Michael Graziano
Princeton University
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
Michael Graziano’s attention schema theory holds that awareness is a schematic model the brain builds of its own attention, in the same way the body schema is a simplified model of the body. The model is useful and inaccurate by design. It omits the neurons and the competition, and what remains is a description of holding something in mind with no mechanism attached. That description is what people report when they report being aware.
The theory is unusual in being mechanistic enough to build and test. Wilterson and Graziano trained a deep Q-learning agent to control visuospatial attention and found that an attention schema improved that control. Later work found the benefit concentrates specifically on interpreting the attention of other agents rather than raising performance in general, and that specificity is what separates the result from a demonstration that larger networks do better.
He has also argued that attention schema theory, global workspace, higher order thought and illusionism describe one mechanism from different angles rather than competing for the same explanatory slot. That reconciliation is a substantive claim, namely that the field’s central dispute is partly terminological.
Known for. Attention schema theory
Coverage on this site
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Michael Graziano is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.