Empirical studies and armchair philosophy of consciousness

The paper examines Igor Mikhailov's proposals for improving empirical theories of consciousness, agreeing that such theories benefit from a computational level with real modeling potential and that their theses will be probabilistic. It disputes Mikhailov's interpretations of two contemporary works on criteria for successful empirical theories, specifically the compression criterion from Konstantin Anokhin and Anokhin's parameter "how". The paper argues that Mikhailov's falsifiability criterion requires clarification, transforming it into the concept of weak direct verifiability, because otherwise all theses could be considered falsifiable. Speculative theories of consciousness are defined as containing directly unverifiable propositions, but non-experimental theories need not be speculative; armchair theories can clarify consciousness's ontological status through conceptual analysis of folk ontology.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this paper I examine the ideas expressed by Igor Mikhailov in his paper “Subjects and Methods of Empirical Theories of Consciousness” and discuss some problems as­sociated with the possibility of non – empirical or non – experimental study of con­sciousness. While generally agreeing with the conclusions of Mikhailov’s paper regard­ing his proposals for improving matters in empirical theories of consciousness, namely, that such theories can benefit from the presence in them of a computational level with real modeling potential, with the fact that theses of such theories will have a probabilis­tic nature, and so on, I dispute some aspects of his interpretations of two contemporary works on criteria of successful empirical theories, in particular his interpretation of the compression criterion, articulated in a recent paper by Konstantin Anokhin, and his interpretation of the Anokhin’s parameter “how”. In the article I also show that one of the key criteria of empirical theories put forward by Igor Mikhailov, namely the cri­terion of falsifiability, requires careful attention and needs to be clarified, that leads to its transformation into the concept of weak direct verifiability, because otherwise it may turn out that all theses are falsifiable. I claim that speculative theories of con­sciousness can be defined as theories that contain directly unverifiable propositions. At the same time, I argue that non – experimental theories of consciousness do not have to be speculative. The creators of armchair theories of the right kind can clarify the ontological status of consciousness by conceptual analysis of the fundamental atti­tudes of human “folk ontology”.