Multiple Drafts Model Of Consciousness

[mszlazak]

Read about it here: Multiple drafts model - Scholarpedia

[David Bailey]

mszlazak,

Thanks for posting that, although I am not sure it contributes much to the theory of consciousness - the title reads like a change in banking procedures!

There is obviously a desire to get away from a model in which there is a homunculus sitting in the middle evaluating pre-digested data, because it obviously doesn't explain the conscious bit! However, I am not sure smudging the problem out a bit, gets rid of it.

Susan Blackmore asks her students to stop suddenly and report what is in their consciousness at that instant. Because some of them can't answer this question, she seems to consider that the stream of consciousness doesn't really exist. The idea is similar to Dennet's - to explain consciousness by demonstrating that it is somehow less significant than it seems to be!

That is the point of the multiple drafts model: consciousness is not what it seems to be (a magic show illuminating an inner stage). It is the differential influence of various contents on the processes that control the body of an agent composed of those processes and capable of telling us, retrospectively, about some of them.

Suppose you built such a thing - presumably a computer program - does anyone think it would be conscious? Perhaps such software exists already - say the control software for a nuclear power station - does anyone seriously think it is conscious (but it might make a good movie )

Dennet seems to want to explain Libet's timing results, well how about exploring the presentiment effect and the possibility that consciousness is actually de localised over a period of time of a few hundred milliseconds.

Is there really a theory of consciousness here at all, or is it just another way of saying consciousness doesn't exist?

David

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by mszlazak

Read about it here: Multiple drafts model - Scholarpedia

I haven't read the article, but it begins:

The multiple drafts model of consciousness (Dennett, 1991, 1996, 1998, Dennett and Kinsbourne, 1992) was developed as an alternative to the perennially attractive, but incoherent, model of conscious experience Dennett calls Cartesian materialism, the idea that after early unconscious processing occurs in various relatively peripheral brain structures "everything comes together" in some privileged central place in the brain–which Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater --for "presentation" to the inner self or homunculus.

Do you think there's a lot of us here who subscribe to cartesian materialism? Materialists cannot believe in a self. So I agree with Dennett that cartesian materialism is incoherent, although perhaps not for the same reasons.

BTW I disapprove of using either of the words homunculus or "inner self". Let's suppose all of our perceptions and conscious experiences are experienced as a whole via a little man (homunculus). But how does this little man do it? Why there is another little man in his skull in turn which does all the work! And ad infinitum.

Replace the concept of a little man in us by a self -- a non-physical self. Then we don't get any such absurdity, we just have a two-term relationship. Of course proposing such a self means it lies outside the scope of science, but that has always been my precise position.

BTW I have to say I'm not remotely interested in what Dennett says about consciousness since he denies its existence.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

Replace the concept of a little man in us by a self -- a non-physical self.

Just to be clear here the self has to be non-physical. This should be made clear by reading my essay on teleportation. Also the homunculus problem might apply to a physical self ( I use the word self as in the sense of being the author of various psychological states rather than merely being the sum of them. The materialist has to hold the latter).

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Ian

Replace the concept of a little man in us by a self -- a non-physical self. Then we don't get any such absurdity, we just have a two-term relationship. Of course proposing such a self means it lies outside the scope of science, but that has always been my precise position.

Why don't we get exactly the same absurdity?

And could you explain the absurdity in more detail, please? Why does the little man need a littler man inside? It's not as if our self-awareness is infinitely nested. For example, we have no experience of how we actually think.

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Why don't we get exactly the same absurdity?

And could you explain the absurdity in more detail, please? Why does the little man need a littler man inside? It's not as if our self-awareness is infinitely nested. For example, we have no experience of how we actually think.

~~ Paul

Well, if I can answer on behalf of Ian, the point is that if you have a model containing a little man, you have explained nothing - just shuffled the data that he has available.

Also, don't fall into the trap of equating consciousness and self-awareness.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Well, if I can answer on behalf of Ian, the point is that if you have a model containing a little man, you have explained nothing - just shuffled the data that he has available.

