Abstract

AbstractFor the broad spectrum of cognitive biological phenomena having 'dual' information sources, isolation from crosstalk between them requires more metabolic free energy than permitting correlation. This allows an evolutionary exaptation leading to dynamic global broadcasts at multiple scales, similar to the well-studied exaptation of noise to trigger stochastic resonance amplification in physiological systems. Entropy gradient models adapted from nonequilibrium thermodynamics lead to an index theorem in which analytic solutions of empirical equations describe different possible topological modes. Not only is the living state characterized by cognition at every scale and level of organization, but by multiple, shifting, tunable, cooperative broadcasts that link selected subsets of those structures to address problems. As for animal consciousness, the 'stream' of cognitive physiological broadcast is constrained by the riverbanks of embedding context, expressed in terms of systematic regularities of an enveloping environmental information source and the limitations imposed by developmental trajectory.

Highlights

  • Researchers have long speculated and experimented on the role of noise in biological process via models of stochastic resonance (e.g., Park and Neelakanta, 1996; Gluckman et al, 1996; Ward, 2009; Kawaguchi et al, 2011)

  • Baars’ global workspace model of animal consciousness attributes the phenomenon to a dynamic array of unconscious cognitive modules that unite to become a global broadcast having a tunable perception threshold not unlike a theater spotlight, but whose range of attention is constrained by embedding contexts (e.g., Baars, 1988, 2005; Baars and Franklin, 2003): 1. The brain can be viewed as a collection of distributed specialized networks

  • Via the giant component linking lower level ‘unconscious’ cognitive modules, emerges directly, and the effects of external signals and internal ‘biological ruminations’ can be incorporated through standard arguments leading to punctuated threshold detection

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Summary

Introduction

Researchers have long speculated and experimented on the role of noise in biological process via models of stochastic resonance (e.g., Park and Neelakanta, 1996; Gluckman et al, 1996; Ward, 2009; Kawaguchi et al, 2011). The basic mechanism emerges ‘naturally’ from a relatively simple application of the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory, once a broad range of unconscious cognitive processes is recognized as inherently characterized by information sources – generalized languages (Wallace, 2000, 2005, 2007). Our assertion is that crosstalk between ‘low level’ cognitive biological modules is a similar inessential byproduct that evolutionary process has exapted to construct the dynamic global broadcasts of consciousness and a spectrum of roughly analogous physiological phenomena: Evolution built many new arches from a single spandrel. For each positive integer n, let N (n) be the number of high probability grammatical and syntactical paths of length n that begin with some particular a0 and lead to the condition h(x) ∈ B1. The form of the decision function h, and the details of grammar and syntax, are all unspecified in this model, the critical assumption which permits inference on necessary conditions constrained by the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory is that the finite limit

Cognition as ‘language’
No Free Lunch
Environmental signals
The simplest ‘regression’ model
Discussion and conclusions
10 References
11 Mathematical Appendix
Full Text
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