This book was for one of my classes this semester, and I really enjoyed the ideas tossed around this book. It provides a great introduction for people who don’t know anything about this space The brain is one of the most complex information processing machines in existence. Existing research in neuroscience tells us that the electrical signals in the brain essentially move from region to region, and the signal strength is boosted, improved, or maintained, but the key question is how does this become the subjective experience we as humans feel every day. This is ultimately a question on what is consciousness. Graziano proposes the atention schema theory of consciousness as a simple approach for addressing this question.

Before getting to Dr. Graziano’s theory, two key parts must first be understood. First, is the concept of attention, which can intuitively be thought of as the brain putting its focus on certain signals over others. This is an information processing trick to reduce a large number of signals to its most significant pieces. Second is the idea that the brain creates simplified models of objects and events in the world, and these models are then used for making predictions, making actions, and reasoning about the world. In addition, a relatively formal definition of consciousness is needed, which Dr. Graziano explains as the “whole of personal experience at any moment.”

What makes attention schema theory interesting for me is the fact that we generate schema not only for ourselves but for other people and things (living and nonliving). These schemas are quick-and-dirty models we construct and impose onto other entities. For example, a robot playing soccer doesn’t have any actual emotions, consciousness, or awareness, yet we still impose some model onto them (potentially attributing some human-like characteristics to it). Applying an attention schema onto ourselves gives rise to self-awareness, whereas on others gives rise to social awareness.

Dr. Graziano also discusses the building of conscious artificial intelligence; he states that it requires three things: to be able to sort information and control its own behavior using attention; to be able to run its own attention schema, tracking, simulating, and predicting attention; and it needs to be able to link its attention schema to other information it has stored. For conscious AI to exist, it will need to create an attention schema of itself, but to do this, I think it would need some method of communication with the world, such as language, robot gestures, or robot gaze, and also be able to model the effects of its communication with the world.

I believe that Dr. Graziano does a wonderful job creating a simplistic, yet powerful theory of consciousness. His theory has solid foundations in plenty of empirical research, which provides for a compelling argument. His comparisons to existing theories such as social theories and information-based theories were particularly interesting and gives people a general overview of the space. I recommend this book as a good introduction for anyone interested in consciousness in general.