Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link]

My reply to Cerullo:

"If we exactly duplicate and then emulate a brain, then it has captured what science tells us matter for conscious[ness] since it still has the same information system which also has a global workspace and performs executive functions. "

It'll have what science tells us matters for the global workspace aspect of consciousness (AKA access consciousness, roughly). Science doesn't tell us what is needed for phenomenal consciousness (AKA qualia) , because it doesn't know. Consciousness has different facets. You are kind of assuming that where you have one facet, you must have the others...which would be convenient, but isn't something that is really known.

"The key step here is that we know from our own experience that a system that displays the functions of consciousness (the easy problem) also has inner qualia (the hard problem)."

Our own experience pretty much has a sample size of one, and therefore is not a good basis for a general law. The hard question here is something like: "would my qualia remain exactly the same if my identical information-processing were re-implemented in a different physical substrate such as silicon?". We don't have any direct experience of that would answer it. Chalmer's' Absent Qualia paper is an argument to the effect, but I wouldn't call it knowledge. Like most philosophical arguments, its an appeal to intuition., and the weakness of intuition is that it is kind of tied to normal circumstances. I wouldn't expect my qualia to change or go missing while my brain was functioning within normal parameters...but that is the kind of law that sets a norm within normal circumstances, not the kind that is universal and exceptionless. Brain emulation isn't normal, it is unprecedented and artificial.

Thanks for the post, I really liked the article overall. Nice general summary of the ideas. I agree with torekp. I also think that the term consciousness is too broad. Wanting to have a theory of consciousness is like wanting to have a "theory of disease". The overall term is too general and "consciousness" can mean many different things. This dilutes the conversation. We need to sharpen our semantic markers and not to rely on intuitive or prescientific ideas.Terms that do not "carve nature well at its joints" will lead our inquiry astray from the beginning.

When talking about consciousness one can mean for example:

-vigilance/wakefulness

-attention: focusing mental resources on specific information

-primary consciousness: having any form of subjective experience

-conscious access: how the attended information reaches awareness and becomes reportable to others

-phenomenal awareness/qualia

-sense of self/I

Neuroscience is needed to determine if our concepts are accurate (enough) in the first place. It can be that the "easy problem" is hard and the "hard problem" seems hard only because it engages ill posed intuitions.

The author is overly concerned about whether a creature will be conscious at all and not enough concerned about whether it will have the kind of experiences that we care about.

Your link is broken at the moment.