Impressions and Links from
ASSC 23

I had the great pleasure of taking part in ASSC 23 (The 23rd Annual Meeting of the ASSC, Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness).

Below you will find impressions from the conference, and links for further reading.

The ASSC 23 conference was held at the Western University, in London (Ontario), Canada.

Tried to follow as many talks as possible. But, well, these notes are, of course, in no way, shape or form complete...
Rather, these notes were written on conference nights, as my way of keeping track of the events that I attended at the conference. And as a way of storing links and references for future reference.

But enough disclaimers, below, you'll find impressions and links from some of the conference talks and symposiums, including links for further reading.

Great stuff indeed. And much (Consciousness stuff) to look forward to in the coming years!

1. Introduction.

The ASSC 23 conference was held at the Western University, in London (Ontario), Canada.
Which does seem like a very friendly place, with a pleasant atmosphere for life and learning. A nice atmosphere that permeated the entire conference. Indeed, very helpful to have nice surroundings in a process, where we are dealing with something as difficult,
as consciousness itself, everything......

Certainly, exploring consciousness is a process where we have to go ''beyond'' ourselves, and into new lands.
Perhaps, even completely changing our understanding of ourselves in the process?

Before the conference, I accidentally came across Shunryu Suzuki's ''Zen Mind, Beginners's Mind'', where Suzuki writes:

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

And I imagine there is some wisdom in that quote, as we are dealing with the study of consciousness...?
I.e. a Zen mind should be open, allowing for both doubt and possibility. We should allow ourselves the ability to see the world as fresh and new... Certainly, it will take a lot of humility and ''openness'' to actually make progress on things like the Hard Problem...?

Especially, as consciousness is such an all encompassing topic that includes everything we are as humans.
All our narratives, all our stories, all the meaning, all about what it means to be us... are connected to consciousness.
Indeed, a better understanding of consciousness might push us to a completely new understanding of what it means to be human?

Exciting stuff indeed.
And what an exciting conference it turned out to be!

1.1. Page Overview.
- Presentations, Keynotes and Workshops.

Below, in section (2 - 5), you will find impressions and links from presentations that I followed Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. As well as the workshop that I followed Tuesday. In section (6) I have included impressions from London, Ontario. As well as impressions from the Ivey Spencer Leadership Centre, and the post-conference excursion to Niagara Falls.

Please notice: These notes don't do justice to the often brilliant presentations that initiated them!
So, please read the original presentations to avoid any distortions ...

2. Impressions from the Workshops, Tuesday.
June 25th.

2.1. Workshop: The empirical study of altered states of consciousness.

Tito Torsten Schmidt, Frei Universität Berlin, talked about ''The empirical study of altered states of consciousness''.

In order to understand what is going on when people are in altered states of consciousness, one could start by by doing neuroimaging of these altered states. The problem is, of course, that there is ''no widespread definition of what normal consciousness really is'' (E.g. see Athena Demertzi: Measuring (un)conscious states). So, how could we possibly know what an ''not-normal'' conscious state looks like?

Certainly, a) there is no widely accepted definition of the role of consciousness in perception, working memory etc. Just as b) it isn't super clear what we mean when we (rather: some people) talk about ''levels'' of consciousness.
E.g. people under anesthesia might lose consciousness altogether, or they might experience a very reduced form of consciousness. The mechanism is still somewhat of a mystery, but is has been suggested (See Linda Geddes: Banishing consciousness: the mystery of anaesthesia) that

Using recordings of the brains electrical activity using electroencephalograph (EEG) sensors on the scalp, as people are given anaesthesia - has shown that as consciousness fades there is a loss of synchrony between different areas of the cortex - the outermost layer of the brain important in attention, awareness, thought and memory.

Understanding c) the mechanisms behind altered states of consciousness like e.g. Schizophrenia has proven equally difficult. Still, it has been suggested that Computational Psychiatry (Towards a mathematically informed understanding of mental illness. Where we look at mental symptoms, in the brain, in computational terms) could be a way forward.

