CF Debate

Staccato Consciousness Problem

PhenomenologyIdentityEpiphenomenalism

Overview

Asking when a moment of experience occurs in the target CF algorithm identifies it at the conclusion of the target algorithm's final step. It cannot be midway, as the algorithm might not complete and so key parts of the conditions for consciousness might not be met. The next moment of consciousness must, in turn, wait for the conclusion of a second algorithm, e.g. a second loop/iteration of the target algorithm. In between, there would be some period of time without conscious experience present. As a result, when the next moment comes along, perhaps this is experienced by an entirely separate self, without any of the continuity between temporal moments that characterises complex consciousness in the human sense.

Responses

  1. Introduce some minimum temporal thickness to the duration of experience produced by the CF algorithm, which connects the moments together into a continuous experience.

    BUT: How can this be motivated using contemporary physics alone? Such thickness would also disconnect the conscious experience from the causal behaviour of the underlying computation, reinforcing the epiphenomenality of the phenomenal binding problem.

  2. Accept 'staccato consciousness' – perhaps that is just the nature of CF.

    BUT: CF-style consciousness would therefore be unable to explain the key continuity feature of human style consciousness, arguably important for our selfhood and ordinary intuitions of moral patienthood.

  3. Require a certain speed of algorithmic loop before they 'blur' together, assuming some phenomenal 'flicker continuity' threshold for conscious entities.

    BUT: How to motivate this threshold without begging the question of a conscious observer? More importantly, such a requirement would already be a new type of theory beyond CF alone. CF algorithms are spatiotemporally neutral: it is possible to pause an algorithm for a thousand years in the middle, before continuing it, with no change to the resulting conscious experience compared to ordinary algorithmic processing.

Further reading

  • No direct reference currently known. Ideas discussed at Ernst Mach Workshop in Prague (June 2025).