Marc Ebner - A communication-based model of consciousness

Marc Ebner
Universität Greifswald, Germany

The seemingly hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why subjective conscious experience exist. However, Qualia is nothing mysterious. Our subjective conscious experience is comparable across individuals because we are a product of evolution. It is grounded in reality and we use it to communicate with each other. Consciousness seems to be intertwined with language. Its primary role is to serve communication between individuals. We need Qualia to communicate with others. We perceive objects within our visual field relative to the orientation of our head. This information is then stored and can also be communicated to others either during perception or at a later time. The same holds for the perception of sounds or smells. According to the theory proposed here, an assembly of neurons in the brain is in charge of consciousness. The job of this assembly is simply (a) to look at what the body does, (b) to keep a record of it, and (c) to explain it to our peers.

Filmed at the Models of Consciousness conference, University of Oxford, September 2019.