Doyle’s Experience Recorder and Reproducer

“Information Philosopher” Bob Doyle proposes the “Experience Recorder and Reproducer (ERR)” as an information model for the mind. He says that the mind, like software, is immaterial information, a human being “is not a machine, the brain is not a computer, and the mind is not processing digital information.” His proposal is that “a minimal primitive mind would need only to ‘play back’ past experiences that resemble any part of current experience,” because “remembering past experiences has obvious relevance (survival value) for an organism.” However, beyond its survival value, “the ERR evokes the epistemological ‘meaning’ of information perceived in that it may be found in the past experiences that are reproduced by the ERR, when stimulated by a new perception that resembles past experiences in some way” (Section: Doyle, n.d.b).

The Experience Recorder and Reproducer (ERR)

Without prior similar experience, new perceptions will be "meaningless." A conscious being is constantly recording information about its perceptions of the external world and most importantly for ERR, it is simultaneously recording its feelings. Experiential data such as sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations are recorded in a sequence in association with emotional states, such as pleasure and pain, fear and comfort levels, etc. This means that when the experiences are reproduced (played back in a temporal sequence), the accompanying emotions are once again felt, in synchronization. The capability of reproducing experiences is critical to learning from past experiences, so as to make them guides for action in future experiences.

The ERR biological model has information stored in “neurons that have been wired together.” (Neuroscientist Donald Hebb said that "neurons that fire together wire together.”) The stored information does not get recalled or retrieved (as computers do) to create a representation that can be viewed. Doyle prefers to call the reproduction a “re-presentation” in that the ERR is simply presenting or “re-presenting" the original experience in all parts of the conscious mind connected by the neural assembly. Humans are conscious of our experiences because they are recorded in (and reproduced on demand from) the information structures in our brains. Mental information houses the content of an individual (Doyle, n.d.b).

ERR, Doyle says, also solves the "binding problem,” the unification of experience, because the sensory components are bound together when initially stored in the ERR (together with the accompanying emotion). They remain bound on playback. “They do not have to be assembled together by an algorithmic scheme.”

Consciousness, Doyle says, can be defined in information terms as a property of an entity (usually a living thing but can also include computers and artificial intelligence) that reacts appropriately to the information (and particularly to changes in the information) in its environment. In the context of information philosophy, Doyle posits that the Experience Recorder and Reproducer can provide us with “information consciousness.”

Information, Consciousness, and Duality

The treatment of information is said to link the physical and the phenomenal. Wherever there is a phenomenal state, it realizes an information state, which is also realized in the cognitive system of the brain. Conversely, for at least some physically realized information spaces, whenever an information state in that space is realized physically, it is also realized phenomenally. This leads Doyle to suppose that “this double life of information spaces corresponds to a duality at a deep level.” He even suggests that this “double realization” of information is the key to the fundamental connection between physical processes and conscious experience. If so, Doyle concludes, we might develop a truly fundamental theory of consciousness. And it may just be that information itself is fundamental (Doyle, n.d.b).