Review of: “Mathematical Models of Consciousness”

Presenter: David Evans

Presenter Status: Undergraduate student

Academic Year: 22-23

Semester: Spring

Faculty Mentor: Martha Shott

Department: Mathematics

Funding Source/Sponsor: Other

Other Funding Source/Program: McNair, LSAMP, MESA

President's Strategic Plan Goal: Diversity and Social Justice

Screenshot URL: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=17V-Yw0gugdwNRnbZQrdmHlrg8ylRLc8G

Abstract:
What we call consciousness is a unique phenomena that has evaded unanimous scientific understanding. Even with the advancement of formally acknowledging that there are two domains of consciousness, phenomenological and functional, the surrounding literature has shown that the interaction between the two and the understanding of how a conscious experience relates to the physical world is evermore of a mystery. Empirical methodologies need to consider the natural restrictions placed upon it by both the characteristic features of phenomenal consciousness and the two routes to gather information about consciousness, first and third-person perspectives. I will provide a review of the recent work, “Mathematical Models of Consciousness,” written by Johannes Kleiner, PhD, published in the National Library of Medicine in 2020. In this review, we will explore how the current knowledge of phenomenology can be translated into formal mathematical language, with the goal of keeping theories or models of consciousness operational in nature; this can be done by considering the empirical restrictions placed upon any model of consciousness by the characteristic features of consciousness. This is a work in progress.