Consciousness in humans, animals and artificial intelligence

[Kamaji]

Very interesting.  It's long past time that we needed to develop new theories of consciousness that went beyond the current standard model, as it were.


Date: December 20, 2021
Source: Ruhr-University Bochum


Summary:
A new theory of consciousness provides experimental access to the study of this phenomenon. Not just in humans.

Two researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have come up with a new theory of consciousness. They have long been exploring the nature of consciousness, the question of how and where the brain generates consciousness, and whether animals also have consciousness. The new concept describes consciousness as a state that is tied to complex cognitive operations -- and not as a passive basic state that automatically prevails when we are awake.

Professor Armin Zlomuzica from the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience research group at RUB and Professor Ekrem Dere, formerly at Université Paris-Sorbonne, now at RUB, describe their theory in the journal Behavioural Brain Research. The printed version will be published on 15 February 2022, the online article has been available since November 2021.


Source:  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/12/211220120719.htm

[The_Reader_David]

From the description it sounds like all they have done is avoided the actual problem of consciousness by substituting the ability to solve novel problems (which is not at all the same thing) for consciousness.  They then hypothesize certain neural structures as essential to the way we human beings solve novel problems and experiments to verify this (which would not show those neural structures explain consciousness, only that they are used in solving novel problems).  They will probably go into administration in a few years.  (cf. John Perry's dictum, “If you think about consciousness long enough, you either become a panpsychist or you go into administration.”)