Mike, The extent to which there is a rigid distinction between these two tiers in the human brain/mind is not entirely clear. The human brain seems to have some distinct memory subsystems associated with various sorts of "short term memory" or "working memory", but the notion of "executive processing" overall is IMO best thought of as a fuzzy set. Yes, there are some parts of the brain clearly shown (by fMRI and PET) to be involved with overall coordination, but the knowledge/memories associated by these brain regions is not necessarily the totality of what can occur in subjective conscious awareness.
I think that the working memory and the autonomic nervous system are best viewed as two extremes, with a continuum of "conscious intensity levels" existing between them. For relatively recent thinking on the underpinnings of consciousnes in the human brain, check out the edited volume -- "Neural Correlates of Consciousness", by Thomas Metzinger His single-author book -- "Being No One" is also very good, though I disagree with his take on AI at the end of the book. (he argues it would be unethical to create AGI's because it would be unethical to experiment on their half-formed, probably buggy conscious minds.) In Novamente we do have an AttentionalFocus concept which is much like what you call the "conscious" tier. We have chosen the term "attentional focus" to avoid getting into arguments related to the nature of consciousness and the first person versus third person perspectives on mind. Each item in the attentional focus is associated with a distributed network of other items that are not necessarily in the attentional focus, which ties in with the fuzziness of the executive function as mentioned above. -- Ben G On 5/6/07, YKY (Yan King Yin) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 5/6/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > YKY: Consciousness is not central to AGI . > > The human mind consists of a two-tier structure. On top, you have this conscious, executive mind that takes most of the decisions about which way the system will go - basically does the steering. On bottom, you have the unconscious, subordinate mind that does nearly all the information processing, both briefing and executing the executive mind's decisions, putting the words in its mouth and forming the thoughts in its head, while continually pressuring the executive mind with conflicting emotions, and at the same time monitoring and controlling the immensely complex operations of the body. That sounds reasonable. You're talking about the executive / planner module. My focus is on the truth maintenance module, which operates somewhat passively, and would require high-level directives from the planner, including value-based bias. The executive should be able to control all other modules. I tried not to use the term "emotion" in AGI, but I guess most people like it as a metaphor. YKY ------------------------------ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
