[The following is a brief summary of my theory of consciousness intended to be used for possible discussion by Bernardo Kastrup and Michael Levin as part of a fund-raising event. See here:https://dandelion.events/e/c01t4. I’ve removed mention of psychules mostly to save space, as the invite called for 250-ish words and the following is about 280.]
This (physicalist, computational functionalist, panprotopsychist) theory proposes a basic unit for consciousness analogous to H2O as the basic unit of water, or clouds, or snowflakes. This basic unit of consciousness is pattern recognition, as described below.
1. Every physical interaction can be diagrammed as
Input(A,B,…)—>[M (mechanism)]—>Output(X,Y,…)
2. Every physical interaction “realizes” (makes real) a pattern, specifically, the pattern of Input/Output pairs which identify the object M (mechanism).
3. Because every physical interaction follows rules (physical laws), outputs are correlated with inputs, i.e., outputs have mutual information with respect to inputs. This information is an affordance for a system with goals.
4. A system has a goal if there is a state of the world such that the system can create/select mechanisms to detect a discrepancy between the current state and the goal state and respond to that detection via action that moves the world toward the goal state.
5. “Pattern recognition” is defined as the making use of a “pattern realization”, and looks like this:
Input()->[mech1]-> sign vehicle -> [mech2] -> Output (response)
where “sign vehicle” (see C.S. Peirce), whose sole purpose is to carry mutual information, is the Output of one process and the Input of another, and a system coordinated the linking of the pattern realization to the response so as to further a goal.
Some observations:
— Pattern realization is the panprotopsychic property.
— A pattern recognition is an experience, and identifying the experience requires reference to both the pattern recognized and the specific response made to the pattern.
— qualia are the first person (software) perspective of pattern recognitions
— A system’s Umwelt is the set of patterns a system can recognize.
— Pattern recognition can be complex and hierarchical (patterns of patterns).
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James of Seattle’s Blog 