Monash University
Hayato Saigo
Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology, Japan
Steven Phillips
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
Project Title
Precision phenomenology: revealing the structure of qualia
Project Summary
Recent progress in consciousness research is driven due to technological advances in measuring neural activity in human brains. Neuroscientific understanding of conscious brains recently led to several theories of consciousness. Testing these theories is still difficult because we still lack clear understanding of properties of conscious sensation. Mathematical phenomenology is an emerging field of the study that tries to model mathematical properties of consciousness, such as color, that precisely matches with people’s reports. Here, based on a mathematical tool, called category theory, we propose a model of visual consciousness. Our model is consistent with the known facts in psychology and neuroscience while it captures our impressions of experience when seeing a brief flash of a natural photograph. As a test our model, we examine if we can indirectly but perfectly characterize and predict our particular sensation, for example color of redness in some part of the photo, by its similarity relationships with all other colors in the photo. To test this prediction, we will employ the PI's recent, novel, web-based psychological experimental platform, called Massive Report Paradigm. This will allow us to “measure” the quality of consciousness for the first time, serving as a litmus test for theories of consciousness.
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