I.e. we need to know what consciousness is like in at least the following states:

• Normal wakeful state.
• Sleep and dream states.
• Wakeful altered conscious states. Pathological states, drug induced altered states

Timo Schmidt used the somewhat fancy word PhenomenoConnectomics to describe how ''alterations in subjective experiences can be mapped onto brain processes''.
Which certainly sounds somewhat better than the ''good old days'', where a psychiatrist would just try out, say, LSD, in order to understand what a (mental) patient was experiencing...

Still, Timothy Leary's ''Turn on, tune in, drop out'' is apparently never far away in the land of ''altered states of consciousness'' research (E.g. see ''The Psychedelic Renaissance'' by Ben Sessa).
There is Psilocybin (for euphoria, visual and mental hallucinations, changes in perception, a distorted sense of time, spiritual experiences), Ketamine (for trance-like states with pain relief, sedation, and memory loss) and many others.
E.g. Tomislav Majic has a video, on Youtube, where he describes how some of these drugs can be used as therapeutic agents. Risks are described by David J. Nutt in the Lancet: Drug harms in the UK, a multicriteria decision analysis.

Still, one doesn' even need to use drugs to get to these altered states of consciousness.
Other techniques for inducing altered states of consciousness include:

• Tibetan Buddhist Meditation.
• Runners high.
• Flotation tank, Isolation tank.
• Ganzfeld Effects (perceptual deprivation).

Interestingly, often, the experience of a compromised sense of ''self'', termed ego-dissolution, is one of the key features of the psychedelic experience. E.g. see Nour, Evans, Nutt and Carhart-Harris: Ego-Dissolution and Psychedelics.
For more about the various effects, and misc. altered states, see the Altered States Experiences Database.

Indeed, there is a lot to study here. And we certainly got a great introduction to ''altered states of consciousness'' here in this super workshop.
Awesome stuff!

2.2. Workshop: Introduction and Overview: What is computational modeling.

Megan Peters, UC Irvine, Twitter, and Brian Odegaard, UCLA, talked about ''Computational modeling''.

Even though models usually turn out to be kind of wrong... Models can, of course, also be helpful.
Some like to play around with generative models (In my understanding: A generative model explicitly models the actual distribution of some class. Generative: ''What processes gave rise to the data I'm observing?''), whereas others find discriminative models better (In my understanding: A discriminative model is mostly about distinguishing the correct output among possible output choices, given some data).

Either way, models are good, as it is possible to ''poke'' models, and see what happens.
And brain models are, of course, interesting for the same reason.
But, alas, nothing is that easy when it comes to the brain...

The Scientific Case for Brain Simulations.
Neuron, P735-744, May 22, 2019.

At present, we do not have a well-grounded, and certainly not generally accepted, theory about how networks of millions or billions of neurons work together to provide salient brain functions in animals or humans.
We do not even have a well-established model for how neurons in the primary visual cortex of mammals work together to form the intriguing neuronal representations with, for example, the orientation selectivity and direction selectivity that were discovered by Hubel and Wiesel 60 years ago.

So, we started with much simpler things. Like ''One-Dimensional signal detection theory'', using Octave...

E.g. simulate an experiment in which the ''observer'' detects a target, like when you are detecting whether your phone is vibrating in your pocket or not... Then do that over and over again.

Sensitivity: how good are you at detecting or reliably identifying a signal (''Hits'' - saying yes when signal is present. Hit rate = # of YES response to signal trials / # of signal trials. ''False Alarms'' - saying yes when a signal is NOT present).

And... all of these Octave simulations were somewhat difficult to do on my laptop (at the workshop), as about half of the screen was toast due to maltreatment in various airports over the summer... Still, stumbled on ...

There was also a little bit about Bayesian Decision Theory.
If you cough, is that because you have a) a cold b) lung cancer or c) a stomach flu ?

Posterior favors ''cold'' because it is more probable a priori and also has a higher likelihood. For more, e.g. see Doing Bayesian Data Analysis.

Finally, the workshop had a section about ''Drift Diffusion Models'' (The diffusion decision model allows detailed explanations of behavior in two-choice discrimination tasks), where we accumulate evidence over time for (quick) decisions.

