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Join us for a Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Satellite Symposium Event, Revolution in Neuroscience: Alternative Models of Consciousness.

Come hear neuroscientists Christof Koch, PhD (Allen Institute of Brain Sciences), Donald Hoffman, PhD (UC Irvine), Julia Mossbrige, PhD (U. San Diego), and Jonathan Schooler, PhD (UC Santa Barbara) explore theories of consciousness, including the idea that consciousness is fundamental.

Saturday, 11/11/23, 6:30pm - 10:00pm, Renaissance Washington DC Hotel (Rm 8 + 9)

This is a public event, anyone can attend!

Last year’s was such a huge success that we couldn’t wait to do it again. This event is not financially supported by SfN. Please consider an individual donation to fund this important symposium.

For corporate sponsorship opportunities, please contact us at info@exploringconsciousness.org.

Something happened last week in the world of consciousness neuroscience. Some would call it serious. Some would call it outrageous. Others might call it amusing (I think I’m in this camp).

In a rare public display of the tension between competing theories in science, last week one hundred scientists wrote a letter labeling one of the main theories of the neuroscience of consciousness ‘pseudoscience,’ dropping a proverbial bomb onto the entire field.

Well, let me back up. It does more than that. But, since others have already written rebuttals, defended the intellectual integrity of the attacked theory, and called out some of the dangers of the letter itself (clearly overlooked by the letter writers; e.g. see here), I can focus on the parts I consider the most problematic.

The topic of the letter is a certain theory of consciousness: Integrated Information Theory (IIT), which can be considered panpsychist, or the idea that consciousness is extremely widespread in nature, that mind is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. The scientists’ gripes include:

(1) IIT isn’t actually a “leading” theory in the field as the media reported when they published about this competition between theories (um, except that it is, see here). This is just petty.

(2) IIT got too much media attention, and the problem with this is that…

(3) IIT has “idiosyncratic claims” (I thought science was supposed to be objective?) such as suggesting “…organoids created out of petri-dishes, as well as human fetuses at very early stages of development, are likely conscious …even plants may be conscious.” According to the letter, these claims are “untestable, unscientific, ‘magicalist’, or a ‘departure from science as we know it.’” Therefore, IIT should be classified as a pseudoscience (!!!).

(4) If the public believes in IIT, this would have huge policy implications (e.g. coma patients, abortion, etc), so we need to protect the public from “scientific misinformation.”  

Before I tackle any of them, I’m going to step into a moment of pettiness myself. Remember the “JayWalking” segment on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show? It was a segment where Jay Leno would pose trivia questions to members of the public.

Imagine he did this with “neuroscience theories of consciousness.” Guaranteed 0 out of 100 members of the general public can name even one theory of consciousness, including IIT – and this is not a diss on the general public, but rather on the scientists who used this as an argument to censor a scientific theory with this letter. In other words: guys, don’t worry – no one knows any of the consciousness theories, much less prefers IIT. I promise. The world where the general public scrambles to keep up with scientific news instead of the Kardashians isn’t here yet.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, we can move on.

Let me start with the most interesting/savage part of the letter: calling IIT a ‘pseudoscience’ (discussion of this word deserves its own post). Eric Hoel’s rebuttal addresses this well:

So if a scientific theory of consciousness has counterintuive predictions it is necessarily pseudoscience? Cerebral organoids are bits of cloned human brains grown in petri dishes—saying they might have consciousness is not wild at all! In fact, regulatory agencies have strongly considered the possibility. The idea that plants might be conscious is not popular, but it is definitely not untestable, unscientific, or “magicalist” (not a word). The idea that early-stage fetuses might have some sort of stream of consciousness is imaginable to, well, a lot of people frankly, and thus all the political debate.

So, what’s the deal? Clearly, the letter writers don’t like how IIT bends towards panpsychism, probably (my conjecture) because it suggests that something other than matter – in this case mind/consciousness – could be a fundamental component of reality. And instead of taking a more reasonable approach, like maybe arguing that all neuroscience theories of consciousness should stem from a similar philosophical base such as scientific materialism/physicalism, they went the petty, infantile route and labeled the theory ‘pseudoscience.’ So, implicitly, they are basically saying that any philosophy other than scientific materialism/physicalism is ‘pseudoscience.’ Well, damn, we’re going to need a conversation about that which includes philosophers.

