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4.5 Globalist versus Localist Representations 85

"inner domain in which we can rehearse telephone numbers to ourselves or, more interestingly,
in which we carry on the narrative of our lives. It is usually thought to include inner speech
and visual imagery." Baars uses the term "consciousness" to refer to the contents of working
memory – a theoretical commitment that is not part of the CogPrime design. In this section
we will use the term "consciousness" in Baars' way, but not throughout the rest of the book.

Baars conceives working memory and consciousness in terms of a "theater metaphor" – ac-
cording to which, in the "theater of consciousness" a "spotlight of selective attention" shines
a bright spot on stage. The bright spot reveals the global workspace – the contents of con-
sciousness, which may be metaphorically considered as a group of actors moving in and out of
consciousness, making speeches or interacting with each other. The unconscious is represented
by the audience watching the play ... and there is also a role for the director (the mind's ex-
ecutive processes) behind the scenes, along with a variety of helpers like stage hands, script
writers, scene designers, etc.

GWT describes a fleeting memory with a duration of a few seconds. This is much shorter
than the 10-30 seconds of classical working memory – according to GWT there is a very brief
"cognitive cycle" in which the global workspace is refreshed, and the time period an item remains
in working memory generally spans a large number of these elementary "refresh" actions. GWT
contents are proposed to correspond to what we are conscious of, and are said to be broadcast
to a multitude of unconscious cognitive brain processes. Unconscious processes, operating in
parallel, can form coalitions which can act as input processes to the global workspace. Each
unconscious process is viewed as relating to certain goals, and seeking to get involved with
coalitions that will get enough importance to become part of the global workspace – because
once they're in the global workspace they'll be allowed to broadcast out across the mind as a
whole, which include broadcasting to the internal and external actuators that allow the mind
to do things. Getting into the global workspace is a process's best shot at achieving its goals.

Obviously, the theater metaphor used to describe the GWT is evocative but limited; for
instance, the unconscious in the mind does a lot more than the audience in a theater. The
unconscious comes up with complex creative ideas sometimes, which feed into consciousness –
almost as if the audience is also the scriptwriter. Baars' theory, with its understanding of uncon-
scious dynamics in terms of coalition-building, fails to describe the subtle dynamics occurring
within the various forms of long-term memory, which result in subtle nonlinear interactions
between long term memory and working memory. But nevertheless, GWT successfully models
a number of characteristics of consciousness, including its role in handling novel situations, its
limited capacity, its sequential nature, and its ability to trigger a vast range of unconscious
brain processes. It is the framework on which LIDA's theory of the cognitive cycle is built.

4.5.9 The LIDA Cognitive Cycle

The simplest cognitive cycle is that of an animal, which senses the world, compares sensation to
memory, and chooses an action, all in one fluid subjective moment. But the same cognitive cycle
structure/process applies to higher-level cognitive processes as well. The LIDA architecture is
based on the LIDA model of the cognitive cycle, which posits a particular structure underlying
the cognitive cycle that possess the generality to encompass both simple and complex cognitive
moments.

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