Humans use this whole idea, this whole construct. One of the ways we use it most is attributing consciousness to other people. It's a huge part of social intelligence. So I'm talking to you, and I have this intuitive kind of reflexive way of attributingconsciousness to you. And it allows me to make some predictions about your behavior. If I think you're conscious of something, then I can start to predict how you might react to the something. But if I think you’re not conscious of it, you know, I don't know we're driving down the road and I think you are not aware of a road sign, then I start making a
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How does our focused attention relate to what we call “consciousness”? What types of attention are out there, and what are the functions of each type? Professor Michael Graziano explores this and more in his book Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience.
Author Michael Graziano is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University, and he has written multiple books on neuroscience, evolution, and human nature. The Graziano Lab at Princeton focuses on the brain basis of consciousness, based on attention schema theory, which was formulated by Professor Graziano.
I talked with Professor Graziano about his book and concepts related to consciousness. The mechanistic approach he brings to the topic is something that I am able to relate with.
Show notes:
what Professor Graziano works on with students in the Graziano lab
how the brain basis of consciousness is studied, and ways that we accept consciousness as defined
what the attention schema theory is, and how the model has two functions for daily living
the way that signals compete with each other in the computational process of attention
how a frog’s form of attention differs from that of a person, and the types of awareness that exist
what “biased competition” is, and and the battle for incoming stimuli to the cortex
why covert and overt attention are both needed, and how they differ
consciousness only being present in a few types of organisms/mammals
the concept of affordance, and how the brain works tirelessly as a prediction machine
why consciousness is defined as a hard problem, and if that difficulty can be usurped with some research method
