Remembering as a research tool for selfless consciousness studies

Abstract

Abstract Consciousness studies have relied on the subject’s remembering capacity as the primary tool for identifying and measuring selfless states, i.e., conscious states without self-consciousness. This paper critically examines whether memory can serve such a role. After outlining the requirements that remembering must meet when deployed in studies of selfless consciousness, I evaluate its competence accordingly. On this basis, I argue for three epistemic challenges to the use of remembering in the study of selfless states: one corresponds to the well-discussed memory challenge of selfless report in the literature, while the other two—the zero-inflation challenge and the measurement challenge—are newly introduced. Specifically, the memory challenge concerns avoiding false negatives—selfless states misclassified as self-conscious. The zero-inflation challenge concerns avoiding false positives—self-conscious states misclassified as selfless. And the measurement challenge concerns reliably capturing the non-self-related aspects of experience within selfless states.