Bernard Baars

Bernard J. Baars (* 1946 in Amsterdam , Netherlands ) is an American cognitive scientist , best known for his Global Workspace Theory of consciousness .

Life

As a child, Baars moved to the United States, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1970 . After receiving a PhD in cognitive psychology from the same university, Baars taught at the State University of New York and the University of California, Berkeley . Since 2001 he has been a Senior Fellow in theoretical neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla near San Diego. From 1994 to 1996 Baars was founding president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC).

plant

Baars became famous for his Global Workspace Theory , which he formulated in 1986 in the book A cognitive theory of consciousness with the aim of providing a cognitive scientific approach to the phenomenon of consciousness. Baars' starting point is the observation that large parts of human information processing take place unconsciously and only a fraction of the information received reaches consciousness. According to Baars, information made conscious is characterized by the fact that it is available to people in a special way: information that has become conscious can be compared with memory or perceptual content and serve as a reason for motor or linguistic actions. Such general availability is not found with unconscious information, which for example often leads to a certain reaction regardless of knowledge or cannot be articulated verbally. According to Baars, consciousness contents are essentially characterized by the fact that they are presented to other cognitive systems for further processing in a global workspace. With this in mind, Baars explains:

The narrow limits of consciousness have a compensating advantage: consciousness seems to act as a gateway, creating access to essentially any part of the nervous system. Even single neurons can be controlled by way of conscious feedback. Conscious experience creates access to the mental lexicon, to autobiographical memory, and to voluntary control over automatic action routines.		The narrow boundaries of consciousness offer a balancing advantage: consciousness seems to function like a gate that provides access to every part of the nervous system. Even individual neurons can be controlled through conscious feedback. Conscious experiences create access to the mental lexicon, the autobiographical memory and the voluntary control over automated action routines.

effect

Baars' theory has worked in the cognitive sciences in a number of ways. On the one hand, his approach complements the cognitive architectures of summarizing the results of cognitive psychology in a comprehensive computer model. Such architectures aim to simulate human information processing processes. The models often consist of a number of modules that are organized around a central processing unit. Such a central processing unit roughly corresponds to the global workspace in the sense of Baars. Baars' theory is effective in cognitive neuroscience . For example, Stanislas Dehaene has tried in recent years to support Baars' approach with findings from brain research.

The theory of the global workspace has also had an impact on the philosophy of mind , for example Ned Block's distinction between access consciousness and pheonomenal consciousness is influenced. Access awareness is characterized by the features that Baars describes in his Global Workspace Model . In this way, a person is aware of their fear in the sense of access awareness, for example when they can say "I am afraid" or can refer to their fear as explicit memory content. Phenomenal consciousness, on the other hand, is the experience content of consciousness, such as the subjective experience of fear. The concept of phenomenal consciousness therefore largely coincides with the concept of qualia . If one accepts Block's distinction, there are also explanatory limits for Baars' model. The Global Workspace Theory can at best offer an explanation for the access consciousness, an explanatory approach for the phenomenal consciousness is not provided.

Publications (selection)

• Bernard Baars: The cognitive revolution in psychology , NY: Guilford Press, 1986, ISBN 0-89862-912-8 .
• Bernard Baars: A cognitive theory of consciousness , NY: Cambridge University Press 1988, ISBN 0-521-30133-5 .
• Bernard Baars: The experimental psychology of human error: Implications for the architecture of voluntary control , NY: Plenum Press, Series on Cognition and Language, 1992, ISBN 0-306-43866-6
• Bernard Baars: In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind , NY: Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-19-514703-0 .
• Bernard Baars and Nicole M. Gage: Cognition, Brain and Consciousness: An Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience , London: Elsevier / Academic Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-12-373677-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Bernard Baars in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage at the Neuroscience Institute

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Curriculum vitae ( Memento of the original dated August 31, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Bernard Baars: A cognitive theory of consciousness , NY: Cambridge University Press 1988, ISBN 0-521-30133-5 .
3. ^ Bernard Baars: In the Theater of Consciousness. In: Journal of Consciousness Studies , 4, No. 4, 1997, pp. 292-309.
4. ^ Dehaene, S. and Naccache, L .: Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: Basic evidence and a workspace framework. In: Cognition, 2001, pp. 1–37.
5. ^ Ned Block: On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness. In: The Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 1995.