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Evidence record

Why does anything feel like anything?

Every sentence on the exploration belongs to at least one claim below. Each says what kind of statement it is, what it rests on, what the evidence does not establish, and how far it was checked. Nothing here is a score, and none of it is a verdict on a belief or a theory.

Last checked 24 September 2026.

  • Presented as open: 5
  • A judgement, not a fact: 14
  • Source checked: 35
  • Partly checked: 2

If something here is wrong, misquoted, out of date or unfair, write to support@unknownoceans.com and give the claim number, which does not change.

What the question takes for granted

A question about why experience exists at all, which is part science and part philosophy. The science can say what experience depends on; whether any science could say why it exists is itself argued, and the page reports the main sides.

  • Experience is something over and above what the brain does

    Contested

    The hard problem assumes it. Eliminativists deny it, in full or in part, and some physicalists hold that explaining the functions will leave nothing over.

  • Consciousness depends on the brain

    Established

    Lesions, anaesthetics and stimulation change experience in specific ways. How the dependence works is the open part.

  • An answer would look like other scientific explanations

    Contested

    Optimistic physicalists expect an ordinary explanation; dualists and Chalmers expect to have to add experience as fundamental.

How the question is labelled

Claim: Consciousness

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: Consciousness

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

The question

Claim: There is no accepted explanation for the fact that experience exists.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

The reference work records the lack of any agreed theory; Chalmers says experience arises from a physical basis and that there is no good explanation of why.

  • Supports

    Consciousnessopening paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: What one sees depends in part on where one stands, and the ongoing project of explaining consciousness will be accompanied by continuing debate about its status and prospects for success.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 2

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises.

  • Context

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Optimistic physicalists will likely see current explanatory lapses as merely the reflection of the early stage of inquiry and sure to be remedied in the not too distant future

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 4

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: According to this line, once we have explained the functions such as accessibility, reportability, and the like, there is no further phenomenon called "experience" to explain.

Other readings

Some physicalists expect the gap to close with more research, and some eliminativists deny there is a further fact to explain (claims 46 and 59).

Claim 3 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: We can describe in detail what the brain does when you see red.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s summary of claims 19 to 22: the brain activity that accompanies a reported experience can be measured. Red is an example; the evidence is about conscious access in general.

  • Context

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Converging neuroimaging and neurophysiological data, acquired during minimal experimental contrasts between conscious and nonconscious processing, point to objective neural measures of conscious access

Claim 4 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: We cannot explain why any of that activity is accompanied by the experience of seeing red rather than by nothing at all.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

This is the hard problem as Chalmers states it, and the SEP entry files it as the less tractable version of the question.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: especially the so-called “hard problem” (Chalmers 1995) which is more or less that of giving an intelligible account that lets us see in an intuitively satisfying way how phenomenal or “what it's like” consciousness might arise

Claim 5 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Right now, something is happening that nobody can explain.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s opening line, following from claims 3 and 5.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 1, first paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

  • Context

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Optimistic physicalists will likely see current explanatory lapses as merely the reflection of the early stage of inquiry and sure to be remedied in the not too distant future

Other readings

Optimistic physicalists read the present lack of explanation as a stage of inquiry rather than a permanent gap (claim 10 and the SEP entry).

Claim 6 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: You are reading these words, and there is something it is like to be you doing it.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

An address to the reader in Nagel’s terms: an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be it.

  • Context

    What Is It Like to Be a Bat?p. 436

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 2

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism.

Claim 7 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: This is not a poetic observation.

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: David Chalmers called it “the most baffling” problem in the science of the mind

Kind
Quotes a source. The words of a named text, checked against the source.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Chalmers writes that consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind, and names the problem of experience as the really hard one.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 1, first paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 2

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “It is the single hardest open problem in the study of the mind, and after decades of progress in neuroscience it has not moved.” The ranking was stated as fact and is Chalmers’ judgement, so it is now his. “Has not moved” was stronger than any source: the SEP entry records continuing debate and optimistic physicalists who see the gap as a stage of inquiry, which is what “no agreed answer” reports.

Claim 9 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and decades of progress in neuroscience have not produced an agreed answer.

