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SUMMARY:What is is like to be a bat from integrated information theory vie
 w - Dr. Naotsugu Tsuchiya
DTSTART:20190715T110000Z
DTEND:20190715T120000Z
UID:TALK127504@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tristan Bekinschtein
DESCRIPTION:\nWhat does it feel like to be a bat? Is conscious experience 
 of echolocation closer to that of vision or audition? Or\, echolocation is
  non-conscious processing and it doesn't feel anything? This famous questi
 on of bats' experience\, posed by a philosopher Thomas Nagel in 1974\, cla
 rifies the difficult nature of the mind-body problem. Why a particular sen
 se\, such as vision\, has to feel like vision\, but not like audition\, is
  puzzling. This is especially so given that any conscious experience is su
 pported by neuronal activity. Activity of a single neuron appears fairly u
 niform across modalities\, and even similar to those for non-conscious pro
 cessing. Without any explanation on why a particular sense has to feel as 
 the way it does\, researchers even cannot approach the question of the bat
 s' experience. Is there any theory that gives us a hope for such explanati
 on? Currently\, probably none\, except for one. Integrated Information The
 ory (IIT)\, proposed by Tononi in 2004 has a potential to offer a plausibl
 e explanation. IIT essentially claims that any system that is composed of 
 causally interacting mechanisms can have conscious experience. And precise
 ly how the system feels like is determined by the way the mechanisms influ
 ence each other in a holistic way. In this talk\, I will give a brief expl
 anation of the essence of IIT and provide initial empirical partial tests 
 of the theory\, proposing a potential scientific pathway to approach bats'
  conscious experience. If IIT\, or its improved or related versions\, is v
 alidated enough\, it will gain credibility to accept its prediction on rou
 gh nature of bats' experience. If we can gain a sophisticated insight as t
 o whether bats' experience is closer to vision or audition\, it is already
  a tremendously big step in consciousness science\, which is just a first 
 yet critical one\, possibly a similar level of the breakthrough in cosmolo
 gy in precisely estimating the age of the universe. \n
LOCATION:Nick Mackintosh Room\, Dept. Psychology\, Downing Site
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