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CSLI Calendar late announcement
[late announcement for CSLI Calendar]
SRI AI SEMINAR SERIES
Tuesday, 25 January 2000, 2:45pm-3:45pm
EJ228, SRI International
How to make a Self
Pat Hayes
The computational paradigm can account, in broad terms, for many of
the phenomena of consciousness, as Dennett (1991) argues
convincingly. The general idea is that the mechanism of consciousness
is an internal representational narrative (also called a 'global
workspace' or a 'world model'), suitably embedded in a functional
architecture, and the phenomenal aspects of consciousness are the
content of this narrative.
However, this kind of account has some problems, most notably the fact
that there seem to be aspects of the internal narrative which we are
not, and cannot be, conscious of. The distinction between conscious
awareness and unconscious information processing (for example in the
visual system) must therefore be based on something more than the
simple presence of the relevant information. Another missing aspect is
the self; the sense of personal integrity which is a hallmark of
normal conscious experience.
Building on pioneering work by Perlis (1997), we will suggest a
representational solution to both of these problems. Perlis posits an
"ur-quale" which arises from a particular kind of self-modelling
computation. This paper sketches how strong self-reference might
evolve as a result of the interaction of processes of truth
maintenance, episodic memory and active spatial location, and why the
resulting representational structure would give rise to many of the
characteristic phenomenal aspects of the subjective self, in
particular the sense of 'free will' and the flow of time from the past
to the future.
Dennett 1991 Consciousness Explained. Back Bay. Perlis 1997
Consciousness as Self-function. J. Consciousness Studies 4, 5-6, pp
509-25
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