An Ascii Theory of Consciousness

Ever since I was in my last years of high school, I've been wondering about the relationship between computer science and how the mind works. And I've done my time, learning what is known in the various disciplines of Cognitive Science. And what is striking about it is that it doesn't make much sense, as of yet.

Rather than reviewing where all of the various things we know fit, let me just say that in cognitive science today we are missing a Central Doctrine, such as plate tectonics for Geology, or atomic theory for Chemistry. With the coming of information theory and computers, we had some sense that this central doctrine will fit within our current understanding of physics and computability. That is, the brain, like the other organs of the body, is in some sense a knowable entity, and that the mind which is implemented by the brain's hardware relies on processes local to that organ. And that the brain seems to be processing information.

In my undergraduate days I was required to write a thesis in order to graduate. As is sometimes the case with young minds, I decided to try to do something big and profound rather than perform some small, incremental piece of research. It did not endear me to my thesis advisor, who kept wanting me to do something more concrete and conventional. It did not help that my research took me to all points of the compass. Despite a fuss, I finished my thesis, coming to a profound realization on the topic, and then left it in the back of my mind for many years, while I went off to pursue other topics.

Yet in the years since those days, I've come to realize that although the computational model I proposed was a failure, there were key ideas in the "fluffy" side of the thesis which remain very important. And that they were incomplete.

In my thesis of 1984, I stated that, as with a time-sharing operating system, attention in a human mind has periods of continuity and occassions when attention shifts. A key item I never mentioned is the predominate form of that stream of consciousness.

I have since come to believe that an extremely important and basic observation of the human (versus mammalian) mind is its continual composition of sentences. If not surpressed, this would be evident to the outside world as speech. Since it is normally not spoken out loud, this stream of consciousness may take the form of sub-vocalizations. At this time, I do not know whether these are externally observable or not (more on this later).

The Hypothesis

The hypothesis is that, although not exclusive product of cognition, this generation of utterances (which could be transcribed in Ascii) is a central element to human cognition. I will refer to these as Internally Observed Sentences, or IOS units.

We can make observations and theories, then, of how these symbolic entities (IOS units) correspond to the largely non-symbolic representations which make up much of the computationally intensive motor and sensory systems, as well as other systems in the brain. One can also ask how the Internally Observed Sentences get remembered, recalled, and processed.

We may ask how much of what we remember of a given event is due to a non-symbolic memory of the event, and how much of it is due to a symbolic encoding, repeated or reviewed through the IOS stream on a periodic basis after the event.

If we accept the hypothesis, we are able to divide the cognition problem in half. Realize that various cognitive processes occur on different time scales, and that the IOS unit generation occurs in roughly a few seconds. Thus any given cognitive process should fall on one side or another of the puzzle. Planning a trip to Chicago entails a train of many IOS units, whereas the visual and verbal recognition of an object is on the sub-IOS generation time scale.

Although it might be morally reprehensible as the ultimate intrusion into a person's privacy, the external observation of an IOS stream will be an important step. Given the recent availability of computer-based continous speech recognition, it might be simple enough to observe the behavior of someone who puts their computerized voice recognition to continual use. On the other hand, for the purpose of confirming or testing the hypothesis, it is important that some verbal activity be detected during what for a normal person should be free-running "conscious thought".

Creating an IOS Unit

In one sense, the generation of IOS sequences does little to resolve the more basic problem of how cognition gets done in the brain. We can, however, focus our attention now on the problem of how a single IOS unit comes to be. In doing so, we divide the general problem into processes which lead up to an IOS unit, and those that consist of sequences thereof.

In order to speak a single sentence, what are the necessary steps that are needed to produce it? There is the rendering of the sentence as speech. There is the syntactic and morphological rendering of the of the abstract thought. There are the component elements and their relationships. There is the planning and selection of this thought as the one we wish to render.

It is this last that is the most difficult, vague, and intriguing of the set. The others are ones that either have been tackled or are in the process of being tackled. This "what to do next" problem probes several basic philosophical areas. Free-will, scheduling, division of attention and other mental resources, the role of serendipity, etc. all come to mind.

Can the conscious mind effectively program itself? Can it put itself into various modes, whereby a mental agenda can be followed? What are the forces that buffet the direction of the conscious window? What IOS will be next produced?

If we postulate that there are a few general basic kinds of selection mechanisms, what might they be? First might be to logically follow an existing train of thought. One of the ways to do that is to ask the general association store for something which is similar to a set of active concepts. In effect, "what does this remind you of". Another might be to have several "background processes" running, which vie with one another for priority, to be rendered by the central dispatch mechanism.

As I mentioned earlier, the mechanism I presented in my 1984 thesis did not succeed. But only now have I realized the problem it was attempting to solve. And more importantly, that the quest for which problem to solve was in fact the central point of the thesis.

What the Hypothesis Isn't

Consider a wide variety of tasks which are essentially non-linguistic. Playing a sport, drawing a picture, fixing a car, eating a sandwich, driving a car - these tasks are complex expressions of our internal mental life, yet seem to require little linguistic description to make them happen. In fact linguistic based reasoning concerning these subjects can actually get in the way of success in some of these endeavors.

"Let your conscious self go, Luke. Use the Force." counsels Obi-Wan Kenobe in the original Star Wars film. Indeed, spending time and effort verbalizing about the reality at hand has a mixed performance record. It is especially true that for time-scales that are under a few seconds, verbalizing can be disasterous.

On the other hand, internally talking to yourself can prove a useful addition to the problem solving of everyday life. I find that when I'm driving on a normal commute, I spend very little conscious attention on the drive at hand. I am verbalizing internally about the coming day, a book I'm reading, or any number of other realities that are not immediately present before me.

Remember, the hypothesis doesn't claim to be the exclusive by-product of conscious thought, just a very important aspect thereof.

The primary product of the human mind is not the narration. That is a secondary product. The primary product is the survival and reproduction of the organism. That is, as with an animal in the wild, the mind is a robot controller. True, it is an odd and wonderful thing, this ability to get outside ourselves, both in perception and speculation, and to consider wider issues than that of the single organism. The whole nature of language is its portability outside a single man's shell. The secondary achievement is thus very powerful.

Written knowledge has been a major means by which individual men have been able to transcend their own mortality, and transmit their lessons learned to those who will come after them.

Conscious Memory

It is my contention that if your thoughts, in the form of an Ascii transcript of the IOS units, were recorded and then presented back to you, you would recognized them as your own. You might be surprised by the sections you had already "forgotten", or be able to point at areas that were not correct or accurate (i.e. No, I meant a river bank).

This raises the question of how you remember your own IOS sequences. If I read to you three or four sentences, and then ask you a few moments later to repeat them back, you may well find yourself reconstructing the sentences from a semantic or auditory memory of the originals. The mistakes made reveal these aspects of how you store these things. I would expect that storage of the IOS units follow similar patterns. You may even remember the result of a train of thought (IOS sequence) without considering the intermediate steps very important.