No Substitute for Functionalism -- A Reply to 'Falsification & Consciousness'

TL;DR

This paper defends Level-1 functionalist theories of consciousness against a formal substitution argument by expanding the model and proving their immunity, thus safeguarding a key approach in consciousness science.

Contribution

The paper extends the formal model of consciousness inference, demonstrating that many Level-1 functionalist theories are resistant to the substitution argument.

Findings

Substitutions do not exist for a broad class of Level-1 functionalist theories.

The expanded model distinguishes between different types of variation.

Functionalist theories are immune to the substitution argument.

Abstract

In their paper 'Falsification and Consciousness' [1], Kleiner and Hoel introduced a formal mathematical model of the process of generating observable data from experiments and using that data to generate inferences and predictions onto an experience space. The resulting substitution argument built on this framework was used to show that any theory of consciousness with independent inference and prediction data are pre-falsified, if the inference reports are considered valid. If this argument does indeed pre-falsify many of the leading theories of consciousness, it would indicate a fundamental problem affecting the field of consciousness as a whole that would require radical changes to how consciousness science is performed. In this reply, the author will identify avenues of expansion for the model proposed in [1], allowing us to distinguish between different types of variation. Motivated by examples from neural networks, state machines and Turing machines, we will prove that substitutions do not exist for a very broad class of Level-1 functionalist theories, rendering them immune to the aforementioned substitution argument.