Empirical studies and armchair philosophy of consciousness
Philosophy Journal May 1, 2024 Vadim V. Vasilyev
The paper examines Igor Mikhailov's proposals for improving empirical theories of consciousness, agreeing that such theories benefit from a computational level with real modeling potential and that their theses will be probabilistic. It disputes Mikhailov's interpretations of two contemporary works on criteria for successful empirical theories, specifically the compression criterion from Konstantin Anokhin and Anokhin's parameter "how". The paper argues that Mikhailov's falsifiability criterion requires clarification, transforming it into the concept of weak direct verifiability, because otherwise all theses could be considered falsifiable. Speculative theories of consciousness are defined as containing directly unverifiable propositions, but non-experimental theories need not be speculative; armchair theories can clarify consciousness's ontological status through conceptual analysis of folk ontology.