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What Is Subjectivity?
Consciousness is a core question of life. Making progress in understanding consciousness has an endless number of benefits — philosophical, scientific, medical, and practical. If there is a chasm between subjectivity and the brain, it has not been discovered so far.
We have a growing understanding of many relationships between the structure and functions of the brain and our own private experiences.
But what is the best scientific evidence that can tell us about subjectivity and the brain?
In this episode of On Consciousness with Bernard Baars, neuroscientists Bernard Baars, David Edelman, Jay Giedd, Jeff Krichmar, professional magician Mark Mitton, and editor Natalie Geld discuss and demonstrate their ideas on the biology of subjectivity.
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.
