POINT OF VIEW
My targets are artificial intelligent systems which can learn like children do. Thus I am always interested in the findings of other disciplines like Psychology, Neurosciences, Linguistics etc. who dig out some interesting structures 'behind' the observable phenomena which appear as the underlying 'machinery' for all that observable behavior. Books who overcome the abundant details of a discipline and -- moreover -- can talk in a language, which is understandable beyond the borders of the own discipline are rare. 'In The Theater of Consciousness' is such a rare book.
LASTING ACTUALITY
Although the book has been written in 1997, about 14 years ago, it hasn't lost too much of it's importance. It's main power is the revelation of a general structure behind the great variety of baffling phenomena accessible to our mind through our consciousness of being there, with our body, in a world. These findings have been possible on account of more then 20 years of intensive research in the field of (cognitive neurosciences. And, indeed, I became aware of this book through many recent papers in the realm of computational intelligence citing this book as an important paradigm which can be used as a guideline for the construction of an artificial consciousness.
RETURN OF A PHENOMENON
There was a time when psychology as 'behavioral psychology (behaviorism)' dispelled the subjective dimension of human experience and tried to explain human behavior without relaying on 'consciousness' and closely related phenomena. This was a fruitful exercise to understand better the limits of such an approach and to learn what is needed, if one tries to explain cognitive properties like language, thinking, planning in a more appropriate theory. Parallel contributed other disciplines like evolutionary biology, ethology, and the neurosciences new empirical findings which underlined more and more the fact, that the evolution of the brain structures is responsible for the increasing complexity of human behavior. Especially emerged a new acceptance that the so-called 'consciousness' seems to be one of the major biological adaptations to improve a flexible, adaptive behavior in a complex changing environment. And at that point of the story comes the book of Bernhard J.Baars and presents a good readable, science-based view of the human consciousness.
BEHAVIOR, PHENOMENA, NEURONS
Although it is not possible to give a direct empirical account of the content of someone's consciousness (the so-called 'phenomena' ), Baars takes a clear stand for these kind of data because it is in praxis always sufficiently possible to get some descriptions of phenomena which can practically be distinguished and repeated. Thus, one can correlate behavioral data with phenomenal data. Besides this one can correlate observable behavior to some degree with the behavior of neuronal assemblies. With these methodological differentiations it is possible for Baars to develop a model of the consciousness as a kind of an 'interface' (called by Baars 'publicity organ',p.7) between the external environment (with the behavior) as well as the brain and the body as the 'internal' environment.
THE THEATER METAPHER
To bring all the different phenomena together in one coherent 'view' Baars uses the 'metapher' of the consciousness as a 'stage' and the whole body is then the 'theater' where the outer and inner senses as well as the ideas are the 'players' which want to act on the stage, and behind the stage is the 'unconscious' audience (embracing many different processes) which perceives the events on the stage and process them further with feedback loops. This 'picture' is helpful It is a simple exercise to turn it in an ordinary mathematical structure -- like in physics -- to present a full-fledged mathematical theory of this view of consciousness).
LIMITED CAPACITY
There is one property of the consciousness which is most important: although the consciousness has access to many parts of the brain, it can in reality always process only a very small fraction of all available data.
CONSCIOUS - UNCONSCIOUS
Those players which can appear within consciousness are 'conscious', everything else is 'unconscious'. Because the overwhelming part of the brain and the surrounding body is 'unconscious' it follows that a human person in the 'light' of its conscious processes always sees only a small fraction of the body and the world 'measured' by the body. If parts of the unconscious structures (parts of the body, parts of the brain) will be changed in some sense then this can only perceived by the consciousness if this has some effects which can become conscious. If one replaces parts of the brain -- or of the body -- in a 'functionally equivalent' manner then the consciousness will not be able to perceive this (strictly speaking (from the point of consciousness): if all parts of our body (including the brain) would be replaced by artificial components which would be 'functionally equivalent' then the consciousness would not be able to detect these changes).
CONTEXT - IDENTITY
In this sense Baars calls everything outside of the consciousness, which has causal influence of the stream of phenomena, simply the 'context' of the consciousness. The context serves as a kind of framework which induces the profile of the 'self'. Changes in the structure of the self can have an impact on the 'psychological structure' of a person, can cause 'emotional disturbances', can induce multiple personalities, and much more.
READ YOURSELF
My short description can by no way give an adequate impression of this wonderful book. I enjoyed it a lot. Perhaps it will do the same with you.
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