8 ms·

Integrated Information Theory labelled pseudoscience

43 points by joak 3y ago

isaacfrond 3y ago
The question is whether its rival GNW is so much better. IIT submits that consciousness arises from the integration of information within a system. A system is conscious if it possesses a certain level of integrated information, denoted by the symbol Φ (phi). GNW on the other hand claims that consciousness arises when information is broadcasted to a "global workspace" within the brain, making it available to a wide range of cognitive processes. Neither has direct evidentiary support and both can explain everything it sees. By that measure it's pseudoscience the lot of them. So...is this the most constructive way to go about it, or maybe there is another agenda at play here?
- iammjm 3y ago
  A rival theory A being wrong doesn't make theory B any more right, their truth values have to be assessed independently
fooker 3y ago
It seems like pseudoscience the same way as string theory is pseudoscience. Model things we can't define with hifi math and produce unfalsifiable predictions.
loandbehold 3y ago
What's the evidence that consciousness is a real thing and not an illusion?
- maxbond 3y ago
  If we're talking about "everything that a human or non-human experiences, including what they feel, see and hear," then I'm not sure it's meaningful to distinguish whether it's "real" or "an illusion". You might put forward the theory we're all brains in jars (or the more modern formulation, 'the universe is a simulation'), but the experiences would still be occuring and consciousness would still be a phenomena. See also, Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.
- red75prime 3y ago
  What is illusory exactly? Is it the brain misrepresenting its own workings? But those misrepresentations are encoded in the brain in the same way as everything else and they do have causal influence on the brain processes. So, those "illusions" are as real as representations of the outside world.
- Legend2440 3y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum You know you are conscious because if you weren't, there wouldn't be a "you" to think about consciousness.
  - Joker_vD 3y ago
    Which is a stance that Buddhism generally takes. There are thoughts, and feelings, but they exist on its own and (sometimes) build up an "ego" which is a fleeting, unstable thing, without its own essence. Cogiationes sunt is an empiric fact. But cogitationes sunt ergo res cogitans est is not.
    - red75prime 3y ago
      It feels a bit like consulting ancient Greek atomists on the nature of covalent bonds. They thought much about the subject sure, but instruments they had were lacking (not that they thought they need any instruments).
  - alecst 3y ago
    Is there a “me”? I’m unconvinced by “cogito, ergo sum.” Has always felt a bit circular to me.
- hrnnnnnn 3y ago
  The fact that you are reading this text and it feels like something to be doing that.
- alexanderchr 3y ago
  What would even be the difference between it being a “real thing” and an illusion?
- edgyquant 3y ago
  It’s literally the only thing any of us know for sure is real
- antonvs 3y ago
  Ok, how would you write a computer program or train a neural network to experience that illusion? When a program executes, it follows a strictly "mechanical" procedure. There doesn't seem to be much room for consciousness or the "experiencing" of illusions. How is it that our brains are capable of experiencing the "illusion" of consciousness?
- mistermann 3y ago
  To answer that, first you may have to solve a tricky semiotics problem. And good luck getting consensus agreement ("the" "reality", not "pseudoscience", "nonsense", or various other persuasive (aka "real") memes) even on that step.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
You can always call any theory about consciousness "pseudoscience" because consciousness is subjective individual experience and the scientific method requires shared consensus which it calls "objective". By definition if you delve into consciousness you're doomed to be called a scammer sooner or later. And any experiments that could prove or disprove a theory of consciousness would be labeled unethical as it'd require messing with the brain of an intelligent being which can communicate back their experience (i.e. humans). For this reason I'd say keep all theories at an arm's distance and keep exploring the space. Any confirmation or dismissal of a theory of consciousness is unwarranted jump to conclusions. Why does a moving electric charge cause magnetism? Why does moving integrated information cause consciousness? We have no clue and yet it's a fact. We're only at the start of this journey and the best we can do is ensure we travel the path long enough to learn more "why-s" before we wipe ourselves out.
tbalsam 3y ago
This seems more political than scientific, despite originating from scientists. I came to similar beliefs from some very personal experiences outside of the field, and it's just that -- a belief. Trying to turn something that's not really easily provable or not into a labeled 'pseudoscience' or 'not pseudoscience' kind of thing seems to just be asking for grief. It sort of reminds me of the hullabaloo around a lot of things way back when historically, where the general opinion ended up being horridly wrong. It seems to me like one of the unifying threads was how politically motivated and communicated the outcry was. Again, just an opinion on my part. I can't say what the nature for reality is or isn't. I do find appreciation in an idea, as another post here alluded to, of consciousness being an illusion of experience. An analogy that I think of is how a rope gets tied up in a knot. The knot is information, it adds information, it does not change the rope. But also my beliefs do come from a belief in a more unified metaphysical 'thing' (as it were, to really simplify my belief into a silly analogy) that makes us all up, so a lot of the ideas for me come as our own self concepts being like these temporary hurricanes or bits of self-sustaining 'knots' of information that live for a time, and then pass on (with or without the body experiencing them, as a part of this greater 'thing'). Again, these are just a sort of partial translation of what I believe. Apologies if I explained it poorly. I think spiritual things are hard to study scientifically, and I feel that duality is alright. As others have noted here, you could call many theories "pseudoscience" by the very same logic as the above, as best as I understand it. :'(((( Unless there's a clear and present harm I don't see much reason in political pressure to suppress the idea. Perhaps I'm missing something here, unfortunately. I don't think I know the whole story yet, there has to be a cohesive explanation for how this (potential) rift has formed. :'))))
