Consciousness as recursive, spatiotemporal self-location

Not least amongst these issues would be the largely unresolved question as to the precise neurological underpinnings of representational content. As long as the relationship between the underlying neuro-physical processes and symbolic (representational) properties remains obscure, the notion of mental representation cannot be said to constitute a fully established explanatory primitive, although the principal of neuropsychological identity remains in effect. At the philosophical level, much attention has been directed to the related question regarding the necessary connection between cognitive (representational) experience and brain functionality. Philosophers have argued that because cognitive “zombies” (creatures possessing the requisite brain functionality without being consciously self-aware) are logically possible (Kirk, 1974; Chalmers, 1996), then it cannot be claimed that recursive self-awareness necessarily accompanies recursive brain functionality. But as Flanagan and Polger (1995, p. 3) point out (cf Churchland, 2002a, pp. 176–178; Heil, 2003, p. 229; Cottrell, 1999) and even Chalmers himself admits (1996, p. 269), the credibility of this kind of argument, based as it is on the evidentiary force of logic alone, holds only outside a naturalistic framework. Within the naturalistic framework of empirical neuropsychology adopted in this proposal (see Evolution of The Architecture of Consciousness below), all properties and processes are understood to be natural properties and processes explainable in terms of naturalistic laws (physics, chemistry, and biology), such that cognitive properties accompany neurological characteristics as part of a neuropsychological identity, and the evolutionary context of all biological phenomena (including cellular signaling in the form of nervous systems) is understood to answer to biological, chemical, and physical but not logical imperatives. Logic in and of itself has no evidentiary force whatsoever within a naturalistic framework—things are not so simply and solely because it can be argued philosophically that it follows, logically, that they should be so, or that they can be imagined to be so. Empirical evidence determines facts. Consequently, the zombie argument simply has no legitimacy and should never have been introduced.

A sophisticated theory of consciousness has been developed by Jordan (1998) and Vandervert (1995) construing consciousness as the ongoing activation of an internal body template (which they derive from Ronald Melzack’s notion of a phantom limb sensation) yielding the conscious “feel” of bodily presence in space–time, including self ownership and location. This continuously generated feedforward template of the body in space–time (Vandervert, 1995, p. 113) is said to be generated by a primitive self–other discrimination comparator (Jordan, 1998, p. 168). With its emphasis on space–time self presence and anticipatory processing (see note 4 below), the Vandervert–Jordan theory resembles the explanation of consciousness as recursive, spatiotemporal self-location outlined here. It should be noted, however, that the theories differ significantly in regard to (1) the data structure (body template vs self-location template), (2) the processing mechanism (self–other comparator/self-location),and (3) the fact that, in concert with Revonsuo (2005), the Vandervert–Jordan theory assumes that spatiotemporal processing is conscious in and of itself, while the self-locational theory insists that consciousness-as-subjectivity requires the evolution of recursive anticipative processing circuitry.

Gibson (1979) (cf. Bermudez, 1998; Neisser, 1988) insists that information about the self is directly perceived in the form of the boundedness of the field of vision as well as the occlusion of portions of the visual field by parts of the body, such as the nose and hands.

The idea that consciousness consists of the merger of the immediate present with the immediate future can also be found in the philosophical explanation of the phenomenal present moment as a blend of past, present, and future. Natika Newton and Ralph Ellis contend that the ‘temporal thickness’ of conscious awareness derives from a weaving together of new sensory input with the memory of immediate past input, along with anticipations (expectations) of immediate future input (Newton, 2001). Within the cognitive science field, several authors have indicated that anticipative internal simulation in the form of forward models will in some unspecified way be found to support consciousness (Haggard, 2005; Hesslow, 2002; Cleermans, 2005; Fourneret et al., 2002). Taylor has argued for a notion of consciousness as anticipatory attention (2002). A strong case for the anticipatory character of consciousness has also been developed by Vandervert, Hershberger and Jordan. In his original proposal regarding consciousness as “the experience of the body in space–time”, Vandervert referred to the feedforward character of the processing. Hershberger-Jordan have further emphasized the anticipatory nature of the perceived body-in-space-time template which encodes the coordinates and generates a perception of the body in space–time, by styling it an “extrabody signal” (Jordan 1998, p. 167) generated in the same way as the anticipatively perceived extra-retinal signal of upcoming eye position—the “Phantom Array” (Hershberger, 1997; Jordan, 1998).

Mandler (2002, p. 45) points out that ‘experiences are seamless and unitary to the extent that they activate existing schemas’.