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Can biology explain machine consciousness better than code?

Ulysse Klatzmann, Adrien Doerig

June 1, 2026

Biological Naturalism claims consciousness needs actual biological tissue, not just computational patterns. The authors distinguish two versions: one where biology intrinsically matters (untestable, because it divorces consciousness from behavior) and one where biology matters only for its information-processing abilities (testable, but then biology becomes just a guidebook, not a requirement). Both frameworks ultimately face the same problem—linking consciousness to how information gets processed.
Published as What biology can, and cannot, tell us about conscious AI arXiv:2606.02121
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