
Attack on Top Consciousness Theory Springs From Abortion Politics
If that sounds surprising and unscientific, read on. Pro and con, they make it clearPerhaps publications like Nature were taken by surprise when well over 100 leading neuroscientists signed a letter denouncing Allen Institute neuroscientist Christof Koch’s leading Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as “pseudoscience.” The most interesting part of the story is that, while the signatories’ main complaint was the panpsychist origins and implications of the theory — consciousness is widespread through the universe — Nature’s writeup did not mention that… Among those who weighed in shortly afterwards was well-known science writer John Horgan. He begins by defining IIT theory in a comprehensible way: 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 Read More ›