Michael Graziano attention schema theory
(I read the article “How the light gets out” in Aeon Magazine, and positioned the details against the backdrop of theory I’ve learned from what I’ve read of Scaruffi on consciousness. I’ve stolen this single sentence biography from the same article: Michael Graziano is a neuroscientist, novelist and composer. He is a professor of neuroscience at Princeton University. His latest book, Consciousness and the Social Brain, is out next month.)
Graziano’s idea is that we have an expert system that acts as a control system by selecting information from other brain processes and applying attention to them. The (necessarily: backwards-) rationalized evolutionary mechanism is suggested as follow: As neural function accumulated it became possible to segregate importance, i.e. attention. This must date to at least the common ancestor of birds and mammals (350myo), and presumably accumulated and modified its array of functionality along the way. For instance, the synthesis of information from so many different sources allows for cross-modal, higher-level, and abstract conceptions.
“I call this the ‘attention schema theory’. It has a very simple idea at its heart: that consciousness is a schematic model of one’s state of attention“. (MC, loc.40)
The scope that is attention can also be described as a model (i.e. of the territory incorporating the selected brain processes). Thus it is not only the control centre for decisions, but also a real-time record keeping of what the objects of attention are in fact.
“We paint the world with perceived consciousness“. (MC, loc.54)
There are a number of benefits to traditional problems of consciousness, says the author, by utilizing this theory. For instance, beginning with an important distinction within consciousness (nb. relating to intentionality), between world-to-mind (e.g. sensation) and mind-to-world (e.g. talking about consciousness). The latter, for instance, argues strongly against epiphenomenalism (and largely ignored by theories centring on emergence), but is permitted by the attention schema theory which never abandons a foundation of symbol processing (i.e. therefore not fundamentally different from any other cognitive function which are also species of symbol processing whose output is read by motor neurons and their member muscle fibres as contractions, etc).
“Attention is a data-handling method used by neurons. It isn’t a substance and it doesn’t flow“. (MC, loc.70)
Graziano recommends the theory by referring to it as a solution to other traditional problems, especially those that may be used to support mystical explanations and despite their replicability in the neuroscientist’s laboratory. These include questions mentioning out-of-body experiences, the intuition that mechanism of sight is rays coming out of the eyes, and post-hoc explanations by subjects (e.g. the famous experiments by Gazzaniga of patients with ablated corpus callosum who confabulate explanations for their actions). All of these can be explained in relation to distorted attention schemas, but only after these schemas are understood to be illusions of their own. For instance, the creation of a spatiotemporal locality described most easily as our body map is an illusion maintained for ease of reference, but easily corrupted as in the case of out-of-body perceptions. A similar illusion is responsible for our intuitions about powers of sight (or power to feel other’s gaze, e.g. as heat or other somatosensory stimuli).
Regarding the last of the neurology-problems to his theory of consciousness – post hoc confabulations – Graziano’s explanation is the least satisfying. He seems to basically only admit that the problem is real and that it indicates situations for which consciousness really is just post-hoc. (Presumably, he avoids allowing his theory to crumble in epiphenomenalism by stating this to be the exception to the tendency, and thus these case do not negate the ability of attention to lie on both effect-vectors linking mind and matter). (More can be said here about the implications for Graziano’s thoughts, especially implications not explored by the original article). Whatever limitations there may exist for understanding the necessity of post-hoc confabulations in these circumstances, they do not absolve the premise underlying it all: that consciousness must have a causal role because it was produced by the process of natural selection.
The article finishes with reference to a phenomenon only mentioned in sparse detail previously, and that is the link between the mind’s ability to generate a model of attention versus the ability to generate a model of other people’s attention. (Before continuing, and in order to highlight the significance of this aspect of his thought, I note that a brief browse of Graziano’s online biographical references indicates this philosophic bias).
“We live embedded in a matrix of perceived consciousness. Most people experience a world crowded with other minds, constantly thinking and feeling and choosing“. (MC, loc.146)
(PS. From his page on Wikipedia, I’ve become aware of two of Graziano’s other interesting ideas. The first is called peripersonal space and is the putative discovery of the neurological underpinnings of a brain map akin to the somatosensory map, but mapping the space near and around the body. The neurology of this mapping of peripersonal space proves it to be multi-modal – synthesising at least tactile and visual data, and its stimulation results in protective but complex behaviours including defensive and flinching actions. The other idea I discovered on the Wikipedia page is about an action map in the motor cortex, which can be contrasted with what was previously described as a ‘motor homunculus’ which is much simpler. This theoretical action map (or series of maps) is capable of eliciting complex behaviour and action patterns, especially when stimulated on temporal scales of behaviour. For example, a stimulation lasting on the order of half a second may result in the (primate tested) clenching a grip and raising that hand to its mouth and the mouth to open.)
(PS. Motivated ‘for record’s sake’ and ‘for future reference’ I note here, again via Wikipedia, that Graziano is a multiple time and multiple genre author, whose breadth incorporates more than fiction (novels) and non-fiction neuroscience texts, among others.)
