George Deane
Université de Montréal
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
George Deane is a philosopher of cognitive science at the Université de Montréal. His research concerns predictive processing, the framework that treats perception as controlled hallucination constrained by sensory error, and what that framework implies about experience and its distribution across systems. He is a co-author of the Butlin and Long indicator-properties report, the site’s nineteen researcher checklist, where he drafted the analysis of the perceptual-inference indicator, the property covering generative, top-down, and noisy perception modules that higher-order and predictive theories associate with consciousness.
The report’s methodological stance, that AI consciousness should be assessed theory by theory against computational indicators rather than by behavioral vibes, is the position Deane’s broader work defends. His published research on perceptual inference and the epistemic standing of predictive-processing models supplies the conceptual hygiene that assessment programs need when they borrow frameworks from neuroscience and apply them to silicon.
Deane’s profile anchors the predictive-processing wing of the indicator collaboration on this site, alongside the coverage of Anil Seth’s version of the framework and of the same report’s other authors.
Known for. Philosophy of predictive processing, theory-heavy assessment of AI consciousness, perceptual inference and experience, indicator properties collaboration
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Patrick ButlinEleos AI Research. Previously the Global Priorities Institute, OxfordLead author of the indicator properties framework for assessing consciousness in AI systems
- Robert LongEleos AI Research (Executive Director)AI welfare research, the 14 indicator framework for AI consciousness assessment, the Eleos Conference on AI Consciousness and Welfare
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David ChalmersNew York University. Co-director, Center for Mind, Brain and ConsciousnessNaming the hard problem of consciousness, and the philosophical zombie argument
- Karl FristonUniversity College London. Chief Scientist, VERSES AIThe free energy principle and active inference
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Jonathan BirchLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe Edge of Sentience, the LSE Criteria, and the run-ahead principle
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Yoshua BengioMila, Université de MontréalThe Consciousness Prior, deep learning foundations, Turing Award, global workspace-inspired representation learning
George Deane is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.