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Sep 25, 2023 · Neuroscientists have identified a number of neural correlates of consciousness—brain states associated with specific mental states—but have not explained how matter forms minds in the first...
Apr 9, 2014 · Solid, liquid, gas, mind: it's all about how you arrange the atoms, says renowned physicist Max Tegmark.
- Max Tegmark
- Internal Representations
- Memory
- Cognition and Behavior
- Learning
- Value
- Self-Representations and Self-Awareness
- Complex, Abstract Representations
- Predictions and Expectations
- Resonance
- Language and Culture
Internal representations are images or models of the body and the world. They have a relational nature to the reality they map—they are built from and characterized by direct correlations to physical things. They are the way that sensory perceptions of the physical world get turned into mental phenomena, which in turn have causal power on the physi...
Brains evolved the ability to store salient mental representations (through short-term and long-term changes in neuronal connections), then access that information after intervals of time (short-term and long-term memory), integrate that information with other relevant information, and update those memories as new information becomes available.
The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux defines cognitionas the ability to form internal representations and to use these to guide behavior. Internal representations enable an animal to react to stimuli even when the stimuli are not present. For example, there may be stored representations of a cue that has previously been associated with food, danger, or...
As we've noted, internal representations are correlational maps. Most learning is based on establishing correlations between things—correspondences or associations. Behavioral conditioning occurs through rewards and consequences reinforcing or weakening those associations. According to an elegant theory by neuroscientist Simona Ginsburg and evoluti...
Positive and negative reinforcement obtained in the process of learning by association confers valence or affect to experience. Thus, brains assign value to stimuli—"good"-ness or "bad"-ness. This forms the basis for the evolution of feeling and emotion, and the fuel for motivationand goal-directedness. All this, of course, occurs entirely physical...
Self-representations (the brain's mapping of the body and its spatial positioning and actions) combine with affect (feeling) to provide a sense of ownership of the body and of perception, a feeling of presence and agency—the sense of being an entity that is doing the experiencing. A feedback loop of the brain’s modeling, predicting, and controlling...
At a basic level, internal representations are simply sensory images (as was illustrated by figure 1). Complex brains form representations of representations. Abstract mental concepts are constructed as higher-order representations from symbolic, analogous correspondencesto physical things—they are still assembled, at bottom, from the building bloc...
Predictions are key to how the brain processes information and learns. The brain is a prediction machine: As the brain learns to recognize patterns of information, so it acquires the ability to predict the form that new information will take and to form expectations about sensory input. This improves efficiency of information processing by imposing...
When inputs match expectations, a neural state of resonance occurs, which, according to one influential theory, is the conscious experience. The neuroscientist Stephen Grossberg formulated a theory of how brains learn to attend, recognize, and predict objects and events in a changing world, called Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART). Following is a ver...
Humans have the ability to share their internal mental states by employing shared attention and symbolic language, and to mirror these to each other, thereby building a more sophisticated sense of self. From language comes the ability to develop extremely abstract ideas, with almost unlimited complexity. And from language emerges the potential for ...
Apr 22, 2014 · Theoretical physicist Max Tegmark says that consciousness is a state of matter, undulating through phases of change based on surrounding mathematical conditions.
- Allison Eck
The important point is that consciousness is a form of the same thing that everything else is a form of: electrons, protons, fields, neurons, elephants, stars—whether we call this thing “matter” or not.
Jan 12, 2000 · Some identity theorists give a behaviouristic analysis of mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but others, sometimes called ‘central state materialists’, say that mental states are actual brain states. Identity theorists often describe themselves as ‘materialists’ but ‘physicalists’ may be a better word.
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Jun 5, 2012 · Summary. In the previous chapter, we focused on two important metaphysical questions in the philosophy of mind. One was the question of whether persons or subjects of experience are identical with their physical bodies, or certain parts of those bodies, such as their brains. The other was the question of whether the mental states of persons ...