- iammjm 3y ago
  Except that testability is one of the core principles of science. If there isn't a way to prove/disprove what you are claiming then we can assert all sorts of things and call it science, at which point science loses all it's credibility
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
Legend2440 3y ago
I mean sure, but so are all the other theories of consciousness. Nobody has any way to test anything about internal experience.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  We just need a way to step outside of it to look at it untainted by it, damnit!
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Abstraction, decomposition, recursion, art, literature, psychedelics, the internet and memes, etc etc etc...humans have many tools at their disposal, though there's no requirement for tools to be used. And, sometimes even a catalyst can be enough to kick off naturally emergent complexity.
  - twic 3y ago
    We just need to smash two conscious minds into each other at near the speed of thought and see what comes out.
curiousgal 3y ago
> PsyArXiv I mean, if peer-reviewed psychology research is lacking behind in terms of statistical power and reproducibility, I can only imagine what flaws self-published research would have lol
hrnnnnnn 3y ago
Erik Hoel has an excellent reaction to this letter on his substack here https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories-of-consciousness https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories... "...as a fledging science consciousness research should worry about hanging out too much dirty laundry. If too much is hung out, then petty infighting can destroy an already fragile field. My greatest fear is that we get another “consciousness winter” wherein just talking about consciousness is considered pseudoscientific bunk. This was the state of affairs throughout most of the 20th century, and it set neuroscience back decades."
- mach1ne 3y ago
  >This was the state of affairs throughout most of the 20th century, and it set neuroscience back decades. This doesn't seem to be based on anything.
  - rusk 3y ago
    Behaviorism was the dominant psychological theory of the 20th century. Specifically it tried to downplay introspection, and personal experience and reduce behavior to learned "reflexes". This was debunked quite a while ago, 1970s or so, by Chomsky and others so it sounds absurd to us. but it was the dominant thinking in psychology (at least in the US) up until that point. The founder of 20th century behaviourism, Watson, specifically stated /"Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness"/ Watson's fundamentalist view lasted about as long as took for it to be tried out on a generation of people and then debunked. The undisputed champion of behaviorism was B.F. Skinner who wrote /"what is felt or introspectively observed is not some nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life but the observer's own body"/ Skinner was so successful in the experimental field that his school of thought pretty much ran away with things. Until it tried to take on language, and ran into Chomsky: https://crackerbarrel.weebly.com/ https://crackerbarrel.weebly.com/ It's kind of absurd really looking back, and I'm certain that although it dominated academic thought I doubt it was taken as seriously on the ground. But Academia is where a lot of the intellectual heavy lifting is done and so, yeah perhaps the more nuanced sides of psychology got neglected as "namby pamby" for a few decades but man was the behaviorist outlook brutally effective. In fact it still is the quickest and cheapest way (if not exactly personally satisfying) way to deal with personal psychological conditions.
dooglius 3y ago
Yep, Scott Aaronson had a pretty thorough takedown https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799
- gwd 3y ago
  > But let me end on a positive note. In my opinion, the fact that Integrated Information Theory is wrong—demonstrably wrong, for reasons that go to its core—puts it in something like the top 2% of all mathematical theories of consciousness ever proposed. Almost all competing theories of consciousness, it seems to me, have been so vague, fluffy, and malleable that they can only aspire to wrongness. That is indeed a big compliment!
  - iammjm 3y ago
    I'm not sure if being top 2% shit in a pile of shit is that great, i think it's more of a testament to the condition of this field
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      I mostly see this attitude towards consciousness from people that have a hard time grappling with their own.
- jsenn 3y ago
  This was also where my mind went, and it's cited in the open letter, but it's worth noting that the premise of his critique is that IIT is not pseudoscience. In fact, he praises the theory for being clear enough to be proven wrong!
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Can we just label Psychology in general as pseudoscience? Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  No, we can't. Most of psychology deals with the stimuli and responses, which are empirically observable; if it's done properly, that's science. Consciousness is problematic for science, because it's intrinsically private, and not observable. Each of us knows it's there, and can observe it; but we can't share our observations, and "science" depends on sharing observations. Perhaps we need a new definition of "science", that can accomodate the private experience that each of us has, but can't share.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    or perhaps we stop trying to label every system of thought we want to claim is legitimate as science and leave it only for one’s we are able to apply the scientific method to
