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

Consciousness, Philosophy of Mind, Cognition and seminar by Marius Usher, Tel-Aviv University

Hosted by Asia Pacific Consciousness Network

Thursday 15:00–16:30 Melbourne (GMT+11)

Recording available

Online

Recording

2 h 2 min

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 NetworkUniversal Approximator theorembottom-up processesConsciousnessfunctional equivalencemental statesrecurrent network

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