Civil war has broken out in the field of consciousness research. More than 100 consciousness researchers have signed a letter accusing one of the most popular scientific theories of consciousness – the integrated information theory – of being pseudoscience.
Immediately, several other figures in the field responded by critiquing the letter as poorly reasoned and disproportionate.
Both sides are motivated by a concern for the long-term health and respectability of consciousness science. One side (including the letter signatories) is worrying that the association of consciousness science with what they perceive to be a pseudoscientific theory will undermine the credibility of the field.
The other side is pressing that what they perceive as unsupported charges of pseudoscience will ultimately result in the whole science of consciousness being perceived as pseudoscience.
I was being specific to this claim of pseudoscience; which seems to be based on the fact that we don’t have any other verifiable facts and instead it attacks the theory as pseudoscience despite there being no other prevailing proof of harms like biases, claims and lacking refutation.
Yeah I mean I think they’re just taking issue with the breadth or scope of what they’re measuring and worried that by calling things conscious which people don’t typically think of as conscious, they’d make people doubt the scientific rigor of the field. I don’t think it justifies calling it pseudoscience so much as the early stages of hypothesis or looking to expand the colloquial or vernacular definitions of consciousness. To anyone who’s worried about that, I’d suggest that they talk with modern physicists because everything we know has gotten extremely weird in the last few decades as we’ve struggling with a lot of weird conundrums about what reality even is.