Kind
What the field holds. The settled view of a field, as a review, a consensus statement or a reference work gives it. Not one study.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousnessopening paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Despite the lack of any agreed upon theory of consciousness, there is a widespread, if less than universal, consensus that an adequate account of mind requires a clear understanding of it

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious ProcessingIntroduction, p. 200

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Understanding the neuronal architectures that give rise to conscious experience is one of the central unsolved problems of today’s neuroscience

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: What one sees depends in part on where one stands, and the ongoing project of explaining consciousness will be accompanied by continuing debate about its status and prospects for success.

What this does not establish

The SEP entry was last substantively revised in 2014; the 2025 adversarial test (claim 36) is the newer evidence that the question remains unsettled.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2023 on, "adversarial collaboration global neuronal workspace integrated information theory": the 2025 COGITATE result challenged both leading theories and a 2025 reply from GNW proponents disputes its reading; no agreed answer since.

Claim 10 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What neuroscience has established

Claim: What neuroscience has established

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Consciousness depends on the brain in specific, measurable ways

Claim: Consciousness depends on the brain in specific, measurable ways

Kind
What the field holds. The settled view of a field, as a review, a consensus statement or a reference work gives it. Not one study.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness and Anesthesiaintroduction

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: for nearly two centuries our ignorance has not hampered the use of general anesthesia for routinely extinguishing consciousness during surgery.

  • Supports

    Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain: Perceptual and Behavioral Phenomena Reported in the Old and New Literaturesection on the occipital lobe

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Depending on the site of stimulation, the effects of EBS were listed as simple visual sensations such as seeing simple patterns, geometric shapes (triangle, diamond, or star), white or black spots or a blob of flashing light, colors, movement, or phosphenes

  • Context

    Cerebral Akinetopsia (Visual Motion Blindness): A Reviewabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Cerebral akinetopsia is a syndrome in which a patient loses specifically the ability to perceive visual motion following cortical lesions outside the striate cortex. There has been only one good case of akinetopsia in the published literature.

What this does not establish

Dependence is shown; how the dependence works is the open question on the rest of the page.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, anaesthesia and consciousness, electrical stimulation and subjective experience: newer work (a 2025 BJA study of disconnected consciousness under ketamine, 2016 to 2018 stimulation studies) refines the detail and does not change it.

Claim 12 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Particular lesions remove particular kinds of experience: a lesion outside the striate cortex can take visual motion away and leave the rest of vision working.

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Partly checked. Only part of the source could be read. What was not read is listed.

  • Supports

    Cerebral Akinetopsia (Visual Motion Blindness): A Reviewabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Cerebral akinetopsia is a syndrome in which a patient loses specifically the ability to perceive visual motion following cortical lesions outside the striate cortex. There has been only one good case of akinetopsia in the published literature.

What this does not establish

Only the abstract of the review was read. It says the syndrome rested, in 1991, on a single good published case.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2000 on, "akinetopsia": a 2025 systematic review and further case reports exist (titles read); nothing found that reverses it.

Claim 13 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Anaesthetics suspend consciousness and return it, reliably enough to operate on people,

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness and Anesthesiaintroduction

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: for nearly two centuries our ignorance has not hampered the use of general anesthesia for routinely extinguishing consciousness during surgery.

  • Qualifies

    Consciousness and Anesthesiaintroduction

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: once in every 1000–2000 operations a patient may temporarily regain consciousness or even remain conscious during surgery

What this does not establish

Not perfectly reliable: the review puts intraoperative awareness at about one operation in every 1,000 to 2,000.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "anesthesia consciousness unresponsiveness": work on disconnected consciousness under anaesthesia (2025) adds to the caveat in claim 15 and does not change this.

Claim 14 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: though which of their effects removes experience rather than only the report of it is still argued.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness and Anesthesiasummary paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Although anesthesia undoubtedly induces unresponsiveness and amnesia, the extent to which it causes unconsciousness is harder to establish.

  • Supports

    Consciousness and Anesthesiasummary paragraph

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: certain anesthetics act on areas of the brain’s cortex near the midline and abolish behavioral responsiveness, but not necessarily consciousness.

Claim 15 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Stimulating specific cortical regions produces specific sensations.

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The reports come from awake patients being mapped before surgery, mostly for epilepsy, so the brains stimulated are not typical ones.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2015 on, "electrical stimulation human cortex subjective experience": newer stimulation studies (2016 visual cortex, 2018 orbitofrontal cortex) extend the catalogue; nothing that changes it.

