Is consciousness an episodic memory system for interacting with reality?

[Blumlein 88]

Is Consciousness Really a Memory System For Our Interactions With Reality? New Research Says Maybe. - The Debrief

A new study proposes a novel theory of consciousness as a memory system that records our unconscious interactions with reality.

thedebrief.org

Short version.

You can download the full article here and it actually is much more interesting.

Consciousness as a Memory System : Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology

journals.lww.com

Consciousness as a Memory System
Andrew E. Budson, MD,*† Kenneth A. Richman, PhD,‡ and Elizabeth A. Kensinger, PhD§


Abstract: We suggest that there is confusion between why con-
sciousness developed and what additional functions, through con-
tinued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we
believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent
past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and
false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory devel-
oped to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of
prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good
system. We argue that consciousness originally developed as part of
the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accom-
plish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that
consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions
that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-
solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is
compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the
after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by
other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound im-
plications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in
general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated
memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a
whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system
in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness.
Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that
makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contrib-
utes to this conscious memory system.

 

[Multicore]

Betteridge's law of headlines works here.

The simplest and most useful statement of what consciousness is ... It is a system for minimizing surprise. It's job is to discriminate affordances and hazards from the noise, i.e. builds a map of foreground (important) and background (safe to ignore). The better this works, the less we are surprised.

Episodic memory is clearly a part of the conscious experience of humans but I'm not sure how big a role it plays in other animals like dogs or elephants. So that seems a bit weird to me.

I'm also a bit suspicious of the lanuage of the title: a system for interacting with reality. People often talk about reality as subjective, so are we talking about an individual interacting with its own subjectivity, i.e. introspection? Or are we talking about conscious animals living in their objective world, e.g navigating it, finding its affordances, avoiding its hazards, making babies, etc?

 

[kemmler3D]

I recently read this and found it to be an equally compelling treatment of how consciousness might have evolved, which also gives us an idea of what it is.

How blindsight answers the hard problem of consciousness | Aeon Essays

An evolutionary approach to consciousness can resolve the ‘hard problem’ – with radical implications for animal sentience

aeon.co

The gist is that consciousness is a byproduct of representing reactions to external stimuli in the brain. Their argument is that very complex states can result from the feedback loop between sensory input and modeling the physical reaction to said input. They get so complex that consciousness is the result. Seems plausible enough to me.

 

[RayDunzl]

Why doesn't it keep better track of eyeglasses, coffee cups, and car keys for me?

 

[Blumlein 88]

I'm also a bit suspicious of the lanuage of the title: a system for interacting with reality. People often talk about reality as subjective, so are we talking about an individual interacting with its own subjectivity, i.e. introspection? Or are we talking about conscious animals living in their objective world, e.g navigating it, finding its affordances, avoiding its hazards, making babies, etc?

To elaborate, our theory of consciousness rejects the
idea that consciousness initially evolved in order to allow
us to make sense of the world and act accordingly, and
then, at some later point, episodic memory developed to
store such conscious representations. Our theory is that
consciousness developed with the evolution of episodic
memory simply—and powerfully—to enable the phe-
nomena of remembering. We view the fact that our ability
to imagine things in consciousness is constrained by and
related to our episodic memory (James, 1890; Moulton
and Kosslyn, 2009) as another piece of evidence sup-
porting the idea that consciousness evolved as part of
episodic memory.

Today, consciousness certainly participates in func-
tions that we do not generally associate with episodic
memory, such as problem-solving, abstract reasoning, and
language. We argue that such functions developed later in
evolutionary history, after consciousness was already
functioning to furnish the content of episodic memory
representations.

 

[sam_adams]

Why doesn't it keep better track of eyeglasses, coffee cups, and car keys for me?

It can't because your cat keeps pushing them off the table they are on.

 

[Keened]

They're headed in the right direction for sure. All modern neuroscience shows that 'conciousness' follows after 'sub-conciousness' processes have already made the decision. That is to say, no one truly has 'intent' it's all ad hoc and post hoc justifications for the actions they took.

