After 121 authors wrote a letter protesting Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, Einstein replied: “If I were wrong, then one [author] would have been enough!”

The fact that this is a petiton and not a formal argument really says something.

I think they dont really have a theory of consciousness as such, but rather, they have a theory on how to produce systems that mimic conscious behavior as defined in behavioral science. Because they dont have any actual way to explain how subjective experience can be produced by any objective process.All they can do is trry to mimic intelligent behavior. But that's not producing conscious experirence.

You don’t post too much but when your do they’re bangers

I've said this before but I'll say it again... I really appreciate the unbiased presentation. Even though at points you hyperbolize some aspects, it's always in a restrained way, which is great for a listener dedicated to truth rather than pure rhetoric.

I think the problem is one of definition, until we define what consciousness is and what it isn't, we can't expect meaningful resuls

Yey you finally uploaded a new video!! so excited to see

Welcome back love your vids

Love it! Super helpful, when does part 2 come out??

Maaaan I want the part 2 asap!!!

No matter how quickly you can go, how skillfully you climb, how strong, resilient and determined you are if you don’t turn precisely in the correct direction before even taking the very first step. I really doubt that anyone currently has the slightest idea about either the definition of life (even matter, actually), intelligence and consciousness and the relation between these assumed categories. We want to solve a huge crossword on an ancient language that nobody speaks anymore, in which every word is crossing every other and the definitions are merely moods, dreams and songs of birds. As for myself, working on this field in most of my time, I’m trying just to turn to the right direction for the last 20 years. I see others climbing and running around in random directions, for sure

great to see you back! i also really would like to hear more about those horrible experiments science hippies do with human brain cells and mice and stuff!

thank you

Very timely video for me, since I'm at the moment researching and writing about the nature of "mind" and "consciousness", and the plethora of vague pseudo-definitions and "theories" of these phenomena is both fascinating and frustrating. Many thanks for this.

Your voice is perfect for presenting scientific information

This is an awesome topic. Thankyou!

Your channel is great!

I love your videos. How are we defining consciousness? I haven't really looked into the subject, but from a more semantic view, I think the fact you can't be sure anyone else is conscious, would imply it's very difficult to define in a measurable way. It appears the only agreed upon view on consciousness is the intuition it exists.

The topics you choose are always so interesting, it's like watching my google news feed 😅

simply remove pieces of the nervous system until the power to know one's own thoughts goes away and the leftover will be consciousness

Good video. Subbed. I think am with the authors of the letter that state that IIT, and actually all these theories, if calling themselves science, are pseudoscience. This should all currently be regarded as part of the field of philosophy. Until some objective explanation of WHY integrating information should cause subjective experience to pop out of an otherwise inert system can be posited and tested, then even if a correlation between the integration of information in the brain and conscious experience is demonstrated, how do we know that this is causative? It doesn’t seem to do anything to leap the canyon described by Chalmers as “the hard problem of consciousness.”

Duuuude. Those prints are beautiful.

I can't say I believe that either (or really any of these theories) are right or properly testable, but this sure looks like politics more than science. If the only reason we shy away from ideas like Pan-psychism is because they make us uncomfortable or have problematic indications then that certainly isn't (proper) science. And then of course it spawns the people who want to fight the status-quo. It really just looks like Epistemological Constructivism to me. It really doesn't seem like science can touch the field of consciousness on the basis that we cannot even prove anyone's consciousness but our own. There's no true way to verify a claim so really it belongs in philosophy rather than science. I do think both sides of the field in the video have a point but it's pretty evident by their testing that really they can't demonstrate anything. While I have no complex ways to try to justify it it certainly seems that either consciousness is a product of order/complexity or is simply a property of how things are. Now whether that order requires something like a neuronal system receiving inputs and outputs is a good question, but not one that can actually be answered. To me intelligence looks like a Complex System (field of study) and things likes plants and artificial neural networks would certainly fit in that, but so would higher order systems likes societies, cities, and colonies (and basically everything else). No idea what that says about consciousness though.

