How Does Consciousness Work? Dueling Scientists Test Two Big Theories But Find No Winner

“Theories are like toothbrushes,” It’s Sometimes Said. “Everybody Has Their Own and Nobody Wants to Use Anybody Else’s.”

It’s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness – the question of how we have the subjective experience of anything at all—it not too far from the trath.

In 2022, British Neuroscientist Anil Seth and I Published the review Listing 22 Theories Based on the Biology of the Brain. In 2024, Operating with a Less Restrictive Scope, US Public Intellectual Robert Kuhn counted More than 200.

It’s Against this background that Nature has just published the results of an “adverse collaboration” from a group called the Consortium cogitate Focused on Two Prominent Theories: Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory.

Two Big Theories Go Head to Head

With so many ideas floating around and inherently Elusive Subject Matter, Testing Theories has Been in Easy Task. INDEED, debate Between proponents of different theories has Been Vigorous and, at Times, Acrimonious.

At the particularly low point in 2023, after the initial annonance of the results cogitate has formally published today, many experts signed an Open Letter Arguing that integrated information theory was not only false but even’t that qualify as scientific.

Neuronal Workspace Theory and Integrated Information theory are Two of the “Big Four” Theories That Dominate Current Discussions of Consciousness. (The Others Are Higher-Rader Representation Theories, and the Local Re-Entry –or Recurency-Theory.)

Theories Are Hard to Summarize, Butt Both Tie Conscousness to the Activity of Neurons in Different Parts of the Brain.

Advocates of these Two Theories, Together with a Number of UnaLigned Theorists, Generated Predictions from the Two Theities About the Kinds of Brain Activity One Wood Expect to Be Associated with Consciousness.

Predictions and results

The group added that integrated information theory predicts conscious perception should be associated with sustained synchronization and activity of signals in a part of the brain called the later court.

On the other hand, They Said Global Neuronal Workspace Theory Predicts That a Process of “Neural Ignition” Should Accompany Both the Start and End of a Stimulus. What’s More, It Should Be Possible to Decode What a Person Is Conscous of From Activity In Their Prefrontal Cortex.

These Hypotheses (Among Others) WERE TESTED by “Theory-Neutral” Teams from Across the Globe.

The Results Were Not Decisive. Some Were in Line with predictions of one or other of the theories, buther results generated challenges.

Example, The Team Failed to Find Sustained Synchronization with the later Cortex of the Kind Predicted by Integrated Information Theory. At the Same Time, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory is Challenged by the FACT THAT NOT ALL CONTENTS OF CONSCIOUSSNESS COULD BE DECODED FROM THE PREFRONTAL CORTEX, AND BY THE FAILURE TO FIND NEURAL IGNITION WHEN THE STIMULUS WAS FIRST PRESENTED.

WIN FOR SCIENCE

But Although this Study Wasn´t a Win for Either Theory, It Was a Decisive Win For Science. IT Representals A Clear Advance in How the Consciousness Community Approaches Theory-Testing.

It’s not uncommon for researchers to tend to look for evidence in favor of their own theory. But the serousness of this problem in consciousness science only gas cman in 2022, with the publication of an Important Paper by a number of Researchers involved in the cogitate consortium. The Paper Showed it was Possible to Predict Which Theory of Consciousness A Private Study Supported Based Purely on ITS Design.

The Vast Majority of Attempts to “Test” Theories of Consciousness Have Been Conducted by Advocates of Those Very Theories. AS A Result, Many Studies have focus on Confirming Theories.

In Changing Minds

The First Achievement of this collaboration was Getting Rival Theorists to Adjust on Testable Predictions of the Two Theories. This was specially Challenging as Both the Global Workspace and Integrated Information Theories Are Framed in Very Abstract Terms.

Another Achievement was to run the same experiments in different labs – the particularly diffult challenge given thhose labs were not committed to the theories in question.

In the Early Stages of the Project, The Team Took Advice from Israeli-US Psychologist Daniel KahnemanThe Architect of the Idea of ​​Adversarial Collaborations for Research.

Kahneman Said Not to Expect the Results to Change Anyone’s Mind, Even If they decisively Favored One Theory Over Another. Scientists are Committed to Their Thes, He Pointed Out, and Will Cling to Them Even in the Face of Counter-Evidence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw5smggo7DW

The Usefulness of IrRationality

This kind of irrational stubbordonness may seem like a problem, but it doesn’t have to be. With the right systems in place, it can even help to advance science.

Given We Don’t know Which Theoretical Approach to Consciousness is Most Likely to Be Right, The Scientific Community Out to Tackle Conscousness from a variety of perspectives.

The Research Community Needs Ways to Correct Itself. However, It’s Useful for Individual Scientists to Stick to Their Theoretical Guns, and Continue to Work Within a Private Theory Even in the Face of Probleatic Findings.

A hard nut to crack

Consciousness is a hard nut to crack. We Don’t Yet Know When Will Yield to the Current Methods of Consciousness Science, or WHETHER IT REVOLUTION IN OUR CONCEPTS OR METHODS (Orhaps Both).

What is Clear, However, Is That if We’re Going to Untangle The Problem of Subjective Experience, The Scientific Community Will Need to Embrace This Model of Collaborative Research.

This article is republished from The Conversation Under Creative Commons License. Read the Original Article.