Across the 124 authors, you’ll probably find 124 different motivations why people signed the IIT-as-pseudoscience letter. I was recently asked why I signed it, so in this public post, I’ll provide my rationale for doing so, which is based on two points:
1. I have concerns about how some proponents of IIT repeatedly represent the theory in the popular press. One of my professional commitments to ASSC in the past year involved running (with Megan Peters and Nora Bradford) a tutorial on how to communicate consciousness science to the popular press and the general public. This ASSC workshop focused on avoiding hyperbole, accurately expressing knowns and unknowns in the field, and concisely and accurately characterizing what we can conclude from current empirical studies on consciousness. I don’t think proponents of IIT have fulfilled any of those three criteria in their engagements with the popular press; not over the last ~15 years since I’ve been following this, and not in recent events, either (as Megan has noted). Since I started as a grad student in 2009, I’ve watched Christof Koch characterize IIT in the popular press as “the only really promising fundamental theory of consciousness” (NYTimes, 2010) and “the only dominant theory we have of consciousness” (NBCNews, 2017) with multiple outlets claiming it is the most popular current theory and most popular modern theory that exists. These statements weren’t true back then, and they aren’t true now. Victor Lamme’s Recurrent Processing Theory has informed much thinking about the topic, and directly relates to Doris Tsao’s extraordinary ASSC talk on her nonhuman primate research on face perception (see this, this, this). Global Neuronal workspace Theory has found more intriguing support in recent work by Pieter Roelfsema’s group. Even Attention Schema Theory has some empirical support worth reflecting upon. These quotes related to IIT in the popular press are not isolated instances, nor are they few in number. Articles discussing IIT tell the general public that “devices as simple as a thermostat or a photoelectric diode might have glimmers of consciousness, a subjective self” (NYTimes, 2016), that these ideas are the “most promising scientific theory of consciousness” that exists, that it represents “a gigantic step in the final resolution of the mind-body problem,” and that based on IITs math, we have to “accept that all kinds of inanimate matter could be conscious.” I am sorry that some feel that the letter is “intended to do harm” and that it is “weirdly concerned with “media exposure” and “public perceptions” (things a colleague mentioned over the last several days). But how we present the scientific work we do to the general public matters a tremendous amount. How we present our work influences scientific literacy in society (e.g., will people think photodiodes are conscious?). It influences the career choices of future students and what scientific topics they will pursue (is it even worth it to study consciousness for a PhD?). And it also influences potential scientific funding for consciousness research, which I’ll dig into more in point #2 below. But overall, past press coverage of this theory has left a lot to be desired, and there is a lot of room for improvement moving forward.
2. I have concerns about the main scientific claims of IIT. A second professional obligation I have involves a TWCF-funded initiative to work with U.S. funding agencies to show them the utility of scientific work being conducted on consciousness. Megan and I have run a workshop in DC on this and have been in direct contact with program officers from NIH, NSF, AFOSR, and ONR to put them in contact with researchers in the field of consciousness, show them the scientific work that’s being done, and talk about how current scientific work aligns with their funding priorities. I’m very encouraged by all of the conversations we’ve had, and by the reactions of the program officers at these agencies to the work being done in the field! We may finally have more opportunities in the U.S. to be funded by these agencies to study this topic! But what should I say to program officers from the U.S. military/NSF/NIH about the main scientific claims of IIT? The main empirical claim is that phenomenal consciousness correlates with maximal integrated information or maximal phi, yes? There are good reasons to be skeptical about phi, as noted by blogs and published articles. Jake Hanson’s work shows that phi is not a mathematically well-defined concept and demonstrates further problems with falsifiability with the overall theory. His PhD thesis talk shows that using simple circuit diagrams, you can compute phi for conscious and unconscious toll booths, and the list goes on and on. . . from issues with the unfolding argument, to problems with axioms, to IIT being incompatible with facts about degeneracy and redundancy, to IIT’s endorsement of the posterior hot zone as it completely ignores facts about hunger, pain, olfaction, and other sensory qualia . . . I can’t ignore these things (either tacitly or explicitly) and make claims about this theory’s explanatory power that simply don’t hold up to scrutiny. Not yet, anyway. Some will/would argue I’m not qualified to issue an edict on this, since I don’t work with IIT or study it in-depth for a living. To that I would say: I undoubtedly still have a lot to learn about it, and I will fully admit that. I cannot consider myself to be a world-renowned expert on ANY theory of consciousness. But I do feel I know enough about it to say something, and I have reasons enough for being skeptical that this is the best scientific idea we have about how consciousness works.