Claim 16 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The dependency is not vague.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s reading of claims 13 to 16.

Claim 17 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: It is detailed enough to be used in surgery.

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Later work looked for

How clinical mapping is used; not a finding later work revises.

Claim 18 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

We can find reliable correlates of conscious content

Claim: We can find reliable correlates of conscious content

Kind
What the field holds. The settled view of a field, as a review, a consensus statement or a reference work gives it. Not one study.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Converging neuroimaging and neurophysiological data, acquired during minimal experimental contrasts between conscious and nonconscious processing, point to objective neural measures of conscious access

  • Context

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious ProcessingIntroduction, p. 200

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: how does an external or internal piece of information gain access to conscious processing, defined as a reportable subjective experience?

What this does not establish

The review measures conscious access, defined by report. Which correlates belong to the experience itself is claim 22.

Later work looked for

Crossref and Europe PMC, 2015 on, "no-report paradigms": correlates of report and of experience are now separated where possible (claim 22); the 2025 COGITATE study found content-specific activity in visual, ventrotemporal and inferior frontal cortex.

Claim 19 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Using binocular rivalry, masking and related paradigms, researchers can hold the stimulus constant while what the subject reports experiencing changes, and watch which brain activity tracks the report.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious ProcessingMajor Experimental Paradigms, pp. 200-201

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Binocular rivalry is another common paradigm whereby the image in one eye becomes subliminal by competition with a rivaling image presented in the other eye.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious ProcessingObjective versus Subjective Criteria for Conscious Access, p. 201

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: Subjective reports also present the advantage of assessing conscious access immediately and on every trial, thus permitting postexperiment sorting of conscious versus nonconscious trials with identical stimuli

Later work looked for

How the method works; not a finding later work revises.

Claim 20 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Several of these markers recur across studies,

Kind
What the field holds. The settled view of a field, as a review, a consensus statement or a reference work gives it. Not one study.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

The review names late amplification of sensory activity, long-distance synchronisation and prefronto-parietal ignition; the 2025 adversarial test reported a general lack of the ignition at stimulus offset that the workspace theory predicted.

Later work looked for

Europe PMC, 2015 on, "no-report paradigms": the markers are still reported, and some are now read as markers of report (claim 22); page updated.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “The pattern is robust across laboratories.” The review calls the data converging, which carries recurrence. It does not carry robustness without qualification: the no-report literature argues that the requirement to report has biased the search, and the 2025 adversarial test was designed to minimise report confounds for that reason.

Claim 21 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: though some may track the act of reporting rather than the experience, and newer designs try to do without the report.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Partly checked. Only part of the source could be read. What was not read is listed.

What this does not establish

Only the abstract of the no-report review was read. That the requirement to report biases the search is its authors’ argument.

Claim 22 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: These are correlates.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Claim 23 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Knowing that a state accompanies an experience is not the same as knowing why it produces one.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Tononi and Koch make the same point: correlates are important but not enough to understand even basic facts.

  • Context

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: correlates are of little help in many instances where we would like to know if consciousness is present: patients with a few remaining islands of functioning cortex, preterm infants, non-mammalian species and machines

Claim 24 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

The problem has a precise formulation

Claim: The problem has a precise formulation

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The page’s heading for claims 26 to 28.

Claim 25 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Thomas Nagel argued in 1974 that an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism, and that this subjective character is not captured by the reductive analyses on offer.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    What Is It Like to Be a Bat?p. 436

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism

  • Supports

    What Is It Like to Be a Bat?p. 436

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: We may call this the subjective character of experience. It is not captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental

Claim 26 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: He stopped short of calling physicalism false: his position was that we have no conception of how it could be true.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    What Is It Like to Be a Bat?p. 446

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: It would be a mistake to conclude that physicalism must be false. ... physicalism is a position we cannot understand because we do not at present have any conception of how it might be true.

Claim 27 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: David Chalmers later separated the “easy problems” (attention, reportability, integration, all hard in practice but conceptually tractable) from the hard problem: why physical processing is accompanied by experience at all.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 2

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena ... the integration of information by a cognitive system; the reportability of mental states; ... the focus of attention;

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 2

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Getting the details right will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

Claim 28 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Theories that cannot both be right

Claim: Theories that cannot both be right

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The two theories make divergent predictions (claim 33). Both could also be wrong, and the 2025 test found evidence for some predictions of each.

