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This book makes formal, detailed, application of what Adams has described as 'the informational turn in philosophy' to the global neuronal workspace (GNW) model of consciousness. It uses an extended statistical model of cognitive process, based on the Shannon-McMillan Theorem and its corollaries, to incorporate the effects of embedding physiological, social, and cultural contextual constraints which operate more slowly than the workspace itself, but severely limit the possible realms available to that workspace, and hence to consciousness itself. The resulting 'biopsychosociocultural' treatment directly addresses criticisms of brain-only models of consciousness which have been raised in cultural psychology and philosophy, while remaining true to the current neuroscience perspective.
This is the first formal, comprehensive, and reasonably rigorous, mathematical treatment of the GNW and is the only one to include the effects of embedding contexts in a 'natural' manner.
List of contents
Preface.- What is consciousness?- The Global Neuronal Workspace model. An introduction to information theory. The Shannon Coding Theorem. More heuristics: a 'tuning theorem'. The Shannon-McMillan Theorem. The Rate Distortion Theorem. Large deviations.- Fluctuations. The fundamental homology with statistical physics. Cognition as generalized language.- Theory. Two neural network examples. Interacting cognitive modules.- Representations. Language-on-a-network models. 'Biological' phase transitions. Universality class distribution. Universality class tuning. More on behavior far from the critical point. Extending the model. The simplest tunable retina. Tuning the visual retina. The torus and the sphere. Expanding the workspace. Energy efficiency and consciousness. Where does all this lead? Sociocultural context as selection pressure. Autocognitive developmental disorder. Toward a 'General Cognitive Model'. Evading the mereological fallacy.- References. Appendix on coarse graining.
Summary
This book makes formal, detailed application of "the informational turn in philosophy" to the global neuronal workspace (GNW) model of consciousness. It uses an extended statistical model of cognitive process to incorporate the effects of embedding physiological, social, and cultural contextual constraints which operate more slowly than the workspace itself, but severely limit the possible realms available to that workspace, and hence to consciousness itself. This is the first formal, comprehensive, and reasonably rigorous, mathematical treatment of the GNW and is the only one to include the effects of embedding contexts in a 'natural' manner.
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From the reviews:
"To formulate a serious, clear-cut and transparent formal framework for cognitive neuroscience is a challenge … . I think that Wallace’s book presents an appreciable step in the right direction. … Beyond references that are necessary for basic elements of his work, the author has put together additional interesting reading material … . It is a book that can unfold its potential to well-educated readers with genuinely interdisciplinary ambitions … ." (Harald Atmanspacher, Acta Biotheoretica, Vol. 54, 2006)
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From the reviews:
"To formulate a serious, clear-cut and transparent formal framework for cognitive neuroscience is a challenge ... . I think that Wallace's book presents an appreciable step in the right direction. ... Beyond references that are necessary for basic elements of his work, the author has put together additional interesting reading material ... . It is a book that can unfold its potential to well-educated readers with genuinely interdisciplinary ambitions ... ." (Harald Atmanspacher, Acta Biotheoretica, Vol. 54, 2006)