I think they might still be putting the cart before the horse though in attributing such low level functions such as memory and environmental problem solving to consciousness. Slime molds demonstrate memory and solve environmental problems.

The easiest answer is there is no such thing as consciousness; there is merely a very persistant illusion. What we call consciousness is merely a semantic grouping of various disparate systems that interact with each other in 'good-enough' ways to pass on genes.

 

[SoundGuy]

Consciousness has evolved in most of the higher animals because it has significant benefits for survival and procreation.

The construct is simply a representation of ourselves (an avatar) in our mind. A portion of our brain monitors and sees ourself within our surroundings and our interactions with the external environment. Memories allow us to store things we learn from our environment and our experiences that could prove useful. Ultimately this overseer part of the brain can analyze past results and reactions as well as anticipate future scenarios and possible responses. This leads to the concept of free will and choice. This kind of overseer brain activity is what we call ’thinking”. In highly intelligent animals the “thinking“ can become abstract - we try to work out what others feel or are thinking. We can apply the same skills to think about experiments/philosophy and science.

The overseer part of the brain largely determines what we regard as important enough to be worth remembering.

It is cloudy. I surmise it might rain. If I don’t bring my umbrella I could get wet but I won’t have to carry it. My choice to bring one or not.

 

[Chrispy]

It's the Matrix thing, did you take the red or blue pill?

 

[MRC01]

I think consciousness is also related to empathy, facilitating productive and efficient social organization. Humans don't organize like ants.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Consciousness has evolved in most of the higher animals because it has significant benefits for survival and procreation.

The construct is simply a representation of ourselves (an avatar) in our mind. A portion of our brain monitors and sees ourself within our surroundings and our interactions with the external environment. Memories allow us to store things we learn from our environment and our experiences that could prove useful. Ultimately this overseer part of the brain can analyze past results and reactions as well as anticipate future scenarios and possible responses. This leads to the concept of free will and choice. This kind of overseer brain activity is what we call ’thinking”. In highly intelligent animals the “thinking“ can become abstract - we try to work out what others feel or are thinking. We can apply the same skills to think about experiments/philosophy and science.

The overseer part of the brain largely determines what we regard as important enough to be worth remembering.

It is cloudy. I surmise it might rain. If I don’t bring my umbrella I could get wet but I won’t have to carry it. My choice to bring one or not.

Actually a large part of this is indicating why the over-seer part reflects back in time to be tricked into thinking it made an executive decision. The research indicates the overseer follows actual decision making by a hefty fraction of a second. A book some years ago was all about this one thing. The User Illusion.

 

[Snarfie]

To make things more complex

Quantum Physics Suggests That Death Doesn’t Exist And It Is Probably Just An Illusion

According to Robert Lanza, M.D, death is actually a door to an endless number of universes. Furthermore, during our life, Lanza asserts that anything

www.thespaceacademy.org

Biocentrism asserts that life and consciousness are both fundamental to the ways of the universe. He further theorizes that it is our consciousness that creates the material universe, instead of being the other way around.

 

[SoundGuy]

The easiest answer is there is no such thing as consciousness; there is merely a very persistant illusion. What we call consciousness is merely a semantic grouping of various disparate systems that interact with each other in 'good-enough' ways to pass on genes.

Consciousness of self and surroundings exists for sure. It is updated continuously. We change slowly enough in life that we can maintain a continuous feeling of identity or self. It is grounded in the physical senses - sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste - it is constantly reinforced by physical interaction with our others, our environment and also our ongoing thoughts about things.

The real tricky thing is what makes you YOU and me ME. I don’t think I have seen a good answer to that yet - it may be an illusion that there is an actual “spirit” but why does everyone have a unique ME (or distinct identity) in their own head. Do Bees/ants share this kind of individuality or separation or do they share a kind of hive mentality?

