The Tides of Mind: Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness

"Gelernter is an expert in artificial intelligence and robotics. What he shows in The Tides of Mind is how fluctuating consciousness is. Consciousness is constantly ebbing and flowing during the day. He shows how we can be very alert and focused on one side of the mental spectrum when we’re concentrating, say in the discussion we’re having now, or in solving a problem. But we also have, on the other side of the spectrum, other states of mind where memory comes up, emotions come up, where we are not focused at all on what is happening in the world, but we’re focused on our inner feelings, our inner world. This comes back to my time perception research, where I argue time consciousness is related to emotional consciousness, which is related to your bodily self. “The high-alert state of mind, of problem-solving, is just one tiny aspect of consciousness” In a very poetic way, and that’s why I like the book, it is a meditation about different states of mind. It goes from dreaming to awakening, to mind-wandering, daydreaming, playing sport and being totally alert and concentrated. He shows also, with examples from literature such as Aristotle’s Poetics , how the mind changes over the day. He criticises researchers, psychologists, neuroscientists and scientists in artificial intelligence who always concentrate just on this one high-alert state of mind of problem-solving. That is just one tiny aspect of consciousness, and 95% of our daily consciousness is totally different in these fluctuations. Yes, he says that artificial intelligence could have something like this modulation of mind because then it would be able to solve totally different problems. Problems of creativity are often solved when you are daydreaming and wandering off, not even realising where you are, and suddenly you have a perfect idea. Big problems, even in science, have been solved in this non-focused way of daydreaming, or having emotional analogies, and then suddenly coming up with a solution. This is a part of decision making. Gelernter gives examples of the best scientists and Nobel Prize-winners who suddenly had a breakthrough idea. This, he says, would also have to be implemented in an artificial intelligence system, if we really wanted to solve the consciousness problem for artificial agents. Yes, and feel emotions."