CONSCIOUSNESS

150 3. Cognitive Sciences and Psychology
3.17 Temporal consciousness
209 Why Consciousness Doesn’t Sleep: An Information Theory of Continuity in
Consciousness Francesco Giorlando, Gorbunova, Anastasia
(Neuroscience, University of Melbourne - Ph.D Candidate, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire
United Kingdom)
The default mode has been primarily described as a functional network (e.g., Raichle &
Snyder, 2007). This paper explores the question of the raison d’etre of the default mode network
from a neuro-informatical perspective. The primary position presented is that the default
mode is a signal pattern found in neuroimaging studies that reflects an underlying constituent
activity. This activity arises from the continuity of the conscious self in all states, including
sleep. Self-consciousness is defined here with reference to the (P)synamic theory (Gorbunova
& Giorlando, TSC 2008). In light of this theory, information fluxes bridging the external and
internal worlds (here, the brain system is viewed as a type of internal model with specific comparator
functions) require the type of continuous activity seen in the default mode network.
The question of why the correlated areas change under cognitive and sensory load is also
addressed. This is achieved by relating information to energy with reference to Landauer’s
principle and to modern information theoretical approaches to consciousness (e.g., Tononi,
2008). The theory is supported by an integration of experimental data, particularly relating to
the role of timekeeping as a function of default mode activity and to aberrations of temporal
continuity as demonstrated clinically and experimentally. P9
210 In Defense of Diachronic Perceptual Atomism Enrico Grube
(Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX)
Diachronic perceptual atomism is the view that temporal experiences such as seeing a
car move or hearing a melody can be reduced to successions of non-temporal, momentary
experiences. This view has been rejected by virtually all thinkers about time consciousness
ever since William James famously asserted that “a succession of feelings, in and of itself,
is not a feeling of succession” (1890: 629). Subsequently it has often been assumed without
much further argument that atomism must be mistaken and that an adequate theory of temporal
experience will have to involve either the doctrine of the specious present (cf. James
1890, Broad 1923, Dainton 2000, Tye 2003) or some special sort of “retentional” memory (cf.
Husserl 1905, LePoidevin 2007). In this paper, I evaluate the phenomenological objection
underlying James’ dictum, as well as other related arguments that have been raised against
atomism: the argument from the continuity of experience, which claims that if atomism were
true, experiences would not be continuous or diachronically unified in the way they in fact
are; the argument from slow motion, which claims that atomism cannot explain the distinction
between directly seeing an object move and merely seeing that it is moving; and the argument
from the metaphysics of experience, which claims that atomism involves commitment to an
implausible “cinematic” or “snapshot” view of experience. I argue that none of these arguments
are persuasive, and that atomism should be seen as a viable alternative to both specious
present theory and memory theory. C 16
211 Mind-Wandering in Daily Life: An Experience-Sampling Study Xiao-Lan Song,
Wang Xiao (College of Education, Zhejiang Normal University,
China, Jinhua, Zhejiang China)
Mind wandering is a too common personal experience to draw attention. We always fall
into our internal mental world constantly no matter what we are doing and where we are. The
ebb and flow of thought, episodic,or images make up great part of ‘the stream of consciousness’
out of our intention, and we sometimes notice it and sometimes not. Different from a
large number of experimental studies about TUT(task unrelated thought) , we are interested
in the mindwandering experience in our real life. We use experience-sampling method to
collect the online experience and its psychological and physical backgroud. 120 participants
were signaled in random time point during 3 days and requested to fill in the questionare