IN THE THEATRE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Global Workspace Theory, A Rigorous Scientific Theory of Consciousness.

Abstract

Can we make progress exploring consciousness? Or is it forever beyond human reach? In science we never know the ultimate outcome of the journey. We can only take whatever steps our current knowledge affords. This paper explores today's evidence from the viewpoint of Global Workspace (GW) theory. 1 First, we ask what kind of evidence has the most direct bearing on the question. The answer given here is 'contrastive analysis' — a set of paired comparisons between similar conscious and unconscious processes. This body of evidence is already quite large, and constrains any possible theory (Baars, 1983; 1988; 1997). Because it involves both conscious and unconscious events, it deals directly with our own subjective experience, as anyone can tell by trying the demonstrations in this article. One dramatic contrast is between the vast number of unconscious neural processes happen- ing in any given moment, compared to the very narrow bottleneck of conscious capacity. The narrow limits of consciousness have a compensating advantage: consciousness seems to act as a gateway, creating access to essentially any part of the nervous system. Even single neurons can be controlled by way of conscious feedback. Conscious experience creates access to the mental lexicon, to autobiographical memory, and to voluntary control over automatic action routines. Daniel C. Dennett has suggested that consciousness may itself be viewed as that to which 'we' have access. (Dennett, 1978) All these facts may be summed up by saying that consciousness creates global access.

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