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Bernard Baars
Also known as: Bernard J. Baars
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Global workspace theory - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 10 facts
quoteBernard Baars stated: "is closely associated with conscious experience, though not identical to it."
claimBernard Baars derived inspiration for global workspace theory from the blackboard system of early artificial intelligence system architectures, where independent programs shared information.
quoteA review of Bernard Baars' 1997 book 'In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind' described the theory as follows: "Thus peripheral and central sensory stimuli, imagination, and intuition compete for the center of attention, from where they address the unconscious processes of memory, interpretation, automatic routines, and motivation which, in turn, affect the control and context operators running the show from behind the scenes."
claimGlobal workspace theory is a cognitive architecture and theoretical framework for understanding consciousness that was first introduced by cognitive scientist Bernard Baars in 1988.
claimBernard Baars distinguishes Global Workspace Theory from the Cartesian theater concept, stating that there is no 'little self' sitting in the theater of the mind.
referenceBernard J. Baars authored the chapter 'The Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness: Predictions and Results' in the book 'The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness' (2nd ed.), published by Wiley-Blackwell in 2017.
quoteBernard Baars stated: "You don't have a little self sitting in the theatre".
claimBernard Baars asserts that working memory is closely associated with conscious experience, though not identical to it.
quoteIn a discussion with Susan Blackmore in her book 'Conversations on Consciousness', Bernard Baars stated: "From my point of view, the metaphor that is useful for understanding consciousness is the theatre metaphor, which also happens to be quite ancient, going back at least to Plato in the West, and to the Vedanta scriptures in the East. The theatre metaphor, in a simple way, says that what's conscious is like the bright spot cast by a spotlight on to the stage of a theatre. What's unconscious is everything else: all the people sitting in the audience are unconscious components of the brain which get information from consciousness; and there are people sitting behind the scenes, the director and the playwright and so on, who are shaping the contents of consciousness, telling the actor in the light spot what to say."
quoteBernard Baars wrote in his 1997 article "In the Theatre of Consciousness" in the Journal of Consciousness Studies: "[A] stage, an attentional spotlight shining on the stage, actors to represent the contents of conscious experience, an audience, and a few invisible people behind the scenes, who exercise great influence on whatever becomes visible on stage. The stage receives sensory and abstract information, but only events in the spotlight shining on the stage are completely conscious."
Moving Forward on the Problem of Consciousness - David Chalmers consc.net 6 facts
perspectiveBernard Baars argues that a functional theory of consciousness can provide significant insight into subjective experience, though he does not claim it solves the hard problem of consciousness.
claimDavid Chalmers claims that even if 'easy' and 'hard' phenomena are aspects of the same thing, as Bernard Baars suggests, a further principle is required to explain the connection between them.
claimBernard Baars has suggested in conversation that the fact that global workspace contents are consciously experienced should be regarded as a brute fact.
claimDavid Chalmers considers the research projects of Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Bernard Baars, and Bruce MacLennan to be compatible with his own research program regarding the hard problem of consciousness.
accountThe symposium on David Chalmers' paper 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness' included 26 commentaries from various scholars, including Bernard Baars, Douglas Bilodeau, Patricia Churchland, Tom Clark, C.J.S. Clarke, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Daniel Dennett, Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, Valerie Hardcastle, David Hodgson, Piet Hut, Roger Shepard, Benjamin Libet, E.J. Lowe, Bruce MacLennan, Colin McGinn, Eugene Mills, Kieron O'Hara, Tom Scutt, Mark Price, William Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, William Seager, Jonathan Shear, Henry Stapp, Francisco Varela, Max Velmans, and Richard Warner.
claimBernard Baars believes the hard problem of consciousness is currently unsolvable because it relies on an implausible criterion for success.
Global workspace theory: consciousness as brain wide information ... selfawarepatterns.com Dec 29, 2019 6 facts
claimBernard Baars defines the global workspace as the entire cortical-thalamic core of the brain.
claimBoth Bernard Baars and Stanislas Dehaene agree that subcortical regions generally cannot contribute directly to the global workspace, though Bernard Baars considers the hippocampus a possible exception.
claimBernard Baars believes that any animal possessing a cortex or a pallium, which includes all vertebrates, likely possesses a global workspace and is therefore conscious.
claimStanislas Dehaene and Bernard Baars have authored books containing a wealth of empirical data regarding Global Workspace Theory.
claimBernard Baars first proposed global workspace theory in 1988.
claimBernard Baars posits that processing in any region of the cortical-thalamic core can be conscious or unconscious, and any region can potentially win the competition to have its contents enter the global workspace.
