Camilo Miguel Signorelli - Consciousness interaction, from experiments to a multi-layer model

Camilo Miguel Signorelli
Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford

Empirical evidence regarding neural studies of consciousness and conscious perception is mainly unknown in fields such as physics and mathematics, or sometimes even misunderstood by many scientists inside the own field of consciousness research. A critical survey of these experiments reveals different aspects and dynamical features among distinct processes related to the conscious phenomenon. These features and distinctions need to be incorporated in any attempt of modelling consciousness and the study of mathematical structures of consciousness.

Therefore, part of that evidence is first reviewed to later generate a preliminary multi-layer model called Consciousness interaction, suitable for further mathematical generalization. In this “prototype” of theory, biological and cellular principles together with mathematical structures are fundamental ingredients and important complement for current physical descriptions such as dynamical systems, emergent, and sub-emergent properties. One advantage of the mentioned approach is the potential of reducing the apparent number of theories of consciousness to a few models, without the need for a single experiment. Moreover, new insights and empirical predictions are expected after this theoretical exercise, eventually producing a list of few experimental tests to verify or falsify current and future models of consciousness.

Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019.