D. Schetselaar's 'Strong Subjectivity' Conjecture rethinks consciousness and AI
A provocative new paper argues consciousness may be permanently unobservable to outsiders.
Deep Dive
Philosopher D. Schetselaar argues in "The Conjecture of Strong Subjectivity" that consciousness is fundamentally impossible to observe from an external perspective—a claim he calls strong subjectivity. He suggests treating this suspicion like a mathematical conjecture: unproven but consistent with all observations. He notes that most current theories of consciousness do not take this as a core assumption, which he suspects explains their failure to provide a satisfactory explanation.