Head to head
Attention Schema Theory vs Spinoza’s One Reality
Attention Schema Theory and Spinoza’s One Reality: Embodied Mind and Graded Consciousness, compared field by field from their entries in the Atlas.
At a glance
- Attention Schema Theory belongs to the Materialism family in Kuhn's Landscape of Consciousness, Spinoza’s One Reality to Neutral Monism.
- Attention Schema Theory treats consciousness as emergent; Spinoza’s One Reality treats it as fundamental.
- On AI consciousness, Attention Schema Theory says “Likely” and Spinoza’s One Reality says “Conditional”.
- On meaning and purpose, Attention Schema Theory says “Humanistic only” and Spinoza’s One Reality says “Cosmic/Ultimate”.
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The claim
In brief
Attention Schema TheoryThis theory posits that consciousness arises when the brain constructs a quick, simplified, internal model—an attention schema—of its own process of attention. The brain mistakenly interprets and reports this internal representation as a subjective, non-physical essence or a 'self-caricature,' even though it is fundamentally a computational product.
Spinoza’s One RealityBaruch Spinoza holds that there is only one substance, God or Nature, known to us under two attributes, thought and extension. A human mind is the idea of an actually existing human body: one and the same thing as the body, conceived under thought. Because every body has a corresponding idea, mind runs through all of nature, and consciousness varies by degree with the complexity and power of the body.
What consciousness is
Attention Schema TheoryConsciousness is identified as the brain’s internal representation or simplified model of its own mechanism of attention (the attention schema), which is a specific example of higher-order thought.
Spinoza’s One RealityThe mind is the idea of the body, the same individual conceived under the attribute of thought rather than extension. Spinoza does not single out phenomenal consciousness as a category; his interpreters read consciousness as higher-order awareness, cognitive access, power or complexity of thinking, or affective awareness.
Big questions
Can AI be conscious?Differ
Attention Schema TheoryLikelySince consciousness is defined as a computational process (the creation of an attention schema), in principle, artificial systems that implement the necessary computational architecture could become conscious. Furthermore, observers will inevitably make the social attribution of consciousness to sufficiently complex AI systems that act like they are conscious.
Spinoza’s One RealityConditionalSince every body has a corresponding mind whose richness tracks the body's complexity and power, a sufficiently complex artificial body would have a correspondingly rich mind; whether that mind would be conscious in the human sense is contested.
Attention Schema TheoryNoAs a Materialist/Neurobiological theory, consciousness is tied to the physical substrate (the biological, information-processing machine), precluding survival beyond the decay of the body.
Spinoza’s One RealityNo position
Attention Schema TheoryPossibleIf the consciousness is realized as a computational structure (the attention schema), and if this structure and the relevant information processing systems can be accurately uploaded to a non-biological medium, virtual immortality is theoretically possible.
Spinoza’s One RealityNo position
Attention Schema TheoryHumanistic onlyConsciousness provides an adaptive, evolutionary purpose (monitoring and regulating attention for action control), but does not imply any ultimate or cosmic meaning, consistent with Materialism.
Spinoza’s One RealityCosmic/UltimateMinds are modes of God or Nature, and freedom lies in understanding the causal order of Nature through more adequate ideas.
Nature of mind
Ontology
Attention Schema TheoryPhysicalism
Spinoza’s One RealitySubstance monism (dual-attribute)
Mind and body
Attention Schema TheoryConsciousness is the report generated by a biological, information processing machine (the brain) through the assessment of its internal data, meaning mental states are computational and wholly physical.
Spinoza’s One RealityMind and body neither interact nor merely correlate; they are one thing under two descriptions. ‘The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things’ (Ethics 2p7), so thought is explained only through thought and extension only through extension.
Fundamental or emergent
Attention Schema TheoryEmergent
Spinoza’s One RealityPrimitive
Qualia
Attention Schema TheoryConsciousness is described as a 'self-caricature' or an illusory report of a non-physical essence, suggesting a deflationary or illusionist account of qualia, akin to Daniel Dennett’s view.
Spinoza’s One RealitySpinoza has no explicit theory of phenomenal character. Interpreters reconstruct it from his accounts of sensation, imagination and affect, where an affect is both a change in the body's power of acting and the idea of that change.
How it works
Mechanism
Attention Schema TheoryThe construction and maintenance of a simplified internal model (the attention schema) of the process of attention, rooted in principles from control engineering.
Spinoza’s One RealityPsychophysical identity under parallel attributes: whatever happens in the body as extension happens in the mind as an idea, so no causal bridge between them is needed.
Where it is
Attention Schema TheoryLocated within the biological, information-processing system of the brain.
Spinoza’s One RealityMentality is everywhere in nature, since all individuals are ‘animate’ in some degree (2p13s). Whether this means every physical thing has phenomenal experience is contested, and Spinoza does not treat God or Nature as one human-like conscious subject.
What it does
Attention Schema TheoryThe functional role of the attention schema is to monitor and regulate the brain's attention in order to control actions in the world. The resulting capacity allows the system to claim consciousness.
Spinoza’s One RealityMind never causes bodily motion and body never causes thought. Affects make ideas matter to behavior by increasing, decreasing or fixing the mind's striving, and freedom comes from forming more adequate ideas of the causes acting on us.
Evidence and criticism
Testability
Attention Schema TheoryEmpirically testable
Spinoza’s One RealitySpeculative
Tests so far
Attention Schema TheoryNot stated
Spinoza’s One RealityNot stated
Criticisms
Attention Schema TheoryThe theory explains how a system can *claim* consciousness but faces the general limitation, shared by similar functionalist models, of conclusively proving or explaining the actual subjective feel (the 'anybody home' problem) which remains eternally uncertain, even by the proponent's admission.
Spinoza’s One RealityThe identity formula says mind and body are one thing but not what makes the thought side felt. The ideas-of-ideas reading makes every idea conscious, which Bennett called absurdly excessive, and LeBuffe notes that a mind's overall power and the power of its ideas can diverge, giving odd verdicts on degrees.
Sources
Key sources
Attention Schema Theory
- True nature of consciousness: solving the biggest mystery of your mind, M. Graziano (2019)
- Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience, M. Graziano (2019)
- Can consciousness be non-biological?, M. Graziano (2014)
Spinoza’s One Reality
- Ethics, Baruch Spinoza (E. Curley, Ed. and Trans., The Collected Works of Spinoza) (1677)
- Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, E. Curley (1969)
- A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, J. Bennett (1984)