Fundamentally, I don't think we should accept purely-representational theories. For instance, related to recent discussion I had with a friend, I don't think we should have any theories of consciousness where you can be convinced a person is conscious, but then a robot takes off its human costume and then you now think it isn't conscious. This does not mean that we can't accept that people can be fooled, they certainly can be. It's to say that all distinctions, even if they are hypothesized representationally, must lead to some kind of behavioral test. If they do not, they are essentially aesthetic theories.
If you are inspired by this idea, you can reach out to the authors for collaboration or cite it:
@misc{holtzman-the-no-costume-2026,
author = {Holtzman, Ari},
title = {The "No Costume Theories" Rule},
year = {2026},
url = {https://hypogenic.ai/ideahub/idea/fZlKRA2SD4AssFtYsOSu}
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