Do babies in the womb have an identity or self? At what point is identity formed? Surely the 1 day old humanoid egg isn’t sentient - but at some point it become conscious of self? Is this before birth or some months or years later? And what determines WHO (the spirit) that inhabits that babies head?

 

[Newman]

Is Consciousness Really a Memory System For Our Interactions With Reality? New Research Says Maybe. - The Debrief

A new study proposes a novel theory of consciousness as a memory system that records our unconscious interactions with reality.

thedebrief.org

Short version.

You can download the full article here and it actually is much more interesting.

Consciousness as a Memory System : Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology

journals.lww.com

Consciousness as a Memory System
Andrew E. Budson, MD,*† Kenneth A. Richman, PhD,‡ and Elizabeth A. Kensinger, PhD§


Abstract: We suggest that there is confusion between why con-
sciousness developed and what additional functions, through con-
tinued evolution, it has co-opted. Consider episodic memory. If we
believe that episodic memory evolved solely to accurately represent
past events, it seems like a terrible system—prone to forgetting and
false memories. However, if we believe that episodic memory devel-
oped to flexibly and creatively combine and rearrange memories of
prior events in order to plan for the future, then it is quite a good
system. We argue that consciousness originally developed as part of
the episodic memory system—quite likely the part needed to accom-
plish that flexible recombining of information. We posit further that
consciousness was subsequently co-opted to produce other functions
that are not directly relevant to memory per se, such as problem-
solving, abstract thinking, and language. We suggest that this theory is
compatible with many phenomena, such as the slow speed and the
after-the-fact order of consciousness, that cannot be explained well by
other theories. We believe that our theory may have profound im-
plications for understanding intentional action and consciousness in
general. Moreover, we suggest that episodic memory and its associated
memory systems of sensory, working, and semantic memory as a
whole ought to be considered together as the conscious memory system
in that they, together, give rise to the phenomenon of consciousness.
Lastly, we suggest that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that
makes consciousness possible, and that every cortical region contrib-
utes to this conscious memory system.

What are your thoughts on relating this back to our hobby?

cheers

 

[Vacceo]

Consciousness of self and surroundings exists for sure. It is updated continuously. We change slowly enough in life that we can maintain a continuous feeling of identity or self. It is grounded in the physical senses - sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste - it is constantly reinforced by physical interaction with our others, our environment and also our ongoing thoughts about things.

The real tricky thing is what makes you YOU and me ME. I don’t think I have seen a good answer to that yet - it may be an illusion that there is an actual “spirit” but why does everyone have a unique ME (or distinct identity) in their own head. Do Bees/ants share this kind of individuality or separation or do they share a kind of hive mentality?

The others and their recognition are what makes me. That is a very old, solved problem since Hegel wrote the dialectics of the master and the slave.

 

[SoundGuy]

Actually a large part of this is indicating why the over-seer part reflects back in time to be tricked into thinking it made an executive decision. The research indicates the overseer follows actual decision making by a hefty fraction of a second. A book some years ago was all about this one thing. The User Illusion.

Fascinating. Yet the over-seer can imagine scenarios like a job interview or a date…it can plan ahead how the interaction might take place advantageously. And mental preparation for these events just like in competitive sports definitely affects outcome.

 

[SoundGuy]

The others and their recognition are what makes me. That is a very old, solved problem since Hegel wrote the dialectics of the master and the slave.

I find that answer philosophically a great answer but it doesn’t help me understand why I am and feel like ME - all the time inside my head.

 

[Blumlein 88]

What are your thoughts on relating this back to our hobby?

cheers

Well I didn't post it in the general audio discussion part of the forum.

I think any new (reasonable) ideas on consciousness, perception etc. would have some interest in a forum dedicated to one of our primary senses, and its effects upon us. I didn't have anything too particular in mind however, this is interesting from the paper.

If
consciousness is a system for memory encoding and
retrieval—and not direct action—there is no reason that it
cannot function properly with a small delay. We would
argue, in fact, that we do not consciously perceive events
directly in real time. We perceive the world as a memory.
In other words, technically, we are not consciously per-
ceiving anything directly; we are actually experiencing a
memory of a perception.

