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Max Hodak - The binding problem

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We think that neural activity creates subjective experience (“phenomenal consciousness”) but lack a satisfying, quantitative understanding of how that actually happens. Near the heart of this mystery is the binding problem, which I understand as having two main sub-questions: I believe that if we had solid answers to both of these questions we would largely consider the practical question of “what is consciousness?” to be solved, even if we still could still get hung up on other metaphysical issues, like what counts as you over time or across substrates. I proposed a possible answer to these questions in a recent talk I gave in Tokyo, which I need to take the time soon to write up into a proper paper. In (very) short: there are deep connections between physically realized information and thermodynamics; information forms “representations” of platonic concepts; maintaining a representation in the real universe requires exerting feedback control; so we can imagine that the answer to “wha

We think that neural activity creates subjective experience (“phenomenal consciousness”) but lack a satisfying, quantitative understanding of how that actually happens. Near the heart of this mystery is the binding problem, which I understand as having two main sub-questions: The human brain is composed of billions of neurons over more than a thousand cubic centimeters, and neural activity relating to consciousness unfolds in time over tens of milliseconds, which we nevertheless experience as an integrated phenomenal “moment.” How does this spatiotemporally extended neural activity get…

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