Schurger Aaron, Graziano Michael
Neurosci Conscious. 2022 Jan 21;2022(2):niac001. doi: 10.1093/nc/niac001. eCollection 2022.
Consciousness is an unusual phenomenon to study scientifically. It is defined as a subjective, first-person phenomenon, and science is an objective, third-person endeavor. This misalignment between the means-science-and the end-explaining consciousness-gave rise to what has become a productive workaround: the search for 'neural correlates of consciousness' (NCCs). Science can sidestep trying to explain consciousness and instead focus on characterizing the kind(s) of neural activity that are reliably correlated with consciousness. However, while we have learned a lot about consciousness in the bargain, the NCC approach was not originally intended as the foundation for a true explanation of consciousness. Indeed, it was proposed precisely to sidestep the, arguably futile, attempt to find one. So how can an account, couched in terms of neural correlates, do the work that a theory is supposed to do: explain consciousness? The answer is that it cannot, and in fact most modern accounts of consciousness do not pretend to. Thus, here, we challenge whether or not any modern accounts of consciousness are in fact theories at all. Instead we argue that they are (competing) laws of consciousness. They describe what they cannot explain, just as Newton described gravity long before a true explanation was ever offered. We lay out our argument using a variety of modern accounts as examples and go on to argue that at least one modern account of consciousness, attention schema theory, goes beyond describing consciousness-related brain activity and qualifies as an explanatory theory.
意识是一种难以用科学方法进行研究的特殊现象。它被定义为一种主观的、第一人称的现象，而科学是一种客观的、第三人称的探索。这种在方法（科学）与目标（解释意识）之间的不一致，催生了一种富有成效的变通方法：寻找“意识的神经关联物”（NCC）。科学可以避开试图解释意识的难题，转而专注于描述与意识可靠相关的神经活动类型。然而，尽管我们在此过程中学到了很多关于意识的知识，但NCC方法最初并非旨在成为对意识进行真正解释的基础。事实上，它的提出恰恰是为了避开那种可以说是徒劳无功的寻找真正解释的尝试。那么，一种基于神经关联物的描述，如何能够承担起理论应有的职责：解释意识呢？答案是它做不到，实际上大多数现代的意识描述也并未声称能够做到这一点。因此，在这里，我们质疑任何现代的意识描述是否真的算得上是理论。相反，我们认为它们是（相互竞争的）意识规律。它们描述了那些它们无法解释的现象，就如同牛顿在真正的引力解释出现之前很久就描述了引力一样。我们以各种现代描述为例阐述我们的观点，进而论证至少有一种现代的意识描述，即注意力模式理论，不仅仅是描述与意识相关的大脑活动，而是可以称得上是一种解释性理论。
