Abstract
At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particular way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness.
Highlights
The Mystery of ConsciousnessThe study of consciousness has proved notoriously erratic regarding the definition of its subject matter
In consonance with the longstanding focus on subjectivity as the primary phenomenal characteristic of consciousness, as well as its most primitive evolutionary form (Weiskrantz, 1985; Farthing, 1992; Reber, 1992 ; Flanagan, 1992; Meijsing, 1997; Bermudez, 1998), consciousness as subjectivity will be the focus of this proposal and its explanation framed in terms of the evolutionary emergence of recursive processing circuitry
Anticipatory self-regulatory-processing architecture utilizes four internal models to represent the various elements of the predictive Markhov control system: models for the desired state (DS), the actual current state (CS), the predicted future state and a structuring schema which acts to configure both CS and forward” model (FM) into a consistent event representation–the self-locating event schema (SL EVENT SCHEMA) abstracted from the ongoing agent-to-environment interaction
Summary
The Mystery of ConsciousnessThe study of consciousness has proved notoriously erratic regarding the definition of its subject matter.
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