How working memory could give rise to consciousness

bookofjoe

https://archive.ph/VZ43n

d00d0ff000

It does not. Consciousness is the echo chamber of the quantum domain, temporally propagating through cognitive technology. Memory and temporal propagation (awareness) give consciousness something to do, which makes it topically interesting and addressable. The quantum domain has a tremendous information density which scales through entanglement (by the tens of thousands or even millions in our neurons) allowing the ultra high definition holographic experience we (many of us) are familiar with. When quantum holographic memory is understood, consciousness will be better understood. The qubit is a dead end, this will be the indicator of scientific progress.

lambdaone

What makes this most interesting from my point of view is that this is a specific enough theory that it might be amenable to experimental investigation.

albertize

In this article, the concept of working memory accounts for not consciousness but the accessibility, stability and reportability of certain contents. For example, when I am reading very carefully, I may not be concentrating on the ambient sounds, my bodily position, my peripheral vision, and the environment of the room. These contents may not have to be retained in working memory in any way as relevant information for the current activity. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily follow that these are unconscious in nature. They can be part of the background of consciousness. Hence, there is the danger that the author assumes "being available for cognitive manipulation or verbal report" to be synonymous with "being conscious." This is quite an assumption and not one arrived at from the working memory model.

mellosouls

Should link to the original article: https://theconversation.com/consciousness-how-working-memory...

cloudie78

We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how. So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it? How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

goalieca

It seems to me that compaction is not unlike sleep

qsera

Isn't that obvious? What we perceive as "present" is just our latest memory.

henry-p

This does not recognize the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Even if we find a mechanistic way to explain what is needed for consciousness, it does not give any clue as to why it feels like something to be conscious.

tsoukase

Working memory is exactly like CPU cache. Data must be first moved to WM from mid and longterm storage in brain (RAM and SSD respectively) before being processed by the brain centres. Consciousness is a process that runs concurrently with the main process and follows it, hence we know about our thought. In this analogy, WM and consciousness have little relation.

iwantitez

No answer would be sufficient to explain how any “thing” can have an experience - we can only ever talk about objective features. Whether working memory, or neural ensembles, or quantum physics, or DMT, or God are the essence of consciousness - none of these really explain the phenomenon of say, “seeing my grandma in my memory”, or what “the aroma of coffee” is. These primitives that make up our experiences (and lives).

cadamsdotcom

My way of reasoning on this is unscientific - but it is intuitive. It might be a starting place. Consider physics as an analogy. The level of detail dictates the right physics to use. Aerospace engineering can use continuous formulae to predict what’ll happen. But when you deal in a few atoms as in chip design, quantum effects dominate. Sub-atomic particles (quarks et al) are different again. This makes deriving a universal physics elusive. So it likely is with consciousness and how the brain achieves what it achieves.