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Updated: Sep 18, 2026

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness
Published on: August 1, 2017
Consciousness needs a subject
Kevin J Mitchell1, Carolyn Dicey Jennings2
1Institutes of Genetics and Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland kevin.mitchell@tcd.ie https://www.kjmitchell.com.
Abstract:
To be conscious is to be an experiencing subject. This can be defined not in terms of computational functions or particular biological substrates, but rather in terms of relations: between subject and world, between parts of the subject, and through time. These kinds of relations - comprising a conscious mode of being - may well be implementable in artificial systems.
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