Panpsychism: Consciousness — Research without Mental Disorders
There is a new piece in Nautilus, The Worth of Wild Ideas, stating that, “In IIT, the amount of consciousness a system has is tracked by a mathematical quantity called Phi, and, according to the theory, wherever there is non-zero Phi, there will be consciousness, at least to some degree. This implies a restricted form of panpsychism, since instances of non-zero Phi can be found beyond brains, and even in non-biological systems. Some very simple systems can be conscious according to IIT, such as grids of inactive electronic circuitry in a computing device — though the kind of consciousness involved may be very minimal. But many other things — whether simple or complex — will lack consciousness entirely, because they don’t integrate information in the right way. For example, according to IIT, things like tables and chairs wouldn’t be conscious, and neither would artificial intelligence systems in which signals can only flow in one direction.”
The article is a containment effort, defending Integrated Information Theory (IIT) from the charge of pseudoscience. The article did not mention mental health, illness or disorder. It did not also mention brain diseases in general. It is unlikely that IIT would have been tagged pseudoscience if it had, for years, found a way to explain or solve mental conditions or addictions.
There is another recent piece about the grenade in The Atlantic, A Scientific Feud Breaks Out Into the Open, stating that, “The field has been largely isolated from mainstream psychology and neuroscience, and as a result, researchers can have trouble attracting funding. Consciousness research has gradually become more accepted, but even today it’s not often bankrolled by the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. Many scientists must instead rely on private donors.”
Some people argue that psychology is not a science, but with psychology having CBT and other therapies, helping people in mental health problems, critics may yell. Psychology has real world applications, even if psychology cannot explain how intrusive thoughts come by, or what thought order is, aside from disorder, or what happens in the mind, in a depression.
Consciousness research probably made an error with their adversarial collaboration, exploring two theories, when there are mental disorders that theories should explain or explore, towards finding better answers than what psychology and psychiatry say.
What matters if two boxer brothers keep dueling at home? They may duel on a competitive stage or with others in competition. This is similar to tennis sisters, in a home scrimmage, against competing on the big stage against each other or others. For consciousness, it should be theory vs. mental disorder or theory vs. theory on what solves mental illness.
Theories about the brain, including those of consciousness, that cannot explain or attempt to solve mental conditions or brain diseases have an open test they have already failed, even if experiments can be designed for them or they are falsifiable.
How does the global workspace theory explain major depression? How do higher-order theories of consciousness explain schizophrenic psychosis? How does the attention schema theory explain Alzheimer’s disease? How does predictive processing explain bipolar disorder? How does IIT explain PTSD? How does panpsychism explain substance abuse?
There are observations that these theories have made, but observations for the brain, when conditions are there, are not enough. The relationship to conditions, either to solve or explain, defines the theory beyond basic empirical tests.
Many theories are not mechanisms of observations, but observations as theories. How does the brain carry out what is described as prediction? How exactly? If this is known, how does it explain or solve bipolar disorder, if it could?
When some young actor dies of accidental overdose, no one cares what consciousness theory is leading, assuming a theory could have been useful in somewhat preventing it, resulting in a high profile outcome for the field. When around 300 to 400 physicians die by suicide in the United States each year, what does consciousness science have to offer, in a solution that would rally medical science for the field.
There is a global problem of the human mind. There are conflicts in the world that stem from perceptions, or those from the inability to come to terms with differences. What goes on in the mind in those cases is beyond looking for activity areas in the brain or slapping fancy phrases like default mode network, flow state, episodic memory and others.
The brain is said to be the most complex organ, but there are too many credible junks like controlled hallucination, best guess, predictive coding/processing/error, central executive, free energy principle — with no application to anything useful. In brain science, wild ideas or their scientific compatibility are not as important as what they would mean to explaining or solving mental illnesses. The DSM-V has labels for conditions, from observations. Consciousness theories are labels from observations. What would move psychiatry forward?
Consciousness research should be a serious science, but the relevance of the field depends on the usefulness of its studies to real world problems. Generative AI has crossed a knowledge threshold. It is strange that many consciousness scientists keep dismissing it as nothing, in part due to having little the field can say about it. Psychedelics have taken off, consciousness science has little for them.
Congeniality with panpsychism for consciousness research is like inviting a major conspiracy theorist — who doesn’t hold back, as a keynote speaker, to an event by reps in a caucus that is trying to gain wide acceptance. If panpsychism can explain why people self-harm, may be it would deserve a place, not just its quest to solve the so-called combination problem to nowhere.
Consciousness experts have been able to police the field so intensely that other scientists are often cautious about saying anything on consciousness to avoid some hot response. It does not matter what consciousness is, or is not, the field may have already been left behind, by its inability to hitch a ride with mental health.
The relevance of the field, for LLMs or mental illnesses may be predicated on its answers, not on the fear of some brand smudge, winter, or on the verdict of pseudoscience.
