The Gradient: Perspectives on AI

Peter Tse: The Neuroscience of Consciousness and Free Will

Dec 14, 2023

Peter Tse, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, discusses the neuroscience of consciousness and free will. Topics explored include determinism, quantum theory, biases in theory selection, neuroscience and subjectivity, introspection in neuroscience, and the physical properties of neurons. Other topics include the evolution of psychology and neuroscience, intrinsic meaning in AI, consciousness, desire systems, and mental operations in cognitive neuroscience.

02:24:04

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Peter Tse

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Quick takeaways

Consciousness is a construction process involving perceptual and cognitive inference, driven by the needs and desires of the body.

Meaning is about the consequences and significance of information, helping consciousness make sense of the world and act accordingly.

Perceptual and cognitive inference shape conscious experiences and guide our actions.

Desire systems play a crucial role in perception, evaluation, and action, allowing humans to imagine and pursue non-concrete possibilities.

Indeterminism is crucial for the existence of free will, as it allows humans to bias the likelihood of multiple possible outcomes.

Deep dives

The Construction of Conscious Experience and Teleology

Consciousness is a construction process that involves perceptual inference and cognitive inference. Perceptual inference is driven by the stimulus and aims to recover what is intrinsically true about the world. Cognitive inference, on the other hand, is open-ended and based on mental models. Consciousness is teleological, representing the needs and desires of the body, which imposes a goal-oriented structure. Consciousness serves the purpose of helping an organism fulfill its needs and desires.

Introduction

2min

Exploring the Nature of Consciousness and Free Will

28min

The History and Perspectives of Psychology and Neuroscience

25min

Intrinsic Meaning and Symbol Grounding

7min

Consciousness and the Role of Desire Systems

18min

Neural Firing Rates and Criteria-Based Randomness

33min

The Physical Basis of Neurons and Fundamental Differences in Processing

4min

Understanding the Difference Between Airplanes and Birds: Consciousness and Evolution

3min

The Overlooked Mental Operations

19min

10.

The Importance of AI for Enhancing Human Life and Choosing Good

4min

In episode 102 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Peter Tse.

Professor Tse is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and chair of the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College. His research focuses on using brain and behavioral data to constrain models of the neural bases of attention and consciousness, unconscious processing that precedes and constructs consciousness, mental causation, and human capacities for imagination and creativity. He is especially interested in the processing that goes into the construction of conscious experience between retinal activation at time 0 and seeing an event about a third of a second later.

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Outline:

* (00:00) Intro

* (01:45) Prof. Tse’s background

* (03:25) Early experiences in physics/math and philosophy of physics

* (06:10) Choosing to study neuroscience

* (07:15) Prof Tse’s commitments about determinism

* (10:00) Quantum theory and determinism

* (13:45) Biases/preferences in choosing theories

* (20:41) Falsifiability and scientific questions, transition from physics to neuroscience

* (30:50) How neuroscience is unusual among the sciences

* (33:20) Neuroscience and subjectivity

* (34:30) Reductionism

* (37:30) Gestalt psychology

* (41:30) Introspection in neuroscience

* (45:30) The preconscious buffer and construction of conscious experience, color constancy

* (53:00) Perceptual and cognitive inference

* (55:00) AI systems and intrinsic meaning

* (57:15) Information vs. meaning

* (1:01:45) Consciousness and representation of bodily states

* (1:05:10) Our second-order free will

* (1:07:20) Jaegwon Kim’s exclusion argument

* (1:11:45) Why Kim thought his own argument was wrong

* (1:15:00) Resistance and counterarguments to Kim

* (1:19:45) Criterial causation

* (1:23:00) How neurons evaluate inputs criterially

* (1:24:00) Concept neurons in the hippocampus

* (1:31:57) Criterial causation and physicalism, mental causation

* (1:40:10) Daniel makes another attempt to push back 🤡

* (1:45:47) More on AI

* (1:47:05) Prof Tse’s perspective on modern AI systems, differences with human cognition

* (2:17:25) Consciousness, attention, spirituality

* (2:20:10) Prof Tse’s hopes for AI

* (2:23:30) Outro

Links:

* Professor Tse’s homepage

* Papers

* Vision/Perception

* Perceptual learning based on the learning of diagnostic features

* Complete mergeability and amodal completion

* Attention

* How Attention Can Alter Appearances

* How Top-down Attention Alters Bottom-up preconscious operations

* Consciousness

* Network structure and dynamics of the mental workspace

* On free will

* NDPR review of “Neural Basis of Free Will”

* Kripke’s Category Error

* Ontological Indeterminism undermines Kim’s Exclusion Argument

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The Gradient: Perspectives on AI

Peter Tse: The Neuroscience of Consciousness and Free Will

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Construction of Conscious Experience and Teleology

Meaning and Information

Embodiment and Consciousness

Perceptual Inference and Meaning

The Role of Desire Systems in Consciousness

The Causal Exclusion Argument and Free Will

Neural Criteria and Mental Operations

The Role of Informational Parameters and Constraints in Determining What Can Happen

The Connection Between Consciousness, Attention, and the Transformative Power of Practices

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts