Related papers: No Substitute for Functionalism -- A Reply to 'Fal…
The search for a scientific theory of consciousness should result in theories that are falsifiable. However, here we show that falsification is especially problematic for theories of consciousness. We formally describe the standard…
Scientific theories of consciousness should be falsifiable and non-trivial. Recent research has given us formal tools to analyze these requirements of falsifiability and non-triviality for theories of consciousness. Surprisingly, many…
In this paper we argue that no forms of Turing test are either necessary or sufficient to establish if a machine is conscious or not. Furthermore, from a modeling point of view, the problem is that the Turing test does not really provide…
The scientific study of consciousness is currently undergoing a critical transition in the form of a rapidly evolving scientific debate regarding whether or not currently proposed theories can be assessed for their scientific validity. At…
Computational functionalism about consciousness is often criticized for relying on observer-relative interpretations of physical systems. This paper proposes a mathematical refinement of functionalism that avoids this problem. The central…
This paper is a shortened version of the full paper that was published in the journal Frontiers of Psychology in May 2022. In recent decades, the scientific study of consciousness has significantly increased our understanding of this…
A fundamental question is whether Turing machines can model all reasoning processes. We introduce an existence principle stating that the perception of the physical existence of any Turing program can serve as a physical causation for the…
The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness…
This paper critically assesses the anti-functionalist stance on consciousness adopted by certain advocates of integrated information theory (IIT), a corollary of which is that human-level artificial intelligence implemented on conventional…
In the field theories in physics, any particular region of the presumed space-time continuum and all interactions between elementary objects therein can be objectively measured and/or accounted for mathematically. Since this does not apply…
The search for reliable indicators of consciousness has fragmented into competing theoretical camps (Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Integrated Information Theory (IIT), and Higher-Order Theories (HOT)), each proposing distinct neural…
This paper explores the hypothesis that the OpenAI-o1 model--a transformer-based AI trained with reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)--displays characteristics of consciousness during its training and inference phases. Adopting…
The mysterious phenomenon of consciousness, after having been the subject of philosophic attention for few millennia, has drawn much scientific curiosity in recent decades; and many brilliant minds of various areas of sciences are trying to…
This paper introduces function alignment, a novel theory of mind and intelligence that is both intuitively compelling and structurally grounded. It explicitly models how meaning, interpretation, and analogy emerge from interactions among…
Knockoffs are a popular statistical framework that addresses the challenging problem of conditional variable selection in high-dimensional settings with statistical control. Such statistical control is essential for the reliability of…
The no-supervenience theorem limits the capacity of physicalist theories to provide a comprehensive account of human consciousness. The proof of the theorem is difficult to formalize because it relies on both alethic and epistemic notions…
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, being able…
To make accurate inferences in an interactive setting, an agent must not confuse passive observation of events with having intervened to cause them. The $do$ operator formalises interventions so that we may reason about their effect. Yet…
Experimental and observational studies often lack validity due to untestable assumptions. We propose a double machine learning approach to combine experimental and observational studies, allowing practitioners to test for assumption…
We employ the Zermelo-Fraenkel Axioms that characterize sets as mathematical primitives. The Anti-foundation Axiom plays a significant role in our development, since among other of its features, its replacement for the Axiom of Foundation…