What is clearly present here is coordinated access. Why call it access consciousness? Do you think consciousness must necessarily be present in a global workspace? The paper repeatedly uses the terms “access consciousness” and “consciousness.” Aren’t the authors already assuming that premise?
Imagine a distributed control computer equipped with an arbiter.
It has only one shared cache slot, with multiple specialized programs competing for write access. The program that crosses the threshold takes exclusive control of the cache. A feedback circuit keeps the content active, and the system bus then sends it to storage, decision-making, planning, and execution units, which report and act accordingly.
Limited capacity, competition among modules, nonlinear ignition, maintenance through recurrent feedback, global broadcasting, global availability—not one feature is missing.
According to the definition of a global workspace, which requirement does it still fail to meet? Is it conscious? Or has it merely achieved functional coordination?
Now connect several GPT agents to visual input and give the whole system the same mechanisms of competition, nonlinear ignition, recurrent processing, and broadcasting. It can describe the scene in front of it, reason about it, and act on it. Is it seeing, or merely processing information in a highly coordinated way?
The broadcast still reaches only functional modules, doesn’t it? How does a piece of content, merely by becoming readable to more modules, turn into the first-person fact that “I am seeing”?
You catch a grass carp in a river. Now reverse the inference: must every place where a grass carp can be caught be a river? Couldn’t it be a fish tank in a Chinese restaurant?
So why, after fishing a few functions of workspace coordination out of the human brain, must we call what we have caught consciousness? Could it not simply be an arbiter?
Where is the principle that takes us from “global availability” to “the world appearing to me”? Does global workspace theory contain such a principle?
The sun gives off light and heat. But must everything that gives off light and heat be the sun? Why couldn’t it be an incandescent bulb, a candle, or a prop lamp in a video game?
(Noting the are different definitions of “consciousness” and this is I think a standard one, although I agree this isn’t a great place for confusing wording)
What is clearly present here is coordinated access. Why call it access consciousness? Do you think consciousness must necessarily be present in a global workspace? The paper repeatedly uses the terms “access consciousness” and “consciousness.” Aren’t the authors already assuming that premise?
Imagine a distributed control computer equipped with an arbiter.
It has only one shared cache slot, with multiple specialized programs competing for write access. The program that crosses the threshold takes exclusive control of the cache. A feedback circuit keeps the content active, and the system bus then sends it to storage, decision-making, planning, and execution units, which report and act accordingly.
Limited capacity, competition among modules, nonlinear ignition, maintenance through recurrent feedback, global broadcasting, global availability—not one feature is missing.
According to the definition of a global workspace, which requirement does it still fail to meet? Is it conscious? Or has it merely achieved functional coordination?
Now connect several GPT agents to visual input and give the whole system the same mechanisms of competition, nonlinear ignition, recurrent processing, and broadcasting. It can describe the scene in front of it, reason about it, and act on it. Is it seeing, or merely processing information in a highly coordinated way?
The broadcast still reaches only functional modules, doesn’t it? How does a piece of content, merely by becoming readable to more modules, turn into the first-person fact that “I am seeing”?
You catch a grass carp in a river. Now reverse the inference: must every place where a grass carp can be caught be a river? Couldn’t it be a fish tank in a Chinese restaurant?
So why, after fishing a few functions of workspace coordination out of the human brain, must we call what we have caught consciousness? Could it not simply be an arbiter?
Where is the principle that takes us from “global availability” to “the world appearing to me”? Does global workspace theory contain such a principle?
The sun gives off light and heat. But must everything that gives off light and heat be the sun? Why couldn’t it be an incandescent bulb, a candle, or a prop lamp in a video game?
(Noting the are different definitions of “consciousness” and this is I think a standard one, although I agree this isn’t a great place for confusing wording)
Consciousness as a conflationary alliance term for intrinsically valued internal experiences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Types