Carlos Montemayor

On the evolution of conscious attention

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between consciousness and attention through theoretical considerations about evolution. Specifically, we will argue that the empirical findings on attention and the basic considerations concerning the evolution of the different forms of attention demonstrate that consciousness and attention must be dissociated regardless of which definition of these terms one uses. To the best of our knowledge, no extant view on the relationship between consciousness and attention has this advantage. Because of this characteristic, this paper presents a principled and neutral way to settle debates concerning the relationship between consciousness and attention, without falling into disputes about the meaning of these terms. A decisive conclusion of this approach is that extreme views on the relationship between consciousness and attention must be rejected, including identity and full dissociation views. There is an overlap between the two within conscious attention, but developing a full understanding of this mechanism requires further empirical investigations.

Artificial consciousness and the consciousness-attention dissociation

Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial consciousness, with some arguing that it will be achievable once we overcome short-term engineering challenges. We believe, however, that phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines. This becomes clear when considering emotions and examining the dissociation between consciousness and attention in humans. While we may be able to program ethical behavior based on rules and machine learning, we will never be able to reproduce emotions or empathy by programming such control systems-these will be merely simulations. Arguments in favor of this claim include considerations about evolution, the neuropsychological aspects of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness found in humans. Ultimately, we are far from achieving artificial consciousness.

Perception and Cognition Are Largely Independent, but Still Affect Each Other in Systematic Ways: Arguments from Evolution and the Consciousness-Attention Dissociation

The main thesis of this paper is that two prevailing theories about cognitive penetration are too extreme, namely, the view that cognitive penetration is pervasive and the view that there is a sharp and fundamental distinction between cognition and perception, which precludes any type of cognitive penetration. These opposite views have clear merits and empirical support. To eliminate this puzzling situation, we present an alternative theoretical approach that incorporates the merits of these views into a broader and more nuanced explanatory framework. A key argument we present in favor of this framework concerns the evolution of intentionality and perceptual capacities. An implication of this argument is that cases of cognitive penetration must have evolved more recently and that this is compatible with the cognitive impenetrability of early perceptual stages of processing information. A theoretical approach that explains why this should be the case is the consciousness and attention dissociation framework. The paper discusses why concepts, particularly issues concerning concept acquisition, play an important role in the interaction between perception and cognition.

The Varieties of Presence: Hierarchical Levels of Temporal Integration

We propose a hierarchical, three-level analysis of the present, in terms of simultaneity of events, experienced presence, and an extended mental presence containing the narrative self. The literature on the philosophy, psychology and neuroscience of time consciousness does not precisely distinguish these varieties of presence: first, a functional moment of perception in the range of milliseconds defines what is simultaneous and successive. Below a certain threshold events are processed as co-temporal. Secondly, the experienced moment of two to three seconds is related to a temporal-processing mechanism enabling conscious experience of the present moment. Thirdly, the continuity of experience is formed by working memory in the range of multiple seconds leading to the sense of mental presence over time, generating a temporal platform for the narrative self. These varieties of presence help solve puzzles pertaining to duration and simultaneity.

Segregating targets and nontargets in depth eliminates inhibition of nontargets in multiple object tracking

The present study investigated how object locations learned separately are integrated and represented as a single spatial layout in memory. Two experiments were conducted in which participants learned a room-sized spatial layout that was divided into two sets of five objects. Results suggested that integration across sets was performed efficiently when it was done during initial encoding of the environment but entailed cost in accuracy when it was attempted at the time of memory retrieval. These findings suggest that, once formed, spatial representations in memory generally remain independent and integrating them into a single representation requires additional cognitive processes.

Knowledge, Dexterity and Attention: A Theory of Epistemic Agency

Contemporary cognitive science clearly tells us that attention is modulated for speech and action. While these forms of goal-directed attention are very well researched in psychology, they have not been sufficiently studied by epistemologists. In this book, Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor develop and defend a theory of epistemic achievements that requires the manifestation of cognitive agency. They examine empirical work on the psychology of attention and assertion, and use it to ground a normative theory of epistemic achievements and virtues. The resulting study is the first sustained naturalized virtue epistemology, and will be of interest to readers in epistemology, cognitive science, and beyond. on this title

Trade-offs between the accuracy and integrity of autobiographical narrative in memory reconsolidation.

Lane et al. propose an integrative model for the reconsolidation of traces in their timely and impressive article. This commentary draws attention to trade-offs between accuracy and self-narrative integrity in the model. The trade-offs concern the sense of agency in memory and its role in both implicit and explicit memory reconsolidation, rather than balances concerning degrees of emotional arousal.

Inferential Abilities and Common Epistemic Goods

While the situationist challenge has been prominent in philosophical literature in ethics for over a decade, only recently has it been extended to virtue epistemology (See also forthcoming work on this issue by Doris and Olin, Heather Battaly, Christian Miller in Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue. (Fairweather & Flanagan eds.)). Mark Alfano argues that virtue epistemology is shown to be empirically inadequate in light of a wide range of results in social psychology, essentially succumbing to the same argument as virtue ethics. We argue that this meeting of the twain between virtue epistemology and social psychology in no way signals the end of virtue epistemology, but is rather a boon to naturalized virtue epistemology. We use Gird Gigerenzer’s models for bounded rationality (2011) to present a persuasive line of defense for virtue epistemology, and consider prospects for a naturalized virtue epistemology that is supported by current research in psychology.

Success, Minimal Agency and Epistemic Virtue

In this paper, I discuss a basic tradeoff that any view of agency and epistemic virtue must address, given the most recent psychological findings: the more minimal the sense of agency, the less plausible the postulation of a reflective requirement for knowledge; and the more enriched the sense of agency, the less epistemically relevant the characterization of ‘virtue.’ Although this may not be a surprising tradeoff, I present new consequences of it, which I believe have not been properly addressed in the literature. In particular, I discuss the role that agential reflection may play in action selection, as opposed to motor control, and why this is crucial to distinguish epistemic virtues for knowledge from other epistemic and pragmatic virtues. More specifically, I argue that if reflection is associated with action-selection, then it can be shown that it is dissociated from apt first level belief formation (what Ernest Sosa characterizes as ‘animal knowledge’). On the other hand, if introspective forms of conscious reflection, or even unconscious forms of reflection, influence epistemic cognitive processes, then it can be shown that reflection either becomes a source of error or that it is irrelevant for knowledge. Therefore, in a fully naturalized epistemology there seems to be little room for meta-virtues for knowledge that are based on reflective processes.

Contextuality in the Integrated Information Theory

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is one of the most influential theories of consciousness, mainly due to its claim of mathematically formalizing consciousness in a measurable way. However, the theory, as it is formulated, does not account for contextual observations that are crucial for understanding consciousness. Here we put forth three possible difficulties for its current version, which could be interpreted as a trilemma. Either consciousness is contextual or not. If contextual, either IIT needs revisions to its axioms to include contextuality, or it is inconsistent. If consciousness is not contextual, then IIT faces an empirical challenge. Therefore, we argue that IIT in its current version is inadequate.