Talk:Global workspace theory

Untitled
On second thought, I have decided to go with my instincts. Please correct this judgement if it was incorrect. Srice13 04:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Question for the authors: You have a link for Dorsal on your page that points to a disambiguation page of that name. As part of a cleanup effort (Disambiguation pages with links) I arrived to try and point to the correct page, but I would have admit that I don't know which is correct. I would guess Dorsal stream vs. Dorsum (biology), but I rely on the experts to clear this on up. Thanks Srice13 01:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

"Criticism" section inadequate.

As it stands, this simply outlines a few claims made by Susan Blackmore about consciousness, then says that Baars (the main advocate of Global Workspace theory) accepts all these points (implying that they do not, therefore, challenge GW theory at all). This implies that there are no reasonable or effective criticisms to be made of GW theory, which I am quite sure is not true. It also strongly suggests either that Blackmore's remarks were never very specifically intended as a critique of GW theory in the first place(which I think is quite likely to be true), or that Baars has failed to understand her criticisms.

I am pretty sure that GW theory is not without real critics, and ones more effective and influential than Blackmore. The main objection to it must surely be that it is purely a theory of the cognitive function of consciousness, and completely fails to address the deeper problem of its nature: the so called "hard problem". (I have put something to this effect into the entry. Unfortunately I cannot at the moment think of a suitable citation. I am sure many must exist, however, so perhaps someone else can find one.) I would be very surprised, however, if there are not also scholars who are critical of GW theory's adequacy even as a functional theory. Treharne (talk) 09:17, 26 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I have removed your insertion. I think it is obvious that GW theory is meant to explain how consciousness works, not how it is produced; so the fact that GW theory does not explain the nature of consciousness would not seem to be a criticism of it. Of course, if you find a cite of someone specifically criticizing GW theory on those grounds, go ahead and put the material back. Ben Standeven (talk) 15:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I think I just found one. I'll put it back, then.Ben Standeven (talk) 15:27, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Don't you think that thinking in terms of different definitions of consciousness may be one reason for disagreement? I think that the scientific concept of conciousness is still very young and a still evolving concept. Dehaene in his recent book "Le code de la conscience" clarify that conciousness is associated with three diffferent "ingredients": the level of vigilance (that span coma - sleep - awake states), a atenção and the access to consciouness. Are we discussing access to conciousness here or one of the two other aspect of consciouness? Another important point that Dehaene is that for the concept of conciousness to be scientific, it has to be possible to make expriments .THat's what the new definition allowed. If experiment can be made. Hypothesys can be proposed and tested... --Manouchk (talk) 14:03, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Dear Treharne, The so-called "hard problem of consciousness" is, in all honesty, not a legitimate issue among cognitive neuroscientists. It's really a fringe issue. The term, and really the "problem" itself, originated with David Chalmers. Unfortunately, once the concept was named and used by him, it gained some added legitimacy among interested laymen and some philosophers. The term is actually now used almost exclusively by philosophers. There are a few reasons why the "hard problem" isn't given any thought or taken seriously by cognitive neuroscientists, the first being that it's based on an informal logical fallacy called "an argument from personal incredulity" or "argument from ignorance". Secondly, although Chalmers et al claim they aren't dualists, at it's core the "hard problem" is essentially based on a rejection of scientific materialism. And most importantly, the "hard problem" just plain doesn't exist. Chalmers' "easy problems" are all there is to the mind, they're the real hard problems. There are a huge number of studies, and a mass of evidence, pointing to the actual neural correlates and signatures of consciousness. Stanislas Dehaene's amazing work is a good example of this. My point is, once Chalmers' "easy problems" are solved, his so-called "hard problem" will be seen as non-existent. So, I think, that adding any more than a cursory mention of the "hard problem" to this article would be giving it far more weight than it actually has in the field. Bzzzing (talk) 17:38, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Global NEURONAL Workspace
There needs to be either a)a section explaining Stanislas Dehaene's updated version, the "global neuronal workspace" or b)an entirely new page devoted to the global neuronal workspace. But at the very least, there should be some mention of Dehaene's work in this article, in order to make clear the differences between the two theories. Hopefully I'll have an appropriate edit ready soon. Bzzzing (talk) 16:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Global workspace theory
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Global workspace theory's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Aggregates": From Stream of consciousness (psychology):  From Consciousness:  From Mind:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 14:52, 21 October 2021 (UTC)