In their recent article in TiCS [1], Cohen and Dennett propose that consciousness is inextricably tied to one's ability to report about the contents of experience (an 'access-only' theory). They contrast this with theories that distinguish mechanisms that create the contents of experience from mechanisms that allow one to report about this content ('phenomenal-access' theories). These they claim to be unfalsifiable, and therefore beyond the realm of science. We argue below that this assertion is wrong and based on a misguided belief about what a theory of consciousness needs to explain.
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