- tgv 3y ago
  Psychology has many bad practices, and does have a certain amount of pseudo-science in its subdomains, but as a whole it isn't. The subject exists, and there are ways of (indirectly) measuring aspects of it. > Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication. That's partially due to bad practices, partially to the fact that psychology is harder than physics, and partially to perverse funding mechanisms.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > Can we just label Psychology in general as pseudoscience? You sure can, and it has the nice bonus of giving psychologists a phenomenon to study: human's drive to attach pseudo-objective labels to subjective phenomena. > Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication. "Pretty much" is a nice ambiguous term, might that be a consequence of the underlying methodology you used to determine that fact? What was your methodology anyways?
mellosouls 3y ago
This is the key sentence from the underlying letter: Given its panpsychist commitments, until the theory as a whole — not just some hand-picked auxiliary components trivially shared by many others or already known to be true — is empirically testable, we feel that the pseudoscience label should indeed apply It seems like a less confrontational label would be "philosophical". Dismissing by implication a venerable and respectable philosophical theory like panpsychism with such terms gives the impression of arrogant scientism which undermines any criticism that might be useful.
- tgv 3y ago
  Panpsychism is not a respectable philosophical theory, unless you want to give ether, a divine soul, idealism, and flat earth the same treatment. > Dismissing [it] undermines any criticism that might be useful. If that's your greatest worry...
  - antonvs 3y ago
    See https://philpapers.org/browse/panpsychism https://philpapers.org/browse/panpsychism for some recent philosophical papers on panpsychism. To quote Prof. Galen Strawson from one of those papers: > "Panpsychism is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality. It is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism."
    - tgv 3y ago
      That list of recent papers doesn't help your argument. The consciousness problem is not going to be solved by wishy-washy creative writing. Very few, if any, of those authors seem to have seen an experiment up close. The quote from Strawson continues to assume consciousness is present in every particle in the universe. It presupposes an extraordinary force of nature, unlike any of the others, to escape a relatively small problem, and it's not based on any observation. No form of consciousness has ever been observed outside animals with a (reasonably large) brain (and even those are rare). There's no explanation for that. If there is one, it will include something like "you need a lot of consciousness particles in a particular structure for it to emerge." Panpsychism is based on the rejection of the possibility that physical processes can explain consciousness. Which makes it all the weirder that they need an extra physical force to explain it.
bionhoward 3y ago
The big challenge here is false separation we create with language. I can say, “consciousness is neural activity” but others will say, what activity, how does activity become conscious, how do you prove those things are the same, all questions which imply a different causal model structure, one in which there are two entities (neural activity and conscious experience) instead of one. (!) the problem is one of cardinality of our model, not lack of evidence; you can’t fit a dualistic two-peg (the mind and the brain) into a monistic one-hole (mind=brain). This language pattern creates a concept of separation between neurons firing and the mind experiencing. If, in reality, neurons firing ARE mind experiences, then to prove they are identical means to disprove a false separation between two identical concepts. That’s a tricky problem (of language) to solve with tools (of neuroscience).
- antonvs 3y ago
  It's not just language, though. The real problem is determining the truth of statements such as this one of yours: > "If, in reality, neurons firing ARE mind experiences" Perhaps they are. But does that mean transistors firing are not mind experiences, and computers can never be conscious? If the statement is true, what's special about neurons that they generate mind experiences? That's the real question - "the hard problem" - that many people are attempting to answer.
  - wholinator2 3y ago
    In my opinion, the recent developments in AI have primarily show us just how much we _are_ just the firing. People argued about whether the computer could be thinking and whether it could be feeling as if those were 2 highly separated, stratified things. Like you said, it's the hard problem. But i think the connection will come not from thinking that computers are more special, but from thinking of ourselves as less special.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
This seems very much like some sour grapes. They aren't strictly saying IIT is wrong, just that they think it gets too much attention. Does Bayesian Statistics get too much attention? >"some researchers in the consciousness field are uncomfortable with what they perceive as a discrepancy between IIT’s scientific merit and the considerable attention it receives from the popular media because of how it is promoted by advocates." Having some good PR isn't a good reason to say the underlying theory is wrong.
andrewflnr 3y ago
> a “commonsensical definition” would be “something that is not very scientifically supported, that masquerades as if it is already very scientifically established”. Does this actually sound like a definition of pseudoscience to anyone? If you think about homeopathy and ancient aliens or whatever, does this address the core of why we think those are "pseudoscience" as opposed to just wrong, even confidently wrong? I don't think it does. IIT is probably wrong, and its proponents should probably shut up or at least show more humility, but "pseudoscience" is the wrong label.