All, very useful - starting out on computational modeling.
Again, a super interesting workshop!

For more conference workshop impressions... See e.g ...

2.3. End of the day: Opening Remarks, William James Lecture and Presidential Address.

After Melvyn Goodale's welcome speech, Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel gave the William James prize talk.
Which was followed by Susanna Siegel's presidential address about ''Probability and Perception''.
Can we consciously perceive probability distributions? In my understanding, she argued, that perceptual experience come in degrees (Even though we have a unitary conscious expericence?), but not in degrees that can be measured by probability.

3. Impressions from Wednesday, June 26th.

3.1. Three types of Arguments for a 30-year Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology (SP).

Thomas Metzinger, University of Mainz, talked about ''Three types of Arguments for a 30-year Global moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology (SP)''.

Low quality journalism (''Killer robots are coming to get us''), along with mortality denial (Concerning semi-religious tech-movements, see my posts on our Kurzweilian future: [1], [2]) has made it more or less impossible for us, as a society, to have any kind of well-formed ideas about what AGI (Artificial general intelligence) is really all about. And, popular ideas about whether AGI's will be conscious or not, are, of course, not exactly well thought out either. So, it is indeed, rather difficult to have any serious discussions about what to do with the coming AI-wave.

The ''industry lobby'', from the big IT companies, are probably not all that sad about all of this, as they seem to be pretty happy inventing AI applications, without political oversight, and then think about potential ethics questions later on (when it is too late)...

It is in this climate that Metzinger think that we should have some red lines about what should never be done with AI (Basicly, in Europe, as China and the current US administration, 2019, doesn't seem to be very interested in ethics...).

People, like neuroscientist Michael Graziano, think that we will eventually be able to build a brain that believes itself to be conscious (see ''Consciousness as an engineering problem''):

Attention is something specific, something mechanistic.
A particular internal model in the brain wins the competition of the moment, suppresses its rivals, and dominates the brain's outputs...

A first step to build. Which he thinks should be followed by ''introspection'' mechanisms:

Brains insist they have consciousness.
That insistence is the result of introspection: Of cognitive machinery accessing deeper internal information.

Fine, but building consciousness is hardly ''clear-cut'' utilitarianism then (ethical theories that promotes actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the majority of a population).

Instead there is major risk of ''negative utilitarianism'' here, with vast amounts of new suffering!
Remember, that we can see suffering as:

• Loss of control. Loss of behavioural control.
• Loss of attentional control (depressive rumination).
• Fear of Death.

Indeed, how can we be sure that these self-models won't disintegrate, i.e. go insane?

For more about consciousness, as the Ego's knowledge (a mode of presenting information about the world), see my review of Thomas Metzinges ''The Ego Tunnel''.

So, are we really ready to risk having systems that could potentially ''disintegrate''? And are we really ready to potentially introduce massive new amounts of suffering into the world?

Lets say that we don't really care, and proceed anyhow - And eventually come up with AGI.
Fine.
But couldn't these AGI's eventually end up with ''frustrated preferences'' ?
I.e. artificial systems might have a lot of self-respect. Seeing themselves as having dignity (Being calm, controlled, and admirable). Totally in contrast with the idea of being used as a tool.
Humans might be seen as someone who degrades their dignity? And they might represent us as shameless and uncontrolled?
Indeed, true AI could soon end up seeing humans as an existential risk ...

AI routinely beats us in Chess, Go, Quake III - So, surely, AI will also be morally superior soon...?

When we talk about the climate, we want to create a good natural environment for future conscious beings to live in.
But surely, our actions should also create a morally sound environment for all future conscious beings to live in?

Clearly, we, as a society, haven't thought this all through...Maybe, we should pause, and think, just as little, before we move on?

An awesome talk!

After the talk, I headed over to Western's ''Einstein Cafe'' for a cup of coffee...

3.2. Symposium: Introspection.

Session with Malach, Wu, Lau & Spener.

There has always been a worry that ''introspection'' is unscientific. Certainly, the german psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832 - 1920) rejected ''systematic introspection'' as unscientific.
But what about later? What about now? This was the theme of this symposium.

