CONSCIOUSNESS I
Neuroethics · Wednesday, October 14, 2026
01
The real problem
of consciousness
Experience. Evidence. Realization.
A philosophical starting point
01 / THE PUZZLE
The knowledge argument
THE PROBLEM
Does an epistemic difference establish a difference in what exists?
Jackson · Epiphenomenal Qualia (1982), p. 130
04
1
Mary knows all the physical facts.
2
Seeing red teaches her something new.
∴
If she learns a new fact, the physical facts
do not exhaust all the facts.
Physicalism: roughly, the physical facts exhaust or fix all the facts.
01 / THE PUZZLE
What has Mary gained?
THE PROBLEM
Does Mary's discovery concern reality's contents or her relation to them?
Jackson · Epiphenomenal Qualia (1982), p. 130 · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · Qualia: The Knowledge Argument
05
01
A new fact
There is a fact about experience missing from the physical account.
02
A new ability
Mary can now recognize, remember, or imagine red.
03
A new way of knowing
She encounters a familiar physical fact in an unfamiliar way.
02 / IDENTIFYING THE TARGET
Conscious experience
THE PROBLEM
Have we explained consciousness, or only indicated what needs explaining?
Chalmers · Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), §§2–3 · Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
06
There is something it is like
for the subject.
Seeing red. Feeling pain. Hearing a melody.
Experience ≠ wakefulness, intelligence, self-reflection, or verbal report.
02 / IDENTIFYING THE TARGET
Definition, evidence, and realization
THE PROBLEM
A useful sign of consciousness need not be part of its constitutive basis.
Chalmers · Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), §§2–3 · Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
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| Question | What we seek | Mary’s case |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A characterization of experience | What seeing red is like |
| Evidence | Reasons to attribute experience | Her report and behavior |
| Realization | What constitutes the experience | Its underlying states or organization |
03 / EXPLAINING EXPERIENCE
What would close the explanatory gap?
THE PROBLEM
What would count as explaining experience, and are all sides demanding the same thing?
Chalmers · Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), §§2–3 · Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
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The explanatory demand
Why should a complete account of physical function entail experience?
The physicalist reply
Our difficulty seeing the connection need not show that experience is nonphysical.
An epistemic gap → a metaphysical gap?
03 / EXPLAINING EXPERIENCE
Seth's real problem
THE PROBLEM
Which features of experience does a proposed mechanism actually explain?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2 · Seth · The real problem (2016)
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Explain why experiences have
the properties they do.
Explain · Predict · Control
Level
Whether and how consciousness is present
Content
What the experience is of
Self
Experiences of being a particular subject
03 / EXPLAINING EXPERIENCE
What does scientific progress settle?
THE PROBLEM
Is the hard problem becoming tractable, or has the explanatory target changed?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2 · Chalmers · Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), §§2–3
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Seth’s analogy: life
Explaining its properties made an apparent mystery scientifically tractable.
The pressure on the analogy
Does explaining experience’s properties explain why experience exists at all?
Close the hard problem? Dissolve it? Leave it intact?
04 / ATTRIBUTING EXPERIENCE
The problem of other minds
THE PROBLEM
When another system differs from us, which grounds for the inference remain?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2 · Neuroscience, 6th ed. · chapter 28, pp. 660–664
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We encounter other people’s
experience through evidence.
Reports
Flexible behavior
Shared physiology
Converging evidence can support a reasonable inference
without producing deductive certainty.
04 / ATTRIBUTING EXPERIENCE
Performance and experience
THE PROBLEM
Which behavior indicates consciousness, and what warrants interpreting its absence?
Neuroscience, 6th ed. · chapter 28, pp. 660–664 · Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
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Blindsight
Above-chance discrimination
Reports of no visual experience
A dissociation that requires interpretation.
The reverse caution: absent overt responses need not mean absent experience.
04 / ATTRIBUTING EXPERIENCE
Measuring consciousness
THE PROBLEM
What exactly does the number measure, and why should it indicate experience?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2 · Casali et al. · Science Translational Medicine (2013), 5(198):198ra105
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“Zap and zip”
1
Perturb the brain
A brief magnetic stimulation of cortex (TMS).
2
Record its response
Measure the resulting activity with EEG.
3
Characterize its complexity
PCI: a proposed indicator in studied human conditions.
04 / ATTRIBUTING EXPERIENCE
The problem of validation
THE PROBLEM
Which assumptions carry the inference from familiar humans to a new kind of system?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
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How do we test a
consciousness test?
Calibration in familiar cases
Use where reports are unavailable
Transfer to a new
kind of system?
05 / REALIZING EXPERIENCE
What realizes consciousness?
THE PROBLEM
Which elements belong to consciousness itself, and which enable or express it?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2 · Neuroscience, 6th ed. · chapter 28, pp. 660–664
16
01
A correlate
It varies with the experience.
02
A causal contributor
Changing it changes the experience.
03
A constitutive basis
It is part of what realizes the experience.
06 / EXTENDING THE QUESTION
Animal and machine consciousness
THE PROBLEM
Can we apply consistent standards without making human similarity either necessary or irrelevant by definition?
Seth · Being You (2021), prologue & chapters 1–2
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| Question | Animals | Machines |
|---|---|---|
| Experience | Which forms of experience might be present? | Which forms of experience might be possible? |
| Evidence | Behavior, physiology, evolutionary continuity | Behavior, internal organization, causal tests |
| Realization | Which biological properties matter? | Can different materials realize the relevant properties? |
06 / EXTENDING THE QUESTION
The questions we carry forward
Neuroethics · Wednesday, October 14, 2026
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What is consciousness?
How do we determine that
something is conscious?
What realizes its consciousness?
Friday: perception as a test of Seth’s explanatory ambition.