Topology Without Transduction: The Distinct Failures of Global Workspace Theory (of "Consciousness")

Global Workspace Theory (GWT) and its Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) variant explain conscious access but not consciousness itself, according to this critique. The paper argues that GWT specifies a transmission and applies the label 'conscious' to it while specifying neither what the transmission consists in nor what the label names. The theory imports the vocabulary of computing broadcast operations without their operational content. Four structural presuppositions are identified: recipients must have interpretive capacity that GWT was supposed to explain; a selector operates causally before consciousness; multiple realizability does not entail phenomenality; and the cognitive theater metaphor's audience is conscious in the source domain...

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Abstract

Global Workspace Theory (GWT) proposes that a mental state is conscious if and only if its content is broadcast in a global workspace. Baars (1988) developed the cognitive workspace account. Dehaene and colleagues (Dehaene & Naccache, 2001; Dehaene, 2014) developed the Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) variant, identifying the workspace with a fronto-parietal network and proposing ignition dynamics as the mechanism of conscious access. This paper argues that GWT specifies a transmission and applies the consciousness label to it, while specifying neither what the transmission consists in nor what the consciousness label is supposed to name. GWT explains access, and the access it explains is one third of what its own functional definition requires. Block's (1995) A-consciousness is availability for use in reasoning, reporting, and the rational control of action. GWT specifies the transmission and presupposes the three downstream systems that perform the use. The central claim contains five operative terms. Mental state and content are imported from folk psychology and semantic theory. Workspace and broadcasting are defined in terms of each other in a closed reference loop. Conscious is the label applied to instances satisfying the loop, with the property the label names left unspecified. To make GWT operate, defenders import additional structure. The borrowing from computing is selective in a way that diagnoses the borrowing, since computing has fully specified broadcast operations and GWT imported only the vocabulary, leaving the operational content behind. Four structural presuppositions follow from the broadcast model's logic. The recipients of the broadcast must have the interpretive capacity to use what they receive, and that capacity is what GWT was supposed to explain. The bottleneck requires a selector that operates causally before consciousness is produced and performs the work of conscious attention without itself being conscious. The functional definition entails multiple realizability, and a multiply realizable function does not entail phenomenality without a bridge premise GWT does not supply. The cognitive theater metaphor's audience element is itself conscious in the source domain, and GWT's denial of the homunculus removes the audience without replacing it. Specific failures follow. GWT cannot predict that different disruptions of the workspace produce qualitatively distinct altered states. GWT does not derive its necessity from a structural constraint. GWT does not specify the zero case for broadcast. The Cogitate Consortium's preregistered adversarial collaboration tested GNWT's central predictions and found them disconfirmed across modalities (Cogitate Consortium, 2025). The variants do not cover for each other. Baars's variant is unfalsifiable. Dehaene's variant has been falsified. Defenders move between them as alibis rather than as branches of a research program. Keywords: global workspace theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, theories of consciousness, access consciousness, phenomenal consciousness, explanatory gap, multiple realizability, functionalism, broadcasting, ignition, falsifiability, transduction, homunculus, Baars, Dehaene, Block, Cogitate Consortium