We suggest that we experience the world by re-
membering sensory memories. Moreover, most of the
time, we are not experiencing these bottom–up sensory
memory processes by themselves. We experience sensory
memory processes influenced by top–down episodic and/or
semantic memory processes, such that the percept that is
consciously perceived is a mashup between the bottom–up
sensory memory processes and the top–down episodic and
sematic memory processes.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Fascinating. Yet the over-seer can imagine scenarios like a job interview or a date…it can plan ahead how the interaction might take place advantageously. And mental preparation for these events just like in competitive sports definitely affects outcome.

Read the actual paper. These kinds of questions are covered. I hate to be that way, but I don't want to bungle what they had in mind. Performance in sports is one of the touchstones in the paper. Like lots of repetitive preperation in sports is to be able to participate without consciousness being needed to perform.

 

[Keened]

To make things more complex

Quantum Physics Suggests That Death Doesn’t Exist And It Is Probably Just An Illusion

According to Robert Lanza, M.D, death is actually a door to an endless number of universes. Furthermore, during our life, Lanza asserts that anything

www.thespaceacademy.org

Biocentrism asserts that life and consciousness are both fundamental to the ways of the universe. He further theorizes that it is our consciousness that creates the material universe, instead of being the other way around.

The number of people who truly understand quantum physics is vanishingly small, I don't see much reason to give an MD significant academic weight behind their opinion. I haven't read the book to be fair, but I'd place a healthy wager on a very liberal interpretation of Many Worlds Theory with a sprinkling of entanglement, all without the tedious math to demonstrate such an assertion.

To be sure, there are arguments to be made that the metaphysical parameters that allow for computation--and thus the universe to exist--will trend towards creating additional computational machines inside it. But that says nothing of life, death, or anything so grand as a motive behind the universe. Physics alone is hard enough to not mix yourself up, metaphysics (especially once you get to the point that logical relations break down) is very easy to over state a case.

Consciousness of self and surroundings exists for sure. It is updated continuously. We change slowly enough in life that we can maintain a continuous feeling of identity or self. It is grounded in the physical senses - sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste - it is constantly reinforced by physical interaction with our others, our environment and also our ongoing thoughts about things.

Ah, but this is part of the illusion. There is no continuity of consciousness (I don't actually know this paper in particular, but just a link to the general literature on the subject). We perceive a continuity because we can only grasp continuities, we don't have direct access to the granular parts (or the processes) that are pulled together. Consider a virtual disk in a computer, the application cannot parse the blocks, it can only see what the userspace presents to it, let alone distinguish between data striped among multiple physical disk. Our physical senses are most certainly not grounded, they are a mixture of stimuli and hallucination. Consider the blind sight example further up in the thread, or how your nose is edited out of your field of vision, or how stereo works

The real tricky thing is what makes you YOU and me ME. I don’t think I have seen a good answer to that yet - it may be an illusion that there is an actual “spirit” but why does everyone have a unique ME (or distinct identity) in their own head. Do Bees/ants share this kind of individuality or separation or do they share a kind of hive mentality?

Do babies in the womb have an identity or self? At what point is identity formed? Surely the 1 day old humanoid egg isn’t sentient - but at some point it become conscious of self? Is this before birth or some months or years later? And what determines WHO (the spirit) that inhabits that babies head?

Well that's a tricky one because you can only reference it statistically. Humans share a similar-but-not-identical hardware running similar-but-not-identical software that is shaped both by their individual experiences and the limits/biases of the hardware/software. If you put two different people through the same scenarios you will get a distribution range of similar outcomes, but if you made an instant clone you'd find a much smaller range of outcomes verging on identical.

Near as we can tell, babies have a reference sense of self ~3-4 month after birth, but it's all rather vague since they possess the disparate elements earlier, they just can't weave them together into a demonstrable 'continuity'. The better question is, if we consider babies to be conscious and deserving of protection how can we not extend that to almost all vertebrae? (and cephloids)