{"id":213324,"date":"2025-05-06T05:12:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-does-consciousness-work-duelling-scientists-tested-two-big-theories-but-found-no-winner"},"modified":"2025-05-06T05:12:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T10:12:10","slug":"how-does-consciousness-work-duelling-scientists-tested-two-big-theories-but-found-no-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/how-does-consciousness-work-duelling-scientists-tested-two-big-theories-but-found-no-winner","title":{"rendered":"How does consciousness work? Duelling scientists tested two big theories but found no winner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-does-consciousness-work-duelling-scientists-tested-two-big-theories-but-found-no-winner.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cTheories are like toothbrushes,\u201d it\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologicalscience.org\/observer\/the-toothbrush-problem\">sometimes said<\/a>. \u201cEverybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness \u2013 the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all \u2013 it\u2019s not too far from the truth.<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, British neuroscientist Anil Seth and I published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41583-022-00587-4\">a review<\/a> listing 22 theories based in the biology of the brain. In 2024, operating with a less restrictive scope, US public intellectual Robert Kuhn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0079610723001128?via=ihub\">counted<\/a> more than 200.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTheories are like toothbrushes,\u201d it\u2019s sometimes said. \u201cEverybody has their own and nobody wants to use anybody else\u2019s.\u201d It\u2019s a joke, but when it comes to the study of consciousness \u2013 the question of how we have a subjective experience of anything at all \u2013 it\u2019s not too far from the truth. In 2022, British [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-humor","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}