. . .
“Why don’t we start out with a little bit of a definition of what we’re talking about when we’re talking about ‘consciousness’, because we can mean a whole lot of different things by it. I’m wondering if you can set the stage a little bit for how you got involved in researching consciousness and sort of thinking about it as something that could be tackled scientifically.”
— Host of CogNation, Rolf Nelson
CogNation is a podcast by Rolf Nelson and Joe Hardy, two cognitive psychologists interested in the future of brain science and technology. The podcast explores relevant topics in the areas of cognitive science, technology, AI, and philosophy.
In December, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Joe and Rolf for their podcast. We talked about my most recent publication, ON CONSCIOUSNESS: Science & Subjectivity, which is a compendium on my work integrating research in psychology and neuroscience on what consciousness is and how it functions. I really enjoyed chatting with Joe and Rolf!
To listen to the episode, click here!
“Consciousness has been talked about, as far as I can tell, by every single culture that I know about.”
— Bernard Baars
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.