43 points by joak 3y ago

The question is whether its rival GNW is so much better. IIT submits that consciousness arises from the integration of information within a system. A system is conscious if it possesses a certain level of integrated information, denoted by the symbol Φ (phi). GNW on the other hand claims that consciousness arises when information is broadcasted to a "global workspace" within the brain, making it available to a wide range of cognitive processes. Neither has direct evidentiary support and both can explain everything it sees. By that measure it's pseudoscience the lot of them. So...is this the most constructive way to go about it, or maybe there is another agenda at play here?

iammjm 3y ago
A rival theory A being wrong doesn't make theory B any more right, their truth values have to be assessed independently

fooker 3y ago

It seems like pseudoscience the same way as string theory is pseudoscience. Model things we can't define with hifi math and produce unfalsifiable predictions.

loandbehold 3y ago

What's the evidence that consciousness is a real thing and not an illusion?

maxbond 3y ago
If we're talking about "everything that a human or non-human experiences, including what they feel, see and hear," then I'm not sure it's meaningful to distinguish whether it's "real" or "an illusion". You might put forward the theory we're all brains in jars (or the more modern formulation, 'the universe is a simulation'), but the experiences would still be occuring and consciousness would still be a phenomena. See also, Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.
red75prime 3y ago
What is illusory exactly? Is it the brain misrepresenting its own workings? But those misrepresentations are encoded in the brain in the same way as everything else and they do have causal influence on the brain processes. So, those "illusions" are as real as representations of the outside world.
Legend2440 3y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum You know you are conscious because if you weren't, there wouldn't be a "you" to think about consciousness.
- Joker_vD 3y ago
  Which is a stance that Buddhism generally takes. There are thoughts, and feelings, but they exist on its own and (sometimes) build up an "ego" which is a fleeting, unstable thing, without its own essence. Cogiationes sunt is an empiric fact. But cogitationes sunt ergo res cogitans est is not.
  - red75prime 3y ago
    It feels a bit like consulting ancient Greek atomists on the nature of covalent bonds. They thought much about the subject sure, but instruments they had were lacking (not that they thought they need any instruments).
- alecst 3y ago
  Is there a “me”? I’m unconvinced by “cogito, ergo sum.” Has always felt a bit circular to me.
hrnnnnnn 3y ago
The fact that you are reading this text and it feels like something to be doing that.
alexanderchr 3y ago
What would even be the difference between it being a “real thing” and an illusion?
edgyquant 3y ago
It’s literally the only thing any of us know for sure is real
antonvs 3y ago
Ok, how would you write a computer program or train a neural network to experience that illusion? When a program executes, it follows a strictly "mechanical" procedure. There doesn't seem to be much room for consciousness or the "experiencing" of illusions. How is it that our brains are capable of experiencing the "illusion" of consciousness?
mistermann 3y ago
To answer that, first you may have to solve a tricky semiotics problem. And good luck getting consensus agreement ("the" "reality", not "pseudoscience", "nonsense", or various other persuasive (aka "real") memes) even on that step.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

