Conscious Attribution Research Articles

Prohibition of plagiarism and the right to quotation in science

Prohibition of plagiarism and the right to quotation in science

Attributions of consciousness.

Many philosophers and brain scientists hold that explaining consciousness is one of the major outstanding problems facing modern science today. One type of consciousness in particular-phenomenal consciousness-is thought to be especially problematic. The reasons given for believing that this phenomenon exists in the first place, however, often hinge on the claim that its existence is simply obvious in ordinary perceptual experience. Such claims motivate the study of people's intuitions about consciousness. In recent years a number of researchers in experimental philosophy of mind have begun to shed light on this area, investigating how people understand and attribute those mental states that have been thought to be phenomenally conscious. In this article, we discuss the philosophical concept of phenomenal consciousness and detail the work that has been done on the question of whether lay people have this concept. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:635-648. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1320 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article.

A Timeless and Spaceless Quantum Theory of Consciousness

In this article, a timeless and spaceless theory of consciousness in terms of quantum entanglement is proposed. It is shown that time and consciousness can be spontaneously emerged and, thus, be defined by separating a subsystem from a much bigger quantum system. The mass and relative distances are recognized as functions of the entanglement entropies between separated systems and the classical background space can be restored in terms of these relative distances. We carefully examine the world with two coexisting consciousnesses. By equivalence principle of consciousness, the criterion of whether an entity is conscious or not is formulated implying that nowadays robots cannot be conscious. In addition, the relativity of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes of consciousness is discussed which might reveal the intricate connections between material and spiritual worlds at the deepest level. This relativity together with the new interpretation of mass further implies that consciousness has a negative mass, but this counterintuitive prediction needs to be verified by future experiments. NeuroQuantology | September 2013 | Volume 11 | Issue 3 | Page 431-442

Evaluation of green maintenance initiatives in design and development of mechanical systems using an integrated approach

The growing public concern on global environmental degradation is forcing many industries to undertake environmentally conscious policies for product design, manufacturing, service and end-of-life activities. Maintenance is a critical activity carried out in the use phase of the product life cycle to prolong system availability. The increasing amount of repairs and maintenance of machinery has become a burden on the environment. Therefore, green maintenance driven product design and maintenance actions are critically important; and organizations are now looking for methods and tools to assess the sustainability aspects of their design and operation. This paper presents an objective approach to evaluate green maintenance aspects of mechanical systems at its design stage and rank the design alternatives. It takes into consideration the green maintenance requirements, environment conscious attributes and their interrelationships. The evaluation problem is formulated as a multi-attribute decision-making model and solved using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach. The proposed approach starts with applying AHP method to evaluate the importance of green maintenance requirements during maintenance. Then the relationships between the requirements and design characteristics are established and the TOPSIS method is adopted to rank the design alternatives.

Machine Minds: The Blueprint for Artificial Consciousness

The paper proposes the design approach as a blueprint for building a sentient artificial agent capable of exhibiting human-like attributions of consciousness. The paper also considers whether if such an artificial agent is ever built, how it will be indistinguishable from a human being? Well, it is glowingly evident that the evolution of artificial intelligence is guided by us, humans, whose own mental evolution have been shaped by the passing years in the course of the phenomenology of adaptation and survival (Darwinian). Yet, the evolution of synthetic minds powered by artificial cognition seems to be quite fast. Yes, the artificial mind in robots, if we accept the analogy ‘mind’ in its fullest sense, that day is not very far when the mental embodiment of consciousness in machines would become reality. But prior to such a feat becoming reality, rhetoric debates have been taking shape as of, how to decode and cipher consciousness in machines, a phenomenon considered as often as ‘nonentity’, then, what would be the true essence of such an artificial consciousness? This paper discusses these aspects and attempts to throw some new light on the design and developmental aspects of artificial consciousness.

Reductio ad bacterium: the ubiquity of Bayesian “brains” and the goals of cognitive science

Reductio ad bacterium: the ubiquity of Bayesian “brains” and the goals of cognitive science

From data processing to mental organs: An interdisciplinary path to cognitive neuroscienceFNx08

Human brain is a highly evolved coordinating mechanism in the species Homo sapiens. It is only in the last 100 years that extensive knowledge of the intricate structure and complex functioning of the human brain has been acquired, though a lot is yet to be known. However, from the beginning of civilisation, people have been conscious of a ‘mind’ which has been considered the origin of all scientific and cultural development. Philosophers have discussed at length the various attributes of consciousness. At the same time, most of the philosophical or scientific frameworks have directly or indirectly implied mind-body duality. It is now imperative that we develop an integrated approach to understand the interconnection between mind and consciousness on one hand and brain on the other. This paper begins with the proposition that the structure of the brain is analogous, at least to certain extent, to that of the computer system. Of course, it is much more sophisticated and complex. The second proposition is that the Chomskyean concept of ‘mental organs’ is a good working hypothesis that tries to characterise this complexity in terms of an innate cognitive framework. By following this dual approach, brain as a data processing system and brain as a superstructure of intricately linked mental organs, we can move toward a better understanding of ‘mind’ within the framework of empirical science. The one ‘mental organ’ studied extensively in Chomskyean terms is ‘language faculty’ which is unique in its relation to brain, mind and consciousness.

