From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Wed Sep 18 2002 - 01:26:19 MDT
[Blunderov]
Hope the assembled find this as interesting as I do.
At a chess tournament a long time ago, a large water jug was knocked to
the floor causing a loud crash which startled all the players except
one. When he was asked afterwards whether he had been aware of the
incident, he said that he had not been in aware of it.
It goes a long way toward explaining why driving while using a cell
phone is not a great idea.
Warm regards
http://www.philosophersnet.com/article.php?id=585
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Mathew Iredale
Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the
mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several
simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.
William James
According to John Taylor, Director of the Centre for Neural Networks at
King's College London, many philosophers, psychologists,
neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and various others, are currently
involved in a 'race for consciousness', the winning post being a full
scientific explanation of consciousness.
However, for Taylor, most of the entrants in the race will fail to
finish, as they have not appreciated the central role played by
attention. Taylor's provocative thesis is that "consciousness can be
more fruitfully regarded as created by suitably specific processes
arising from the movement of attention. This leads to a tentative neural
mechanism for the creation of mind from matter."
Taylor's belief in the importance of attention arises from two areas:
the phenomenon of inattentional blindness recently discovered by the
psychologists Arien Mack & Irvin Rock and recent neuroscientific
research showing the physical processes involved in attention
processing.
In Mack and Rock's research, participants were briefly presented with a
small cross on a computer screen for each of several experimental trials
and asked to judge which arm of the cross was longer. After several
trials, an unexpected object, such as a brightly coloured rectangle,
appeared on the screen along with the cross.
Mack and Rock reported that participants-busy paying attention to the
cross-often failed to notice the unexpected object, even when it had
appeared in the center of their field of vision. When participants'
attention was not diverted by the cross, they easily noticed such
objects.
Mack came away from their studies 'convinced that there is no conscious
perception without attention.'
However, as Taylor states, even though there can be no consciousness of
a given input without attention, the implicit capture of attention in
blindsight subjects (patients who have sustained localised brain damage
and are sometimes able to reliably discriminate visual information of
which they claim to have no visual awareness) shows that attention alone
is not sufficient for consciousness. What is required is the ability to
be aware of the focus of your attention, or, put simply, to be able to
pay attention to attention. The ultimate expression of this, Taylor
argues, is the Eastern mystic's state of 'pure conscious experience' in
which, through meditation, one is able to direct one's attention solely
to one's own movement of attention.
To be aware of the focus of one's attentions requires that there are
brain processes that attend to inputs and separate brain processes that
control the focus of attention, a state of affairs that is backed up by
recent neuroscientific research. Through noninvasive global brain
imaging techniques, such as Positron Emission Tomography and Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging it has been discovered that parietal and
prefrontal sites are involved in controlling the focus of attention
whereas the various sensory cortices are involved in the initial
processing of an attended input.
Bringing these various ideas together, Taylor has produced a tentative
attentional model of consciousness which he calls CODAM - Corollary
Discharge of Attention Movement. (A corollary discharge is a copy of a
neural command which acts as a 'feed-forward mechanism' that tells
relevant parts of the brain of our intentions and allows us to
distinguish between events due to our own actions, and events in the
outside world.)
According to this model, our most basic state of consciousness is
identified with, and experienced as, 'the corollary discharge of the
attention movement control signal residing briefly in its buffer until
the associated attended input activation arrives in its buffer.'
Put more plainly, when the brain network involved in controlling the
focus of attention (the attention movement control) sends out a neural
command to change the focus of attention, we experience basic
consciousness when a copy of this command (the corollary discharge) is
held in a temporary storage area (its buffer) until it receives an input
signal telling it that the focus has indeed changed.
Taylor admits that his theory needs to be filled in with considerable
detail. Areas for future research, he proposes, include where the
corollary discharge buffer is sited, the details of its functionality
and how attention is able to guide learning in a conscious manner.
But if he is right, if consciousness can be identified with such
specific brain processes, then those who have argued for a more
functional approach to consciousness may wish that they had paid more
attention to the science of attention.
TPM Online is The Philosophers' Magazine on the net.
It is edited by Dr Jeremy Stangroom.
C The Philosophers' Magazine - 98 Mulgrave Road, Sutton, Surrey SM2 6LZ
Tel/Fax +44 (0)20 8643 1504
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