Scientific Papers

Foreword to the Group of Papers Concerning the BAL-Looping Framework

Readers have asked, what's it all about? So this foreward gives it in a nutshell.

Reportable Awareness vs. Foundational Competence: A Functional BAL/Looping Account of Split-Brain Phenomena (PhilPapers Edition↗︎)

The phenomena associated with a severed corpus callosum have presented enduring puzzles to researchers. In light of the framework, however, they seem straightforward – predictable even, as revealed here.

A Functional Basis for Concept mastery (PhilPapers Edition↗︎)

"Concept mastery" has been extensively debated in philosophy. Applying the framework to this question serves as a sort of proof of concept, by demonstrating its application to a philosophical problem involving the mind and cognition.

Glossary for the BAL-Looping Framework of Consciousness (PhilPapers Edition↗︎)

The glossary defines key terms, giving them in a logical order that presents the framework from the ground up. It can serve as an introduction to the framework, or as an aid while reading the Seven Dialogues, helping to review key concepts.

A Fourth Dialogue Between Hylas and Philonous (PhilPapers Edition↗︎)

By applying the framework to Berkeley’s fundamental problem of perception, this paper helps readers grasp the operation of the BAL-looping architecture more clearly, while also offering the two interlocutors a bridge between their opposing views.

Abstract for the Dialogues (PhilPapers Edition↗︎)

Here you can read the formal scientific abstract prepared for the Seven Dialogues as published on PhilPapers, with a synopsis of the framework and a succint description each of the Seven Dialogs.

(A direct link to the PhilPapers entry page to the downloadable, searchable PDF of all Seven Dialogs is also included!)

AI Safety Page

The framework can be applied to other fields as well, for example, the design of functional architecture in AI systems. The AI safety page discusses how the human cognitive architecture could be modeled in an artifical cybernetic system

Paraphrasing Russell:

“The BAL-looping framework is functional not because we know so much about the brain and subjective experience, but because we know so little: it is only their functional relations that we can meaningfully describe.”

Quoting Sir Author Conan Doyle:

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

― The Sign of Four

A necessary reflection on the word consciousness:

Consider the sentence, “The rock hit the wall.” We know what the rock is, and we know what the wall is, but what is the hitting? It has no existence apart from the rock and the wall, yet it remains a distinct and meaningful idea. Consciousness, in the BAL-looping framework, is like the hitting – a noun formed from an action. It has meaning, but not apart from the BAL and subjective experience.

In the BAL-looping framework, then, consciousness is not a primary element. The BAL is primary, the content of subjective experience is primary, and the action of attendance – “being conscious of” – is primary. The noun consciousness is a notion formed from the verbal expression "being conscious of," and has no meaning apart from the BAL and the content of subjective experience.

― John Mark Norman

Quote for the day:

"Ordinary subjective experience consists in the BAL’s catching sight of what is presented within looping. The so-called hard problem arises when the BAL catches sight, not of the content within looping, but of the looping process itself, and then wonders what that process is."

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