Cleeremans: The search for the computational correlates of consciousness

How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness? We can see the problem in stark form if we ask how we could tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: find the neural natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt their authority, and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: do we include the machinery underlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is ‘Yes’, then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is ‘Yes’? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! The paper argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. I argue that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified (other things being equal) by the explanations it allows.

Research on consciousness is currently enjoying a spectacular revival of interest in the cognitive sciences. From an empirical point of view, the NCC program --- the search for the "Neural Correlates of Consciousness" --- holds the promise of establishing correlations between physiological and phenomenal states in a way that directly resembles G. T. Fechners (1860) so-called "inner psychophysics". Should the NCC program be entirely successful, we would thus be able to predict phenomenal states based on physiological states. we would be able to predict phenomenal states based on physiological states. In this paper, we explore some of the conceptual and methodological difficulties of this approach. In both neurobiology and psychology, there are serious measurement problems that stand in the way of correlation research, even after the "hard problem" has been set aside. Thus, even if one had identified certain internal functional states as indicators of phenomenal states, the ...

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Abstract. In addressing the scientific study of consciousness, Crick and Koch state, “It is probable that at any moment some active neuronal processes in your head correlate with consciousness, while others do not: what is the difference between them? ” (1998, p. 97). Evidence from electrophysiological and brain-imaging studies of binocular rivalry supports the premise of this statement and answers to some extent, the question posed. I discuss these recent developments and outline the rationale and experimental evidence for the interhemispheric switch hypothesis of perceptual rivalry. According to this model, the perceptual alternations of rivalry reflect hemispheric alternations, suggesting that visual consciousness of rivalling stimuli may be unihemispheric at any one time (Miller et al., 2000). However, in this paper, I suggest that interhemispheric switching could involve alternating unihemispheric attentional selection of neuronal processes for access to visual consciousness. On this view, visual consciousness during rivalry could be bihemispheric because the processes constitutive of attentional selection may be distinct from those constitutive of visual consciousness. This is a special case of the important distinction between the neuronal correlates and constitution of visual consciousness. Key words: attentional selection, bipolar disorder, binocular rivalry, caloric vestibular stimulation,

The concept of contextual emergence has been proposed as a non-reductive, yet well-defined relation between different levels of description of physical and other systems. It is illustrated for the transition from statistical mechanics to thermodynamical properties such as temperature. Stability conditions are shown to be crucial for a rigorous implementation of contingent contexts that are required to understand temperature as an emergent property. Are such stability conditions meaningful for contextual emergence beyond physics as well? An affirmative example from cognitive neuroscience addresses the relation between neurobiological and mental levels of description. For a particular class of partitions of the underlying neurobiological phase space, so-called generating partitions, the emergent mental states are stable under the dynamics. In this case, mental descriptions are (i) faithful representations of the neurodynamics and (ii) compatible with one another. 1 2 1

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empiricism and the vehicles of thought

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The value of Noë and Thompson’s contribution consists in highlighting a series of important methodological and conceptual issues associated with current research in the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. Frequently, these are not seen by empirical scientists attempting to delineate the neural correlate for a given type of phenomenal experience. More importantly, they draw attention to a deeper theoretical problem that may soon become even more pressing: What precisely are the identity criteria we can employ in making reference to specific forms of conscious content, both introspectively, when generating the firstperson experience (or even judgment) of sameness, as well as conceptually, when making explanatory claims from the third-person perspective? However, the paper has a number of shortcomings too. Let us briefly look at them first. The first problem with Noë and Thompson’s strategy is that they persistently equivocate between the two basic notions of ‘intentional content ’ and ‘phenomenal content’. Thus they create a straw man (by misdescribing their opponent’s claim) and their own argument becomes incoherent (by committing a fallacy of equivocation). As a consequence they also misrepresent what actually constitutes their opponent’s epistemic goal. What is intentional content? It is the representational content, which, for instance, a certain neural system in our brain may possess. In accordance with a naturalized version of