mtbennett

10 points.

Substrate dependence / independence is discussed in chapter 13. The short answer is no, I do not assume substrate dependence because substrate just doesn't need to be addressed given the premises. It becomes irrelevant when we start from such basic premises. Instead, the biggest unanswered question is something I call "The Temporal Gap". It would seem to be the closest thing in spirit if not letter to the question of substrate dependence / independence.

Starting with consciousness as the fundamental is a cool idea, but others have done that in depth (e.g. IIT).

My approach is to say "I don't know what is fundamental" and identify what must be fundamental to all possible worlds regardless whether it is consciousness or something else. The answer then is that difference or change is fundamental. That is as true if we start with consciousness as it is if we start with physics.

I understand the skepticism. My humor is not for everyone and I have been rather self indulgent with the presentation of my work. However the research is genuine; the thesis is basically the aggregate of my previous papers, which have all been through peer review in various conferences and journals, and the experimental code and results are all available on GitHub.

We like to have fun here.

Fair points. However I don't put humans in a special category, so much as I say I know at least humans are this conscious. I then cite some research on Australian magpies which suggests they may be so conscious too.

It is not different from theory of mind; theory of mind is an important part of it, just not the whole picture. I argue access consciousness and theory of mind go hand in hand, which is a significant departure from how access consciousness is traditionally understood.

I had the same question.

Lol, I have been accused of many things but a lack of novelty certainly hasn't been one of them.

I address the second in the final chapter. There are necessary preconditions for consciousness, but it is unclear whether they alone are sufficient (hence the uncertainty around what I dub the temporal gap - maybe someone else can figure this out).