What is it about?
This paper proposes a framework for evaluating hypotheses about the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) by treating them not merely as statistical correlations, but as testable claims that support predictions about conscious experience. The author introduces “sufficiency tests” and distinguishes four classes—Which-, When-, What-, and How-tests—based on whether they aim to predict who is conscious, when a system is conscious, what it is conscious of, or how experience is structured.
Why is it important?
NCC research is often criticized for relying on correlations that are easy to find yet difficult to interpret metaphysically or explanatorily. By reframing NCCs as hypotheses that must succeed in principled prediction-based tests, the paper offers a methodological bridge between neuroscience and the structure of conscious experience. This approach is designed to reduce ambiguity in how NCC claims are evaluated, while remaining explicit about what kinds of inferences neuroscience can and cannot support.
What does the author argue?
The author argues that How-tests—tests that predict aspects of phenomenal character (how an experience feels)—are preferable to tests focused on creature consciousness, state consciousness, or content. How-tests, on this view, avoid several standard pitfalls (e.g., contested cases of who/when is conscious, or reliance on additional theories of content determination) and better support “explanatory correlates” in the sense that neural structure is used to account for experiential structure. However, adopting How-tests also commits researchers to a stronger-than-supervenience systematic mapping between neural and phenomenal structures, motivating a position the author calls direct neurophenomenal structuralism.
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You can find the paper here.