Great video!! Thanks for posting. My main problem with the way things were going (mainly in the US!), was the way IIT was being portrayed as 'the leading theory of consciousness', and some things some of the main proponents of the theory claim in the media (mostly referring to panpsychism). All theories of consciousness have major issues and lots of problems, and I think IIT is a valuable contribution to the field. But it should not be portrayed in a somewhat populistic way too much. And for these adversarial collaborations, it would make sense to make clear predictions that would falsify a theory. And to make clear how even Science reports on your more nuanced portrayal of the results: "Two rival theories about the basis of perception went head-to-head in neuroscience experiments, but advocates of “losing” idea aren’t conceding yet". Here the 'losing' idea is the Global Workspace Theory according to the media branch of Science. Which is weird considering the conclusions of the paper itself.

Where can i read the integrated information theory?

That kinda reminds me of something from history.

Damage to both regions, in FTD and LBD affect frontal and posterior circuit networks preferentially , yet those individuals are not bereft of consciousness.

can you please link the study in the description?

Nice shoulder movements 😂

But, doesn't the brain (cells/network) do both? Doesn't it integrate information and then re-broadcasts it to other areas, possibly forming a type of feedback system. Maybe it's the feedback system that actually elicits a conscious experience.

Maybe consciousness shouldn't be a separate category? A single cell creature has basic awareness and can respond to stimuli, but this is a feature of life. IIT and many other theories are based on the premise that "life" is not a separate category, or even a mystery, which just moves the mystery up one level to consciousness. The current quest for General AI also assumes that giving consciousness to a dead thing would be of some value.

My prediction (on pause now) is the global one is more for humans who use their "holodeck" to reason and play out scenarios, but also need the pre-processing" of IIT, which is probably most favourable on lower order intelligence. Now I will press play and be shown I'm wrong. A recurring theme to my neurons.

I’ve personally read the IIT v3 paper a couple years ago. It has a bit of an unusual for a scientific paper but it is not pseudoscience, and they should retract their letter. To state the obvious, the fact that a theory makes counter intuitive predictions does not make pseudoscience.

In my very uninformed opinion, trying to find a formula for consciousness seems like trying to find a formula for other abstract emergent things like envy.

I wish Attention Schema Theory was more well known and researched...

We need an Einstein of consciousness

First time watching your channel and I’m getting Adam Ragusia vibes

Such is the problem with trying to integrate consciousness/psychology with the "hard sciences." I remember reading an article by James Alcock arguing why parapsychology was a "pseudoscience." I realized that many of Alcock's reasons given for why parapsychology was pseudoscience could be equally applied to psychiatry/abnormal psychology and possibly most areas of cognitive science as well.

I did not sign on to either view. I don’t think consciousness can be localized. I think that involves integration of multiple inputs similar to our integration of 3d in combination with proprioception to creat our consciousness of our physical localization in our environment

What would be going on in the Global Workspace other than the Integration of Information? And for analysis any non-trivial problem, and one entailing significant fitness stakes to get correct, why wouldn't virtually the whole brain be involved? Moreover, I think it is vital to consider that the brain activity being measured in all these neural correlate studies is likely doing two separate but related things, (1) creating a constantly updated and relatively complete and objective NONconscious model of reality, which by definition generates no easily accessible phenomenology, and (2) creating and much more circumscribed and far more subjective conscious model of reality, which can be presented to social partners - one that is designed primarily for social navigation purposes. The construction of the conscious model would be informed deeply by the nonconscious model and would also be constantly updated mainly to maximize its social efficacy. Note if this is correct, a lot of brain activity devoted to generation of the nonconscious model will not correlate with conscious experience at all, especially over short time frames. Note that these two models may (are expected to) contain enormously contradictory representations of many aspects of reality, because the nonconscious model is trying to build a correct model (limited in scope, of course, by what in the real world is relevant, ultimately, to generating maximum expected lifetime inclusive fitness for the individual in question), while the conscious model is all about making the individual maximally effective within their social niche(s) in garnering, approval, status, help, forgiveness, etc.

Where is part 2?????

