Assessing theories of consciousness is a challenge. Normative scientific methodology, including falsification and prediction, is notoriously difficult when addressing phenomenal consciousness. For example, it is often less than obvious that the claimed predictions of theories reflect the actual essences of those theories. I suggest two 'orthogonal' approaches that, while not dispositive in...
To gather (almost) all (reasonable) theories of phenomenal consciousness, describe them neutrally (largely in the words of their authors), and organize them in a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary taxonomy of categories-"Landscape of Consciousness." Perhaps the process can encourage novel ways of thinking among medical (psychiatry/neurology) practitioners and neuroscientists. Landscape organizes...
Diverse explanations or theories of consciousness are arrayed on a roughly physicalist-to-nonphysicalist landscape of essences and mechanisms. Categories: Materialism Theories (philosophical, neurobiological, electromagnetic field, computational and informational, homeostatic and affective, embodied and enactive, relational, representational, language, phylogenetic evolution); Non-Reductive...