THE COMPUTATIONAL STANCE IS UNFIT FOR CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

It is customary to assume that agents receive information from the environment through their sensors. It is equally customary to assume that an agent is capable of information processing and thus of computation. These two assumptions may be misleading, particularly because so much basic theoretical work relies on the concepts of information and computation. In similarity with Dennett's intentional stance, I suggest that a lot of discussions in cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence is biased by a naive notion of computation resulting from the adoption of a computational stance. As a case study, I will focus on David Chalmers' view of computation in cognitive agents. In particular, I will challenge the thesis of computational sufficiency. I will argue that computation is no more than the ascription of an abstract model to a series of states and dynamic transitions in a physical agent. As a result, computation is akin to center of masses and other epistemic shortcuts that are insufficient to be the underpinnings of a baffling-yet-physical phenomenon like consciousness.