Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-8wtlm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-30T00:47:13.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Consciousness is already solved: The continued debate is not about science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2022

Michael S. A. Graziano Open the ORCID record for Michael S. A. Graziano [Opens in a new window]
Michael S. A. Graziano*
Affiliation:
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA. Graziano@princeton.edu https://grazianolab.princeton.edu/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A logical explanation of consciousness has been known for decades. The brain must construct a specific set of information about conscious feeling (theory-of-mind information), causing people to believe, think, and claim to have consciousness. Theories that propose an actual, intangible feeling are non-explanatory. They add a magical red herring while leaving unexplained the objective phenomena: the believing, thinking, and claiming.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 45 , 2022 , e50
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Dennett, D. C. (1991). Consciousness explained. Little-Brown.Google Scholar
Frankish, K. (2016). Illusionism as a theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23, 1–39.Google Scholar
Graziano, M. S. A. (2019). We are machines that claim to be conscious. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26, 95–104.Google Scholar
Graziano, M. S. A, & Kastner, S. (2011). Awareness as a perceptual model of attention. Cognitive Neuroscience, 2, 125–133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelly, Y. T., Webb, T. W., Meier, J. D., Arcaro, M. J., & Graziano, M. S. A. (2014). Attributing awareness to oneself and to others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 111, 5012–5017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know – Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84, 231–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Webb, T. W., & Graziano, M. S. A. (2015). The attention schema theory: A mechanistic account of subjective awareness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, article 500, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500Google Scholar
Webb, T. W., Kean, H. H., & Graziano, M. S. A. (2016). Effects of awareness on the control of attention. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28, 842–851.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilterson, A. I, & Graziano, M. S. A. (2021). The attention schema theory in a neural network agent: Controlling visuospatial attention using a descriptive model of attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 118(33), 1–10, e2102421118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2102421118CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilterson, A. I., Kemper, C. M., Kim, N., Webb, T. W., Reblando, A. M. W., & Graziano, M. S. A. (2020). Attention control and the attention schema theory of consciousness. Progress in Neurobiology, 195, 101844. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2020.101844CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wilterson, A. I., Nastase, S. A., Bio, B. J., Guterstam, A., & Graziano, M. S. A. (2021). Attention, awareness, and the right temporoparietal junction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 118, e2026099118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2026099118. PMID: 34161276.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed