creators_name: Wallace, Rodrick creators_id: New York State Psychiatric Institute type: preprint datestamp: 2004-06-14 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:37 metadata_visibility: show title: Consciousness, cognition, and the hierarchy of context: expanding the global neuronal workspace subjects: neuro-mod full_text_status: public keywords: atlas, cognition, consciousness, Dretske, groupoid, information theory, renormalization, topology abstract: Adapting Dretske's approach on the necessary conditions for mental process, we apply a communication theory analysis of interacting cognitive biological and social modules to the global neuronal workspace. Using an obvious canonical homology with statistical physics, the method, when iterated, generates a fluctuating dynamic threshold recognizably similar to a phase transition in a physical system, but constrained to a manifold/atlas structure analogous to a tunable retina. The resulting 'General Cognitive Model' can be extended in a straightforward manner to include the effects of psychosocial stress, culture, or other cognitive modules which constitute a structured, embedding, hierarchy of contextual constraints acting at a slower rate than neuronal function itself. This produces an empirically-testable 'bipsychosociocultural' treatment of individual consciousness that, while otherwise remarkably similar to the standard development, meets compelling philosophical and other objections to brain-only descriptions. date: 2004 date_type: published refereed: FALSE citation: Wallace, Rodrick (2004) Consciousness, cognition, and the hierarchy of context: expanding the global neuronal workspace. [Preprint] document_url: http://cogprints.org/3677/1/mind17.pdf