I. The Stakes: Why Consciousness Theory Matters

Consciousness, a topic that has sparked intense debates in philosophy and cognitive science, is profoundly significant. What constitutes consciousness? Is it self-perception? Can animals or machines possess consciousness? What accounts for the existence of qualia, the inexplicable sense of what salt tastes like or why red appears as it does? These questions, while complex, are crucial to our understanding of the world and our place in it.

Understanding consciousness matters because we assign intrinsic value to conscious beings (1). This affects who gets rights, protection, and even life. Yet modern discourse often treats consciousness as a binary switch. Terms like "NPC" dehumanize individuals by implying the absence of consciousness due to a lack of introspection. Consciousness is used to humanize or dehumanize, making its definition politically and morally critical.

This essay, the first in a three-part series on NeuraType's approach to consciousness and personality, advocates for a more scientific framework. This framework, rooted in evolutionary dynamics, systems theory, and information metabolism Robert M. Hazen’s law of increasing functional information is urgently needed to navigate the complexities of consciousness. It posits that consciousness is the ability of a system to perceive information, and make judgements on it. Then, to define particular type of consciousness gives rise to advanced attributes like self-awareness and agency. These features bridge evolutionary psychology, spiral dynamics, neuroscience, and machine intelligence.

Part one critiques thinkers such as Dehaene, Goff, and Chalmers who reject or partially reject functionalism. In the end, reasons for functionalism's superiority are given in describing consciousness as a concept.

II. Critiquing Modern Theories

A significant problem in current discourse is the assumption that consciousness is binary. Binary consciousness creates confusion when discussing AI and LLMs. For example, LLMs use probability-based reasoning, similar to ancient bacteria. If those bacteria weren't conscious, when did consciousness "turn on" in evolutionary history? The binary view fails here. 

Consciousness is not binary because self-awareness is not innate. It's taught and developed. A child or animal looking in a mirror for the first time does not understand that it's seeing itself, but overtime develops the capability (2). Consciousness is not an instant state but a developmental process, and philosophical traditions have long described consciousness as a path, a gradual journey toward awareness, perception, and judgment. Many psychotherapists described consciousness as an incredibly variable state, based on the level of perception and judgement an entity can make. In psychoanalytic theory, consciousness was always variable, and on spectrums.

When viewed through systems theory and evolution, consciousness becomes measurable and, therefore, applicable to creating real-world technologies. There was once a time where the first conscious entity said “I,” in relation to itself. The Vox article above stated that only some magpies and dolphins could recognize themselves in the mirror, so, it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that the first conscious human was truly alone, and was the first one to say I. But, this speaking to itself, created a special type of system: a public persistence of a private loop (3).

Further complicating matters is the lack of consensus on what counts as consciousness. Different scholars define it in other, often contradictory ways. Yet, not all consciousness is equal in function. 

This article defends functionalism, the idea that consciousness and all mental processes arise from and can be explained by functional brain operations. While many defend qualia as irreducible, the history of science consistently shows that what was once mystical can be reduced to mechanisms. Consciousness should be no exception. 

The three-part essay builds on Dehaene and Dennet's ideas but expands beyond them. It argues that consciousness is hierarchical and layered, a pyramid of development. Drawing from spiral dynamics, Jungian cognitive functions (via Kepinski & Socionics theory), and Hazen's Law of Functional Information, I will sketch a rough framework of consciousness and how it forms. First, I will dismantle competing theories without functional or empirical clarity.

III. Demolishing the Alternatives

A. Against Qualia and Subjectivity

Qualia are the subjective, first-person experiences of consciousness, the "what it is like" aspect of perception (4). For example, the redness of red, the bitterness of coffee, or the sharp sting of pain are all qualia. Nagel argues that qualia are fundamentally irreducible (5). Nagel emphasizes a core subjective nature that science can't fully capture, suggesting consciousness inherently involves an irreducible first-person perspective. The fundamental truth however is that qualia experiences can be mapped. Some genes can determine how bitter a herb can taste (6), and how intense colours can be. This position, while intuitive, dissolves under rigorous scientific scrutiny.

Take the paradigmatic case of saltiness. Salt tastes like salt because it's a fundamental mineral for our survival. Humans without salt have significantly reduced muscular function, and heart problems, among other things, and will die in the wild. Therefore, it was important to develop a mechanism to taste salt, and to have a craving for salt, to ensure that one could survive, and to give it a distinct profile, that we know call salty.

Understand that our body's learning to use and produce minerals was the cause of our sapience. Learning to differentiate information allowed our DNA to pass on, overcoming our intrinsic fear of death. Hypothetically, if we could activate the neural pathway of salt with another chemical, one could implant the subjective taste of salt in another human’s brain, like potassium chloride. 

B. Against Panpsychism

Philip Goff's panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is intrinsic to all matter, faces multiple fatal problems that reveal it as metaphysical speculation rather than a serious theory. It raises very good questions, such as what the structure of consciousness is. But its solutions end up being unscientific. At its current state, the ideas it raises are too advanced to engage with, and may not even be logical.

