Refuting the unfolding-argument on the irrelevance of causal structure to consciousness

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Asia Pacific Consciousness Network

Duration

90 minutes

Abstract

I will build from Niccolo's discussion of the Blockhead argument to argue that having an FeedForward Network (FN) responding like an recurrent network (RN) in a consciousness experiment is not enough to convince us the two are the same with regards to the posession of mental states and conscious experience. I will then argue that a robust functional equivalence between FFN and RN is akso not supported by the mathematical work on the Universal Approximator theorem, and is also unlikely to hold, as a conjecture, given data in cognitive neuroscience; I will argue that an equivalence of RN and FFN may only apply to static functions between input/output layers and not to the temporal patterns or to the network's reactions to structural perturbations. Finally, I review data indicating that consciousness has functional characteristics, such as a flexible control of behavior, and that cognitive/brain dynamics reveal interacting top-down and bottom-up processes, which are necessary for the mediation of such control processes.

Topics

FeedForward Network Universal Approximator theorem bottom-up processes cognition consciousness functional equivalence mental states recurrent network top-down processes

Refuting the unfolding-argument on the irrelevance of causal structure to consciousness

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Video on demand

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