If you insist that there is no way that consciousness can arise from brain function, then I agree that a little man does nothing for you. In fact, no additional brain functions do anything for you, because you do not believe that brain function can explain consciousness. If, however, you think it's possible that brain function can explain consciousness, than a central function monitoring other functions (the little man) might have explanatory power.

Also, don't fall into the trap of equating consciousness and self-awareness.

What's the difference, again?

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

If you insist that there is no way that consciousness can arise from brain function, then I agree that a little man does nothing for you. In fact, no additional brain functions do anything for you, because you do not believe that brain function can explain consciousness. If, however, you think it's possible that brain function can explain consciousness, than a central function monitoring other functions (the little man) might have explanatory power.


What's the difference, again?

~~ Paul

Well the little man seems to figure implicitly in all the conventional theories of consciousness. Multiple drafts are like pieces of paper coming off a word processor - if nobody reads them, what good are they? My take on this is that if the brain can be replaced by a computer - even in principle - then it can't be solely responsible for consciousness.

I am beginning to think that devising a totally physical theory of consciousness is a bit like building a radio out of LEGGO bricks. You can build all sorts of great things out of those bricks - even a Taj_Mahal - but they just don't do electronics (at least not when I was a kid) - so you can make a LEGGO case with a LEGGO volume control that really turns, and a LEGGO aerial, but however hard you try, it never works as a radio! This is, of course, just another way of expressing David Chalmers' views.

The term 'self awareness' is sometimes used as a synonym for consciousness, but the trouble with glib phrases like that is that people start to thing that consciousness is self awareness. Hence all the excitement about testing which animals could recognise themselves in the mirror! The two concepts are obviously distinct - do you become unconscious if you are deeply engrossed in a problem and are not concentrating on self - of course you don't.

David

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by David

Well the little man seems to figure implicitly in all the conventional theories of consciousness. Multiple drafts are like pieces of paper coming off a word processor - if nobody reads them, what good are they? My take on this is that if the brain can be replaced by a computer - even in principle - then it can't be solely responsible for consciousness.

Why couldn't a computer brain simulation have a "little man"?

I am beginning to think that devising a totally physical theory of consciousness is a bit like building a radio out of LEGGO bricks. You can build all sorts of great things out of those bricks - even a Taj_Mahal - but they just don't do electronics (at least not when I was a kid) - so you can make a LEGGO case with a LEGGO volume control that really turns, and a LEGGO aerial, but however hard you try, it never works as a radio! This is, of course, just another way of expressing David Chalmers' views.

But if the Leggo parts were made out of metal, then you could build a working radio.

The term 'self awareness' is sometimes used as a synonym for consciousness, but the trouble with glib phrases like that is that people start to thing that consciousness is self awareness. Hence all the excitement about testing which animals could recognise themselves in the mirror! The two concepts are obviously distinct - do you become unconscious if you are deeply engrossed in a problem and are not concentrating on self - of course you don't.

If you're not concentrating on self, then you aren't going to notice the thoughts your brain is having about the problem. I suppose you're using "self awareness" to mean simply thinking about yourself. Yes, that is different from consciousness in the sense that it is a subset of it.

But that leaves us with my original question: How does moving consciousness out of the brain solve the "little man" problem?

~~ Paul

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Why couldn't a computer brain simulation have a "little man"?


But if the Leggo parts were made out of metal, then you could build a working radio.


But that leaves us with my original question: How does moving consciousness out of the brain solve the "little man" problem?

~~ Paul

Well, the LEGGO parts would need to be made of metal and semiconductors and some of them would need to be resistors - but of course it was an analogy.

I know it isn't much of an answer, but if you don't require that consciousness be created by physical 'stuff' but simply exist like electrons exist, you don't have a problem - you just have a new component to the universe. That does not, of course, mean that you couldn't have a science that studied mental 'stuff' - indeed the preliminary version is called psychology and maybe parapsychology, but you would get away from the impossibility of making a radio out of non-conducting plastic bricks! Another analogy would be the impossibility of explaining electrostatic attraction within Newtonian physics (i.e. without adding the new concept of electric charge).

Why can't a little man exist inside a computer - well as I have argued before, all a computer really does is check equations of the form input+P=>output. If the program is conscious while it is doing the checking, why not the abstract equation - which delocalises the consciousness over all space-time!

David