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Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems - BICS2004
University of Stirling, Scotland, UK
August 29 – September 1, 2004
Models of Consciousness: The world scene.
by Igor Aleksander
An increasing number of laboratories around the world are trying to
design a machine which could be said to be conscious. Their efforts are
not only revealing how to build more competent machines, they are also
illuminating how consciousness arises in living beings. The key
historical event was a closed conference organised by Christof Koch of
CalTech and David Chalmers Arizona University in 2001. A mixture of 20
philosophers neurologists and computer scientists meeting at the Cold
Spring Harbour Laboratories in the US determined almost unanimously that
approaching consciousness from the perspective of computational
modelling would not only introduce novel mechanisms, but would clarify
many philosophical puzzles about consciousness.
I review what has happened since then, drawing attention to salient work
both in the US and Europe. This is proceeding over a spectrum ranging
from the 'functional' to the 'material'. The functional is sited in the
artificial intelligence tradition being concerned with behaviour that
one would say might require consciousness, while the material is
neurologically based and asks what possible mechanisms could give rise
to consciousness.
I amplify work in my own laboratory which is at the material end of the
spectrum and breaks down into five major lines of enquiry[1]:
How could a mechanism:
1. sense an out-there world with itself in it?
2. imagine either experienced or fictional worlds?
3. attend to important events in the world an in its imagination?
4. plan its future actions?
5. evaluate emotionally the nature of its plans?
I shall briefly show that these new modelling approaches throw light on
a. Chalmers' 'hard' problem;
b. what it is to be unconscious;
c. animal consciousness;
d. 'illusion' theories of consciousness.
The conclusion will draw attention to areas that need serious attention
from computationally minded researchers.
[1] I. Aleksander and B. Dunmall : Axioms and tests for the presence of
consciousness in agents: Jour. Of Conc. Studies, June 2003, 15 pp.
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