Infants

Non-human animals

Conscious unintelligent systems

Unconscious intelligent systems

The inadequacy of reductionist ontologies

The incoherence of ontological reductionism

Please see Findlay et al. (2024):

"Developments in machine learning and computing power suggest that artificial general intelligence is within reach. This raises the question of artificial consciousness: if a computer were to be functionally equivalent to a human, having the same cognitive abilities, would it experience sights, sounds, and thoughts, as we do when we are conscious? Answering this question in a principled manner can only be done on the basis of a theory of consciousness that is grounded in phenomenology and that states the necessary and sufficient conditions for any system, evolved or engineered, to support subjective experience. Here we employ Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which provides principled tools to determine whether a system is conscious, to what degree, and the content of its experience. We consider pairs of systems constituted of simple Boolean units, one of which---a basic stored-program computer---simulates the other with full functional equivalence. By applying the principles of IIT, we demonstrate that (i) two systems can be functionally equivalent without being phenomenally equivalent, and (ii) that this conclusion is not dependent on the simulated system's function. We further demonstrate that, according to IIT, it is possible for a digital computer to simulate our behavior, possibly even by simulating the neurons in our brain, without replicating our experience. This contrasts sharply with computational functionalism, the thesis that performing computations of the right kind is necessary and sufficient for consciousness."

Functional equivalence without phenomenal equivalence: computers

Pure presence: being without doing

The double dissociation between consciousness and intelligence

Functions, like everything else, only exist in the mind

The inadequacy of functionalist ontologies

‘The meaning is the feeling’

Loss and lack of meaning

Goals, intentions, and action concepts

Abstract concepts and symbols

Inventing meanings 

Imbuing the world with meaning

Please see Mayner, Juel, and Tononi (Forthcoming): 

"Here, we extend the integrated information theory of consciousness to assess how intrinsic meanings are triggered by extrinsic stimuli. Using simple simulated systems, we show that perception is a structured interpretation, triggered by a stimulus but provided by a system’s intrinsic connectivity. We then show that the “matching” between a system and an environment can be measured by assessing the diversity of intrinsic meanings triggered by typical sequences of stimuli. This approach offers a way of understanding how the meaning of an experience, which is necessarily intrinsic to the subject, can refer to extrinsic entities or processes."

For the time being, please see the actual causation page.