Tsuchiya Naotsugu, Saigo Hayato
School of Psychological Sciences and Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia.
Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology, 1266 Tamura-cho, Nagahama, Shiga 526-0829, Japan.
Neurosci Conscious. 2021 Oct 15;2021(2):niab034. doi: 10.1093/nc/niab034. eCollection 2021.
Characterizing consciousness in and of itself is notoriously difficult. Here, we propose an alternative approach to characterize, and eventually define, consciousness through exhaustive descriptions of consciousness' relationships to all other consciousness. This approach is founded in category theory. Indeed, category theory can prove that two objects A and B in a category can be equivalent if and only if all the relationships that A holds with others in the category are the same as those of B; this proof is called the Yoneda lemma. To introduce the Yoneda lemma, we gradually introduce key concepts of category theory to consciousness researchers. Along the way, we propose several possible definitions of categories of consciousness, both in terms of level and contents, through the usage of simple examples. We propose to use the categorical structure of consciousness as a gold standard to formalize empirical research (e.g. color qualia structure at fovea and periphery) and, especially, the empirical testing of theories of consciousness.
对意识本身进行特征描述是出了名的困难。在此，我们提出一种替代方法，通过详尽描述意识与所有其他意识的关系来对意识进行特征描述，并最终对其进行定义。这种方法基于范畴论。事实上，范畴论可以证明，一个范畴中的两个对象A和B当且仅当A与该范畴中其他对象所保持的所有关系与B的相同时才是等价的；这个证明被称为米田引理。为了引入米田引理，我们逐步向意识研究者介绍范畴论的关键概念。在此过程中，我们通过使用简单示例，从层次和内容方面提出了几种意识范畴的可能定义。我们建议将意识的范畴结构用作一种黄金标准，以便将实证研究（例如中央凹和周边的颜色质结构），特别是意识理论的实证检验形式化。
