CHANging Consciousness Epistemically (CHANCE): An empirical method to convert the subjective content of consciousness into scientific data

Abstract

The content of consciousness (cC) constitutes an essential part of human life and is at the very heart of the hard problem of consciousness. The cC of a person (e.g., study participant) has been examined indirectly by evaluating the person’s behavioral reports, bodily signs, or neural signals. However, the measures do not reflect the full spectrum of the person’s cC. In this paper, we define a method, called “CHANging Consciousness Epistemically” (CHANCE), to consciously experience a cC that would be identical to that experienced by another person, and thus directly know the entire spectrum of the other’s cC. In addition, the ontologically subjective knowledge about a person’s cC may be considered epistemically objective and scientific data. The CHANCE method comprises two empirical steps: (1) identifying the minimally sufficient, content-specific neural correlates of consciousness (mscNCC) and (2) reproducing a specific mscNCC in different brains.