Related papers: A thought experiment on consciousness
The origin and development of consciousness is poorly understood. Although it is clearly a naturalistic phenomenon evolved through Darwinian evolution, explaining it in terms of physicochemical, neural, or symbolic mechanisms remains…
We discuss philosophical issues concerning the notion of cognition basing ourselves in experimental results in cognitive sciences, especially in computer simulations of cognitive systems. There have been debates on the "proper" approach for…
By means of a thought-experiment, consisting of an interference experiment with two interfering beams, it is shown that it can be demonstrated experimentally that with one single particle a wave can be associated which propagates in space…
Various research initiatives try to utilize the operational principles of organisms and brains to develop alternative, biologically inspired computing paradigms and artificial cognitive systems. This paper reviews key features of the…
The purpose of this article is to provide an overall critical appraisal of Integrated Information Theory(IIT) of consciousness. We explore how it has evolved and what problems are involved in the theory. IIT is a hypothesis that…
The central problem with understanding brain and mind is the neural code issue: understanding the matter of our brain as basis for the phenomena of our mind. The richness with which our mind represents our environment, the parsimony of…
The multiple realizability thesis holds that psychological states may be implemented in a diversity of physical systems. The deep learning revolution seems to be bringing this possibility to life, offering the most plausible examples of…
Humans have long been fascinated by how memories are formed, how they can be damaged or lost, or still seem vibrant after many years. Thus the search for the locus and organization of memory has had a long history, in which the notion that…
According to a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, the causal role of human consciousness in the measuring process is called upon to solve a foundational problem called the "measurement problem". Traditionally, this…
Consciousness is the process by which one attributes `meaning' to the world. Considering F$\phi$llesdal's definition of `meaning' as the joint product of all `evidence' that is available to those who `communicate', we conclude that science…
The pursuit of artificial consciousness requires conceptual clarity to navigate its theoretical and empirical challenges. This paper introduces a composite, multilevel, and multidimensional model of consciousness as a heuristic framework to…
We propose the quantum mechanical description of complex systems should be performed using two types of causality relation: the ordering relation ($x\prec y$) and the subset relation ($A\subseteq B$). The structures with two ordering…
The ancient mind/body problem continues to be one of deepest mysteries of science and of the human spirit. Despite major advances in many fields, there is still no plausible link between subjective experience (qualia) and its realization in…
The relation between self awareness and intelligence is an open problem these days. Despite the fact that self awarness is usually related to Emotional Intelligence, this is not the case here. The problem described in this paper is how to…
The relationship between brains and computers is often taken to be merely metaphorical. However, genuine computational systems can be implemented in virtually any media; thus, one can take seriously the view that brains literally compute.…
Criticality is hypothesized as a physical mechanism underlying efficient transitions between cortical states and remarkable information processing capacities in the brain. While considerable evidence generally supports this hypothesis,…
It has been proposed that there is a wave excitation in animal brains, whose function is to represent three-dimensional space around the animal as a working spatial memory. After surveying the evidence supporting the hypothesis, I discuss…
We frame the question of what kind of subjective experience a brain simulation would have in contrast to a biological brain. We discuss the brain prosthesis thought experiment. We evaluate how the experience of the brain simulation might…
We all are fascinated by the phenomena of intelligent behavior, as generated both by our own brains and by the brains of other animals. As physicists we would like to understand if there are some general principles that govern the structure…
We have analysed the many facets of Consciousness into two distinct categories. First: the organisational state of the neural networks at any one time, which determines whether a person is conscious - awake, or unconscious - asleep. Second:…