Consciousness and the Social Brain

information theory. It is a poor argument to point to something for which there is no evidence of any consciousness and then claim that it is conscious but just can’t say so. The argument is vacuous because it has no limits and can be applied to anything. Maybe rocks are conscious but just can’t say so. It is a variant on, “You have no evidence against it, so it must be true,” a thoroughly antiscientific argument.
    The underlying difficulty here is that integrated information is ubiquitous. Therefore, a theory that equates consciousness with integrated information is left trying to explain why so much integrated information in the world, including much of it in our heads, shows no signs of consciousness.
    The attention schema theory does not suffer from this difficulty of overgenerality. In this theory, consciousness is not the result of integrated information in general. It depends instead on a specific kind of information. It is not a theory in which one’s cell phone, having become sufficiently integrated with other cell phones, experiences consciousness.
    According to the attention schema theory, the brain constructs a constantly shifting, constantly updated informational model or schema,
A
. The schema provides a depiction of what it means for a brain to deeply process, apprehend, attend to, and
seize
information. This schema can be bound to other informational representations in the brain. To be conscious of a visual stimulus, in this formulation, at minimum a bound representation
A
+
V
is required, where
V
stands for the information about the visual stimulus, presumably represented in visual circuitry. With this larger, integrated information set, the brain has the basis for concluding and reporting that
V
is present and that
V
comes attached to the properties described in
A
. In other words, thebrain has the basis for concluding that the visual stimulus comes with an inner conscious experience.
    To know that you, your own physical and mental self, are aware of a visual stimulus requires, by hypothesis, the larger bound representation
S
+
A
+
V
. Here
S
refers to the complex, vast information set that defines your understanding of yourself. The larger, integrated complex of information provides the basis for a brain to conclude that
V
is present, that it comes with an inner experience, and that you, in particular, are the one experiencing it.
    To be conscious of your own emotions requires a bound representation
S
+
A
+
E
, where
E
stands for the information about emotional state.
    To be conscious that you are doing mental arithmetic requires the bound representation
S
+
A
+
M
, where
M
stands for the computed mathematical information.
    In the present theory, only information bound to the attention schema is recognized or describable as being within consciousness. The attention schema, A, acts like a hub. It is the nexus at the center of a vast set of bound information, represented in diverse brain areas, that makes up the contents of consciousness.
    Because of this involvement of a large bound set of information that spans the brain, the attention schema theory is a type of integrated information theory. It shares similarities with Baars’s global workspace hypothesis, 1 , 2 with Crick and Koch’s theory of binding as the basis of consciousness, 8 and with Tononi’s integrated information theory. 14 But it does not suffer from the problem of overgenerality. It is not enough to pool information into a global workspace. It is not enough to accumulate a large pile of interlinked information. In the attention schema theory, what people call “awareness” depends on a specific set of information integrated into that global workspace. Awareness itself, in this theory, is a complex, continuously recomputed model that describes what it means—the conditions, dynamics, and consequences—for a brain to attentively process information. When that information is added to the mix,the system has a basis on which to decide that it is conscious, report that it is conscious, and describe some of the attributes of consciousness. Without that information, the system logically has no way to compute what consciousness is or whether it has it. The system can admirably compute other types of information—visual information, tactile information, mental arithmetic—and answer questions thereof. But lacking the relevant information set, it would be silent both inwardly and outwardly on the topic of consciousness.
    In