Page 59 - Artificial Intelligence in the Age of Neural Networks and Brain Computing

46 CHAPTER 2 Mind, Brain, Autonomous Agents, and Mental Disorders

develop and learn in response to these inputs. Modal architectures are thus less gen-
eral than the von Neumann architecture that provides the mathematical foundation
of modern computers, but much more general than a traditional AI algorithm.
ART networks form part of several different modal architectures, including modal
architectures that enable seeing, hearing, feeling, and knowing.

9. ALL CONSCIOUS STATES ARE RESONANT STATES
ART resonances clarify questions such as the following, which have been raised by
distinguished philosophers [1]: What kind of “event” occurs in the brain during a
conscious experience that is anything more than just a “whir of information-
processing”? What happens when conscious mental states “light up” and directly
appear to the subject? ART explains that, over and above “just” information process-
ing, our brains sometimes go into a context-sensitive resonant state that can involve
multiple brain regions. Abundant experimental evidence supports the ART prediction
that “all conscious states are resonant states.” Not all brain dynamics are “resonant,”
and thus consciousness is not just a “whir of information-processing.”
Second, when does a resonant state embody a conscious experience? And how do
different resonant states support different kinds of conscious qualia? The other side
of the coin is equally important: When does a resonant state fail to embody a
conscious experience? ART explains [1] how various evolutionary challenges that
advanced brains face in order to adapt to changing environments in real time
have been met with particular conscious states, which form part of larger adaptive
behavioral capabilities. ART sheds new mechanistic light on the fact that humans
are not conscious just to platonically contemplate the beauty of the world. Rather,
humans are conscious in order to enable them to better adapt to the world’s changing
demands. To illustrate these claims, ART explains how resonances for conscious
seeing help to ensure effective looking and reaching, resonances for conscious
hearing help to ensure effective speaking, and resonances for conscious feeling
help to ensure effective goal-directed action.

10. THE VARIETIES OF BRAIN RESONANCES AND THE
CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCES THAT THEY SUPPORT

Towards this end, ART has explained six different types of neural representations of
conscious qualia, and has provided enough theoretical background and data expla-
nations based on these representations to illustrate their explanatory and predictive
power [1]. These explanations also suggest multiple kinds of experiments to deepen
our mechanistic understanding of the brain mechanisms for generating conscious
resonances.
For example, surface-shroud resonances are predicted to support conscious
seeing of visual qualia. Feature-category resonances are predicted to support