The Brouhaha Over Consciousness and “Pseudoscience”
This symbol stands for phi, which represents the interconnectedness of the components of a system. The more phi something has, the more conscious it is. Or so says integrated information theory, which some mind-body researchers like and others are calling “pseudoscience.” I found this image on Wikipedia.
September 23, 2023. You’ve been playing low-stakes poker with a bunch of buddies for years. You might peek at someone’s cards now and then, but only as a joke. Suddenly your buddy accuses you of cheating. Shocked, you exclaim, What the hell! It’s just a game! Chill out!
Something like that just happened in the field of consciousness studies, as mind-brain researchers denounced integrated information theory as “pseudoscience.” The incident--covered here, here and here--is worth dwelling on, because pseudoscience extends far beyond consciousness research.
Integrated information theory, or IIT, which I’ve tracked for years, holds that consciousness arises in any system whose components exchange information in a certain mathematically defined way. Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi invented the theory two decades or so ago, and it has been championed by neuroscientist Christof Koch and treated respectfully by philosopher David Chalmers, among others.
Tononi, Koch and Chalmers are bigshots. So are neuroscientists Joseph LeDoux and Bernard Baars and philosophers Patricia Churchland and Daniel Dennett. They are among the 120-plus signers of an online letter that calls information theory “pseudoscience.”
Some folks in the pro- and anti-IIT camps have known each other for decades. They often knock each other’s views, but usually in a genial fashion. Defenders of integrated information theory seem stunned by the “pseudoscience” charge. Some have responded by exclaiming, in effect, What the hell! Chill out! Chalmers compared the letter to “dropping a nuclear bomb over a regional dispute.”
The letter-signers were apparently irked by media coverage of a big consciousness shindig at NYU last June, which featured lots of talks on integrated information theory. The New York Times, Nature and other publications described IIT as a “leading” or “dominant” theory that has been at least partially corroborated by experiments. The letter-writers dispute that claim, asserting that the theory “has not been meaningfully tested.”
The letter, oddly, does not define “pseudoscience.” Here’s my definition, based on one proposed by philosopher Karl Popper. A theory is pseudoscientific if it isn’t formulated rigorously enough to be tested and potentially falsified, or proven wrong. A theory can resist falsification if it is so vaguely defined, or has so many variables, that it can “predict” any observation. Classic examples are astrology, Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism.
A theory is also pseudoscientific, I’d add, if it postulates stuff beyond the scope of observation. Integrated information theory falls into this category. It is a general theory of consciousness, which attempts to explain how consciousness arises not just in the brains of humans but in any physical system, which needn’t even be biological.
The problem is that we have no way of knowing for sure whether any particular thing is conscious. We can examine the behavior of a bumblebee, smartphone or stockbroker, but we can’t be sure that it has feelings, an inner life. This is what I call the solipsism problem.
The solipsism problem applies to all general theories of consciousness, such as one proposed by physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. They assert that consciousness arises from the collapse of quantum wave functions in the brain and elsewhere and hence that “consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe.”
If integrated information theory is pseudoscience, so are the Penrose-Hameroff theory and other general theories of consciousness. So are claims that ChatGPT and other clever artificial intelligences might be conscious.
Physics, supposedly the most rigorous of disciplines, is riddled with pseudoscience. So-called quantum theories of gravity, such as string and loop-space theory, “predict” things happening at scales far too small to be probed by any conceivable experiment. String theory also comes in many different versions, each of which makes different predictions.
A popular theory of cosmic creation, inflation, suffers from a similar problem. Inflation, which says the universe underwent an exponential growth spurt shortly after its birth, is so malleable that it can account for almost any astronomical observation. (The big bang theory, in contrast, has made predictions borne out by multiple observations, as I point out in my previous column.)
Then there are multiverse theories, which are corollaries of string theory, inflation and plain old quantum mechanics. Multiverse theories postulate the existence of other universes in addition to our own. There’s no way to detect these other universes, hence all multiverse theories are pseudoscientific.
So is the popular claim, advanced by philosopher Nick Bostrom and taken seriously by physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and David Chalmers, among others, that our reality is a simulation being run on a computer, as in The Matrix. I have called the simulation hypothesis “a stoner experiment pretending to be science.”
Quantum mechanics, confirmed in countless experiments, is the antithesis of pseudoscience. But interpretations of quantum theory, which attempt to explain what it says about reality, are pseudoscience. All interpretations “predict” established experimental results, so the interpretations cannot be falsified or distinguished from each other. (I exclude theories, such as GRW, whose predictions diverge from conventional quantum theory and hence can in principle be falsified.)
Back to consciousness studies. Here's the question. Is this field a serious scientific endeavor? Or is it really just a low-stakes intellectual game? You might have reached the latter conclusion if you attended the NYU conference last June, as I did. One evening featured performances by a science-y rap artist and rock band as well as a jokey “debate” between the old frenemies David Chalmers and Christof Koch.
I wrote about the event in a light-hearted, ironic way, because I enjoyed it, and I like Koch and Chalmers. I didn’t accuse anyone of peddling “pseudoscience,” because I thought that would be in bad taste. But reading the “pseudoscience” letter chastened me. Integrated information theory implies that consciousness is ubiquitous. If the theory is widely accepted, the letter points out, it could influence our treatment of smart machines, comatose patients, research animals, stem cells and fetuses.
After all, the more sentience we impute to something--like a week-old human embryo—the more rights we should grant it. Yes, we’re talking about abortion. With “so much at stake,” the letter-signers state, “it is essential to provide a fair and truthful perspective on the status of [integrated information] theory. As researchers, we have a duty to protect the public from scientific misinformation.” Science journalists have the same duty.
Here's another concern: We desperately need science to help us cope with pandemics, climate change, cancer, mental illness and other problems. When prominent intellectuals tout flimsy theories, they undermine science’s credibility in ways that hurt us all. If science is a game, right now the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Further Reading:
I delve into integrated information theory, and Christof Koch’s affinity for it, in Chapter One of my book Mind-Body Problems. Look for Koch’s suggestion that dark energy might be conscious.
For a full list of my free, un-paywalled columns, see https://johnhorgan.org/about-cross-check.