This article suggests that the influence of philosophy of mind and metaphysics in the study of consciousness, has become excessive and is not well-founded. Metaphysical terms are often ill-defined and equivocal, and philosophy of mind relies largely on weak, concrete arguments which lack the power of more abstract mathematical formulations. An example is given of a mathematical argument, the...
The 'no-supervenience' theorem (Reason, 2019; Reason and Shah, 2021) is a proof that no fully self-aware system can entirely supervene on any objectively observable system. I here present a simple, non-technical summary of the proof and demonstrate its implications for four separate theories of consciousness: the 'property dualism' theory of David Chalmers; the 'reflexive monism' of Max...
This is a brief comment on the paper "Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness" by Shan Yu and Danko Nikolic [1]. Yu and Nikolic argue that the "consciousness causes collapse hypothesis" interpretation of quantum mechanics, or CCCH, can be falsified by a particular experimental setup. This claim is incorrect and the cause of the error appears to be a confusion over where and when a collapse can...
This article presents an operationalized solution to the mind-body problem which relies on rigorously defined theoretical reasoning rather than philosophical argument. We identify a specific operation which is a necessary property of all healthy human conscious individuals -- specifically the operation of self-certainty, or the capacity of healthy conscious humans to "know" with certainty that...