Comparative psychology without consciousness.

If a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct and fully reductive, then questions about consciousness in nonhuman animals should be abandoned—not because they are too difficult, but because there are no substantive facts to discover. The argument hinges on the idea that global broadcasting is all-or-nothing in humans but framed in terms that imply gradations across species, yet the concept of phenomenal consciousness does not permit mental states to be conscious to some degree. The paper first displays some virtues of global workspace theory to motivate the discussion.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to establish the truth of the following conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct, and is fully reductive in nature, then we should stop asking questions about consciousness in nonhuman animals-not because those questions are too hard to answer, but because there are no substantive facts to discover. The argument in support of this conditional turns on the idea that while global broadcasting is all-or-nothing in the human mind, it is framed in terms that imply gradations across species. Yet our concept of phenomenal consciousness doesn't permit mental states to be to some degree conscious. Before getting to that argument, however, and in order to motivate the subsequent discussion, some of the virtues of global workspace theory are displayed.