You can always call any theory about consciousness "pseudoscience" because consciousness is subjective individual experience and the scientific method requires shared consensus which it calls "objective". By definition if you delve into consciousness you're doomed to be called a scammer sooner or later. And any experiments that could prove or disprove a theory of consciousness would be labeled unethical as it'd require messing with the brain of an intelligent being which can communicate back their experience (i.e. humans). For this reason I'd say keep all theories at an arm's distance and keep exploring the space. Any confirmation or dismissal of a theory of consciousness is unwarranted jump to conclusions. Why does a moving electric charge cause magnetism? Why does moving integrated information cause consciousness? We have no clue and yet it's a fact. We're only at the start of this journey and the best we can do is ensure we travel the path long enough to learn more "why-s" before we wipe ourselves out.

tbalsam 3y ago

This seems more political than scientific, despite originating from scientists. I came to similar beliefs from some very personal experiences outside of the field, and it's just that -- a belief. Trying to turn something that's not really easily provable or not into a labeled 'pseudoscience' or 'not pseudoscience' kind of thing seems to just be asking for grief. It sort of reminds me of the hullabaloo around a lot of things way back when historically, where the general opinion ended up being horridly wrong. It seems to me like one of the unifying threads was how politically motivated and communicated the outcry was. Again, just an opinion on my part. I can't say what the nature for reality is or isn't. I do find appreciation in an idea, as another post here alluded to, of consciousness being an illusion of experience. An analogy that I think of is how a rope gets tied up in a knot. The knot is information, it adds information, it does not change the rope. But also my beliefs do come from a belief in a more unified metaphysical 'thing' (as it were, to really simplify my belief into a silly analogy) that makes us all up, so a lot of the ideas for me come as our own self concepts being like these temporary hurricanes or bits of self-sustaining 'knots' of information that live for a time, and then pass on (with or without the body experiencing them, as a part of this greater 'thing'). Again, these are just a sort of partial translation of what I believe. Apologies if I explained it poorly. I think spiritual things are hard to study scientifically, and I feel that duality is alright. As others have noted here, you could call many theories "pseudoscience" by the very same logic as the above, as best as I understand it. :'(((( Unless there's a clear and present harm I don't see much reason in political pressure to suppress the idea. Perhaps I'm missing something here, unfortunately. I don't think I know the whole story yet, there has to be a cohesive explanation for how this (potential) rift has formed. :'))))

iammjm 3y ago
Except that testability is one of the core principles of science. If there isn't a way to prove/disprove what you are claiming then we can assert all sorts of things and call it science, at which point science loses all it's credibility
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

Legend2440 3y ago

I mean sure, but so are all the other theories of consciousness. Nobody has any way to test anything about internal experience.

ethanbond 3y ago
We just need a way to step outside of it to look at it untainted by it, damnit!
- mistermann 3y ago
  Abstraction, decomposition, recursion, art, literature, psychedelics, the internet and memes, etc etc etc...humans have many tools at their disposal, though there's no requirement for tools to be used. And, sometimes even a catalyst can be enough to kick off naturally emergent complexity.
- twic 3y ago
  We just need to smash two conscious minds into each other at near the speed of thought and see what comes out.

