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Traditional image enhancement algorithms do not account for the subjective evaluation of human operators. Every observer has a different opinion of an ideally enhanced image. Automated Techniques for obtaining a subjectively ideal image enhancement are desirable, but currently do not exist. In this paper, we demonstrate that Reinforcement Learning is a potential method for solving this problem. We have developed an agent that uses the Q-learning algorithm. The agent modifies the contrast of an image with a simple linear point transformation based on the histogram of the image and feedback it receives from human observers. The results of several testing sessions have indicated that the agent performs well within a limited number of iterations.

A neuropsychoanalytical approach to the hard problem of consciousness revolves around the distinction between the subject of consciousness and objects of consciousness. In contrast to the mainstream of cognitive science, neuropsychoanalysis prioritizes the subject. The subject of consciousness is the indispensable page upon which consciousness of objects is inscribed. This has implications for our conception of the mental. The subjective being of consciousness is not registered in the classical exteroceptive modalities; it is not merely a cognitive representation, not only a memory trace. Rather, the exteroceptive modalities are registered in the subjective being. Cognitive representations are mental solids embedded within subjectivity, the tangible and visible (etc) properties of which are projected onto reality. It is important to recognize that mental solids (e.g., the body-as-object) are no more real than the subjective being they are inscribed in (the body-as-subject). Moreover, pure subjectivity is not without content or quality. This aspect of consciousness is conventionally described quantitatively as the level of consciousness, or wakefulness. But it feels like something to be awake. The primary modality of this aspect of consciousness is affect. Affect supplies the subjectivity that underpins all consciousness. Some implications of this approach are discussed here, in broad brush strokes.

We aim at replacing the currently adopted exophysical perspective with the humbler, but more realistic, approach offered by endophysics that goes beyond the boundaries of the former. Our arguments are based on three well established circumstances. First, our unavoidable mutual interaction with nature allows us to bypass any unproved ad hoc assumptions like the Cartesian cut. Second, the historical evolution of human knowledge compels us to recognize a substantial similarity between the notions of “subjective” and “objective” as referred to a single individual, or to a group of individuals. This emphasizes the role of subjectivity in the formulation of theories for the representation of the world. Third, the lack of satisfying progress in the numberless attempts at the unification of physical theories, in spite of the fundamental changes produced by quantum mechanics in the interpretation of nature, seems to indicate that the exophysical approach has already reached its limits.

The subjective experience of time will be taken as a primary motivation for an alternative, essentially discontinuous conception of time. Two types of such experience will be discussed, one based on personal episodic memory, the other on the theoretical fine texture of experienced time below the threshold of phenomenal awareness. The former case implies a discrete structure of temporal episodes on a large scale, while the latter case suggests endowing psychological time with a granular structure on a small scale, i.e. interpreting it as a semi-ordered flow of smeared (not point-like) subliminal time grains. Only on an intermediate temporal scale would the subjectively felt continuity and fluency of time emerge. Consequently, there is no locally smooth mapping of phenomenal time onto the real number continuum. Such a model has certain advantages; for instance, it avoids counterintuitive interpretations of some neuropsychological experiments (e.g. Libet’s measurement) in which the temporal order of events is crucial.

These days, development of computer device leads to computer user explosion. On the other hand, conventional technology cannot handle user's diversity, because the computer cannot treat each user's subjectivity. It is important to materialize techniques which can answer user's subjective requests flexibly for the coming new media epoch. This research focuses on studying how subjective impressions are grounded in physical perceptions, especially in visual perception. In this paper, we propose a model for subjectivity and physical perceptions, and give an example in an image database system.

ART MUSEUM is our prototype system which can treat each user's subjective interpretation for advanced image database. It allows users to retrieve images from a database of impressionist paintings (e.g. Monet's works) by using adjective words. The system learns the correlation between the feature of sample paintings and user's descriptions, and provides interactive and progressive learning mechanisms. We show the interesting experimental results on ART MUSEUM (Multimedia Database with Sense of Color and Construction upon the Matter of ART) system.

