We propose that any theory of visual awareness must explain the gradient of different awareness measures over experimental conditions, especially when those measures form double dissociations among each other. Theories meeting this requirement must be specific to the measured facets of awareness, such as motion, contrast, or color. Integrated information theory lacks such specificity because it is an underconstrained theory with unspecific predictions.

In consciousness science, theories often differ not only in the account of consciousness they arrive at, but also with respect to how they understand their starting point. Some approaches begin with experimentally gathered data, whereas others begin with phenomenologically gathered data. In this paper, I analyse how the most influential phenomenology-first approach, namely the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness, fits its phenomenologically gathered data with explanatory hypotheses. First, I show that experimentally driven approaches hit an explanatory roadblock, since we (...) cannot tell, at the present stage, which model of consciousness is best. Then, I show that IIT’s phenomenology-first approach implies a self-evidencing explanation according to which consciousness can be explained by starting from consciousness itself. I claim that IIT can take advantage of the virtuous circularity of this reasoning, but it also faces a data-fitting issue that is somehow similar to that faced by experiment-driven approaches: we are not given enough information to decide whether the explanatory hypotheses IIT employs to explain its phenomenological data are in fact best. I call this problem “the self-evidencing problem” for IIT, and after introducing it, I propose a possible way for IIT to solve it. (shrink)

Proponents of the hard problem of consciousness argue that the zombie and inverted spectrum thought experiments demonstrate that consciousness cannot be physical. They present scenarios designed to demonstrate that it is conceivable that a physical replica of someone can have radically different or no conscious experiences, that such an experience-less replica is possible and therefore that materialism is false. I will argue that once one understands the limitations that the physics of this world puts on cognitive systems, zombies and the (...) inverted spectrum are not conceivable. (shrink)

If Ned Block were a rockstar he would be Mick Jagger: sartorial, iconic, ever youthful, and still producing hit records after half a century. Fittingly, then, P.