Content: A Possible Key to Consciousness
PsyArXiv August 9, 2023 Thomas W Clark preprint
Explaining consciousness requires first clarifying what consciousness is. Two essential features need explanation: qualitativeness, the sensory feel of experience, and subjectivity, that experiences exist only for the subject. These together constitute phenomenal consciousness. The author argues for realism about phenomenality, rejecting illusionism despite explanatory difficulties for standard science. Rather than focusing on structure or functions, the primary target should be qualitative and subjective nature. The content hypothesis is proposed: understanding representational content may explain both subjectivity and qualitativeness. Content is real but not directly observable, unlike its physical vehicles. Qualitativeness may arise from basic content items that are epistemic primitives, not themselves objects of representation. Progress in understanding content, as in predictive processing, may show why systems like us host conscious experience.