Now, all that being said, doesn’t every current theory of consciousness have pitfalls? Yes. Of course they all do. When you look at how little empirical support there is for Higher-Order Theory, for instance (at least in terms of the number of articles, not the quality of the research), it’s striking! Especially in comparison to the other theories (See Figure 2 this paper). But I think there are ways we can move some of these theories forward (or at least refute some of what they predict) with empirical investigations. It’s why I’m working on this TWCF project to test ideas from Higher-Order Theory. It’s why I go to ASSC and listen to talks from people outside of my immediate group of collaborators like Rony Hirschhorn, Liad Mudrik, Michael Cohen, Michael Pitts, Caroline Myers, Gal Vishne, Nadine Djikstra, Andres Canales-Johnson, Johannes Fahrenfort, and all of the other people that are researchers in this field. And when I look at the direction the field (or at least ASSC) is going, I see some hope that people can have some degree of moderation in their theoretical commitments. (Joe Ledoux actually said something like, “You may not need a higher-order representation to see motion” in his opening talk at ASSC this year, and Ned Block called him out on it, and Ned actually said something like, “You may not see as many details in the periphery as I originally thought” in the symposium on visual richness. We can all go back and check videos to verify that these amazing moments actually happened, and that I’m not misremembering/
But in the end: I put my name on that controversial letter, as of now, for the reasons I list above in items 1 and 2. And what to do about it moving forward? There are a few remaining thoughts on my mind as this all unfolds:
First, I’ve always had an affinity for Chalmers’ short quote in The Conscious Mind that “some speculation is needed if we are to make progress” (pg xv) in this field. His final remarks at ASSC this year, when he mentioned the Tucson consciousness conference’s “let a thousand flowers bloom approach,” does have something to be said for it, seeing as how we’ll likely (almost certainly) all be dead before we have a full, mechanistic understanding of how consciousness works. Heck, I myself have published speculative, controversial things that, while empirically based, could turn out to be flat-out wrong. So where to draw the line on speculation? Many presentations at the Tucson conference fall short of rigorous, scientific standards. Jonathan Birch’s blog about “The Overton Window” (the range of positions that can safely raise their heads in public discourse) is relevant here, as we consider what approaches to studying the topic seem to be the most promising and worthy of time, resources, and presentation in scientific venues (ASSC, journals, etc.). For me, IIT is . . . right on the edge of my personal Overton window. Other authors on the letter will cringe at that assessment. Why do I say it’s on the edge? And not outside of it, when I endorse the content in the letter? Because I can’t deny that IIT is contributing to/motivating empirical work that I find valuable and interesting. As Biyu He noted, Marcello Massimini has insightful experiments (e.g., this, among other studies looking at the predictive power of PCI to predict patient outcomes), Andrew Haun has had many thought-provoking insights inspired by IIT on the TWCF-project I referenced above, and lurking out there are still possibilities about specific versions of IIT that may have more explanatory power than I’m currently giving them credit for. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
Second, the tone online (on Twitter/X) grew so incredibly toxic following its release, that part of me wants not to be involved anymore. It’s obviously possible that some authors may have motivations that I don’t share, but because I’m signing the letter, I am now associated with all motivations for why everyone signed, and associated with all toxic comments from both sides on X/Twitter. And there’s a bigger question as to what purpose the letter is serving: what do we expect to emerge for the field on the other side of this? Is the letter constructive for the field, as a call to increase and improve public outreach and empirical rigor? The first draft is indeed a bit light on citations/substantive critiques that can be addressed in a scholarly way. But I think that with edits, it can be improved, and states something that needs to be said, to improve outreach and empirical rigor moving forward.
On a more personal note about how all of this feels to be involved with: I’ve run a gamut of emotions these last 6 days, watching the banter surrounding the letter online, wavering between feeling obligated to bound into the online fray with a Mike-Gundy-level of enthusiasm, compared to what I’m actually doing more of this last week, which is simply sitting at my work desk and melting down like I’m on an episode of Hot Ones as I mull over Tweets that call names on X/Twitter, and an email I received warning of “personal and professional consequences” for signing the letter. I won’t lie: I’ve lost sleep each night over it. Even though that email I received was a bit ominous, it wasn’t wrong . . . my name is on the letter, so anytime you sign off on something as a scholar (even as an author buried in a massive author list, who didn’t write the letter), you are endorsing its content, and you must take the criticism and consequences that come with it, professionally and beyond. That’s entirely fair, entirely warranted, and part of what keeps science healthy (at least I hope?).
So with all that in mind, I’ll end with this: I’m hoping that the letter will be revised moving forward, with some of the content I list above in points 1 and 2. I hope that as the dialogue online and in print continues, that I continue to learn about IIT, to update my priors, and come to an even more well-informed judgment about the theory’s technical merits. I’ve learned a lot from critics and IIT’s defenders in the last week’s worth of discussions. I am also, so, so grateful to have this job, to get to do research on this topic, in a field where the opportunities are few in number, and there are so many brilliant scientists doing interesting work. I am also grateful to have my job among a community of interesting scholars doing interesting research while I live in a state in the U.S. that is . . . shall we say . . . not exactly a bastion for freedom of inquiry and engagement with the public about research findings at the moment, depending on the topic.
But at the end of the day, we need to do better with how IIT is presented to the public. We need to acknowledge the problems that exist with its scientific claims about phi. And if we truly care about the state of consciousness science, please, please stop pretending that panpsychism is one of our best ideas and that everything may be conscious.
Brian Odegaard