Lexicon
The Substrate Demand
The modal demand relocated from structure to substrate: the conviction that a system with all the right structures would still lack experience because its substrate is not biological.
Refusing the demand for a non-structural explanation at the level of structure does not refuse it everywhere; the demand can retreat. The substrate demand is its most prominent hiding place: the conviction that even a system implementing every structure the account specifies would fail to host experience, because the implementation is silicon rather than biology. The fading qualia intuition is its clearest instrument, and the pre-Wright conviction that flight required feathers is its closest historical analog. The intuition tracks the only known instance of consciousness, which is why it feels like evidence, but intuitions drawn from a single available case have historically tracked the implementation rather than the phenomenon.
Essays using this term
1 essay- The Substrate Demand
Anil Seth refuses the demand for a special explanation of consciousness at the level of structure, then lets it back in at the level of substrate. On fading qualia, the biology bet, and why the case against silicon consciousness has the same shape as the case against mechanical flight.
