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SUMMARY:What Makes Some Intelligent Agents Conscious - Dr Hakwan Lau\, RIK
 EN Center for Brain Science\, Japan
DTSTART:20211209T123000Z
DTEND:20211209T133000Z
UID:TALK161014@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:87079
DESCRIPTION:*Abstract* \nMuch of current empirical research on the neural 
 mechanisms of subjective experience is biased by a common set of experimen
 tal confounds\; when we compare between conscious and nonconscious conditi
 ons (e.g. under coma\, interocular suppression\, visual making)\, besides 
 subjective experience there is usually also a large difference in terms of
  the depth or strength of information processing. This means that so long 
 as a theory associates consciousness with some sort of strong\, global\, s
 table\, complex\, or deeply integrated signals\, it would be trivial to ob
 tain apparent empirical ‘support’ - even if the theory otherwise makes
  little sense. Using new methods like multivoxel neural-reinforcement\, we
  can partially address this problem\, by inducing strong nonconscious repr
 esentations for the control conditions. However\, before we can do these e
 xperiments on a larger scale\, our theories need to be conservative\, i.e.
  prima facie plausible\, given what we know about brains and cognition. Gi
 ven this context\, I will present a ‘just so’ story\, of how an intell
 igent agent capable of general reasoning and predictive sensory coding may
  come to enjoy qualitative experiences. For this to happen\, the relevant 
 sensory representations need to demonstrate the properties of smoothness a
 nd sparsity. This way some implicit metacognitive mechanisms can learn the
  relational structure of these representations\, and allow the agent to kn
 ow\, without effort\, what an experience is like\, i.e. how exactly it is 
 subjectively similar to all other experiences. In this view\, consciousnes
 s is something considerably more specific than perception that functions w
 ell.\n\n*Biography*\nHakwan Lau directs the Laboratory for Consciousness a
 t the Riken Institute in Japan. He was formerly a tenured full professor a
 t UCLA\, and prior to that\, an associate professor at Columbia University
 . His research group employs tools of cognitive neuroscience to study the 
 mechanisms for visual perception\, attention\, and metacognition. He also 
 interacts closely with people working in the philosophy of mind and philos
 ophy of science. The interdisciplinary nature of his research will be refl
 ected in his upcoming book\, _In Consciousness We Trust_\, to be published
  by Oxford University Press early in 2022. For more information on Dr Lau\
 , please visit: https://cbs.riken.jp/en/faculty/h.lau/\n
LOCATION: Webinar  (via Zoom online)
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