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CLAIM-460: In the completely locked-in state, evidence of lucid judgement has to cross a channel the patient drives, which is action in active inference's sense, so such cases can show the judgement–observation loop running down but never running with no action at all, and a null result cannot tell lost judgement from a lost channel

2 min read

Properties8
StatusActive
Version2
Rolethesis
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsconsciousness, neuroscience, epistemology
Lineevidence-for-experience
GroundsCASE-107 — Locked-in syndrome: consciousness preserved with anarthria and quadriplegia; in the classic form, vertical eye movement and blinking remain and carry communication, and in the completely locked-in state no motor channel remains
ComplementsCLAIM-339 — A judgement–observation loop cut off from action loses one route for evidence it did not select, and the free-energy principle's reason for minimizing surprise, that a persisting system must keep its states in bounds, needs action on the world, though a loop can confirm itself with action available too, CLAIM-341 — The loop that keeps a lucid agent's model in touch with what it models runs between judgement and observation: each judgement reshapes the observer whose later observations it then judges, and action on the world is not part of that loop, so active inference's action–perception cycle misplaces where the agent is active

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The claim

CASE-107: “CLIS is the test, and it is asymmetric. Evidence of lucidity in CLIS has to cross some channel, and a channel the patient drives is an action in active inference’s sense. Chaudhary et al.’s patient communicated only once neurofeedback restored a contingency between intention and outcome. So the case can show the loop running down (Kübler and Birbaumer’s prediction, CLAIM-339), but it cannot show judgement running with no action at all, which is CLAIM-341’s defeater (b) turned around.” And from the case’s reading of the fMRI study of unresponsive patients, where the same limit holds: “Negative results are uninterpretable. When a question got no signal, ‘Whether the patient fell asleep … or lost consciousness cannot be determined’.”

CLAIM-341 holds that the loop keeping a lucid agent’s model in touch with what it models runs between judgement and observation, without action on the world; its defeater (b) is lucid judgement shown to fail with every contingency removed, by evidence that restores none. This claim says the locked-in state, the case that looks made to decide it, cannot: whatever shows lucidity is itself a restored contingency, and whatever shows none is ambiguous between the judgement and the channel. It is the evidence-for-experience line’s standing point (QUESTION-048: “Every kind of evidence the record holds about experience reaches it through access”) applied to judgement rather than experience.

What it does not say

  • That CLAIM-341 is true, or false. Its defeater (b) stays as stated; this says the locked-in state cannot supply it either way.
  • That locked-in patients lack judgement. The point is about what evidence can show.
  • That no other case could. A case with a contingency the patient does not control, if one were validated, would escape the asymmetry.

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