seeks to explore classic debates in consciousness science, such as distinguishing between the most promising contemporary theories of consciousness, while also offering fresh perspectives and new insights into the progress of this field, including current reflections on its connection to artificial intelligence. One of the most debated issues in consciousness research concerns its neural...
This work explores the hypothesis that subjectively attributed meaning constitutes the phenomenal content of conscious experience. That is, phenomenal content is semantic. This form of subjective meaning manifests as an intrinsic and non-representational character of qualia. Empirically, subjective meaning is ubiquitous in conscious experiences. We point to phenomenological studies that lend...
In this perspective article, we show that a morphospace, based on information-theoretic measures, can be a useful construct for comparing biological agents with artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The axes of this space label three kinds of complexity: (i) autonomic, (ii) computational and (iii) social complexity. On this space, we map biological agents such as bacteria, bees, C. elegans,...
The quest for a scientific description of consciousness has given rise to new theoretical and empirical paradigms for the investigation of phenomenological contents as well as clinical disorders of consciousness. An outstanding challenge in the field is to develop measures that uniquely quantify global brain states tied to consciousness. In particular, information-theoretic complexity measures...
We construct a complexity-based morphospace to study systems-level properties of conscious & intelligent systems. The axes of this space label 3 complexity types: autonomous, cognitive & social. Given recent proposals to synthesize consciousness, a generic complexity-based conceptualization provides a useful framework for identifying defining features of conscious & synthetic systems. Based on...