Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience Audiobook (Free)

Focusing attention might help an animal find food or flee a predator. It also may have led to consciousness. Tracing evolution over an incredible number of years, Michael S. A. Graziano uses examples from the organic world showing how neurons initial allowed animals to develop simple forms of attention: consuming messages from the surroundings, prioritizing them, and responding as required.

Then some animals evolved covert attention-a roving mental focus that can take in information aside from where the on the subject of Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience senses are pointed, like hearing sirens at a distance or recalling a memory.

Graziano proposes that to be able to monitor and control this specialized interest, the brain evolved a simplified model of it-a cartoonish self-description depicting an internal essence having a capacity for understanding and experience. In other words, consciousness.

With this eye-opening function, Graziano accessibly explores how this sense of the inner being resulted in empathy and formed us into social beings. The theory may point the best way to engineers for building consciousness artificially. Graziano discusses what a future with artificial awareness might be like, including both advantages and risks, and what AI might mean for our evolutionary potential.