A Tube of Glue for Cognitive Science: On the Origin of Consciousness by Means of Pattern Distillation

Cognitive science needs a mechanism to join the disparate disciplines and address philosophical challenges. I present a parsimonious model for the informational content of brain and mind which aligns with the capabilities of neurons and describes the development of consciousness and higher features of mind. Using a simplification to reduce brain content to patterns, I develop a model which describes the origin of consciousness. The model shows that consciousness is an inevitable occurrence in any active creature with adequate mental capacity. I derive step by step, a minimal self, unconscious awareness, and conscious awareness. I address the ‘hard problem’ before showing how attention operates as a mechanism to influence pattern matching. After exploring some philosophical obstacles to physicalism, I expand on the description of the model and discuss integration to other theories of consciousness. Finally, I describe some predictions that arise from the model. The logical model is compatible with Global Workspace Theory & Predictive Processing. It offers the possibility of integration from neuronal level processing to existing higher-level approaches. It also gives us a way of thinking about thinking in terms that are closer to the way the brain works. The model is open-ended and in further papers I aim to explore its capabilities for the construction of thinking and intelligence. Having an information-oriented model that is substrate independent may benefit work on Artificial Intelligence.