Category: Cognitive Science
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[Weekly Post] Reading paper “Sources of richness and ineffability for phenomenally conscious states”
Link to paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.06403 My interest in this paper originally came from my study of GFlowNet, which is a new deep learning framework proposed by Mila, and is said to be useful in constructing compositional objects. Consciousness can be considered as a compositional object because it appears to be sequential when ideas and thoughts build,…
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DL study – Jan 25, 2024
The scaling law I have been hearing about, how much truth is there to it? I think to look at it from the opposite angle, the question is: how much neural architecture matters? Or does all those invariants or biases that different architectures possess are simply a “shortcut”, which facilitates more complex problem solving with…
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What does Bengio have to say about consciousness? – Jan 3-5, 2024
I have studied the science of consciousness, particularly GWT, and the influence of that on constructing system 2 AI. The remaining perspective I haven’t examine is the AI scientists’ ideas on consciousness. I asked the question: if system 2 AI is successful, could it be used to simulate consciousness? I have already got a preliminary…
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Gap in System 2 AI formulation, Dec 27-29, 2023
Bengio’s system 2 AI and GFlowNet took inspirations from Bernard Baars’ Global Workspace Theory. Mila researchers take the “limited capacity” element from GWT, and posit that high-level thoughts are a necessity and constructed in a sequential manner using a small number of discrete concepts due to the biological bottleneck. However, such a position increasingly looks…
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Consciousness, System 2 and AI – Christmas holiday 2023
This post discusses phenomena in a general manner and terms like “subconscious“, “cognitive biases” are used in a way accepted in popular literature. I was imagining my conversation with Justin, my skip manager, about what I am studying. I would say to him: “next time when you make a judgement or come up with an…
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Reductionism Can’t Address Complex Systems
A colleague once said that drones are not innovative because they are just four motors and some plastic put together, arguing that these are existing components. However, I don’t believe that this reductionist argument fully explains the true nature of these devices. This particular argument stuck with me, as I had recently been contemplating a…
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The Dual Process Theory and its Criticisms
What is the precise definition of system 1 and system 2? I was discussing with Genia the other day and realized I was describing their characteristics and giving examples, which most of other people do. But I wasn’t really talking about the definition Kahneman provided in his research. Okay, so in the book Thinking Fast…
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Consciousness Research
Concepts The brain’s processing of information and our experience of that processing. And the experience is what we called consciousness. Consciousness is our awareness of ourselves and our environment. Everything psychological is simultaneously biological. Dual processing: the principle that information is simultaneously processed on separate conscious and non-conscious tracks. Selective attention: the focusing of conscious…
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GWT – Global Workspace Theory
What is it? Global Workspace Theory (GWT) is a cognitive architecture and theory of consciousness proposed by psychologist Bernard Baars. This theory is often used to explain various aspects of human cognition, including attention, perception, and action. The central metaphor of GWT is a “theater of consciousness.” In this theater, the conscious mind is like…
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