Consciousness theory slammed as ‘pseudoscience’ — sparking uproar

Researchers publicly call out theory that they say is not well supported by science, but that gets undue attention.

A letter, signed by 124 scholars and posted online last week1, has caused an uproar in the consciousness research community. It claims that a prominent theory describing what makes someone or something conscious — called the integrated information theory (IIT) — should be labelled “pseudoscience”. Since its publication on 15 September in the preprint repository PsyArXiv, the letter has some researchers arguing over the label and others worried it will increase polarization in a field that has grappled with issues of credibility in the past.

geosoco, (edited )

Here's the psyarxiv link - It's short and worth reading.

It sounds like some of the general issue here is around the language of being "dominant" and "well-established" and that it might be receiving undue attention without more thorough research supporting it. There's also some concern about the testability of some of the claims the theory proposes.

Part of the letter's issue seems to be about sharing results prior to peer-review.

The actual letter doesn't seem to claim it should be labeled pseudoscience, but just mentions that some others have labeled it that:

"IIT is an ambitious theory, but some scientists have labeled it as pseudoscience"

(edit: language clarifications)

MossyFeathers,

I’m trying to figure out what IIT claims that is making people upset. Normally when I think of pseudoscience, it involves metaphysics or magic or psychics or whatever. It sounds like that’s not what they’re referring to in this context, but I can’t figure out what about the theory has people up in arms because I’m struggling to understand what the theory is saying about consciousness. It’s all going over my head. Could someone eli5 for me?

EdenRester,
EdenRester avatar

You can read the session "Reception" of the related Wikipedia page : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory

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