Baars: Thoroughly Empirical Approach To Consciousness
Bernard J. Baars: A Thoroughly Empirical Approach To Consciousness PDF | HTML
Replies to Critics: A Welcome Dialogue on Empirical Issues PDF | HTML
Managing Editor: Winand Dittrich
From the abstract of Bernie Baars' article on Constrastive Analysis:
This paper maintains that the position of behavioristic denial is far too restrictive, but that the Bat Criterion is far too demanding --- that in fact, we only need to specify comparable pairs of psychological phenomena that differ only in the fact that one member of any pair is conscious, while the other is not. This "method of contrastive analysis" is a generalization of the experimental method, with consciousness as a variable whose interaction with other psychological and biological phenomena can be assessed in standard ways.
This paper describes five sets of well-established pairs of phenomena that meet these criteria. Others are presented elsewhere, with more of a theoretical interpretation (Baars, 1983, 1988, 1993). Here I simply want to show that any adequate theory of conscious experience must satisfy these demanding but achievable empirical constraints.
John A. Allen
Delineating Conscious and Unconscious Processes PDF | HTML
Selmer Bringsjord
Baars Falls Prey to the Timidity He Rejects PDF | HTML
Greg Davis
Working Definitions of "Non-Conscious" PDF | HTML
Bruce Mangan
The Dead Hand PDF | HTML
James Newman
Consciousness Requires Global Activation PDF | HTML
Max Velmans
A Thoroughly Empirical First-Person Approach to Consciousness PDF | HTML
