar to “the Global Neuronal Workspace”, and qualia are rather similar to “what’s currently in the Workspace”. Is there a reason to reject this way of thinking?
Hmm, my point here was that “your introspective model of your own consciousness” is more-or-less the same as “your internal model of your Global Neuronal Workspace”.
But I’m very hesitant to take the seemingly-obvious next step and say “therefore, your own consciousness is your Global Neuronal Workspace”.
The thing is, an internal model of X doesn’t have to have much in common with X:
In the moving-Mario optical illusion, there’s an internal model in which Mario is moving, but that’s not a veridical reflection of the thing that it’s nominally modeling—Mario is not in fact moving.
Another example (I think from Graziano’s book) is that we have an internal model of “pure whiteness”, but that’s not a veridical reflection of the thing that it’s nominally modeling, because actual white light is a mix of different colors, not “pure”.
I think the consciousness case is an extreme case of that. Out of the various things that people say when describing their own phenomenal consciousness, I think only a very small fraction could be taken to be a veridical description of aspects of their Global Neuronal Workspace.
And when you have features of an internal model of X that are not veridical reflections of features of the actual X, we call that an “illusion”.
(Another thing is: I also think that different people in different cultures can have rather different internal models of their Global Neuronal Workspace, cf. Buddhists rejecting “self” and Julian Jaynes claiming a massive cultural shift in self-models around 1500-500BC.)
Saying that qualia aren’t veridical representations of the properties of external objects, doesnt make them nonveridical in the sense of a hallucination....or nonexistent.
Saying that qualia aren’t veridical representations of the brain , doesnt make nonexistent either.
In fact, both claims strengthen the case for qualia. Them first claim is a rejection of naive realism, and naive realists don’t need qualia.
It seems access consciousness is almost tautologically accounted for by global workspace, and other aspects or meanings of consciousness aren’t addressed by it all.