It is common to hear scientists draw boundaries around what is under the purview of science and what should be thrown into the philosophy pile – a pile that scientists prefer not to acknowledge. Such ‘unscientific’ points of view should be restricted to philosophy, religion, and spirituality – or, the humanities more broadly.

But, why?

It didn’t used to be this way. Science and philosophy used to dance together to unravel the mysteries of the natural world under the banner of natural philosophy. Now, science is done under the invisible umbrella of scientific materialism/physicalism – or the philosophy/worldview that the world is only comprised of physical matter. These invisible boundaries that we’ve drawn between fields cause clashes like the current one.

What if, instead of assuming a scientific materialist/physicalist framework or excluding philosophy altogether, scientific publications even devoted a section to exploring multiple interpretations of a study’s findings, based on multiple different philosophies?  The truth is that no one – seriously, no one! – knows the precise nature of reality. Philosophers, physicists, and even cosmologists are still working it out. In the least (and I talk about this in my book, which btw, has its 1-year anniversary this month!), scientists should educate themselves (or our programs should) on various philosophies to put scientific materialism/physicalism in its proper historic context.

Because what is ‘idiosyncratic’ in one worldview is normal in another.

Before this controversy landed last week, my collaborator (Allison Paradise) and I had already planned a satellite event (“Revolution in Neuroscience: Alternative Models of Consciousness”) for the 2023 Society for Neuroscience conference as a follow-up to our popular “Neuroscience & Spirituality Social” from last year because ‘consciousness’ comes up a lot at the intersection of science and spirituality. This is because a lot of the unexplained data that must be ignored by mainstream science in order to make the physicalist paradigm work is better explained by theories that suggest consciousness is not restricted to the brain, and might be a fundamental part of the universe instead (see Galileo Commission). But who knows!  All theories are welcome, so if you’re in DC or at SfN, come see Christof Koch, PhD, Donald Hoffman, PhD, Julia Mossbridge, PhD, and Jonathan Schooler, PhD muse on consciousness. (The event is at the annual conference in Washington, D.C. 11/11/23 @ 6:30pm – 10:00pm, see the link for more details. Open to the public, so join us!)

In any case, why does all this have to be so serious? Isn’t science supposed to be open and creative? It’s important that young scientists feel free to think broadly, and not fear having their theories be labeled ‘pseudoscience.’ Hopefully a generation of innovative thinkers wasn’t just snuffed out by that letter.

One other thing I want to briefly pick on from the letter is this sentence:

“As researchers, we have a duty to protect the public from scientific misinformation.”

To this, I must ask: do we? It’s really, truly worth asking: is this true? And what would this look like, in practicality? When I come across “misinformation” in the media, is it my duty to contact the media outlet and request a correction? Or should I just write a (public) letter to the scientist and chastise them for talking to the media at all? This is impractical– we would basically spend all our time doing this. Also: scientific information is a moving target. What’s misinformation today can be the gold standard tomorrow. In my opinion, this is a particularly pernicious (and lazy) way to frame the issue.

You know what I think is our ‘duty’ as scientists (besides trying to be more open-minded and curious)? I would argue that scientists – especially ones studying consciousness – should actively bridge science and philosophy as we ask these big questions, and not implicitly assume one or another to be true. We’ve built walls between these two fields using the words ‘pseudoscience’ and ‘scientific misinformation.’ When a lay person hears these words, they actually hear ‘untrue.’ And that is misleading because (it’s worth repeating again) no one knows which worldview/philosophy is the correct one. None are true or untrue. It’s unknown.

Not many people pay attention to philosophy, but many pay attention to neuroscience (as I am often annoyingly reminded when I listen to non-neuro podcasts and hear brain regions casually dropped). So, neuroscientists are in a unique position to obliterate the walls. Stop throwing these unhelpful words around with incendiary letters and pick up your sledgehammers (aka a philosophy book).

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