Papers by Kenneth Williford
This paper aims to assess whether the recently proposed "inner screen model" of conscio... more This paper aims to assess whether the recently proposed "inner screen model" of consciousness that follows from the free-energy principle (FEP) can be regarded as a minimal unifying model (MUM) of consciousness, thereby providing a common foundational model for consciousness studies, and integrating approaches to consciousness based on the FEP. We first present the inner screen model, which follows from applying the quantum information theoretic version of the FEP to the known sparse (nested and hierarchical) neuroanatomy of the brain. We then review models of consciousness that are premised on the FEP. Specifically, we review Bayesian versions of the global workspace and attention schema theories, theories premised on world-models and self-models, and models formalizing the computational structure and properties of time-consciousness. We then discuss how extant FEP-theoretic models of consciousness can be situated with respect to the candidate MUM.
arXiv (Cornell University), Aug 12, 2018
Brain Sciences
Consciousness has been described as acting as a global workspace that integrates perception, imag... more Consciousness has been described as acting as a global workspace that integrates perception, imagination, emotion and action programming for adaptive decision making. The mechanisms of this workspace and their relationships to the phenomenology of consciousness need to be further specified. Much research in this area has focused on the neural correlates of consciousness, but, arguably, computational modeling can better be used toward this aim. According to the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), consciousness is structured as a viewpoint-organized, internal space, relying on 3D projective geometry and governed by the action of the Projective Group as part of a process of active inference. The geometry induces a group-structured subjective perspective on an encoded world model, enabling adaptive perspective taking in agents. Here, we review and discuss the PCM. We emphasize the role of projective mechanisms in perception and the appraisal of affective and epistemic values as tied t...
Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness & Projective Geometry
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
The Imagination by Jean-Paul Sartre (translation)
English translation of L’Imagination (The Imagination) by Jean-Paul Sartre
Self-Consciousness
Encyclopedia of the Mind
Open MIND, 2-vol. set
Tobias Schlicht argues that subjective character derives from the integration of mental states in... more Tobias Schlicht argues that subjective character derives from the integration of mental states into a complex of representations of the organism and that therefore there is no need try to account for subjective character in terms of "reflexivity" or self-acquaintance, as I do. He further argues that the proper subject of consciousness is the whole organism and not the episode or stream of consciousness, as I maintain. He maintains that his account solves problems about the individuation and synchronic unity of conscious mental states that mine does not. While I agree that we need an account of the individuation of episodes of consciousness and an account of the synchronic and diachronic unities of consciousness (something I bracketed in my paper), I disagree that making the organism into the phenomenological subject of consciousness helps with these problems. However, I am willing to concede that the organism is the subject of consciousness in some non-phenomenological sense.
Open MIND, 2-vol. set
In this study I argue for the following claims: First, it's best to think of subjective character... more In this study I argue for the following claims: First, it's best to think of subjective character as the self-acquaintance of each instance of consciousness-its acquaintance with itself. Second, this entails that all instances of consciousness have some intrinsic property in virtue of which they, and not other things, bear this acquaintance relation to themselves. And, third, this is still compatible with physicalism as long as we accept something like in re structural universals; consciousness is a real, multiply instantiable, natural universal or form, but it likely has a highly complex, articulated structure, and "lives" only in its instances. In order to make these cases, I give a characterization of subjective character that accounts for the intuition that phenomenal consciousness is relational in some sense (or involves a subject-object polarity), as well as the competing and Humean intuition that one of the supposed relata, the subject-relatum, is not phenomenologically accessible. By identifying the subject with the episode or stream of consciousness itself and maintaining that consciousness is immediately self-aware ("reflexively" aware), these competing intuitions can be reconciled. I also argue that it is a serious confusion to identify subjective character with one's individuality or particularity. I argue that deeper reflection on the fact that consciousness has only incomplete self-knowledge will allow us to see that certain problems afflicting acquaintance theories, like the one I defend, are not the threats to certain forms of physicalism that they might seem to be. In particular, I briefly consider the Grain Problem and the apparent primitive simplicity of the acquaintance relation itself in this light.
Epistemology and MBE : Educating the Bayesian Brain
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Papers by Kenneth Williford