Erik Hoel: consciousness is a great mystery, but its definition isn't — the 'undefinability' myth debunked
erikphoel · x · 2026-10-22
Neuroscientist Erik Hoel pushes back on the popular claim that consciousness can't be defined, arguing the objection is linguistically baseless.
- "Consciousness is a great mystery. Its definition isn't" — most experts who actually research it share a substantive definition
- The "argument from undefinability" is often deployed to dismiss the field; in practice, conflating consciousness with introspection, purpose, pleasure/pain, or intelligence is most common among people with CS, math, or tech backgrounds
- He cites a LessWrong survey of academics in cog-sci/AI/ML showing exactly these conflations, especially prominent among AI researchers today
- The post was resurfaced by chrisfetsch in an ongoing debate about AI consciousness
A foundational piece for AGI-era machine consciousness debates: the premise of the argument may itself be wrong.
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