Baars (Imprint) Global Workspace Theory. A Rigorous Scientific Theory of Consciousness

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example, that athletes can improve performance by consciously imagining desired actions. The theatre may
also be used to make decisions: an actor can call out a question to the audience, which may then respond with
specialized knowledge that is not otherwise available.
7. Error-detection and editing function
Suppose this paragraph contains an error. Often you will become conscious of the error, even though the
process that detects it is unconscious. It seems that conscious input is monitored by unconscious systems,
which will act to interrupt the flow if errors are detected. The knowledge of what makes an error an error is
rarely conscious.
8. Reflective and self-monitoring function
Through inner speech and imagery we can reflect upon, monitor, problem-solve and try to modify our own
functioning.
9. Optimizing the trade-off between organization and flexibility
Unconscious, habitual or inborn, canned responses are highly adaptive in predictable situations. However, in
unpredictable conditions the capacity of consciousness to organize existing knowledge in new ways is
indispensable.
In sum, consciousness appears to be the main way in which the nervous system adapts to novel, challenging
and informative events in the world.
V: Summary and Conclusions
An array of evidence is beginning to reveal the role of consciousness in the nervous system, at least in outline.
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Conscious experience seems to create access to many independent knowledge sources in the brain, most of
them quite unconscious. Humans seem to have a larger repertoire of uses for consciousness including
language and long-term planning, self-monitoring and self-reflection, inner speech, metaphor, symbolic
representation of experience and deliberate use of imagery. When it comes to sensory consciousness,
however, the brain shows little difference between humans and many other mammals.
In the view presented here, global access may be a necessary condition for consciousness; but in the nature of
science we simply do not know at this time what would be the truly sufficient conditions. Some other
conditions seem to be necessary, including conscious access to a self system (Baars, 1988; 1997).2
For many, the emerging scientific evidence will raise ethical and philosophical implications. This is not the
place to explore them. But just as the scientific study of pain perception, for example, has relevance to
medical ethics, so does the issue of consciousness in general. That is not to say that a better scientific
understanding will somehow dictate values, but rather that people inevitably bring their values to whatever we
learn about such a central human concern.
We began this paper by asking whether we can make progress on a traditionally contentious question like the
nature of our own experience. The question is answered in the affirmative; but in classic scientific fashion,
each answer, no matter how tentative, raises many more new questions.
The book of thought about human experience opens at the very beginnings of human philosophy, with the
Greeks and the philosophers of the Himalayas more than two millennia ago. Almost every century since that
time has added new pages to this work in progress. Brain science and psychology are only the latest
contributors in a long and distinguished lineage. Though they have barely begun their work, there is little
doubt even now that we are seeing the beginnings of a new chapter in human thought.
Endnotes
1
The easiest introduction is In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind (Baars, 1997). The most
complete technical exposition is in Baars (1988). Papers since 1988 are cited in the References.
2
A more complete account seems to require at least five more plausible conditions for conscious experience. They may
be added to an extended global workspace architecture (Baars, 1988; 1997). They are: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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