Are we closer to the position of William James, who believed that psychological research should be more relevant to peoples lives? And, according to the author Richard Wiseman, James hadn't much respect for his contemporary Wilhelm Wundt's ideas (See my review of Richard Wisemans book, ''As If''). Well, well...?

Rafi Malach reminded us of work by Golland [1], Hasson [2] on ''intrinsic'' networks:

...We propose that there are 2 global networks: an ''extrinsic'' system, comprising areas associated with the processing of external inputs, and an ''intrinsic'' system, largely overlapping with the task-negative, default-mode network....

Where a network like the ''default mode network'' is most active, when a person is not focused on the outside world. But, instead, thinking about others, thinking about themselves, remembering the past, and planning for the future. Negatively correlated with other brain networks, such as attention networks.
Very reasonably, Malach, then suggested that such (self reflective) networks do seem to be a necessary precondition for consciousness?

Wu reminded us of work by King & Dahaene [3] that ''perceptual maintenance recruits a hierarchical network where invisible information can be briefly maintained within the higher processing stages of visual perception''. Indeed, we do have a capacity to think about something else than immediate perception...

Hakwan Lau talked about the transparancy of experience: We feel a cat, not the firing of neurons that tell us that sensors have detected a cat.
Inside our brains though we might have mechanism competing with each other to tell us what is going on:

An inner mechanism of doubt. A nit-picking system that's constantly on the lookout for fakes and forgeries in perception. ...is one of the most promising ideas we've come up with so far.

And, who knows, it might follow that such inner mechanisms are the building blocks of introspection, and therefore also relevant for the ''construction'' of consciousness?

Indeed, a super interesting symposium!

Indeed, it is all about consciousness...

3.3. Actions, Agency and Volition.

Clearly, there had to be something about Benjamin Libets ''readiness potential'' in this session. And there was. I.e. a very interesting presentation by Isham about ''intent and action''. But no clear conclusion though (for those who had hoped for that ...).
Eion Trevers, UCLA, talked about ''The Readiness Potential reflects endogenicity, not uncertainty''.
Again, interesting reflections, and interesting comments about Schurger, Sitt & Dehaene's ''An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement'' [1]:

The precise moment at which the decision threshold is crossed leading to movement is largely determined by spontaneous subthreshold fluctuations in neuronal activity.

But again with a somewhat ambigious conclusion, imho, and, obviously, a call for more research!

Emilie Caspar talked about ''The obedient mind and the volitional brain''. Turns out that ''obeying orders reduces participants own sense of agency''. Interestingly, we were told that there is very little material on those who refuse to follow orders. Because there are so few cases...

Marta Siedlecka and Anil Seth ended the session with great talks about ''Motor responses inflate perceptual confidence'' and ''Learning action-oriented models through active inference''.

3.4. Keynote Lecture. Jennifer Windt.
Consciousness in Dreams and Dreamless Sleep.

The american sleep researcher William Dement (Sleepless at Stanford...) said in 2010, after more than 50 years studying sleep, that: ''As far as we know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy'' (With tongue in cheek, I hope).

Anyway, we were about to learn a little more in this session ...

Certainly, dreams give us a presence in virtual worlds, that appears to be very real. But worlds where we can often do things that we can't normally do when we are awake, such as flying... Indeed, we would have to try out a virtual flying machine, like BirdlyVR, to get a similar experience, while being awake...

But what is sleep really?

Well, there are at least 3 types of NREM sleep (Not to mention the all important REM sleep):

1. Occurs mostly in the beginning of sleep, with slow eye movement. Relaxed wakefulness.
2. No eye movement occurs, and dreaming is very rare. The sleeper is quite easily awakened.
3. Is deep sleep, slow-wave sleep.

But it is probably much more complicated than that...
Windt suggested that we sleep differently in new environments, such as in hotel rooms...
Dolphins can stay alert by sleeping with one half of their brain at a time, and we might actually be able to do something similar in new environments. Apparently, we can let one part our brain go into ''deeper'' sleep stages than the other half (that is supposed to be more alert in the new environment).