When handling, multivariate impacts analysis, i.e. in acknowledging multiple incommensurable dimensions, any decision making process requires a step of value judgement declaration. Here is presented an extension of allocation systems based on Majeau-Bettez formalism in order to integrate multi-criteria allocation. The use of a hierarchy process on allocation keys enable to treat multi-functionality according to decision makers preferences. The global production balance is verified whatever incompleteness in values or attributes characterisations. This enable the allocation between valued co-products of distinct attributes. The process of elicitation and implementation of values in LCA will reect our cultural portrait. Our perspective is to develop this model to integrate all value judgements required in LCA. Thus we would provide a tool for a complete agent based LCA-modelling.

Quantum computing (QC) is imminent; can it add to the seasoned fields of electronic and computer music? After all, it seems unwarranted to requisition time on a massively parallel peta FLOP (10¹⁵, quadrillion calculations per second) supercomputer like the Chinese Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest, reaching 93.015 pFLOPS. There is however, something QCs will be able to do that will remain impossible on even a putative yottaFLOP (10²⁴) Turing machine if Cartesian interactive dualism is the correct solution to the problem of awareness/consciousness. A special, 2^nd generation class of conscious-QC modeled after the mind-body interface will be able to transduce physically real stored (extracellular) elements of mind (qualia): thought, mood, feelings, emotion directly into the awareness of the subject in a manner breaking down the so-called 1^st person - 3^rd person barrier. The theoretical model introduced, a paradigm shift in terms of current thinking in Cognitive Science (mind = brain) or cognitive musicology, is sufficiently mature to be experimentally testable suggesting that conscious-QC music may only be a couple of decades away.

Electromagnetic quantum field interactions provide a deeper understanding of the emergence of consciousness through an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics. Quasiparticle interactions in brain matter can produce “virtual” particles, hitherto mathematical conveniences, which reflect the manifold images of brain activities in terms of effects on charged particles that have physical quantum effect similar to the Aharonov-Bohm effect in quantum field theory. Electromagnetic potentials in the quantum domain pervade the entire brain through causative interactions. The exchange of energy quanta during quantum field interactions emerge as distinct patterns of quasiparticles and their entanglement produces waves of “virtual” particles with periodicities of discrete energies tethered through a common quantum potential as they interact and collectively represent the emergence of self-awareness as a quantum dynamic effect carried on the magnetic vector potential throughout the brain. This is caused by the magnetic dipole moments sensitivity to the phase shifts entrained by the zeitgeber acting on dipolar molecules in interfacial water. The emergence of consciousness is inseparable (spatiotemporally) in the sense that the endogenous electromagnetic field (and therefore the forces acting on the particles) vanish yet neurophenomenologically separate from the physical through the magnetic dipole moments sensitivity to the phase shifts of the coherent system. The subjective aspect of consciousness or phenomenal consciousness facilitates qualia as quantum information through information-physical interactions that metastabilize into rhythms unfolding through resonance into access consciousness as cognizable associable representations of subjective experiences. The transition from subjectivity occurs non-reductively from the microlevel to the macrolevel as a mechanism of spontaneous breaking of symmetry resulting from “photon” behavior of interfacial water instantiated by macroergic effects in the nuclei of neurons through a continuous supply of metabolic energy. The emergence of consciousness in living organisms disappears once autopoietic processes in populations of neurons cease to function.

Within the context of brain-based consciousness, the spin-mediated consciousness theory claims that quantum spin is a cog in the wheel of consciousness of consciousness and the linchpin between mind and the brain, that is, spin is the “mind-pixel,” and the unity of mind is achieved by quantum entanglement of these mind-pixels. Here, mind is understood as the cognitive faculty in the brain which enables subjectivity to arise from consciousness. The theory is based on the fact that quantum spin is the most basic quantum bit (‘qubit’) for encoding information and a fundamental quantum process associated with the structure of neural membranes and proteins that are saturated with quantum spin carrying nuclei and these nuclear spins have relatively long quantum coherence time. Furthermore, in both Bohm and Hestenes quantum formalisms, the origin of quantum effects is due to internal motion associated with quantum spin. In this chapter, we first ask three questions: (1) What is the mind-pixel? (2) How does mind achieve binding? (3) How mind-pixels are connected with the classical neural activities in the brain? We then offer possible solutions to each of these three key questions. We then proceed to illustrate the spinmediated consciousness theory insofar as the mechanism by which subjectivity is sourced from “qubits” through the internal motion associated with the quantum spin.