Response to commentaries on 'hard criteria for empirical theories of consciousness'

In consciousness research, we have a very large number of theories, which exceeds by far the number of theories in other fields. We recently presented a set of criteria for evaluating and comparing theories of consciousness, and then applied the criteria to a number of different theories. Our publication sparked strong responses as evident by the many comments published in Cognitive Neuroscience (this issue). Overall, there seems to be consensus that a theory of consciousness (ToC) needs to have an unconscious alternative, but other criteria sparked controversy. The hottest debate is to what extent consciousness needs to work with purely 1(st) person data, containing information not available in 3(rd) person reports. We would like to thank all the commentators for their lively input and we look forward to continued dialog as theories evolve and compete.

Automated summary

In the field of consciousness research, there are numerous theories and the criteria for evaluating and comparing these theories are controversial. While there is consensus that a theory of consciousness needs an unconscious alternative, the debate on the extent to which consciousness should work with first-person data is the most heated.