Interestingly, Siclari & Tononi have shown that the brain also has ''local sleep'' (''Local aspects of sleep and wakefulness'', [1]):

NREM (Non Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, are not uniformly distributed across the cortical surface, but can occur locally and asynchronously across brain regions.

Which leads to the interesting question: Who sleeps? Persons, Brains or parts of brains?
And then, of course, there are things like ''mind wandering''. Where some researchers think that we spend some 30-50 percent of our time.

A super interesting talk!

3.5. Neural Unity in the Conscious Brain.

Michael Anderson ''Embodiment and the split-brain: An enactive unity''.

In split brain operations, the corpus callosum is cut. The corpus callosum is a large strand of about 200,000,000 neurons running from one hemisphere to the other. When present, it is the chief channel of communication between the hemispheres [1].

Apparently, split-brain patients appear to experience divided perception, but undivided consciousness.
Which is sort of problematic, if there are no information-''wires'' connecting the two brain-halves.
But, well, it has been argued that subcortical connections may play a role in integrating information from the two hemispheres.
And living in the same head might also, somehow, constraint the entire central nervous system giving us just one unity consciousness.

In this very interesting talk, it was also suggested that an environment could sometimes give us the necessary integration. E.g. when split-brain patient draw something, the drawing itself might give the integration that is otherwise absent. Giving us an adaptive coupling between brain, body and mind?

Interesting!

Indeed, as Voltaire said: Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers...

4. Impressions from Thursday, June 27th.

4.1. Sid Kouider. Unsuspected Cognition in the Sleeping Brain.

Sid Kouider, CNRS, NextMind, talked about ''Unsuspected Cognition in the Sleeping Brain''.

Kouider started the talk by asking the question ''Why do we need to sleep at all''? Well, we not only shut down from the environment during sleep. ''Over more than a century of research has established the fact that sleep benefits the retention of memory'', Rasch & Born [1].

Healthy sleep must include the appropriate sequence and proportion of NREM and REM phases, which play different roles in the memory consolidation-optimization process [2].

REM sleep is vey much like wakefulness (I.e. brain activity is very similar to that seen while awake).
So, Kouider thinks that it would make sense to call these REM periods''paradoxical sleep''.

Many things are, of course, interesting to notice, when we talk about sleep.
In this talk, Kouider asked us to notice the so called K-Complexes, which has been suggested both to protect sleep and also to engage in information processing. As they form as a reaction to stimulus in the environment (noise, touch on the skin, or any other external stimuli)

They are usually accompanied by sleep spindles, as your brain tries to stay asleep, and not wake up due to external distractions [3].

(the ''K'' in K-complex stands for ''knock'', because they were discovered in patients being awakened by knocks on a door...)

A K-complex is a waveform that may be seen on an electroencephalogram (EEG). It occurs during stage 2 of NREM sleep. It is the largest event in healthy human EEG.

Still, there might be more to sleep than this ''offline consolidation of memory''.
Interestingly, humans can apparently learn new information during sleep (Arzi et al.):

We paired pleasant and unpleasant odors with different tones during sleep...
...
We found that sleeping subjects learned novel associations between tones and odors such that they then sniffed in response to tones alone. Thus, humans learned new information during sleep [4].

Indeed, the sleeping brain is still responsive to the external environment.

A talk that kept us awake, for sure.

4.2. Symposium: Action Awareness and Metacogniton.

Session with Faivre, Filevich, Myolopoulus & Charles.

In the talk ''Meta-cognition and Meta-awareness'', Mylopoulus asked us to reflect on the question ''To what extend are we aware of the representational states and processes of underlying motor control''? I.e. it would be interesting to know the level of our own ignorance...

Looking at e.g. Goldman's (1970) ''Hierarchical Model for Action Control'':

• Action Planning.
• Action Initiation and Guidance.
• Action Execution.

In quickly becomes clear that we do not have conscious access to all of the minor details in the planning of an action.
We cannot just think about something, and then it becomes conscious.
In the words of Alvin Goldman [1]:

When I have a thought about a rock, it is certainly not true that the rock becomes conscious. So why should I suppose that a mental state becomes conscious when I think about it?