curiousgal 3y ago

> PsyArXiv I mean, if peer-reviewed psychology research is lacking behind in terms of statistical power and reproducibility, I can only imagine what flaws self-published research would have lol

hrnnnnnn 3y ago

Erik Hoel has an excellent reaction to this letter on his substack here https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories-of-consciousness https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories... "...as a fledging science consciousness research should worry about hanging out too much dirty laundry. If too much is hung out, then petty infighting can destroy an already fragile field. My greatest fear is that we get another “consciousness winter” wherein just talking about consciousness is considered pseudoscientific bunk. This was the state of affairs throughout most of the 20th century, and it set neuroscience back decades."

mach1ne 3y ago
>This was the state of affairs throughout most of the 20th century, and it set neuroscience back decades. This doesn't seem to be based on anything.
- rusk 3y ago
  Behaviorism was the dominant psychological theory of the 20th century. Specifically it tried to downplay introspection, and personal experience and reduce behavior to learned "reflexes". This was debunked quite a while ago, 1970s or so, by Chomsky and others so it sounds absurd to us. but it was the dominant thinking in psychology (at least in the US) up until that point. The founder of 20th century behaviourism, Watson, specifically stated /"Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness"/ Watson's fundamentalist view lasted about as long as took for it to be tried out on a generation of people and then debunked. The undisputed champion of behaviorism was B.F. Skinner who wrote /"what is felt or introspectively observed is not some nonphysical world of consciousness, mind, or mental life but the observer's own body"/ Skinner was so successful in the experimental field that his school of thought pretty much ran away with things. Until it tried to take on language, and ran into Chomsky: https://crackerbarrel.weebly.com/ https://crackerbarrel.weebly.com/ It's kind of absurd really looking back, and I'm certain that although it dominated academic thought I doubt it was taken as seriously on the ground. But Academia is where a lot of the intellectual heavy lifting is done and so, yeah perhaps the more nuanced sides of psychology got neglected as "namby pamby" for a few decades but man was the behaviorist outlook brutally effective. In fact it still is the quickest and cheapest way (if not exactly personally satisfying) way to deal with personal psychological conditions.

dooglius 3y ago

Yep, Scott Aaronson had a pretty thorough takedown https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799

gwd 3y ago
> But let me end on a positive note. In my opinion, the fact that Integrated Information Theory is wrong—demonstrably wrong, for reasons that go to its core—puts it in something like the top 2% of all mathematical theories of consciousness ever proposed. Almost all competing theories of consciousness, it seems to me, have been so vague, fluffy, and malleable that they can only aspire to wrongness. That is indeed a big compliment!
- iammjm 3y ago
  I'm not sure if being top 2% shit in a pile of shit is that great, i think it's more of a testament to the condition of this field
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    I mostly see this attitude towards consciousness from people that have a hard time grappling with their own.
jsenn 3y ago
This was also where my mind went, and it's cited in the open letter, but it's worth noting that the premise of his critique is that IIT is not pseudoscience. In fact, he praises the theory for being clear enough to be proven wrong!

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Can we just label Psychology in general as pseudoscience? Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication.

denton-scratch 3y ago
No, we can't. Most of psychology deals with the stimuli and responses, which are empirically observable; if it's done properly, that's science. Consciousness is problematic for science, because it's intrinsically private, and not observable. Each of us knows it's there, and can observe it; but we can't share our observations, and "science" depends on sharing observations. Perhaps we need a new definition of "science", that can accomodate the private experience that each of us has, but can't share.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  or perhaps we stop trying to label every system of thought we want to claim is legitimate as science and leave it only for one’s we are able to apply the scientific method to
tgv 3y ago
Psychology has many bad practices, and does have a certain amount of pseudo-science in its subdomains, but as a whole it isn't. The subject exists, and there are ways of (indirectly) measuring aspects of it. > Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication. That's partially due to bad practices, partially to the fact that psychology is harder than physics, and partially to perverse funding mechanisms.
mistermann 3y ago
> Can we just label Psychology in general as pseudoscience? You sure can, and it has the nice bonus of giving psychologists a phenomenon to study: human's drive to attach pseudo-objective labels to subjective phenomena. > Pretty much all the “findings” that have been popularized recently have all failed replication. "Pretty much" is a nice ambiguous term, might that be a consequence of the underlying methodology you used to determine that fact? What was your methodology anyways?

