I know that I shouldn’t get hung up on terminology: these things are just arbitrary labels, aren’t they? Well, no – we can’t simply ignore the everyday meanings of words. So when Koch (and Block too) went on about the NCC, or neural correlate of consciousness during the symposium, it felt wrong. It was as if a biologist had been talking about the CCO, the chemical correlate of organisms, instead of cells. Yes, cells are made of chemicals, but no biologist would indulge in such a crude reductionism.
Talking about the neural correlates of consciousness sounds respectfully non-committal: after all, it just talks about correlation, nothing causal. But to my ears, there is certainly a strong implication of stable correlation, rather than (e.g.) a pattern that is stable at some higher level but is not bound to any specific neural elements. If such patterns exist, the minimal NCC would presumably encompass the entire collection of neurons which could potentially support them; this doesn’t sound like what Koch is getting at.
In general, I would prefer to adopt a more flexible systems-oriented language for the working of the mind, and explore the constraints and preferences that flow from the properties of the neural substratum. It is easier to capture the relationships between concepts at several levels of [evolutionary] design than it is to tease apart a single idea into multiple elements at different levels.
(In computing we call this refactoring: it’s hard enough at a single level, extraordinarily difficult when multiple levels are involved.)