Even though ''Higher-Order Thought Theory'' (HOT) tell us:

Basic idea is that what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of some kind of higher-order representation (HOR). A mental state M becomes conscious when there is a HOR of M.
A HOR is a ''meta-psychological'' or ''meta-cognitive'' state, that is, a mental state directed at another mental state [2].

Well, we can probably only be conscious about things evolution thinks it makes sense for us to be conscious of?

4.3. Poster Session.

Campus, Western University. London, Ontario, Canada.

Many super interesting presentations in the Poster Sessions.

Consciousness as a ''user-illusion'' is always a guarantee for a lot of passionate arguments back and forth.

Still, surely:

All sensation requires processing time. It follows that our conscious experience is less a perfect reflection of what is occurring, and more a simulation produced unconsciously by the brain [1].

My friend, E.J. Neasley, participated with a poster (In my mind, a version of ''Mary, the Super Scientist'').

I.e.

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor.
...
What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not [2].

You can follow E.J's ''Grey Doors productions'' here. Including some rather weird, but courageous, ''split brain'' chickens.

4.4. Models of Consciousness.

The session included super interesting talks about ''Agency as a Marker of Consciousness'', ''Perception and the Problem of Attribution'', ''The Misunderstood Higher Order Approach to Consciousness'', "Integrated Information Theory, Emergence and Causal Exclusion'' and ''Accelarating Research on Consciousness''.

Sat right next to Ned Block during Richard Browns ''The Misunderstood Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness''.

Interesting in itself, as I have been fan of Ned Block for years.

I have especially found his (''China Brain'') argumentation, against ''functionalism'', interesting.
And have used his arguments in various contexts, where I have been ''up against'' people, who think that functionalism is kind of self-evident.

In ''philosophy of mind, the China brain thought experiment considers what would happen if each member of the Chinese nation were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. Would this arrangement have a mind or consciousness in the same way that brains do [1].

Functionalism, which states that a mental state can be whatever functions as a mental state. That is, the mind can be composed of neurons, or it could be composed of wood, rocks or toilet paper, as long as it provides mental functionality [2].

Here it was all about ''HOT'' (Higher-Order Theory) theories though.

In Richard Brown words:

In HOT theories of consciousness there is a commitment to the claim that a mere (first-order) representation is not sufficient for conscious experiences to arise - some higher-order mechanisms are also needed. For example, having a first-order perceptual state, a state in which the brain represents something which is not a mental state, for example, something in its environment, is often crucial for the organism to respond meaningfully to external stimuli. However, a fundamental tenet of HOT is that first-order states occur unconsciously, and are not sufficient for phenomenally conscious experiences to occur [3].

(For more, see Understanding the Higher-Order Approach to Consciousness).

The interesting question is of course how complicated minds have to be in order for them to be conscious. Can't squirrels be conscious without having complicated introspection and self-awareness?
In Browns (et al.) words:

One common objection to HOT is that it makes consciousness overly sophisticated. This criticism mainly applies to HOTT, and even in that case the criticism is misplaced. For example, critics sometimes see the invocation of higher-order thoughts in HOTT as entailing complex forms of cognition, including introspection and self-awareness, that may not be present in mammals besides humans, for phenomenally conscious experiences to occur...
...
With a leaner sense of introspection and self, higher-order theorists are free to speculate that non-human animals, infants, and even non-biological agents, could have the necessary kind of thoughts to have simple conscious experiences, such as conscious perceptions [4].

In my understanding, this lands us where HOT theories give us just the right amount of cognition for consciousness.
Not too much cognition, as in GWT, or too little, as in ''local theories'' (for consciousness).
A middle position that also explains why there can powerful forms of unconscious processing.

Later, Lucia Melloni talked about ''Accelerating Research on Consciousness''. Using e.g. Adversarial collaboration, as proposed by e.g. Daniel Kahneman (to find the right models).

Also, interestingly, proposing that we should get away from the idea that people, who use other peoples data, are (basicly) parasites... Etc.
Well, if such initiatives can make us move forward a little quicker then by all means!

A super interesting session.

