A situated and timing-based approach to consciousness in learning

What happens to us when we learn something new? How is consciousness of our agency linked with this process? This work investigates the notion of consciousness by focusing on the process of individual learning from two perspectives. On one side, the role played by intentionality and intersubjectivity in individual action. On the other one, the role played by motor conditioning. I distinguish between two different types of learning. The first, standard and voluntary learning, proceeds between intention, imitation (intersubjective) and consolidation of neural structures. The second, recursive, proceeds from consolidation of the motor side to promote some neural circuits, consolidating effective motor experiences among a wider range of ineffective experiences. The goal is to compare the level of consciousness associated with them, from a neural point of view and from a phenomenological point of view. I will also explore whether an interaction between neurophysiological and philosophical approaches could contribute to reinterpret some data, in order to have a broader notion of consciousness that could be associated with these learning processes. I will argue that an analysis of the timing processes involved in this kind of mental activity could help to shed a new light on these processes and could help to connect neural subjective activity to phenomenological experience, on one hand, and to intersubjective reality, on the other hand. Starting from an extended and dynamical approach (4E type) that underlines the relevance of the environment-system, the thesis proposes an explanatory paradigm focused on some aspects of the timing of signals that would characterize, in my opinion, some of the cognitive faculties most involved in learning, such as perception and memory. I therefore propose a redefinition of these faculties not locally focused on portions of space, but on their temporal architecture. I argue that this timing architecture offers a way to connect some outcomes of neurophysiological research with phenomenological aspects and helps to compare the awareness of agency in these two opposite kinds of learning processes. These studies also have significant ethical implications and practical applications. The intersubjective dimension and motor conditioning play an important role in learning and cognition, and also complicate the notion of personal identity, voluntary action and causation in agency.