On the Conflation of Consciousness and Cognitive Complexity

Abstract

The goal of detecting, measuring, and engineering machine consciousness depends on making explicit key metaphysical assumptions about the nature of consciousness that may be lying dormant in the minds of AI researchers. In this position paper, we lay out a small set of arguments that call into question a particular family of these assumptions. These assumptions all arise from the dominant paradigm of analytic materialist philosophy in combination with modern cognitive science: 1. consciousness is a property that emerges from complex matter, 2. consciousness depends on architectural cognitive complexity, and 3. consciousness can be measured as a function of behavioral cognitive complexity. Alternatives to these views and their implications for future machine consciousness research are discussed.