Claim 29 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Which theory, if any, is on the right track

Claim: Which theory, if any, is on the right track

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: Global workspace theories hold that consciousness is what happens when information is broadcast widely enough across the brain to become available to many systems at once.

Kind
What a model says. What a theory or model predicts or describes, which is not the same as what has been observed.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Review of the field

    The source reads: conscious access occurs when incoming information is made globally available to multiple brain systems

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingp. 210

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Review of the field

    The source reads: Dehaene and Naccache (2001) postulate that ... this global availability of information ... is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.

  • Context

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious ProcessingIntroduction, p. 200

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Review of the field

    The source reads: how does an external or internal piece of information gain access to conscious processing, defined as a reportable subjective experience?

What this does not establish

What the theory models is conscious access, defined by report; whether that is all of consciousness is the dispute in claim 59 and claim 60.

Claim 31 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Integrated information theory holds that consciousness is identical to a particular kind of causal structure, and assigns it a quantity.

Kind
What a model says. What a theory or model predicts or describes, which is not the same as what has been observed.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 3, IIT

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: the central identity of IIT can be formulated quite simply: an experience is identical to a conceptual structure that is maximally irreducible intrinsically.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 3, IIT

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: a conceptual structure completely specifies both the quantity and the quality of experience

  • Context

    Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrateabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness must be a maximum of intrinsic cause-effect power and provides a means to determine, in principle, the quality and quantity of experience.

  • Context

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?p. 689

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Currently, Φ can only be precisely calculated in idealized systems with a few units

What this does not establish

The identity is the theory’s central claim, not a finding. The quantity can be computed exactly only for small idealised systems (claim 56).

Claim 32 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: These are not variations on a theme; they make different predictions and imply different things about which systems are conscious.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Adversarial Testing of Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theories of Consciousnessmain text, first section

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Experiment

    The source reads: The group identified differential existing and novel predictions of the two theories and developed an experimental design to test them

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: IIT implies that digital computers, even if their behaviour were to be functionally equivalent to ours, and even if they were to run faithful simulations of the human brain, would experience next to nothing.

Claim 33 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: A large adversarial collaboration has tested them directly against each other,

Kind
Historical claim. A statement about the past that historical evidence can test.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Large adversarial collaborations have begun testing them directly against each other.” The plural rested on one cited study. The COGITATE paper names a separate adversarial collaboration in animals, whose protocol was published in 2026, so the second is now cited and described as what it is.

Claim 34 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: and a second is under way in monkeys and mice.

Kind
Historical claim. A statement about the past that historical evidence can test.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

A published protocol, not a result.

Claim 35 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: The results so far constrain both without settling between them.

Kind
Experimental result. What an experiment or trial found, under its own conditions. A result in animals, cells or a simulation is not a result in people.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

What this does not establish

One study of 256 people viewing suprathreshold images. Proponents of each theory published their own readings of the outcome.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2025 on, "adversarial testing global neuronal workspace integrated information": a 2025 reply by GNW proponents in Neuroscience of Consciousness disputes how the challenges to their theory were read, which leaves it unsettled.

Claim 36 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Where it stops

Claim: Where it stops

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: There is no agreed test for whether a system is conscious.

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

Tononi and Koch allow that in some cases a correlate can be decisive: a patient who responds to commands with brain activity alone can fairly be judged conscious (claim 41).

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: correlates are of little help in many instances where we would like to know if consciousness is present: patients with a few remaining islands of functioning cortex, preterm infants, non-mammalian species and machines

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, patients

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Argument

    The source reads: Yet most of the proposed ‘signatures’ of consciousness are inadequate.

  • Context

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, patients

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Argument

    The source reads: In some cases, NCC can be decisive. Thus, if a patient who lies mute and immobile can nevertheless respond to commands by appropriately activating certain brain areas, it is fair to conclude that she is conscious

Claim 38 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: This is not an academic gap:

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Claim 39 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: it affects clinical decisions about unresponsive patients, questions about which animals can suffer, and increasingly, questions about artificial systems.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

Tononi and Koch name patients, preterm infants, non-mammalian species and machines as the cases where correlates help least.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: correlates are of little help in many instances where we would like to know if consciousness is present: patients with a few remaining islands of functioning cortex, preterm infants, non-mammalian species and machines

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, patients

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Argument

    The source reads: Is an island of functioning brain tissue sufficient for generating a limited kind of awareness, maybe just awareness of sound or of pain?

