Why Leibniz Couldn't Find the Mind Inside the Mill (Joscha Bach)
Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist and the founder of the California Institute for Machine Consciousness.
TIMESTAMPS:
Cold open: Could consciousness be a learning algorithm?
Introduction
What makes an agent?
Why consciousness needs explaining
Sponsor: Parallel
Leibniz's mill and causal patterns
Perceiving that you perceive
Two hypotheses, two ways to fail
Do minds converge?
Does consciousness converge too?
When language models reshape our thinking
Can simulated water make you wet?
Computation as construction
Error-correcting patterns and the Ruliad
Conscious, or simulating consciousness?
What would count as evidence?
The research programme
REFERENCES:
Joscha Bach, The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis (California Institute for Machine Consciousness)
Kumar, Clune, Lehman & Stanley, "Questioning Representational Optimism in Deep Learning: The Fractured Entangled Representation Hypothesis"
Giulio Tononi, integrated information theory
Fleming et al. 2023, "The Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness as Pseudoscience"
John Searle 1980, "Minds, brains, and programs", Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Kurt Gödel 1931, "On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems"
Alan Turing 1950, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"
Whitehead & Russell, Principia Mathematica
Paul Thagard 2022, "Energy requirements undermine substrate independence and mind-body functionalism"
Richard Sutton 2019, "The Bitter Lesson"
Michael Graziano, attention schema theory
Bernard Baars and Stanislas Dehaene, global workspace theory
Michael Levin 2022, "Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere", Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience
Chris Olah et al. 2020, "Zoom In: An Introduction to Circuits", Distill
Adele Lopez 2025, "The Rise of Parasitic AI", LessWrong
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