I’ve read about half of this sequence, and it’s certainly the most palatable, well-founded-seeming discussion of consciousness I’ve ever encountered.
But… I’ve kind of run aground on the question: how would I tell if this is true? (Or, you know, all models are false etc., but how would I tell if this is useful?)
Three examples of how a theory can useful: “Hey, I came up with this new theory of blurtzian phenomena! …
Make predictions: ”...The literature has catalogued 347 kinds of blurtz, but under this model, there should be at least two more, with the following characteristics: [...]”
Distill: ”...The literature has catalogued 351 kinds of blurtz with various complicated characteristics, but under this model, all those complicated characteristics are pretty closely retrodicted by modeling each of the (3^3 choose 2) blurtzes as being the interaction of [...]”
Babble: ”...The literature has a couple different models of blurtzes, all with various open questions. Here’s one more. It’s not obviously right, but it’s another promising direction to go.”
This sequence doesn’t feel like (1) or (2) to me. Is it (3), or something else?
I see! Thanks for the thoughtful response. I think my problem is caused by not having brought enough neuroscience and psychology textbooks to my armchair, leaving me in too-many-plausible-hypotheses-land, rather than your too-few-. I’ll take another stab at this sequence if/when I collect more background knowledge!