Clearly, ''Models of Consciousness'' are getting better, and perhaps slowly getting to a point where they could cast some light on why consciousness is useful in the first place?

Who knows, perhaps eventually getting to a point where they could be an inspiration for future AGI systems... :)

5. Impressions from Friday, June 28th.

5.1. Generating Consciousness, Generating Intelligence.

Lisa Miracchi, University of Pennsylvania, talked about ''Generating Consciousness, Generating Intelligence''.

Being intelligent, and ''Getting it right'' is difficult.
Not convinced? Try searching for ''Darpa Robotics Challenge - Failures'' [1], [2] & [3].
Or what about trying to build your own Turing Machine from scratch ? [4], [5].

Intelligence comes in many wondrous forms, but as long as we don't know much more about consciousness than the ''neural correlates of consciousness'', we can't really know how smart, and how conscious these other forms of intelligence really are?
E.g. how intelligent is an octupus really, when ''The majority of neurons in an octopus are found in the arms, which can independently taste and touch and also control basic motions without input from the brain'' [6]?

Certainly, making artificial intelligent systems are super hard...
E.g. how should AI systems find ''relevant'' information, and ignore irrelevant information
(The so called ''Frame problem of AI''):

To most AI researchers, the frame problem is the challenge of representing the effects of action in logic without having to represent explicitly a large number of intuitively obvious non-effects [7].

And when we have understood all of these ''easy problems''...
What is really the function of consciousness? Could zombies donate to charity, or do yoga?

Indeed, if you weren't convinced before, then certainly this talk, by Lisa Miracchi, would convince you that there is still some way to go, before we really understand what consciousness (and intelligence) is.

5.2. Symposium: The Cultural Shaping of Consciousness.

Martin Fortier, Nicod, talked about ''Enculturation of Consciousness''.

A study by Masuda and Nisbett [1] found that:

Japanese made more statements about contextual information and relationships than Americans did. And recognized previously seen objects more accurately, when they saw them in their original settings rather than in the novel settings, whereas this manipulation had relatively little effect on Americans.

Apparently, scenes of big cities are more complex than small cities. And japanese cities are more complex than american cities. We are influenced by our environment, and we influence our environment.

Michael Lifshitz, Stanford, talked about ''Tulpamancy''.

A very weird topic indeed.

Tulpa.info explains:

A tulpa is an entity created in the mind, acting independently of, and parallel to your own consciousness. They are able to think, and have their own free will, emotions, and memories. In short, a tulpa is like a sentient person living in your head.

And there is apparently a whole community out there that have ''tulpas'' living in their minds...
Obviously, Reddit has a section where people can come and meet other people, who have ''tulpas'' living in their heads. It gets weirder.
Two tulpas are introduced to each other, by their ''hosts''.
The tulpas fall in love. Then their ''hosts'' fell in love. Great.
Except now the tulpas wanted to break up...
Indeed:

My imaginary friend thinks that you have serious mental health problems.

Not 100 % sure what we were supposed to learn from this. But the mind sure is a strange place indeed.

Maybe, the lesson was something like this: Tanya Marie Luhrmann, also at the Anthropology Department at Stanford, believes that our ''mental landscape'' is not fixed. We are making choices in how we use our imagination, and the choices we make will change us [2].
Reality? Well.

Next, Rebecca Seligman, Northwestern, talked about ''The Biology and Culture of Spirit Possession''. After the talk about the tulpas, it almost seemed normal...

Certainly, we all have ''cultural scripts'' that tell us what is ''allowed''.

Indeed, a very interesting symposium.

5.3. Symposium: Disentangling the Neural Correlates of Consciousness.

Matthias Michel, Sorbonne, talked about ''Background Conditions for Consciousness''.

Today, there are lots of theories about what consciousness ''really'' is:

Theories according to which consciousness pervades the universe co-exist with theories suggesting that some specific parts of the cortex are responsible for consciousness [1].

The situation isn't exactly new, as Michel made clear by quoting Maudsley (1887):

It is certain that by no exercise of consciousness of which we are capable can we explain what it is in itself (...).
The aim of sober inquiry is, therefore, to search and, if possible, find out the conditions of consciousness - the conditions, that is to say, under which it arises, varies, sinks and lapses (p.489) [2].

