phenomenal consciousness
In plain wordsThe felt, experiential side of the mind — what it is like to taste coffee or to feel sad — as opposed to simply processing or reporting information.
Consciousness as experience itself, as distinct from the processing that may accompany it. In the sense Thomas Nagel made standard, a mental state has it when being in that state feels like something to its subject; how it feels is the state's phenomenal character, often described in terms of qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.. Ned Block distinguished it from access consciousnessaccess consciousness, n.: Information in the mind that is available for use — for thinking, speaking and guiding behavior — whether or not any feeling comes with it., information globally available for reasoning, report and action, and argued that the two can come apart and that cognitive science often explains the second while claiming to explain the first. Phenomenal consciousness is what the hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience. concerns and what debates over machine consciousnessmachine consciousness, n.: Whether a machine such as an AI system could have genuine experiences of its own — and the research field that tries to find out, or to build such a machine. and sentiencesentience, n.: The ability to have feelings that are good or bad for you, such as pleasure, pain, comfort or distress. It is the most common test for whether a being's welfare matters morally. ultimately turn on, since a system could have rich access to information without any experience. Illusionistsillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems. deny that it exists in the sense philosophers intend.
Showing that the model broadcasts information globally would establish access, not phenomenal consciousness.
Origin
The 'what it is like' criterion comes from Thomas Nagel (1974). Ned Block made 'phenomenal consciousness' (P-consciousness) a standard term by contrasting it with access consciousness, most influentially in 'On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness' (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1995).
Related
- access consciousnessaccess consciousness, n.: Information in the mind that is available for use — for thinking, speaking and guiding behavior — whether or not any feeling comes with it.
- qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words.
- hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience.
- consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question.
- illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems.
- philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind.
- access consciousnessaccess consciousness, n.: Information in the mind that is available for use — for thinking, speaking and guiding behavior — whether or not any feeling comes with it.
Sources
- Block, N. (1995). On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18(2), 227–247.
- Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review 83(4), 435–450.
Mentioned in
consciousnessconsciousness, n.: Having experiences: there being something it feels like to be you, as when you see red or feel pain. Whether any AI is or could become conscious is an open and fiercely debated question., sentiencesentience, n.: The ability to have feelings that are good or bad for you, such as pleasure, pain, comfort or distress. It is the most common test for whether a being's welfare matters morally., hard problem of consciousnesshard problem of consciousness, n.: The puzzle of why physical processes in a brain — or a computer — should feel like anything from the inside, rather than simply running without any inner experience., machine consciousnessmachine consciousness, n.: Whether a machine such as an AI system could have genuine experiences of its own — and the research field that tries to find out, or to build such a machine., philosophical zombiephilosophical zombie, n.: An imagined being that behaves exactly like a person — talking, laughing, even saying it feels pain — but has no inner experience at all. Philosophers use it to ask whether behavior proves a mind., qualiaqualia, n.: The individual felt qualities of experience — the particular redness of red, the taste of mint, the sting of a burn — that seem impossible to capture fully in words., access consciousnessaccess consciousness, n.: Information in the mind that is available for use — for thinking, speaking and guiding behavior — whether or not any feeling comes with it., Giulio TononiGiulio Tononi, prop. n.: An Italian-American neuroscientist who created integrated information theory, which measures consciousness by how unified a system's internal causes are, and which implies ordinary computers are not conscious., illusionismillusionism, n.: The view that the inner glow of experience that seems so hard to explain is a kind of trick the brain plays on itself: we are conscious, but not in the mysterious way it seems., knowledge argumentknowledge argument, n.: A thought experiment about Mary, a scientist who knows every physical fact about color but has lived all her life in a black-and-white room. When she first sees red, does she learn something new?, Ned BlockNed Block, prop. n.: An American philosopher who distinguished felt experience from information available for thinking, and who imagined a lookup-table machine to show that passing a conversation test need not mean intelligence., recurrent processing theoryrecurrent processing theory, n.: A theory that we consciously see something only when signals in the brain's visual areas loop back on themselves, not when they merely sweep forward once., seemingly conscious AIseemingly conscious AI, n.: An AI that gives such a convincing impression of having feelings and a self that people believe it is conscious, whether or not it actually is., Thomas NagelThomas Nagel, prop. n.: An American philosopher whose 1974 essay 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?' defined consciousness as there being something it is like to be a creature, a test now applied to machines.