Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 132 of 171
Biological versus functionalist views of consciousness
Without going into the mathematical details here, Maguire shows that if we do in fact have completely integrated experiences, this form of information integration cannot be modeled computationally. Both the global workspace theory and the integrated information theory can in principle be implemented in a computer program. According to Ned Block there is nothing intrinsically biological about either of these theories. This is why they are called functionalist, because the underlying biology, or substrate, as it is called, is irrelevant. In contrast to the many varieties of functionalist and computationalist views of consciousness, the majority of which I have not mentioned here, there is a view of consciousness that is called “biological.” This school of thought holds that only machines having the right biology can have consciousness. John Searle and Ned Block are the most prominent theorists espousing the biological theory of consciousness. They answer the question of how unconscious pieces of meat produce consciousness by saying this takes place through specific, though poorly understood, neurobiological features of the brain. There is by now a vast literature on the neurobiological features of the brain that produce consciousness.