Claim 40 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: In one study of 241 brain-injured patients with no observable response to commands, a quarter performed a cognitive task detectable on fMRI or EEG.

Kind
Observation. Something measured or seen, as the named source reports it.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of ConsciousnessResults

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Observational study: associations, not causes

    The source reads: Of the 241 participants with a diagnosis of coma or vegetative state (i.e., participants who were unconscious) or minimally conscious state–minus on the basis of the score on the CRS-R, 60 (25%) had a response to commands on task-based fMRI, task-based EEG, or both.

  • Supports

    Cognitive Motor Dissociation in Disorders of Consciousnessabstract, Methods

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Observational study: associations, not causes

    The source reads: we collected clinical, behavioral, and task-based fMRI and EEG data from a convenience sample of 353 adults with disorders of consciousness.

What this does not establish

A convenience sample of 353 adults at six centres, 241 of them without an observable response. The tasks were spoken commands, such as to imagine playing tennis, and the authors say the true share may be higher.

Later work looked for

Crossref, 2024 on, "cognitive motor dissociation": a 2026 individual-participant meta-analysis of 56 studies (abstract read) finds it common, varying by cause of injury; nothing that changes the figure.

Claim 41 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

The hard problem

Claim: The hard problem

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

Claim: No measurement of a brain yet settles, in every case, whether the lights are on inside it.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Follows from claims 38 and 41: brain measures can show awareness in some patients who cannot move, and most proposed signatures fail in others.

  • Context

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, patients

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Argument

    The source reads: Yet most of the proposed ‘signatures’ of consciousness are inadequate.

  • Context

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, patients

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Research in people · Argument

    The source reads: In some cases, NCC can be decisive. Thus, if a patient who lies mute and immobile can nevertheless respond to commands by appropriately activating certain brain areas, it is fair to conclude that she is conscious

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Nothing you can measure about a brain tells you whether the lights are on inside it.” The page’s own study (claim 41) is a measurement that told clinicians the lights were on, and Tononi and Koch accept that such a response is fair evidence of consciousness. What no measurement does is settle it generally.

Claim 43 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Why physical processes are accompanied by experience

Claim: Why physical processes are accompanied by experience

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

Claim 44 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Nothing in physics, chemistry or neuroscience predicts that any arrangement of matter should feel like something from the inside.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Chalmers’ premise: everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 6

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness.

  • Context

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, end

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: things may be less hard if one takes the opposite approach: start from consciousness itself, by identifying its essential properties, and then ask what kinds of physical mechanisms could possibly account for them.

Other readings

Integrated information theory does say which physical systems are conscious, but by starting from experience and working back to its substrate rather than deriving experience from physics (claims 32 and 54).

Claim 45 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: A complete functional account of the brain (every signal traced, every computation described) would still, on Chalmers’ argument, leave this unexplained.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

  • Context

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Optimistic physicalists will likely see current explanatory lapses as merely the reflection of the early stage of inquiry and sure to be remedied in the not too distant future

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 4

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: According to this line, once we have explained the functions such as accessibility, reportability, and the like, there is no further phenomenon called "experience" to explain.

Other readings

Physicalists who expect the gap to close, and theorists who deny there is anything left over once the functions are explained, reject the premise (claims 10 and 59).

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “A complete functional account of the brain (every signal traced, every computation described) would still leave this unexplained.” Stated as fact, this is the conclusion of Chalmers’ argument and is rejected by eliminativists and many physicalists, as the SEP entry records. It is now attributed.

Claim 46 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: That is what makes it hard. It is not that the answer is complicated.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

Chalmers: what makes the hard problem hard is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 3

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience - perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report - there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

Claim 47 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: It is that nobody agrees on what an answer of the right shape would look like.

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

The SEP entry: optimistic physicalists expect ordinary explanation to succeed, dualists think consciousness must be added as fundamental, and what one sees depends on where one stands.