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 4 facts
claimBernard Baars explains Global workspace theory using a theatre metaphor where conscious processes are an illuminated stage that integrates inputs from unconscious networks and broadcasts them to an unlit audience of unconscious networks.
claimPhilosophers Daniel Dennett, Massimo Pigliucci, Thomas Metzinger, Patricia Churchland, and Keith Frankish, along with cognitive neuroscientists Stanislas Dehaene, Bernard Baars, Anil Seth, and Antonio Damasio, reject the existence of the hard problem of consciousness.
referenceGerald Edelman, Joseph Gally, and Bernard Baars authored 'Biology of Consciousness', published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2011.
claimGlobal workspace theory (GWT) is a cognitive architecture and theory of consciousness proposed by cognitive psychologist Bernard Baars in 1988.
#17 — ”Global Workspace Theory… - Consciousness and the Brain podcasts.apple.com Nov 22, 2021 4 facts
claimBernard Baars is a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, and the Editor in Chief of the Society for MindBrain Sciences.
perspectiveBernard Baars and Alea Skwara suggest that combining brain recordings with phenomenological interviews during meditation is a promising approach for future research into consciousness.
claimBernard Baars received the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award from the International Neural Network Society for work in perception that is considered paradigm-changing and long-lasting.
claimBernard Baars is the originator of Global Workspace Theory and Global Workspace Dynamics, which are theories regarding human cognitive architecture, the cortex, and consciousness.
Consciousness and AI - Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science oecs.mit.edu Feb 5, 2026 2 facts
claimGlobal workspace theory, as described by Bernard Baars (1993) and Mashour et al. (2020), claims that consciousness depends on the presence of a shared, limited-capacity 'workspace' that links multiple specialized subsystems.
claimBernard Baars (1993), Stanislas Dehaene et al. (2017), and Hakwan Lau (2022) suggest that it is possible to implement functional features of the brain, such as information gating mechanisms, in conventional computational systems.
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 2 facts
referenceBernard Baars (1988) proposed that the 'easy problems' of consciousness, such as the dynamics of access consciousness, can be explained through the functional or computational organization of the brain.
claimScientific and philosophical research into the nature and basis of consciousness experienced a major resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, involving researchers such as Bernard Baars (1988), Daniel Dennett (1991), Roger Penrose (1989, 1994), Francis Crick (1994), William Lycan (1987, 1996), and David Chalmers (1996).
GWT: A Leading Consciousness Theory Depends on Information ... mindmatters.ai Oct 15, 2021 2 facts
referenceIn 1988, psychologist Bernard Baars proposed the concept of a 'global workspace,' where information is integrated in a small group of brain regions before being broadcast to the whole brain.
quote“... given the distributed nature of the brain hierarchy, there is unlikely to be just a single ‘conductor’. Instead, in 1988 the psychologist Bernard Baars proposed the concept of a ‘global workspace’, where information is integrated in a small group of brain regions (or ‘conductors’) before being broadcast to the whole brain…”
In defense of scientifically and philosophically (not politically ... blog.apaonline.org Nov 14, 2023 2 facts
claimBernard Baars originated the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) hypothesis, a neurobiological theory of consciousness, in the late 1980s.
referenceBernard Baars stated in the introduction of 'Essential Sources in the Scientific Study of Consciousness' that the scientific study of consciousness was taboo during much of the 20th century.
What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved quantamagazine.org Aug 24, 2023 2 facts
claimBernard Baars, a psychologist at the Society for Mind Brain Sciences, proposed the conceptual foundation for Global Neuronal Workspace Theory in 1988, drawing an analogy to the 'blackboard' architecture used in early artificial intelligence systems.
claimStanislas Dehaene developed Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) by applying Bernard Baars' conceptual template to neuroscience findings and using computational models.
The evolution of human-type consciousness – a by-product of ... frontiersin.org 1 fact
claimGlobal Workspace Theory (GWT), originally proposed by Bernard Baars in 1988 and expanded by Stanislas Dehaene in 2014, suggests that consciousness arises when information is widely broadcast across the brain, allowing different areas to integrate and share information for decision-making, memory, and action.
Evolutionary psychology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 1 fact
claimRecursive circuitry in consciousness may have provided a basis for the subsequent development of many functions that consciousness facilitates in higher organisms, as outlined by Bernard J. Baars.
Consciousness and Cognitive Sciences journal-psychoanalysis.eu 1 fact
claimMark Johnson (1987) proposed an approach to cognitive semantics, John Searle (1994) proposed ideas on ontological irreducibility, Gordon Globus (1995) proposed a post-modern brain model, Owen Flanagan (1992) proposed reflective equilibrium, and Bernard Baars proposed the theatre of consciousness model.
Fame in the Brain—Global Workspace Theories of Consciousness psychologytoday.com Oct 28, 2023 1 fact
claimCognitive scientists Bernard Baars and Stan Franklin developed the original Global Workspace Theory in the late 1980s.
23 — Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and Prefrontal Cortex youtube.com Nov 1, 2022 1 fact
claimBernard Baars is a participant in a podcast discussing consciousness and the science of subjectivity and the brain.