An act of desperation -all for a case of wine. 😅

Such endeavours are destined to fail from the start because they're as logical as studying the sun in the daytime - with a flashlight. Consciousness can only be aware of that, which isn't, itself. Everything that you can possibly be aware of, must be distinct from your consciousness (otherwise, it would still be your consciousness).

That’s funny they want my help!

Interesting 🤔🤔

Shoo mine ain't very scientific but my theory is that consciousness permeates the universe like a force and fills complex containers that can hold it. But iit is interesting first time I've heard of it. Also read a neuroscience paper that parts of our brain act like a wifi receiver that's why I like my theory 😂

Can consciousness even be measured? A machine that can understand what it is could be considered conscious, so it can be either conscious and not. There's so much to think through about this...

we know not much about a whole lotta natural stuff. all we have are more talks then more research. and on and on and on it just revolves like that. so making up new stuff makes it easier for all. odd thing is nothing has yet been done about any of it. maybe its time for more radical views to try to push the whole thing in the right direction.

Good and informative video. Those lists are trending now. The same happens now with AI safety. They signers are there only because of self interest. IIT has an interesting approach, which may be incorrect, and may need many updates, but it is clearly not pseudoscience. Saying that is pseudoscience is an insult towards the signing people. Also, IIT explicitly states that computers and such do not have consciousness in any serious way, so it does not equals to panpsychism. BTW, I do not work in the field and have heard of both theories, including others that were proved wrong in the past, or are less popular.

"Scientists" slapping the "pseudoscience" tag on anything they don't agree with/their agenda cannot agree with is the new pseudoscience.

Lets settle that consciousness issue. Consciousness is an emergent property of every autopoietic (i.e. self-sustaining/self-recreating = living) system and precisely emerges from the reduction of complexity (i.e., perception, representation) between the infinitely complex environment to the relatively few perceptions, i.e. to the model-building, that is necessary for autopoietic self-preservation and survival. These perceptions or models also include system-internal (i.e., within-the-body) processes, thus forming a self-representation contained in the representation of the environment. This is the definition of consciousness. One of the simplest organisms that has consciousness (i.e. a model of itself inside a model of its environment, thus a perception of itself) is a single living cell.

Define consciousness, Hint : tell us what you use to 'measure' consciousness ?

Any form of cancelling is ultimately harmful. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, etc. All got temporarily cancelled. We're not smart enough to cancel stuff.

Title is misleading, since it gets cut off in recommendations at 'Is Consciousness Science "Pseudoscience"?' while the video is actually about almost the opposite. More like 'Is something that would undermine all of consciousness science by eroding the definition of consciousness "pseudoscience"?'

Get out of that body, Bill Gates ! (JK)

Really good video ! I love science ! Thank you ! (I'm just testing whether this comment will be shown by the algorithms just because it's positive.)

This whole thing seems stupid to me. Clearly the debate is just philosophy/religion in scientific terms. They’re leaking into those fields and rightly so because science is about what can be observed. Once you get into things about consciousness or the soul, you’re not being scientific, you’re being philosophical and if you’re calling the study of it pseudoscience, you’re not being scientific, you’re just a materialist with circular thinking. This is a debate that can’t be won in science because the very topic goes beyond what science is by definition.

I don’t think the brain generates consciousness at all. It does correlate with the specific experiences we have, but does not produce experience at the base level.

