Towards a Universal Theory of Consciousness

Abstract

While falsifiability has been broadly discussed as a desirable property of a theory of consciousness, in this paper, we introduce the meta-theoretic concept of "Universality" as an additional desirable property for a theory of consciousness. The concept of universality, often assumed in physics, posits that the fundamental laws of nature are consistent and apply equally everywhere in the universe, and remain constant over time. This assumption is crucial in science, acting as a guiding principle for developing and testing theories. When applied to theories of consciousness, universality can be defined as the ability of a theory to determine whether any fully described dynamical system is conscious or non-conscious. Importantly, for a theory to be universal, the determinant of consciousness needs to be defined as an intrinsic property of a system as opposed replying on the interpretation of the external observer. The importance of universality originates from the consideration that given that consciousness is a natural phenomenon, it could in principle manifest in any physical system that satisfies certain set of condition whether it is biological or non-biological. To date, apart from a few exceptions, most existing theories do not possess this property. Instead, they tend to make predictions as to the neural correlates of consciousness based on the interpretations of brain functions, which makes those theories only applicable to brain-centric systems. While current functionalist theories of consciousness tend to be heavily reliant on our interpretations of brain functions, we argue that functionalist theories could be converted to a universal theory by specifying mathematical formulations of the constituent concepts. While neurobiological and functionalist theories retain their utility in practice, we will eventually need a universal theory to fully explain why certain types of systems possess consciousness.

When philosophical nuance matters: safeguarding consciousness research from restrictive assumptions

“…The second option is to adopt a more ambitious stance, by either formulating theories in a context-independent way [this is what Kanai and Fujisawa (2023) call ‘universality’] or by justifying extrapolations to the non-human case through arguments based on analogical reasoning, abductive reasoning, or a combination of both ( Melnyk, 1994 ). One could start, for example, from the structural similarities between the source domain (i.e., the domain for which the original hypothesis is formed, for example the domain of humans in the case of consciousness) and the target domain (i.e., the domain for which the hypothesis is supposed to hold, for example organisms radically different from humans and non-biological systems in the case of consciousness), and then claim that given that phenomenal properties correlate with specific properties in the source domain, the most parsimonious hypothesis is that a correlation between similar properties in the target and phenomenal properties occurs ( Barron and Klein, 2016 ; Godfrey-Smith, 2017 ; Bayne and Shea, 2020 ; Tsuchiya and Saigo, 2021 ; Birch, 2022 ).…”

“…These two options have contrasting strengths and weaknesses: the humility principle can ensure that our applications of consciousness theories are more grounded, at the cost of limiting the explanatory power of such theories. Adopting the more ambitious stance, instead, can ensure stronger explanatory power, at the cost of either requiring a further ampliative argument or formulating theories that might end up being too liberal in their ascription of consciousness [for discussions, see ( Block, 1978 ; Block, 2002 ; Shevlin, 2021 ; Kanai and Fujisawa, 2023 )].…”