Anil Seth


[tag: transl.]

Anil Sethというサセックス大学の神経科学の 研究者の意識観は、共感できるところが多い。

a new picture is taking shape in which conscious experience is seen as deeply grounded in how brains and bodies work together to maintain physiological integrity – to stay alive.
In this story, we are conscious ‘beast-machines’ Anil Seth “The real problem
Every conscious experience involves a very large reduction of uncertainty – at any time, we have one experience out of vastly many possible experiences – and reduction of uncertainty is what mathematically we mean by ‘information’.
Ibid.
perception is a controlled hallucination, in which the brain’s hypotheses are continually reined in by sensory signals arriving from the world and the body.
Ibid.
The specific experience of being you (or me) is nothing more than the brain’s best guess of the causes of self-related sensory signals.
Ibid.
It now seems to me that fundamental aspects of our experiences of conscious selfhood might depend on control-oriented predictive perception of our messy physiology, of our animal blood and guts.
Ibid.

意識とは、身体を維持するための予測過程であり、 自意識というのも、その過程の一環で予測された ものでしかない。
Consciousness is a predictive processing for maintaining the body, and conscious self is only predicted as a part of the process.

この理論もまた、理由付けという予測過程によって 導かれたものであるから、これが正解かどうかは どうでもよいし、そもそも正解というものはない。
best guessはなんだろうかと理由付けを続けるのが、 意識らしい在り方だと思われるというだけである。
Since this theory is also derived by the predictive processing of reasoning, it does not matter whether this is correct or not, or there is no correct answer in the first place.
Just saying that keeping reasoning as to what is the "best guess" seems to be a conscious way of thinking.

それでよいのだ。
That's fine.