Since I only partly understand your comment, I'm not sure if this pertains, but the phrase "spatiotemporal encoding" caught my attention. It makes intuitive sense that complex cognitive function would be connected to spatiotemporal sensations and ideas in an embodied nervous system evolved for, among other things, managing itself spatially and temporally.
Also, Riccardo Manzotti's book "The Spread Mind" seems connected. Part of the thesis is that the brain doesn't form a "model" version of the world with which to interact, but instead, the world's effects are kept active within the brain, even over extremely variable timespans. Objects of consciousness can't be definitively separated from their "external" causes, and can be considered the ongoing activity of those causes, "within" us.
Conscious experience as "encoding" in that sense would not be an inner representation of an outer reality, but more a kind of spatiotemporal imprint that is identical with and inextricable from the activity of "outer" events that precipitated it. The "mind" is not a separate observer or calculator but is "spread" among all phenomenal objects/events with which it has interacted--even now-dead stars whose light we might have seen.
Not sure if I'm doing the book justice here, but it's a great read, and satisfyingly methodical. The New York Review has an interview series if you want to get a sense of the ideas before committing to the book.
This is salient enough that I think you intuitively understood my comment. I won't pretend I can fully explain pending hypotheses either, it's more about research angles (e.g., connecting tools with problem categories).
Thanks a lot for the recommendations. That's what I love about HN. One often gets next-level great pointers.
> Objects of consciousness can't be definitively separated from their "external" causes, and can be considered the ongoing activity of those causes, "within" us.
Emphatically yes.
> […] spatiotemporal imprint that is identical with and inextricable from the activity of "outer" events that precipitated it
Exactly, noticing that it includes, and/or is shaped, by "inner" events as well.
So there's the outer world, and there's your inner world, and only a tiny part of the latter is termed "conscious". We gotta go about life from that certainly vantage but incredibly limited perspective too. The 'folding power' of nature (to put so much information in so little space) is mesmerizing, truly.
I like to put it down to earth to think about it. When you're in pain, or hungry, or sleepy—any pure physiological, biological state,—it will noticeably impact (alter, color, shade, formally "transform" as in filters or gating of) the whole system.
Your perception (stimuli), your actions (responses), your non-conscious impulses (intuitions, instincts, needs & wants…), your emotions, thoughts, and even decision-making and moral values.
I can't elaborate much here as it's bound to get abstract too fast, to seem obfuscated when it's everything but. I should probably write a blog or something, ha ha. You too, you seem quite astute at wording those things.
Also, Riccardo Manzotti's book "The Spread Mind" seems connected. Part of the thesis is that the brain doesn't form a "model" version of the world with which to interact, but instead, the world's effects are kept active within the brain, even over extremely variable timespans. Objects of consciousness can't be definitively separated from their "external" causes, and can be considered the ongoing activity of those causes, "within" us.
Conscious experience as "encoding" in that sense would not be an inner representation of an outer reality, but more a kind of spatiotemporal imprint that is identical with and inextricable from the activity of "outer" events that precipitated it. The "mind" is not a separate observer or calculator but is "spread" among all phenomenal objects/events with which it has interacted--even now-dead stars whose light we might have seen.
Not sure if I'm doing the book justice here, but it's a great read, and satisfyingly methodical. The New York Review has an interview series if you want to get a sense of the ideas before committing to the book.