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SUMMARY:The radical plasticity thesis: Consciousness as learned metacognit
 ion - Axel Cleeremans\,  Professor of Cognitive Science\, Department of Ps
 ychology\, Université Libre de Bruxelles\, Belgium
DTSTART:20161111T163000Z
DTEND:20161111T180000Z
UID:TALK67110@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Louise White
DESCRIPTION:In this talk I explore the idea that consciousness is somethin
 g that one learns rather than an intrinsic property of certain neural stat
 es\, and suggest that this perspective offers a way of reconciling Global 
 Workspace Theory with Higher-Order Thought Theory. Starting from the idea 
 that neural activity is inherently unconscious\, the question becomes: How
  does the brain learn to be conscious? I suggest that consciousness arises
  as a result of the brain's continuous attempts at predicting not only the
  consequences of its actions on the world and on other agents\, but also t
 he consequences of activity in one cerebral region on activity in other re
 gions. By this account\, the brain continuously and unconsciously redescri
 bes its own activity to itself\, so developing systems of meta-representat
 ions that characterize and qualify their target representations. The main 
 functions of such metarepresentations are (1) to redescribe the target fir
 st-order representations in such a way as to explicitly indicate mental at
 titude\, and (2) to subserve prediction-driven control mechanisms. Crucial
 ly\, (1) such metarepresentations do not need to be conscious themselves (
 as in HOT)\, and (2) they emerge over training and development as a result
  of unconscious prediction-driven learning and plasticity mechanisms. Meta
 representations form the basis for self-awareness because they enable agen
 ts to “know that they know”\, that is\, to be acquainted with the geog
 raphy of their own representational systems. In a sense thus\, this is the
  enactive perspective\, but turned both inwards and (further) outwards. Co
 nsciousness is “signal detection on the mind”\; the mind is the brain'
 s (non-conceptual\, embodied implicit) theory about itself. I subtend thes
 e ideas by exploring empirical evidence that conscious experience is shape
 d by learning and through neural network models that simulate the relation
 ships between performance and awareness in the different tasks. Next\, I t
 urn to the link between self-awareness and theory of mind. The main argume
 nt is that developing infants continuously attempt to predict not only the
  consequences of their actions on the world\, but also the consequences of
  their actions on other agents. But there is a crucial difference between 
 interactions with the world and interactions with other agents: Understand
 ing the reactions of the latter\, unlike the former\, requires assuming th
 e existence of hidden\, unobservables states. Thus\, when one learns to in
 teract with other agents\, one also forms mental models of the internal st
 ates of those other agents. But this involves the same prediction-driven p
 rocesses as involved in forming metarepresentations of one own’s mental 
 states. There is thus a direct link between theory of mind and self-awaren
 ess\, a point that was forcefully argued by Carruthers. Hence we bridge th
 e gap from theory of mind to perceptual awareness through the joint involv
 ement of prediction-driven\, learned interactive loops that make it possib
 le for agents to better anticipate the consequences of their actions.
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology
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