Overcoming essentialism: evaluation of theories of consciousness by the lawful regularities they predict

Abstract

A common objection to consciousness research is that researchers cannot agree on what consciousness is. But how should a consensus on the nature of consciousness be reached? Does consciousness have essential features that one can be right or wrong about? Should we select theories of consciousness based on their descriptions of the essential features of experience alone? In this article, we will argue with the help of (Popper, 1945) that determining unquestionable essential features of consciousness is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, any account of what consciousness is, should be understood as a subjective selection of features and should not count as an insight. According to Popper, insights in science are achieved when novel regularities between observations are discovered that generalize to scientific laws. Furthermore, all results of research can be stated independently of the definitions that were used in their making. Therefore, no consensus on the nature of consciousness or on a theory of consciousness is needed for consciousness research to progress – in fact, a multitude of definitions and theories may be beneficial. Based on this, we argue that theories of consciousness be evaluated by their ability to propose concrete, testable laws rather than by their description of what consciousness is.