Computational consciousness
Oxford University Press eBooks August 19, 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199551118.003.0002 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that consciousness serves to direct the search for new programs, necessitating a distinction between agent and environment, and that it must be handled at a higher abstraction level using a tagging strategy due to shared neural hardware. |
Abstract
Much previous work has concentrated on finding a mechanistic explanation of how it feels to be conscious and, specifically, in trying to trace that feeling to the neural substrate. This chapter argues that the question of why consciousness exists may have a ready answer when compared to its useful partner, the unconscious. Unconscious programs represent repeated and reliable interactions between the agent and the world that can be coded invariantly for each case. Consciousness is used to direct the search for new programs, and in that search it becomes essential to distinguish the agent from the surround. It is further argued that since the neural hardware must be shared between the two states, consciousness must be handled at a higher level of abstraction that incorporates a bookkeeping strategy termed as tagging.