Molecular Biologist Johnjoe McFadden interviewed

[NLN]

In this interview, molecular biologist Johnjoe McFadden speaks about cognition, synthetic life and artificial intelligence. An excerpt:

 

"The basic problem is that our subjective experience of consciousness does not correspond to the neurophysiology of our brain. When we see an object, such as a tree, the image that is received by our eyes is processed, in parallel, in millions of widely separated brain neurons. Some neurons process the colour information, some process aspects of movement, some process texture elements of the image. But there is nowhere in the brain where all these disparate elements are brought together. That doesn’t correspond to the subjective experience of seeing a whole tree where all the leaves and swaying branches are seen as an integrated whole. The problem is understanding how all the physically distinct information in our brain is somehow bound together to the subjective image: the binding problem."

[Buffy]

The real obstacle as I see it is the perception that there is a *need* for "binding."

 

The brain is not a vonNeumann machine, but the notion that the brain's *entire* state at a particular point in time *is* consciousness, is just really hard to, well, "wrap your brain around!"

 

This is an interesting topic in general of course, and I think the key is opening up the limited range of ways that we think the brain "ought" to work...

 

The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, :hyper:

Buffy