Firstly, we have the combination problem. Even granting micro-experiences to particles, panpsychism provides no coherent mechanism for how these fragments combine into unified conscious experience (7). Your experience of reading this sentence is not a swarm of micro-experiences but a cohesive and integrated process. How do billions of supposed micro-conscious particles create the unified "you" that experiences thoughts, emotions, and sensations? Panpsychism offers no answer. Is it even useful? 

Secondly, it doesn't really explain where it comes from. Claiming that matter is "intrinsically conscious" doesn't explain consciousness; it just relocates the mystery. It's like solving the question "How do birds fly?" by answering "Because they have intrinsic flight-ness." This adds no predictive power, generates no testable hypotheses, and advances no practical applications. Still, the theory is sound, because the laws that we call physics may actually be the conscious minds of these micro particles. Still, it is wholly unexplained and not important for consciousness studies today (8).

Thirdly, panpsychism cannot be empirically tested. Unlike functionalism, which has produced brain imaging studies, clinical applications, and AI systems, panpsychism has generated no experiments, technologies, or measurable progress. It remains pure metaphysical speculation.It fundamentally goes against the perspective that every human-like conscious entity can react to information. The most significant distinction between biological and non-biological systems is that biological systems can respond and act with information (9). Many molecules do not have the ability to react to information proactively. It is very clear that consciousness, in a systems perspective, is an emergent property of systems which can react to information by creating some sort of stream of consciousness. A better way to understand panpsychism is that certain atoms and molecules have a better capacity to create conscious entities, because of what their structure allows them to do. But this doesn't mean they are conscious, in the panpsychic sense.

C. Against Zombie Arguments

David Chalmers' philosophical zombies, which are beings physically identical to conscious entities but lacking inner experience, rest on a fundamental conceptual error that reveals the poverty of dualistic thinking.

The zombie argument claims we can conceive of a being with all your brain structures, neural firing patterns, and behavioural outputs, but which lacks consciousness. This supposed being would say "I feel pain," and write poetry about love, yet have no inner experience.

But this argument smuggles in an impossible contradiction. If something has all your functional organization, information processing, memory integration, behavioural flexibility, and self-monitoring, what coherent criteria could we deny consciousness? The zombie argument requires us to believe that consciousness is an invisible, causally inert property that somehow gets "added" to specific physical systems. Why are we assuming consciousness is something separate from the systems in our body?

Denying consciousness to a system with identical functional structure is like claiming a computer is running code and displaying outputs but it has no computation occurring, because you don't "see" the computation. But if it behaves identically, processes inputs identically, and produces the same outputs, then computation is happening. 

Moreover, consciousness serves fundamental functions. It enables a flexible response to novel situations, allows organisms to simulate future scenarios, and coordinates complex behaviours. A zombie lacking these functional capacities would behave like a simple reflex machine, not like a conscious being. The zombie argument conflates functional consciousness with imaginary, non-functional "consciousness stuff."

D. On IIT and other arguments

IIT (Integrated Information Theory) and other niche arguments for consciousness will be dealt with in another blog post. These theories are incredibly complex and require more in-depth analysis to understand. Below, I will follow the functionalist perspective and give a theory about why consciousness evolved.

IV. Functionalism as a theory for Consciousness

A. Consciousness as an Evolutionary Solution

In this section, I will detail functionalism as a theory for consciousness. It is highly inspired by Global Workforce Theory, which states that our consciousness is the result of many different computations happening at once. Consciousness evolved to solve a specific computational problem: information overload. Organisms face torrents of sensory data, internal signals, memory fragments, and environmental demands. Complex behaviour would be impossible without a mechanism to filter, prioritize, coordinate and organize this information. 

Conscious thinking, is evolution’s solution for a brain which can perceive vast amounts of information. It’s a system attribute that selects relevant information, integrates it across specialized modules, and makes it available for flexible action. Its computational architecture is refined by hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary pressure. For humans, we have a very active type, high type of consciousness. We can perceive and judge more than any other species. Because of our high cognitive capabilities however, we need to be able to specialize, so that we don’t get overwhelmed. And, for societies, the best societies are those with some of the most efficient workers. Efficiency is usually a result of correct specialisation. There are two important axioms for functionalism.

Firstly, Global Workspace Theory is true, and is how our consciousness is created in our brain. In Dehaene’s Consciousness and the brain, This is an attribute of our minds which: "enables organisms to avoid paralysis in the face of competing demands. Instead of processing everything simultaneously, conscious systems create a priority queue that sequences attention and action.” It explains why the brain works as a collective, and aligns with neural imaging.

Secondly, feelings are functional signals. The subjective aspects of consciousness, pain, pleasure, anxiety, and confidence are not epiphenomenal byproducts but functional signals that assign value to information streams. Pain means "prioritize this threat," pleasure means "repeat this behaviour," and uncertainty means "gather more information." These aren't just sensations but metabolic tags that guide resource allocation. This is also why salt tastes like salt. Selection pressures give it an arbitrary taste, but also a need to go get it, which imprints the subjective taste of the molecule. 