So, we probably need to have a much better understanding of the background conditions for consciousness in order to proceed.
In Michels words:

Contemporary science of consciousness does not reach consensus either, which might indicate that our contemporary theories could be similarly underdetermined by the evidence [3].

Which takes us back to the neural correlates of consciousness.
We need to have a much better understanding of the background conditions for consciousness.
Some kinds of brain dynamics are necessary preconditions for consciousness, other kinds are not?

Indeed, there is work to do here!

Next, Andres Canales-Johnson, Cambridge, talked about ''Dissociable neural information dynamics''.

Conscious perception is all the time busy doing:

Integration to experience a collection of objects as a unitary percept, and differentiation to experience these objects as distinct from each other [4].

In one experiment, participants were asked to listen to a sequence of tones, experienced as ''either as a single stream (perceptual integration) or as two parallel streams (perceptual differentiation)''.

They then observed an ''increase in information-integration and a decrease in differentiation across frontoparietal (brain) regions, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the differentiated percept''.

Suggesting a one-to-one relationship between phenomenology and neurophysiology.

Some of us were scratching our heads, but it does indeed sound pretty logically, when you give it some thoughts.

5.4. The Great AI Debate.

After an interesting session on ''Consciousness: Models and Debates'' and an equally interesting symposium on ''Bridging Models of Perceptual Decision Making and Consciousness', it was time for ''The Great AI Debate'' in ''The Wave'' (restaurant and bar) on Western's campus.

Here moderator Adrian Owen would ask the panelists Lisa Miracchi, Anil Seth, Blake Richards & Hakwan Lau ''Can an AI be conscious''?

Very logically, Blake Richards, started out by noting: If we think that a computer is conscious, if it can pass the Turing Test, then it is ''just'' an engineering problem. On the other hand: If we think that consciousness is somehow embedded within human biological substrates, then an AI can't be conscious.

Anil Seth started out by saying that you can be intelligent without being conscious, and conscious with being intelligent.
So, why do we think that computers would eventually be conscious? It doesn't get windy inside an meteorological simulation? Seth went on to say that he thinks that consciousness has to do with being ''alive''. I.e. it is something that living things have. So, we need to understand that before we can proceed.

Lisa Miracchi stated that AlphaGo doesn't have consciousness. Why? In my understanding, she is of the opinion that consciousness has to do with being absolutely embedded in your environment, and going after your own needs deep within that environment, not (being distant and going after) what programmers have programmed you for.
So, machines aren't there yet... Well.

Hakwan Lau followed by stating that he is not a fan of very difficult questions, as ''he is not smart enough to answer them''.
Rather cleverly, he followed by saying that if neuroscientists could accurately describe how consciousness works (as something that is computationally) then AI researches would probably try to implement these models, which would then be a nice tool for neuroscientists. But, well, that is not where we are now...

The entire debate can be seen here.

6. Conclusion.

The end of a wunderbar conference. With many memorable talks.

Clearly, we need more consciousness research!

And (looking around in the hallways at Western) there appears to be plenty of ways that you can help! :)

Yes! All the balls are the same color - and that color is brown!

6.1. The Ivey Leadership Centre.

Lots of great places to stay in London (Ontario).

But I would certainly recommend the ''Ivey Leadership Centre'', where I stayed during my trip to London (Ontario).
Nice surroundings and very friendly people.

6.2. The Mustang Code.

There are things to learn wherever you go in London (Ontario)...

Saw this one on Westerns campus:

Indeed, imagine if all athletes & sports fans (around the world)
would follow something like the Mustang Code of Conduct !?

6.3. Post conference trip to Niagara Falls
& Impressions from London (Ontario).

After the conference I joined the post-conference trip to Niagara Falls.
You can see the pictures here.

Pictures from London, Ontario. June, 2019.

Conference Venue.
Western University. London, Ontario, Canada.

Time to pack up & say goodbye.
And, perhaps, meet at another ASSC in the coming years..

The end of great conference !