A Social Self-Model Theory of Consciousness
I recently started thinking about Eliezer Yudkowsky’s unusual view on consciousness. I won't try to explain it here (not least because I’m not entirely sure I fully understand it, or that I could do it justice), but it did make me develop a theory that’s somewhat related to his. I call it the Social Self-Model Theory or SSMT. I did some digging with several LLMs and couldn’t find this specific theory in the literature.
The argument itself is quite simple and can be summed up as follows: the very concept of “consciousness” only makes sense in the context of a theory of mind. Indeed, being conscious is just being a subject, as distinct from other subjects (either real or potential). Any attempt to define a perspective, a first-person view, necessarily entails this notion of privacy.
Without this fundamental distinction between private and shared mental states, it’s literally impossible to have a thought like “I’m conscious” and its corollaries like “I have this particular experience that you don’t have” or “there’s something it’s like to be me.” This leads us to conclude that regardless of what consciousness is (and it could be quite complicated, involving a shared global workspace, etc.), having a theory of mind is necessary.
That’s where people feel they’re being gaslit. “Yes,” they say, “you’ve explained how people conceive of consciousness, but not consciousness itself.” And that is where, so the theory goes, the fundamental confusion lies. There is no consciousness floating over and above our conception of consciousness. Whatever you claim consciousness is, if it’s not what you conceive, it’s just not consciousness. That is almost tautological. When you’re thinking “consciousness is more than that,” there is no reference; it’s a floating signifier.
An analogy would be embarrassment. It seems fairly straightforward that it’s not possible to be embarrassed without theory of mind. The very concept of embarrassment necessarily implies it. To say that embarrassment is “more than that” would be to say nothing at all. We cannot even conceive of embarrassment without theory of mind. If you take away the social dimension, then you’re talking about something else, perhaps discomfort. You’re changing the subject.
Note the implication: a being cannot have what we conceive of as consciousness or phenomenal states without a theory of mind; the thought itself is inconceivable. This implies that, for example, when we look at a dog that doesn’t have a theory of mind, we’re projecting onto it an inner witness or listener, which it definitely doesn’t have. Let me emphasize that: I’m not saying that nothing is happening in the dog’s brain, but that whatever is happening, it cannot be what we conceive of as consciousness or phenomenal states.