CSE 719: Computational Theories of Consciousness, Fall 2009 ======================================================================== Baars (1988) quotes (for bib info, see online bibliography) ======================================================================== 1. Sect. 2.0, para 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "...the core theoretical idea of this book [is] that conscious experience is closely *associated with* [MY EMPHASIS] a 'Global Workspace System'. A global workspace is an information exchange that allows specialized unconscious processors in the nervous system to interact with each other. It is analogous to a blackboard in a classroom, or to a television broadcasting station in a human community. Many unconscious specialists can compete or cooperate for access to the global workspace. Once having gained access, they can broadcast information to all other specialized processors that can understand the message." 2. Sect. 2.2, para 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "...computer scientists, psychologists and some neuroscientists have become increasingly interested in distributed information processing systems--systems that are really collections of intelligent, specialized processors." 3. para 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "In a true distributed system there is no central executive--no single system assigns problems to the proper specialists, or commands them to carry out some task. For different jobs, different processors may behave as executives, sometimes handing off executive control to each other in a very flexible way. Control is essentially decentralized. The intelligent processors themselves retain the processing initiative..." 4. para 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "But even without a true executive, a distributed collection of processors still needs some central facility through which the specialists can communicate with each other. This kind of central information exchange has been called a "global workspace", "blackboard", or "bulletin board" (Reddy & Newell, 1974; Erman & Lesser, 1974; Hayes-Roth, 1984, etc.). A "workspace" is just a memory in which different systems can perform operations, and the word "global" implies that symbols in this memory are distributed across a variety of processors. Each processor could have local variables and operations, but it can also be responsive to global symbols.