Is the problem of artificial consciousness a fundamentally scientific problem, one that we should attempt to address by means of scientific discovery? Although a positive answer to this question is widely assumed, there has been surprisingly little explicit discussion of this question. That neglect is unfortunate, for the issue is central to how we approach the challenge of artificial...
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need for rigorous methods to assess AI systems for consciousness, but significant uncertainty about relevant issues in consciousness science. We present a method for assessing AI systems for consciousness that involves exploring what follows from...
A foundational issue for the science and philosophy of consciousness concerns the function(s) of consciousness—what consciousness does for any particular aspect of psychological or neural processing. In spite of progress in consciousness science, false assumptions and a lack of clarity regarding how best to approach the functions of consciousness represent an ongoing and serious roadblock to...
Abstract Seth argues that anthropocentrism, anthropomorphism, and human exceptionalism bias us towards an overly optimistic view of the prospects of conscious AI. I agree, but argue that these phenomena might also bias us towards an overly pessimistic view of the prospects for artificial consciousness. Furthermore, it is not always clear when these factors are functioning as “biases.”
Hemispherotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for treating refractory epilepsy, which entails disconnecting a significant portion of the cortex, potentially encompassing an entire hemisphere, from its cortical and subcortical connections. While this intervention prevents the spread of seizures, it raises important questions. Given the complete isolation from sensory-motor pathways, it remains...
As recently as the 1980s, it was not uncommon for paediatric surgeons to operate on infants without anaesthesia. Today, the same omission would be considered criminal malpractice, and there is an increased concern with the possibility of consciousness in the earliest stage of human infancy. This concern reflects a more general trend that has characterised science since the early 1990s of taking...
Which systems/organisms are conscious? New tests for consciousness ('C-tests') are urgently needed. There is persisting uncertainty about when consciousness arises in human development, when it is lost due to neurological disorders and brain injury, and how it is distributed in nonhuman species. This need is amplified by recent and rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), neural...
Highlights The study of infant (and fetal) consciousness is emerging as a distinctive research focus in the science of consciousness. Converging evidence from studies of functional network connectivity, attention, multimodal integration, and cortical responses to global oddballs suggests that consciousness is likely to be in place in early infancy and may even occur before birth. Recent...
When does the mind begin? Infant psychology is mysterious in part because we cannot remember our first months of life, nor can we directly communicate with infants. Even more speculative is the possibility of mental life prior to birth. The question of when consciousness, or subjective experience, begins in human development thus remains incompletely answered, though boundaries can be set using...
Recent years have seen a blossoming of theories about the biological and physical basis of consciousness. Good theories guide empirical research, allowing us to interpret data, develop new experimental techniques and expand our capacity to manipulate the phenomenon of interest. Indeed, it is only when couched in terms of a theory that empirical discoveries can ultimately deliver a satisfying...
The cognitive phenomenology debate concerns the nature of conscious thought. On one side of the debate are those who deny that thought has a sui generis phenomenal character. This view—which I refer to as ‘conservatism’—holds that to the extent that thoughts are phenomenally conscious, their phenomenal character is purely sensory. On the other side of the debate are those who hold that thought...
In a recent series of experiments, Pinto and colleagues found that the split-brain patient D.D.C. was able to respond accurately to stimuli in either visual field, whether using his right hand, his left hand, or verbally. Pinto and colleagues argue that this demonstrates that a split-brain patient remains a unitary agent and thus continues to possess a unified consciousness. This paper provides...
At present, the science of consciousness is structured around the search for the neural correlates of consciousness (the NCCs). One of the alleged advantages of the NCCs framework is its metaphysical neutrality—the fact that it begs no contested questions with respect to debates about the fundamental nature of consciousness. Here, we argue that even if the NCC framework is metaphysically...
Conscious thought has been neglected, but it has not been entirely overlooked. Discussion of the topic has focused on three sets of questions. The first set of questions focuses on the kinds of states (events, episodes) that qualify as forms of conscious thought. What might a taxonomy of conscious thought look like? A second set of questions concerns the kind(s) of consciousness that...
Ordinary human experience is embedded in a web of causal relations that link the brain to the body and the wider environment. However, there might be conditions in which brain activity supports consciousness even when that activity is fully causally isolated from the body and its environment. Such cases would involve what we call islands of awareness: conscious states that are neither shaped by...
It has often been suggested in the popular and academic literature that the psychedelic state qualifies as a higher state of consciousness relative to the state of normal waking awareness. This article subjects this proposal to critical scrutiny, focusing on the question of what it would mean for a state of consciousness to be 'higher'. We begin by considering the contrast between conscious...
The integrated information theory (IIT) is one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. It functions as a guiding framework for a great deal of research into the neural basis of consciousness and for attempts to develop a consciousness meter. In light of these developments, it is important to examine whether its foundations are secure. This article does just that by...
The notion of a level of consciousness is a key construct in the science of consciousness. Not only is the term employed to describe the global states of consciousness that are associated with post-comatose disorders, epileptic absence seizures, anaesthesia, and sleep, it plays an increasingly influential role in theoretical and methodological contexts. However, it is far from clear what...
In his paper 'Are we ever aware of concepts? A critical question for the Global Neuronal Workspace, Integrated Information, and Attended Intermediate-Level Representation theories of consciousness' (2015, this journal), Kemmerer defends a conservative account of consciousness, according to which concepts and thoughts do not characterize the contents of consciousness, and then uses that account...
This chapter develops a framework for addressing the neural correlates of consciousness. We begin by distinguishing the kinds of neural correlates that are of central interest to the science of consciousness (what we call ‘NCCs’) from the kinds of neural correlates that are more peripheral to consciousness science and which are typically regarded as confounds from the perspective of...
In recent decades there has been a great deal of interest in global disorders of consciousness, such as the vegetative state, the minimally conscious state, and epileptic absence seizures. Global disorders of consciousness pose significant challenges to consciousness science in that the ordinary pretheoretical criteria for the ascription of consciousness are not easily applied in such contexts,...
It is often said that the normal unity of consciousness fragments, and perhaps even breaks down entirely, in psychiatric disorders. This chapter examines ways in which the unity-or, better, unities-of consciousness might be lost in the context of psychiatric disorders, such as multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and depersonalization.
This paper examines three respects in which the study of epileptic absence seizures promises to inform our understanding of consciousness. Firstly, it has the potential to bear on debates concerning the behavioural and cognitive functions associated with consciousness. Secondly, it has the potential to illuminate the relationship between background states (or ‘levels’) of consciousness and the...
The chapter examines an account of phenomenal unity that appeals to the closure of phenomenal content under conjunction—‘closure,’ for short. The chapter begins by locating closure within the context of representational treatments of phenomenal consciousness. Four objections to closure are then examined. A first objection involves the claim that inconsistent states can be phenomenally unified....