Neural Computations Underlying Phenomenal Consciousness: A Higher Order Syntactic Thought Theory

Rolls, Edmund T.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00655

Cited by 28 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 114 publications

(166 reference statements)

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“…Activity at any one level can be used to understand activity at the next. This raises the philosophical issue of how we should consider causality with these different levels ( Rolls, 2016b , 2020 , 2021b ). Does the brain cause effects in the mind, and do events at the mental, mind, level cause brain activity?…”

Section: Levels Of Explanation In Neuroscience and The Relation Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I argue that causality can be thought of as operating within each level of operation, and that causality in terms of computational neuroscience needs to be understood as operating within each of many different levels of explanation. Further, the presence of multiple routes to action which I have described in detail elsewhere ( Rolls, 2014 , 2020 , 2021b ) provides evidence that we need to know exactly which route to action was involved for a particular behavior: it is not sufficient to describe behavior as having inputs and outputs ( Kim, 2011 ). The computations in between the input and output can be multiple, and even occurring at the same time, in parallel, in the brain ( Rolls, 2021b ).…”

Section: Levels Of Explanation In Neuroscience and The Relation Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, knowledge of the detailed computational architecture of the individual [e.g. whether the individual is capable of higher order syntactic thoughts (HOSTs), and what their contents are ( Rolls, 2020 )] is necessary in order to evaluate the mental states of different individuals, and how similar or not they may be. The brain/mental computational approach is thus the only approach that I think will suffice to elucidate questions such as whether two minds are similar or not, and whether the mental states that are involved, including phenomenal consciousness ( Rolls, 2020 ), are similar or not.…”

Section: Levels Of Explanation In Neuroscience and The Relation Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper I develop and explain further a theory of the relation between events investigated at different levels of neuroscience ( Rolls, 2020 ). These include ion channels in neurons activated by transmitters; the action potentials produced by neurons to transmit information to other neurons; and the collective activity of large populations of neurons to perform mental processes such as short-term memory, long-term memory, decision-making, and emotion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is an important move, and if accepted helps enormously with the great debates about dualism, functionalism, physical reductionism, etc. In this paper I reach as far as mental events, but do not deal with phenomenal consciousness, which I have considered elsewhere ( Rolls, 2004 , 2012b , 2020 ). This is clarified below, but a mental event as considered here does not include what is experienced phenomenally ( Rolls, 2020 ); but the mental events considered here can include events such as perception, memory, and emotional states that, as shown below, can have content.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Neuroscience Levels of Explanation Approach to the Mind and the Brain

Rolls

2021

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

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The relation between mental states and brain states is important in computational neuroscience, and in psychiatry in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This allows the supervenient (e.g., mental) properties to be emergent, though once understood at the mechanistic levels they may seem less emergent, and expected. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. This approach may provide a way of thinking about brains and minds that is different from dualism and from reductive physicalism, and which is rooted in the computational processes that are fundamental to understanding brain and mental events, and that mean that the mental and mechanistic levels are linked by the computational process being performed. Explanations at the different levels of operation may be useful in different ways. For example, if we wish to understand how arithmetic is performed in the brain, description at the mental level of the algorithm being computed will be useful. But if the brain operates to result in mental disorders, then understanding the mechanism at the neural processing level may be more useful, in for example, the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

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Section: Levels Of Explanation In Neuroscience and The Relation Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Levels Of Explanation In Neuroscience and The Relation Betwmentioning

confidence: 99%