  • Context

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Optimistic physicalists will likely see current explanatory lapses as merely the reflection of the early stage of inquiry and sure to be remedied in the not too distant future

  • Context

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: To dualists, those same impasses will signify the bankruptcy of the physicalist program and the need to recognize consciousness as a fundamental constituent of reality in its own right

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “It is that no one has produced a proposal of the right shape.” Chalmers, integrated information theory and others have produced proposals their authors take to be of the right shape, and the page lists them below. What the sources carry is disagreement about the shape itself.

Claim 48 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What else is conscious

Claim: What else is conscious

Kind
Open question. Something the page says is not known.
Review
Presented as open. The page says this is unresolved, and the review found that it is.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 1

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: should we attribute experience to all mammals ... to all vertebrates, to invertebrates such as cephalopods and bees

Claim 49 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: We infer consciousness in other humans from similarity.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 1

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: We usually grant consciousness to others ... if they can tell us what they feel, or if they look and behave more or less like us.

Claim 50 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: That inference weakens smoothly as we move to other mammals, to birds, to octopuses, to insects, and it provides little guidance for systems that are behaviourally sophisticated but built differently.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 1

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: should we attribute experience to all mammals ... to all vertebrates, to invertebrates such as cephalopods and bees

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, end

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Clearly, as we move away from people, BCC and NCC become progressively less helpful to establish the presence of consciousness.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 2, animals

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: must make us cautious about inferring its presence in creatures very different from us, no matter how sophisticated their behaviour and how complicated their brain.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “and it provides no guidance at all for systems that are behaviourally sophisticated but built differently.” The source says correlates are of little help and call for caution in such cases, not that they give no guidance at all.

Claim 51 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Proposals on the table

Claim: Proposals on the table

Kind
Framing. Signposting. It asserts nothing a source could check.

It is a kind of information integration

Claim: It is a kind of information integration

Kind
Hypothesis. A proposed explanation, not an established one.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 3, IIT

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: the central identity of IIT can be formulated quite simply: an experience is identical to a conceptual structure that is maximally irreducible intrinsically.

  • Context

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?standfirst

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.

What this does not establish

A proposal, not a result: its core claim is contested as untestable (claim 56).

Claim 53 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Integrated information theory proposes that experience is what a system with a particular causal structure is, from its own perspective.

Kind
What a model says. What a theory or model predicts or describes, which is not the same as what has been observed.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 3, IIT

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: the central identity of IIT can be formulated quite simply: an experience is identical to a conceptual structure that is maximally irreducible intrinsically.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?section 3, axioms

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: my experience exists from its own intrinsic perspective, independent of external observers.

  • Context

    Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrateabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness must be a maximum of intrinsic cause-effect power and provides a means to determine, in principle, the quality and quantity of experience.

What this does not establish

This is the theory’s identity claim, stated as the theory states it.

Claim 54 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Its authors say it makes testable predictions;

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: IIT can explain a range of clinical and laboratory findings, makes a number of testable predictions

  • Context

    Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrateabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Abstract only, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness must be a maximum of intrinsic cause-effect power and provides a means to determine, in principle, the quality and quantity of experience.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “The theory is precise enough to be tested in some cases, and it has the unusual property of implying that consciousness is widespread and graded rather than rare and binary.” Testability was stated in the page’s own voice while it is the most contested thing about the theory. The critics’ 2025 Nature Neuroscience comment is added and each side is attributed.

Claim 55 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: a group of critics argued in 2025 that its core claims cannot be tested even in principle.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

The comment expands an earlier open letter. It separates the theory’s core claims from work inspired by it that uses complexity measures, which it calls uncontroversially scientific.

  • Supports

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?standfirst

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle.

  • Supports

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?p. 689

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: Currently, Φ can only be precisely calculated in idealized systems with a few units

  • Context

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?p. 689

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: This latter work is uncontroversially scientific, but neither supports nor tests the core claims of IIT.

  • Context

    What makes a theory of consciousness unscientific?p. 689

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: here we expand on the original letter to explain why it was written

Claim 56 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: It has the unusual property of implying that consciousness is widespread and graded rather than rare and binary.

Kind
What a model says. What a theory or model predicts or describes, which is not the same as what has been observed.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?abstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Model

    The source reads: It predicts that consciousness is graded, is common among biological organisms and can occur in some very simple systems.

