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“The only way we get certainty or stability in the world is to start from what we know, and gradually move to what we don’t know.”
– Bernard Baars, PhD
“When we talk about something like ‘animal consciousness’ and the idea of pinning it down in a non-human animal, we do have to engage in some rather systematic forms of observation. We do have recourse to hard-nosed empirical experimentation simply because in the case of animals that are not so far from us — non-human primates, other mammals, perhaps even birds — we have the benefit of comparative anatomy and physiology and we also observe behavior.”
— David Edelman, PhD
Talking Points
- 0:04 – Intro
- 1:38 – Where in the brain is consciousness located?
- 7:44 – Consciousness in non-mammalian animals
- 11:00 – The visual cortex
- 17:15 – How is consciousness defined?
- 25:01 – Behaviors as markers for subjectivity
- 30:02 –Sensory consciousness and higher order self-awareness
- 34:14 – Do cephalopods belong to the big C-club?
- 40:22 – The awareness of the self
“The best science that we have right now seems to show that we’re creeping toward animal consciousness.”
— Bernard Baars, PhD
Bios
Bernard J. Baars: a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA, Bernie is best known as the originator of the global workspace theory and global workspace dynamics, a theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex and consciousness. Bernie’s many acclaimed books include A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness; The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology; In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind; Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience. Winner of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by the International Neural Network Society, which recognizes work in perception proven to be paradigm changing and long-lasting.
David Edelman, PhD: a neuroscientist and currently Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, David has taught neuroscience at the University of San Diego and UCSD. He was Professor of Neuroscience at Bennington College until 2014 and visiting professor in the Dept of Psychology, CUNY Brooklyn College from 2015-2017. He has conducted research in a wide range of areas, including mechanisms of gene regulation, the relationship between mitochondrial transport and brain activity, and visual perception in the octopus. A longstanding interest in the neural basis of consciousness led him to consider the importance—and challenge—of disseminating a more global view of brain function to a broad audience.
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.
