Two theories of consciousness: Semantic pointer competition vs. information integration |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada;2. Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada;1. University of Turin, Dip. di Informatica, Corso Svizzera 185, Torino, Italy;2. ICAR-CNR, edificio 11, Viale delle Scienze, Palermo, Italy;1. Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita, Osaka 565-0871, Japan;2. School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria 3800, Australia;3. Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Victoria 3800, Australia;4. University of Wisconsin – Madison, 6001 Research Park Blvd, Madison, WI 53719, United States;5. ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, 2-2-2 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto 619-0288, Japan;6. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8092, Japan;7. RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan |
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| Abstract: | Consciousness results from three mechanisms: representation by firing patterns in neural populations, binding of representations into more complex representations called semantic pointers, and competition among semantic pointers to capture the most important aspects of an organism’s current state. We contrast the semantic pointer competition (SPC) theory of consciousness with the hypothesis that consciousness is the capacity of a system to integrate information (IIT). We describe computer simulations to show that SPC surpasses IIT in providing better explanations of key aspects of consciousness: qualitative features, onset and cessation, shifts in experiences, differences in kinds across different organisms, unity and diversity, and storage and retrieval. |
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| Keywords: | Binding Competition Consciousness Information integration Neural engineering framework Neural mechanisms Qualia Representation Semantic pointers |
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