Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience

by Michael S.A. Graziano

sentient;

The new approach does not solve the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness—how a physical brain can generate a nonphysical essence.4 Instead, it explains why people might mistakenly think that there is a hard problem to begin with, why that mistaken intuition is built deep into us where we’re unlikely to change it, and why its presence is advantageous, maybe even necessary, for the functioning of the brain.

Our intuitive understanding of the world around us and our understanding of ourselves, always distorted and simplified, are dependent on those internal models.

connotations.

The term consciousness has come to mean the act of being conscious of something, rather than the material of which you are conscious.

If anything defines the mystery of human consciousness, surely it must be our ability to make decisions.

amorphous

the sense we get of its conscious mind says more about us than about the octopus.

pervasive

pantomimes

moccasins,

tecta

hath

That restless, cortical winnowing process is our most powerful type of attention. It’s the most sophisticated tool the brain has for understanding the world. Sometimes people ask me why I built a theory of consciousness centered around such a specific, seemingly narrow topic as attention. But attention is not a narrow topic. It is the essence of how the cerebral cortex apprehends the world.

The difference between overt attention and covert attention is simply this: overt attention is grasping an object with your sense organs; covert attention is grasping an object with the massive computational machinery of the cortex.

Attention is the key that unlocked a complex understanding of the world.

The

panpsychism,

In that theory, information in the global workspace is information in consciousness.

Our casual intuition tells us that when people speak, they are merely expressing their inner experiences.

It needs an internal control system, and a controller cannot operate without an internal model. The attention schema is that internal model, a set of information about the process of attention itself.

ethereal

metaphysical.

The attention schema theory focuses on the information set on which the claim of subjective experience is based.

Third,