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“You can actually study consciousness. You can do psychological studies and behavioral studies. So the question I’ve been interested in is whether we can go beyond that and can we relate the brain theory I talked about to the issue of consciousness.”
— Gerald Edelman
In this episode of ON CONSCIOUSNESS, neuroscientist David Edelman discusses his father, Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman’s life, reminisces about little known stories and milestones, and the professional artistry of GME’s distinguished career and groundbreaking theories.
In a nearly six decade long career, Gerald M. Edelman’s research spanned diverse areas of biological science, including immunology, developmental biology, and neuroscience. The common thread running through all of Dr. Edelman’s pursuits was an enduring interest in the relationship between biology and human experience.
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of cognitive psychology treats the brain as part of a machine-model. We live in a view of science that’s highly mechanized. We’ve been talking essentially about the ‘machine-model’ of the mind and I’m against that, I think the facts don’t stand up for that.”
— Gerald Edelman
Talking Points
- 1st segment (:20 – 8:05) — A Tribute to Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman by Oliver Sacks and others, along with interviews with Gerald on Putting the Mind Back into Nature – in his own words.
- 2nd segment (8:06 – 18:03) — Neuroscientist David Edelman discusses his father, Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman’s life, reminisces about little known stories and milestones, and the professional artistry of GME’s distinguished career and theories.
Bios
- Cognitive Neurobiologist and originator of GWT, Dr. Bernard J. Baars, Author of ON CONSCIOUSNESS: Science & Subjectivity — Updated Works on Global Workspace Theory
- Neuroscientist Dr. David Edelman, Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences
- Neuroscientist Dr. Jay Giedd, Director of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Rady Children’s Hospital and Professor of Psychiatry at UCSD School of Medicine
- Neuroscientist & Roboticist Dr. Jeffrey Krichmar, UC Irvine
- Professional Magician Mark Mitton
- Natalie Geld, Editor of ON CONSCIOUSNESS and CEO & Founder of MedNeuro, Inc
Global Workspace Theory (GWT) began with this question: “How does a serial, integrated and very limited stream of consciousness emerge from a nervous system that is mostly unconscious, distributed, parallel and of enormous capacity?”
GWT is a widely used framework for the role of conscious and unconscious experiences in the functioning of the brain, as Baars first suggested in 1983.
A set of explicit assumptions that can be tested, as many of them have been. These updated works by Bernie Baars, the recipient of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by International Neural Network Society form a coherent effort to organize a large and growing body of scientific evidence about conscious brains.
