The neural correlates of consciousness: new experimental approaches needed?

The neural correlates of consciousness: new experimental approaches needed? Hohwy

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The neural correlates of consciousness: new experimental approaches needed? 2009 Consciousness and Cognition 10.1016/j.concog.2009.02.006 hohwy2009-the-neural-correlates-of-conscious hohwy2009-the-neural-correlates-of-conscious.txt, the project's staged copy 62b2384080b1bafe5aa1f83e3928292ec96cbf57 open-access philosophy

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0 spans located by searching the stored text for the quote's exact words, allowing any whitespace between them critique Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. neural correlates of consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. conceptual-analysis conceptual-analysis Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms Relegating state consciousness to a background condition screens off any contribution the state NCC makes to constituting a content's being conscious, so the design can only speak to which content is represented Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. mechanisms The pre-existing conscious state, not the induced content, may be the actual difference-maker that renders the content conscious Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The argument shows the current paradigms need re-development, not that no NCC can ever be found. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The paper is neutral between theories of consciousness and does not adjudicate them. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The design is argued to be flawed in the way a carcinogen study would be if every mouse already had the cancer: the property of interest is presupposed in every subject. what this limits: a content-NCC result as evidence about what makes a content conscious: the design presupposes the property whose instantiation is at issue, exactly as a carcinogen study would if the property were already instantiated in all the mice Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. On the author's own account the approach can at best deliver the conditions for a content being SELECTED for consciousness, which is a different question from a content being conscious. what this limits: the content-based NCC literature: at best it finds the minimally sufficient conditions for selection into consciousness, not for a content's being conscious Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Tightening the experimental control defeats the aim: the better the content is matched, the harder the conscious/unconscious contrast is to sustain. what this limits: a state-based design that matches content across conditions: the better the matching, the harder it becomes to uphold the very contrast the approach depends on Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The field states that absence of the neural marker cannot be read as absence of the phenomenon. what this limits: a negative NCC finding in a patient: the researchers are explicit that absent thalamocortical or SMA activity Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. A CONTROL GROUP ARGUED AWAY RATHER THAN OMITTED. Owen's case that the vegetative-state patient's sustained SMA response is voluntary rests on its duration and on its changing to order - and the author notes that this logic, if it works, makes a control group unnecessary, since ANY brain activity time-locked to the requests would show the same thing. He calls that consequence puzzling rather than wrong. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. neural correlates of consciousness neural correlates of consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. content consciousness content consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. state consciousness state consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. unified conscious field unified conscious field Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. binocular rivalry binocular rivalry Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. NCC - FOR CONTENT CONSCIOUSNESS: the minimally sufficient neural conditions for a specific, mostly representational content being conscious rather than not being conscious Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. NCC - FOR STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS: the minimally sufficient conditions for a creature being in an overall conscious state rather than an overall unconscious state - a different contrast, and the paper's whole argument is that the two cannot stand in for each other Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. state consciousness - A TERM WHOSE SENSE THE AUTHOR CANNOT STATE SUCCINCTLY, and he gives that failure as the core motivation for writing the paper Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. the field's vocabulary - DECLARED NON-UNIFORM by the author, who then proceeds on the clustering of studies rather than on the terms Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. extends → Searle (2005) on the content-based NCC approach Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. contradicts → Searle (2005) on adopting the state-based approach instead Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. unified conscious field —same-as→ state consciousness unified conscious field state consciousness strength of the relation: 1 Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but Searle's notion is 'supposedly close' to state consciousness, and the author rejects Searle's use; attributed. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Because content-based NCC studies hold the subject's overall conscious state fixed rather than manipulating it, that presupposed conscious state remains an uncontrolled potential cause of the content's being conscious, i.e. a confound. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The content-based approach's target is the neural correlate of a content being selected for conscious presentation, assuming an overall conscious state. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. Researchers can stay neutral about whether the creature is conscious and still gain fruitful results with this method. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. In state-based studies there is a trade-off: the more carefully conscious content is matched across conditions, the weaker the grounds for believing the two conditions still differ in being conscious versus unconscious rather than being two conscious conditions. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. On this criterion the mark of consciousness becomes voluntary control rather than phenomenality. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The alternative route of inferring state consciousness from the presence of a content NCC also fails, because the content-based approach already assumes the subject is in a conscious state and therefore cannot independently establish it. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The paper concludes that neither the content-based nor the state-based paradigm, pursued on its own, can deliver the neural correlates of consciousness. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. The remedy proposed is not to conjoin the two approaches' results but to build a new paradigm that targets the causal, mechanistic interplay between content processing and overall conscious state across contents and across conscious and unconscious state types. Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. NCC for content consciousness NCC for content consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. NCC for states of consciousness NCC for states of consciousness Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. total NCC total NCC Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution. neural correlates of volition neural correlates of volition Quotation withheld because this record is not cleared for redistribution.

The full text of this article is not redistributable, so it is not included here. The evidence sentences are withheld with it; the tag layer and its grounding status remain. The article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2009.02.006.