mellosouls 3y ago

This is the key sentence from the underlying letter: Given its panpsychist commitments, until the theory as a whole — not just some hand-picked auxiliary components trivially shared by many others or already known to be true — is empirically testable, we feel that the pseudoscience label should indeed apply It seems like a less confrontational label would be "philosophical". Dismissing by implication a venerable and respectable philosophical theory like panpsychism with such terms gives the impression of arrogant scientism which undermines any criticism that might be useful.

tgv 3y ago
Panpsychism is not a respectable philosophical theory, unless you want to give ether, a divine soul, idealism, and flat earth the same treatment. > Dismissing [it] undermines any criticism that might be useful. If that's your greatest worry...
- antonvs 3y ago
  See https://philpapers.org/browse/panpsychism https://philpapers.org/browse/panpsychism for some recent philosophical papers on panpsychism. To quote Prof. Galen Strawson from one of those papers: > "Panpsychism is a plausible theory of the fundamental nature of reality. It is fully compatible with everything in current physics, and with physicalism."
  - tgv 3y ago
    That list of recent papers doesn't help your argument. The consciousness problem is not going to be solved by wishy-washy creative writing. Very few, if any, of those authors seem to have seen an experiment up close. The quote from Strawson continues to assume consciousness is present in every particle in the universe. It presupposes an extraordinary force of nature, unlike any of the others, to escape a relatively small problem, and it's not based on any observation. No form of consciousness has ever been observed outside animals with a (reasonably large) brain (and even those are rare). There's no explanation for that. If there is one, it will include something like "you need a lot of consciousness particles in a particular structure for it to emerge." Panpsychism is based on the rejection of the possibility that physical processes can explain consciousness. Which makes it all the weirder that they need an extra physical force to explain it.

bionhoward 3y ago

The big challenge here is false separation we create with language. I can say, “consciousness is neural activity” but others will say, what activity, how does activity become conscious, how do you prove those things are the same, all questions which imply a different causal model structure, one in which there are two entities (neural activity and conscious experience) instead of one. (!) the problem is one of cardinality of our model, not lack of evidence; you can’t fit a dualistic two-peg (the mind and the brain) into a monistic one-hole (mind=brain). This language pattern creates a concept of separation between neurons firing and the mind experiencing. If, in reality, neurons firing ARE mind experiences, then to prove they are identical means to disprove a false separation between two identical concepts. That’s a tricky problem (of language) to solve with tools (of neuroscience).

antonvs 3y ago
It's not just language, though. The real problem is determining the truth of statements such as this one of yours: > "If, in reality, neurons firing ARE mind experiences" Perhaps they are. But does that mean transistors firing are not mind experiences, and computers can never be conscious? If the statement is true, what's special about neurons that they generate mind experiences? That's the real question - "the hard problem" - that many people are attempting to answer.
- wholinator2 3y ago
  In my opinion, the recent developments in AI have primarily show us just how much we _are_ just the firing. People argued about whether the computer could be thinking and whether it could be feeling as if those were 2 highly separated, stratified things. Like you said, it's the hard problem. But i think the connection will come not from thinking that computers are more special, but from thinking of ourselves as less special.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

This seems very much like some sour grapes. They aren't strictly saying IIT is wrong, just that they think it gets too much attention. Does Bayesian Statistics get too much attention? >"some researchers in the consciousness field are uncomfortable with what they perceive as a discrepancy between IIT’s scientific merit and the considerable attention it receives from the popular media because of how it is promoted by advocates." Having some good PR isn't a good reason to say the underlying theory is wrong.

andrewflnr 3y ago

> a “commonsensical definition” would be “something that is not very scientifically supported, that masquerades as if it is already very scientifically established”. Does this actually sound like a definition of pseudoscience to anyone? If you think about homeopathy and ancient aliens or whatever, does this address the core of why we think those are "pseudoscience" as opposed to just wrong, even confidently wrong? I don't think it does. IIT is probably wrong, and its proponents should probably shut up or at least show more humility, but "pseudoscience" is the wrong label.