Overcoming essentialism: evaluation of theories of consciousness by the lawful regularities they predict

Abstract

A common objection to consciousness research is that researchers cannot agree on what consciousness is. But how should a consensus on the nature of consciousness be reached? Does consciousness have essential features that one can be right or wrong about? Should we select theories of consciousness based on their descriptions of the essential features of experience alone? In this article, we will argue with the help of Popper that determining unquestionable essential features of consciousness is neither possible nor desirable. Instead, any account of what consciousness is, should be understood as a subjective selection of features and should not count as an insight. According to Popper, insights in science are achieved when novel regularities between observations are discovered that generalize to scientific laws. Furthermore, all results of research can be stated independently of the definitions that were used in their making. Therefore, no consensus on the nature of consciousness or on a theory of consciousness is needed for consciousness research to progress—in fact, a multitude of definitions and theories may be beneficial. Based on this, we argue that theories of consciousness be evaluated by their ability to propose concrete, testable laws rather than by their description of what consciousness is.

Highlights How to define consciousness and how to determine its essential features are often considered to be major obstacles in consciousness research, but we argue in this article that this view is a misconception of scientific progress. According to Karl Popper, there is no way to determine indisputable essential features of a concept (such as consciousness), and it is also not the task of science to find essential features of concepts. Theories of consciousness often regard their definition of consciousness (what they consider its essential features) as an insight in itself, but we argue that definitions constitute untestable elements of a theory and should therefore not serve as a basis for evaluation of a theory. According to Popper, science progresses not by revealing essential features of concepts but when scientific laws that state regularities between observations are corroborated. In the process of proposing and testing scientific laws, concepts such as consciousness play only a temporary and subordinate role. We conclude that theories of consciousness should be solely evaluated by the scientific laws that they propose, which includes rejecting theories of consciousness that propose no laws at all and focusing on the predictive value of theories of consciousness in experimental settings.