Assessment of academic motivation: A mixed methods study

This article uses a computer assisted mixed methods approach to investigate academic motivation in a large sample (N = 878) of young students. The purposes of the study were to explore the various aspects connected to motivation in primary and secondary school, using a mixed methodology (both inductive data-driven and deductive theory-driven) and to assess the findings by means of a powerful statistical inferential test. The results show that intrinsic motivation tends to decrease in the transition from primary to secondary school, but they also reveal a hitherto undemonstrated trend, which is the significant increase, during this phase, of identified motivation, a different, yet still highly self-determined, form of regulation, involving the conscious attribution of value to studying. On the whole the results suggest that the elements dictating student motivation at school are more complex than indicated by previous studies.

Corticothalamic necessity, qualia, and consciousness

The centrencephalic theory of consciousness cannot yet account for some evidence from both brain damaged and normally functioning humans that strongly implicates thalamocortical activity as essential for consciousness. Moreover, the behavioral indexes used by Merker to implicate consciousness need more development, as, besides being somewhat vague, they lead to some apparent contradictions in the attribution of consciousness.

A model of agent consciousness and its implementation

The study of several theories and models of consciousness, among them the functional and cognitive model exhibited in Baars’ ‘Global Workspace’ theory, led us to identify computational correlates of consciousness and discuss their possible representations within a model of intelligent agent. We first review a particular agent implementation given by an abstract machine, and then identify the extensions required in order to accommodate the main attributes of consciousness. This amounts to form unconscious processor coalitions that result in the creation of contexts. These extensions can be formulated within a reified virtual machine encompassing a representation of the original machine as well as an additional introspective component.

The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness

The Dream Drugstore: Chemically Altered States of Consciousness

The state of consciousness and very high frequency signalling in the serotonergic neuronal system

The attributes of consciousness are briefly discussed and matched to the known characteristics of the serotonergic neuronal system. In particular sleep, the action of agonist drugs, the regulatory role and monitoring components, together with the receptor areas for serotonergic activity, are identified as significant correlates of consciousness. Fröhlich-like phenomena are attributed to the topology of the serotonergic cell which is posited to produce excitations in the gigaHz or very high frequency range. Coding by discrete channel frequency and propagation throughout the vast microtubule cytoskeletal structure of serotonergic activity is proposed as the biophysical basis of consciousness in higher mammals, particularly humans.

Cerebral bases of consciousness: A historical view

Attempts of modern brain research, starting at the end of the nineteenth century, to define and hierarchically order consciousness are reviewed. It is emphasized that roots from philosophy, biology, and psychology influenced brain research in its search for possible physical bases of consciousness. Among the mainstreams of research were approaches which defined consciousness by selecting numerous attributes of it and ordering these hierarchically. Similarly, there was widespread speculation on whether all kinds of animals or only some of them are conscious or manifest some of the hierarchically defined attributes of consciousness. On the brain side, the cerebral cortex and in particular its frontal aspects, the prefrontal cortex, was regarded as the principal anatomical basis of consciousness. The dependence of consciousness on memory and the ability to order processes in time were widely acknowledged and case descriptions from Korsakoff patients and epileptics were considered especially to demonstrate the interdependence between consciousness and the brain.

A critique of information processing theories of consciousness

Information processing theories in psychology give rise to “executive” theories of consciousness. Roughly speaking, these theories maintain that consciousness is a centralized processor that we use when processing novel or complex stimuli. The computational assumptions driving the executive theories are closely tied to the computer metaphor. However, those who take the metaphor serious — as I believe psychologists who advocate the executive theories do — end up accepting too particular a notion of a computing device. In this essay, I examine the arguments from theoretical computational considerations that cognitive psychologists use to support their general approach in order to show that they make unwarranted assumptions about the processing attributes of consciousness. I then go on to examine the assumptions behind executive theories which grow out of the computer metaphor of cognitive psychology and conclude that we may not be the sort of computational machine cognitive psychology assumes and that cognitive psychology's approach in itself does not buy us anything in developing theories of consciousness. Hence, the state space in which we may locate consciousness is vast, even within an information processing framework.

Cognitive ethology and applied philosophy: The significance of an evolutionary biology of mind

The broad field of cognitive ethology, in which internal mental states are inferred from the behavior they explain, is receiving increased attention nowadays from diverse scientists and philosophers. The nature of the results and how they are presented greatly influence how humans assess their place in the natural world and how they view other animals. The attribution of consciousness and intelligence to other animals suggests that they have moral rights. The results of comparative cognitive ethological analyses and how they are presented may play a large role in defining the domain of morally permissible research, and in the development of research strategies including decisions on feeding and housing, treatment, handling, and what happens to animal subjects when the research is completed. Scientists and philosophers interested in the evolution of behavior and mental continuity can have a significant impact on how others view the world.

Animism and Related Tendencies in Hopi Children

The work of Wayne Dennis on animism in Hopi Indian children is replicated after 40 years. The results indicate that while little change has taken place in the Hopi child's attribution of life to inanimate objects, there is a substantial decrease in the attribution of consciousness to these same objects. An additional result is that the moral realism of the present day Hopi children has decreased markedly as compared with the original study.