Abstract Does the free energy principle support the view that consciousness is substrate-dependent? Based on previous work (Wiese, 2024), I argue that the free energy principle can be used to clarify conditions under which a system realises, rather than merely simulates, a causally relevant property (such as consciousness). This helps to address a weakness in Seth’s argument.
Consciousness research has long been dominated by competing grand theories, yet consensus remains elusive. We propose shifting focus toward construct-based, data-driven, and iterative approaches that identify the empirical building blocks of conscious experience and provide a more cumulative, integrative path forward for the field.
• Building-block approaches facilitate the assessment, integration, and unification of theories of consciousness. • Descriptive building-block approaches examine key constructs of existing theories. • Normative building-block approaches emphasise foundational constructs of a mature theory of consciousness. • Two foundational building blocks, given their roles in leading theories, are attention...
Does the assumption of a weak form of computational functionalism, according to which the right form of neural computation is sufficient for consciousness, entail that a digital computational simulation of such neural computations is conscious? Or must this computational simulation be implemented in the right way, in order to replicate consciousness? From the perspective of Karl Friston’s free...
Abstract Whilst the topic of representations is one of the key topics in philosophy of mind, it has only occasionally been noted that representations and representational features may be gradual. Apart from vague allusions, little has been said on what representational gradation amounts to and why it could be explanatorily useful. The aim of this paper is to provide a novel take on gradation of...
Abstract Some authors argue that phenomenal unity can be grounded in the attentional structure of consciousness, which endows conscious states with at least a foreground and a background. Accordingly, the phenomenal character of part of a conscious state comprises a content aspect (e.g., hearing music) and a structural aspect (e.g., being in the background). This view presents the concern that...
Methods used in artificial intelligence (AI) overlap with methods used in computational psychiatry (CP). Hence, considerations from AI ethics are also relevant to ethical discussions of CP. Ethical issues include, among others, fairness and data ownership and protection. Apart from this, morally relevant issues also include potential transformative effects of applications of AI—for instance,...
This essay addresses Cartesian duality and how its implicit dialectic might be repaired using physics and information theory. Our agenda is to describe a key distinction in the physical sciences that may provide a foundation for the distinction between mind and matter, and between sentient and intentional systems. From this perspective, it becomes tenable to talk about the physics of sentience...
Abstract This article discusses a hypothesis recently put forward by Kanai et al., according to which information generation constitutes a functional basis of, and a sufficient condition for, consciousness. Information generation involves the ability to compress and subsequently decompress information, potentially after a temporal delay and adapted to current purposes. I will argue that...
Predictive processing (PP) is not a theory of consciousness. Hence, it is not obvious that PP should have any relevance to research on consciousness. A first promising possibility opens up if we consider the ambitious assumption that PP is a general theory of brain function. If the brain’s function is to minimize prediction error (just as the heart’s function is to pump blood), as Jakob Hohwy...
An interdisciplinary account of phenomenal unity, investigating how experiential wholes can be characterized and how such characterizations can be analyzed computationally. How can we account for phenomenal unity? That is, how can we characterize and explain our experience of objects and groups of objects, bodily experiences, successions of events, and the attentional structure of consciousness...
In Being No One, Metzinger (2004[2003]) introduces an approach to the scientific study of consciousness that draws on theories and results from different disciplines, targeted at multiple levels of analysis. Descriptions and assumptions formulated at, for instance, the phenomenological, representationalist, and neurobiological levels of analysis provide different perspectives on the same...
How can the free energy principle contribute to research on neural correlates of consciousness, and to the scientific study of consciousness more generally? Under the free energy principle, neural correlates should be defined in terms of neural *dynamics*, not neural states, and should be complemented by research on *computational* correlates of consciousness -- defined in terms of...