Consciousness, Methodological and Epistemological Questions - Detailseite

Questions regarding the epistemology of consciousness have come into the spotlight recently. One reason is that the validity of introspective reports which had long been accepted as a gold standard for evidence regarding consciousness, have come under attack recently. Moreover, these reports are unavailable in cases that have attracted much attention, among them coma patients, non-human animals, and artificial intelligence. Finally, empirical theories of consciousness have been put in doubt, e.g. because they are said to be based on methodological artefacts, or, even worse, haven been derided “pseudoscience” because they can’t be tested at all. This raises the question whether it is possible to identify epistemic standards for serious research on consciousness and other higher cognitive abilities like language understanding, mind reading, or object recognition in humans, non-human animals, and intelligent machines.
The seminar will start with a review of introspection-based methods in consciousness research. In the second part, we will discuss conceptual issues and problems of objective methods to detect and model consciousness. In the third part, we will focus on strategies to investigate consciousness in non-human animals and intelligent machines where we lack direct evidence, e.g. from introspective reports.

Pauen, M. and J. D. Haynes (2021). "Measuring the mental." Conscious Cogn 90: 103106.