creators_name: Aerts, Diederik creators_name: Broekaert, Jan creators_name: Gabora, Liane editors_name: Yasue, Kunio type: confpaper datestamp: 2000-09-21 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:23 metadata_visibility: show title: Intrinsic Contextuality as the Crux of Consciousness ispublished: inpress subjects: phil-mind full_text_status: public keywords: contextuality, consciousness, hierarchy, concepts, cognition, quantum, collapse, superposition, stimuli, drive, emotion, conceptual network, emergence, criticality, constraint, microworld, closure, worldview, association, relationship, association, self organization, perturbation, edge of chaos, animal, opinion, probability, liar paradox, Hilbert space, illusion abstract: A stream of conscious experience is extremely contextual; it is impacted by sensory stimuli, drives and emotions, and the web of associations that link, directly or indirectly, the subject of experience to other elements of the individual's worldview. The contextuality of one's conscious experience both enhances and constrains the contextuality of one's behavior. Since we cannot know first-hand the conscious experience of another, it is by way of behavioral contextuality that we make judgements about whether or not, and to what extent, a system is conscious. Thus we believe that a deep understanding of contextuality is vital to the study of consciousness. Methods have been developed for handling contextuality in the microworld of quantum particles. Our goal has been to investigate the extent to which these methods can be used to analyze contextuality in conscious experience. date: 2000 date_type: published publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company, Philadelphia PA refereed: TRUE referencetext: [1] Aerts, D. and Durt, T. (1994) ``Quantum. Classical and Intermediate, an illustrative example", Found. Phys., 24, 1353. [2] Aerts, D. (1985) ``A possible explanation for the probabilities of quantum mechanics and example of a macroscopic system that violates Bell inequalities", in Recent developments in quantum logic, (eds.), Mittelstaedt, P. and Stachow, E.W., Grundlagen der Exakten Naturwissenschaften, band 6, Wissenschaftverlag, Bibliografisches Institut, Mannheim. [3] Aerts, D. (1986) ``A Possible Explanation for the Probabilities of Quantum Mechanics", J. Math. Phys. 27, 202. [4] Aerts, D. (1995) ``Quantum structures : An attempt to explain their appearance in nature", Int. J. Theor. Phys., 34, 1165. [5] Aerts D., Broekaert J., Smets S., (1999a). A Quantum Structure Description of the Liar-Paradox International Journal of Theoretical Physics, in print. [6] Aerts D., Broekaert J., Smets S., (1999b). The Liar-Paradox in a Quantum Mechanical Perspective, World Conference of Philosophy, Boston, to appear. [7] Gabora, L. (1998) Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the evolution of culture. Psycoloquy, 9:67. http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?9.67 [8] Gabora, L. (1999) Weaving, bending, patching, mending the fabric of reality: A cognitive science perspective on worldview inconsistency. Foundations of Science, 3:2. [9] Gerlach, F. and Stern, O. (1922) ``Der experimentelle Nachweis der Richtungsquantelung im Magnetfeld", Zeitschrift für Physik, 9, 349. [10] Kauffman, S. (1993) Origins of Order. Oxford Press. citation: Aerts, Diederik and Broekaert, Jan and Gabora, Liane (2000) Intrinsic Contextuality as the Crux of Consciousness. [Conference Paper] (In Press) document_url: http://cogprints.org/974/1/tokyo99.htm