B. Clinical Evidence with brain damage causing conscious perception changing 

Neurological disorders provide natural experiments that reveal consciousness as a collection of separable functions rather than a unitary phenomenon.

One of the most striking clinical examples that undermines the idea of consciousness as a singular, self-transparent force is the neurological condition known as Anosognosia, a disorder of consciousness where a person is unaware of their own disability.

Consider the classic case of Anosognosia, from VSauce's video on consciousness. A patient has lost the ability to move their left hand, often due to a stroke that affects the right hemisphere. When asked to raise their right hand, they do it effortlessly. But when asked to raise their left hand, they confidently respond, “Sure, no problem,” and proceed to do nothing. When asked why they didn’t raise their left hand, they don’t say, “I can’t.” Instead, they confabulate, they make something up like, “I didn’t feel like it.” Why? Because the brain region responsible for internal physical monitoring, the one that should detect the hand didn’t move, is no longer sending that data. So the brain’s language and narrative systems, tasked with answering questions, step in and fabricate a believable story. The result is a person who believes they are acting freely and consciously, even when their own body has betrayed them. This single case dismantles the naive view that consciousness is unified and all-knowing. The “self” is not a single agent, but a patchwork of modules. When those modules desynchronize, the narrative breaks, and the illusion of unified consciousness crumbles. It also proves something deeper: Consciousness is not a transparent observer of the self. It is a reconstructive function, one that explains behavior after it happens, sometimes even incorrectly. Keep in mind, they still believe they are acting completely rationally. This aligns perfectly with Libet’s experiments on free will and further supports the thesis that consciousness is a biological system of distributed, functional modules, prone to both brilliance and blind spots (10).

V. Why Functionalism Wins

Functionalism: The Only Framework that Moves Us Forward

In the final analysis, functionalism alone delivers what every serious theory of consciousness must supply: explanatory power, predictive reach, and empirical traction. Where dualism erects an unbridgeable chasm and panpsychism dissolves consciousness into metaphysical fog, functionalism identifies the work that conscious systems actually perform, filtering torrents of data, binding disparate signals, and assigning value so that organisms can act in real time. It is a theory driven by causal architecture. If we are to understand how consciousness evolves, and it’s application in machines & androids, we need to approach it with a functional perspective. 

The core of NeuraType is to use this functionalist architecture to explain our conscious mind, which can help individuals with understanding their personality type. The tragedy of personality type is that it has been a field wrought with confirmation bias and unscientific testing, and therefore it has been called pseudoscience. This is true: modern personality theory is pseudoscience. But, if we can map our psyche, then the world will be changed. People will no longer need to go through long self-discovery processes, nor will they have to suffer through needless pain to get the knowledge of what not to do.

In the second part of the essay, I will be detailing what consciousness means in NeuraType by implementing a systems-based definition related to information metabolism from Antoni Kepinski's theory. Additionally, using Robert M. Hazen's law of increasing functional information, we will create dimensions of consciousness, inspired by Spiral Dynamics, but much more complex. If we are to describe personality type, we need to understand all its dimensions.

Works Cited:

Self Consciousness & Moral Status (https://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/03/self-consciousness-and-moral-status #:~:text=Many%20share%20an%20intuition%20that,entities%20a%20very%20serious%20matter)

Vox, Mirror Psychology (https://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6960123/consciousness-tests-levels-define-mirror-animals-psychology)

Bill Giannakopoulus, Consciousness and Mutual information (https://medium.com/@bill.giannakopoulos/consciousness-mutual-information-in-condensed-matter-that-found-a-voice-1e0359532e2e#:~:text=In%20this%20view%2C%20consciousness%20is,how%20well%20a%20structure%20can)

Qualia (https://iep.utm.edu/qualia/#:~:text=fact%2C%20that%20Nagel%20argues%20that,%E2%80%9D%20%28Nagel%201974%2C%20520)

What's it like to be a bat? (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914?origin=crossre)

Combination problem for panpsychism (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/116506/questions-on-panpsychism-locality-and-)boundary#:~:text=Part%20of%20what%20you%20asking,Panpsychists%20believe%20that%20a

Panpsychism (https://iep.utm.edu/panpsych/#:~:text=Two%20final%20objections%20bear%20mentioning,evidence%20of%20lesser%20minds%20is)

How do living systems use information to survive? (https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/semantic-information-theory-living-systems-574112/#:~:text=By%20contrast%2C%20moving%20a%20non,to%20maintain%20or%20reproduce%20itself)

Dehaene on Consciousness (https://www.jch.com/jch/notes/DehaeneConsciousness.html#:~:text=p,networks%20show%20that%20the%20global)

Anosognosia and Visuoverbal Confabulation (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstract/592863#:~:text=the%20confabulatory%20responses%20seen%20with,is%20shown%20to%20the)