Consciousness: A Mathematical Treatment of the Global Neuronal Workspace Model - Hardcover

Wallace, Rodrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0387252428 ISBN 13: 9780387252421

Verlag: Springer, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

This book is not an intellectual history or popular summary of recent work on consciousness in humans. Bernard Baars (1988), Edelman and Tononi (2000), and many others, have written such, and done it well indeed. This book, rather, brings the powerful analytic machinery of communication theory to bear on the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) model of consciousness which Baars introduced, and does so in a formal mathematical manner. It is not the first such attempt. The philospher Fred Dretske (1981), indep- dent of Baars, long ago outlined how information theory might illuminate the understanding of mind. Adapting his approach on the necessary conditions for mental process, we apply a previously-developed information theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to Baars' GNW, which has become the principal candidate for a 'standard model' of consciousness. Invoking an obvious canonical homology with statistical physics, the method, when iterated in the spirit of the Hierarchical Linear Model of regression theory, generates a fluctuating dynamic threshold for consciousness which is similar to a tunable phase transition in a physical system. The phenomenon is, however, constrained to a manifold/atlas structure analogous to a retina; an adaptable Rate Distortion manifold, whose 'topology', in a large sense, reflects the hierarchy of embedding constraints acting on consciousness. This view greatly extends what Baars has characterized as 'contexts.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Deborah Wallace, PhD, received her PhD in symbiosis ecology from Columbia University in New York City in 1971. In 1972, she became an environmental studies manager at Consolidated Edison Co. and participated in pioneering environmental impact assessment. She became a manager of biological and public health studies at New York State Power Authority in 1974 and remained there until early 1982. In 1980 she completed a MiniResidency in epidemiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center. In the mid-1970s, she also founded Public Interest Scientific Consulting Service, which produced impact assessments of massive cuts in fire service in New York City. She also probed the health threats that plastics in fires posed to firefighters and became an expert witness in litigation for plaintiffs in large fires fueled by plastics. From 1985 to 1991, she worked for Barry Commoner at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College. From 1991 to 2010, she tested consumer products andservices for their environmental and health impacts at Consumers Union. She retired in 2010 but continues data analysis, research, and scientific publications. Her first paper was published in 1975, and her last publication, a book, in 2021.

Rodrick Wallace, PhD, is a research scientist in the Division of Epidemiology at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, affiliated with Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry in New York City. He has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics from Columbia University, and completed postdoctoral training in the epidemiology of mental disorders at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He worked as a public interest lobbyist, including two decades conducting empirical studies of fire service deployment, and subsequently received an Investigator Award in Health Policy Research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition to material on public health and public policy, he has published peer reviewed studies modeling evolutionary process and heterodox economics, as well as many quantitative analyses of institutional and machine cognition. He publishes in the military science literature, and in 2019 received one of the U.K. MoD RUSI Trench Gascoigne Essay Awards.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

"This book brings together the fundamental ideas of information theory and the statistical mechanics of phase transitions within the context of the neurosciences, culture, immunology and socio-psychological studies. Outlined is a program pertaining to a dynamic and semantic extension of current models for the global neuronal workspace as were previously introduced by Baars, Dretske and others. Topics include original applications of rate distortion and large deviations theory, biological renormalization, and retinal tuning as means towards understanding consciousness on the large scale. The overall treatment is concise, has been well thought out, and the mathematical details should be accessible to both students and researchers in the cognitive and life sciences."

- James Glazebrook Ph.D, Eastern Illinois University, USA

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Springer
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0387252428
• ISBN 13: 9780387252421
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 129
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: ProductSafety@springernature.com; ProductSafety@springernature.com; ; Poststr. 9; Darmstadt; 64293; Deutschland