Minding Consciousness: How Life Urges Embody Attention

Consciousness is not some magical phenomenon that lacks a scientific explanation. Like life, consciousness is an effect that emerges from underlying interactions. Life has a physical basis, and yet it results in adaptive properties that extend beyond the physical. Consciousness has a neurological basis, and yet it results in subjective feelings that extend beyond neural signals. Minding Consciousness explains that consciousness emerges as synchronous interactions among perceptions and adaptive feelings drive toward a coherent focus of attention. That coherent focus enhances neural processing and makes conscious awareness more intense. Consciousness enables perceptions to be interpreted in the context of the feelings they engage. The feelings, in turn, promote more adaptive reactions to what is perceived.

Feelings are essential for consciousness. Descartes missed this point when he proclaimed "I think; therefore, I am." We are not simply detached thinkers. Our very sense of self is determined by how we feel as we perceive and think. But how does this sense of self develop? Minding Consciousness argues that the self emerges because attention constantly engages embodied feelings as we react to the world. Learning and memory provide growing collections of feeling-related experiences that can be re-activated by attention. As a result, conscious agents are literally growing storms of feeling-bound attention. Attention engages conscious feelings and memories. The feelings and memories guide subsequent actions and changes in attention. Minding Consciousness claims that we can build conscious robots that experience similar aspects of feeling-bound attention.