This paper addresses what we consider to be the most pressing challenge for the emerging science of consciousness: the measurement problem of consciousness. That is, by what methods can we determine the presence of and properties of consciousness? Most methods are currently developed through evaluation of the presence of consciousness in humans and here we argue that there are particular problems in application of these methods to nonhuman cases—what we call the indicator validity problem and the extrapolation problem. The first (...) is a problem with the application of indicators developed using the differences between conscious and unconscious processing in humans to the identification of other conscious vs. nonconscious organisms or systems. The second is a problem in extrapolating any indicators developed in humans or other organisms to artificial systems. However, while pressing ethical concerns add urgency to the attribution of consciousness and its attendant moral status to nonhuman animals and intelligent machines, we cannot wait for certainty and we advocate the use of a precautionary principle to avoid causing unintentional harm. We also intend that the considerations and limitations discussed in this paper can be used to further analyze and refine the methods of consciousness science with the hope that one day we may be able to solve the measurement problem of consciousness. (shrink)

In this essay, we discuss Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka’s The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul from an interdisciplinary perspective. Constituting perhaps the longest treatise on the evolution of consciousness, Ginsburg and Jablonka unite their expertise in neuroscience and biology to develop a beautifully Darwinian account of the dawning of subjective experience. Though it would be impossible to cover all its content in a short book review, here we provide a critical evaluation of their two key ideas—the role of Unlimited (...) Associative Learning in the evolution of, and detection of, consciousness and a metaphysical claim about consciousness as a mode of being—in a manner that will hopefully overcome some of the initial resistance of potential readers to tackle a book of this length. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends an account of model-based science that I dub model pluralism. I argue that despite a growing awareness in the philosophy of science literature of the multiplicity, diversity, and richness of models and modeling practices, more radical conclusions follow from this recognition than have previously been inferred. Going against the tendency within the literature to generalize from single models, I explicate and defend the following two core theses: any successful analysis of models must target sets of (...) models, their multiplicity of functions within science, and their scientific context and history and for almost any aspect x of phenomenon y, scientists require multiple models to achieve scientific goal z. (shrink)

One way to express the most persistent part of the mind-body problem is to say that there is an “explanatory gap” between the physical and the mental. The gap is not usually taken to apply to all of the mental, but to subjective experience, the mind’s “qualitative” features, or what is now referred to as “phenomenal consciousness.” The “gap” formulation is due to Joseph Levine. He acknowledged the appeal of intuitions of separability between physical facts, of any kind we can (...) envisage, and this aspect of our mental lives. Subjective experience seems not to be the sort of thing that is just the physical under another guise. The immediate focus of Levine’s discussion was a family of arguments due to Saul Kripke. Kripke argued that some influential claims of mind-body identity could not be, as materialists claimed, contingent. If these identities are real then they are necessary. But we can clearly conceive that the mental and physical could come apart—an intuition that “identity theorists” conceded. Given that the identity is necessarily present if present at all, from the fact it is not necessary we can see it is absent. Kripke concluded that physicalism is false. Levine wanted to resist this. (shrink)