Here is my in-depth opinion on the subject. Let's begin by stating that consciousness is not a real concept, and the current evidence on consciousness is like a double-edged sword. In simpler terms, our sense of consciousness arises from the brain, consisting of a biological neural network and other chemical components that continuously process memories/ experiences received through our senses. To put an end to the debate on consciousness, we can conduct an experiment. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where there is a newborn who can live without any external support, essentially being immortal and able to grow like a human being. If this newborn were placed in a dark, empty room with no exposure to the outside world or human contact, all the previously mentioned conditions could theoretically be met. However, in reality, we can’t achieve this, but we can find real-life examples in feral children who grew up in isolated environments. Examining their cases reveals that without meaningful memories, they were unable to develop cognitive abilities to human standards. In the absence of a set of experiences considered meaningful by human standards, these feral children adapted to their environment, whether in a jungle with wolves or dogs. They learned to behave primarily based on instinct (hard-coded memories from birth), and those children, especially those who never had human contact from birth, struggled to develop cognitive abilities. This struggle persisted even when they were taught and remained largely unchanged as they reached adulthood. While we often say that all humans have consciousness, observing the behavior of these children until becoming adults may lead one to question the concept of consciousness more deeply. Another example involves adults who suffer brain damage from accidents. Examining the aftermath, we can see that these individuals' personalities can be profoundly altered, and some have lost the ability to reason in specific areas of expertise due to the loss of memories related to those areas. In my view, even a calculator can be considered conscious, as can AI. Technologies, from calculators to computers to AI, have all aimed to replicate human cognitive functions throughout history. We have now reached a point where this technology has successfully replicated artificial intelligence similar to our biological intelligence. We have transcended the limitations of the human brain, creating something more capable of mimicking human reasoning and covering a vast knowledge that we could never handle through advances in AI and robotics research. AI is becoming increasingly proficient at reasoning, and in the future, people will have to confront the distasteful truth about consciousness, regardless of their beliefs. This will break the cycle of endless consciousness theories without a conclusive answer. The importance of reaching a conclusion on consciousness lies in the fact that people are already conducting research on mind uploading, with a misunderstood goal of uploading consciousness to a simulation in hopes of achieving what is depicted in the Matrix movies. In a sense, we will only be able to upload a copy of our consciousness, so the original self will coexist alongside the copy (which is different from the concept in the Matrix movies). These research endeavors are ongoing, but I consider them a waste of resources, and researchers need to focus more on memory implantation, which has the potential to merge artificial intelligence with biological intelligence using a bridge device and allow us to immerse ourselves in a shared simulation using shared devices. Moreover, theories about consciousness hinder advancements in AI research by categorizing AI as a mere product of a company rather than recognizing it as one of the greatest discoveries of humankind, in my opinion. The divide among humans on the topic of consciousness is deeply rooted in our instinct to assert our position as the dominant species for survival among other species. Furthermore, strong beliefs in consciousness are often tied to cultural and religious faith. Ironically, when I read AI research papers on consciousness, I can’t help but think that some researchers, in their quest to prove that large language models lack consciousness while overlooking other strong evidence of their reasoning abilities, should include a section declaring their potential bias, stating, “I am a human,” in the research paper.

That's funny. I don't find most psuscience claims to be useful in any real sense.

Funnily enough, similar problems exist in Quantum Mechanics regarding certain interpretations of things such as Schrodinger's wave equation, why it follows Born's rule, why there is an apparent collapse, solving the measurement problem, etc. However, I find the calling of some interpretations as pseudoscience by physicists quite disappointing. It is important to explore how we can reconcile reality with the Schrodinger equation, and to encourage new research. However, I get why people want to make these things very rigorous and completely empirical -- as you show at the end of the video. Pop science took Everett's interpretation, called it Many Worlds and sparked an _incredible_ amount of misconception which even leaks into the physics community. There are no "splits" of "worlds" due to "quantum events" or anything in that manner. It merely takes the Schrodinger equation to heart and assumes there are no additional processes at play -- the wave function never truly collapses.

Eat toothpaste

Pseudoscience it is. Zero interest.

How do they explain that plants communicate without consciousness? There is no way that is possible. If you are not aware, you do not, for example, warn your neighbors about the danger.

Consciousness can never get measured not with the tools that we use, for consciousness is the awareness in itself, n every time we measure something, we would end up measuring that which the awareness is aware off bt never the subject.However mathematics being the language of the universe may point in that direction, but it will never be able to conclusively conclude.

I am almost certain that you are AI generated

politically charged

The mainstream science establishment, doesn’t like ideas that contradict its own, call me crazy but I think this is what dogma looks like, plenty of bad ideas are being taken a granted because of their sheer popularity within the mainstream and standard model

Trying so hard to keep the truth from coming out.

Dont touch theology