What this does not establish

A prediction of the theory, not an observation.

Claim 57 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

It is what a particular kind of computation feels like

Claim: It is what a particular kind of computation feels like

Kind
Hypothesis. A proposed explanation, not an established one.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingp. 210

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Review of the field

    The source reads: Dehaene and Naccache (2001) postulate that ... this global availability of information ... is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 4, on Baars

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: The theory shows promise as a theory of awareness, the functional correlate of conscious experience, but an explanation of experience itself is not on offer.

What this does not establish

A proposal, and one its critics say addresses only the easy problems (claim 60).

Claim 58 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: On global workspace accounts, there is no additional fact to explain: being conscious of something just is having it globally available.

Kind
What a model says. What a theory or model predicts or describes, which is not the same as what has been observed.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingp. 210

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Review of the field

    The source reads: Dehaene and Naccache (2001) postulate that ... this global availability of information ... is what we subjectively experience as a conscious state.

  • Supports

    Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Conscious Processingabstract

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Review of the field

    The source reads: conscious access occurs when incoming information is made globally available to multiple brain systems

What this does not establish

The review states the identity, quoting Dehaene and Naccache (2001); the consequence that nothing further needs explaining is what the identity implies, and it is what claim 60 disputes.

Claim 59 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Chalmers replies that this shows promise as an account of the easy problems and offers no explanation of the hard one.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 4, on Baars

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: The theory shows promise as a theory of awareness, the functional correlate of conscious experience, but an explanation of experience itself is not on offer.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 4, on Baars

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: nothing internal to the theory explains why the information within the global workspace is experienced.

Corrected

24 September 2026. Previously: “Critics reply that this describes the easy problems accurately and the hard problem not at all.” The reply is Chalmers’ critique of Baars’ workspace theory, and the source cited is his; it is now attributed.

24 September 2026. Previously: “Critics, Chalmers among them, reply that this describes the easy problems accurately and the hard problem not at all.” Only Chalmers was read, so "critics" named more people than the source does, and he says the workspace theory shows promise as a theory of awareness, not that it describes the easy problems accurately. The sentence now reports him alone, in his terms.

Claim 60 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Experience is fundamental

Claim: Experience is fundamental

Kind
Hypothesis. A proposed explanation, not an established one.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 6

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time.

What this does not establish

Chalmers offers it as a candidate account, not a result.

Claim 61 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: Some philosophers argue that if experience cannot be derived from physical description, it may belong in the inventory of basic features of reality rather than being built from them.

Kind
An argument. An argument a named thinker makes. That it is made is checked; whether it succeeds is argued.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 6

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness.

  • Supports

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 6

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time.

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection on dualist theories

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Fundamental property dualism regards conscious mental properties as basic constituents of reality on a par with fundamental physical properties such as electromagnetic charge.

Claim 62 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: This is a serious position in the literature and it is not established.

Kind
What scholars argue. A report of what specialists argue, or where they disagree.
Review
Source checked. The cited passage was read, and it says this.

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection on dualist theories

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: Fundamental property dualism regards conscious mental properties as basic constituents of reality on a par with fundamental physical properties such as electromagnetic charge.

  • Supports

    Consciousnesssection 5, the explanatory question

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Texts · Reference work

    The source reads: What one sees depends in part on where one stands, and the ongoing project of explaining consciousness will be accompanied by continuing debate about its status and prospects for success.

Claim 63 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

Claim: It also trades one mystery for another: why this experience, in this arrangement?

Kind
This page’s reading. A judgement the page makes from the evidence. Others read it differently.
Review
A judgement, not a fact. Reviewed for whether it is fairly put and follows from the checked claims. No source can confirm it.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 6

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world.

  • Context

    Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousnesssection 1

    Cited · Link answered, 19 October 2026 · Read in full, 24 September 2026 · Theory · Argument

    The source reads: I put forward my own candidate for such an account: a nonreductive theory based on principles of structural coherence and organizational invariance and a double-aspect view of information.

Other readings

Chalmers answers that a nonreductive theory would specify basic principles saying how experience depends on physical features of the world, and he proposes some.

Claim 64 · checked 24 September 2026 · AI-assisted audit

What was read