{"id":230838,"date":"2026-02-07T22:14:58","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:14:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/no-current-theory-of-consciousness-is-scientific"},"modified":"2026-02-07T22:14:58","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T04:14:58","slug":"no-current-theory-of-consciousness-is-scientific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/no-current-theory-of-consciousness-is-scientific","title":{"rendered":"No current theory of consciousness is scientific"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/no-current-theory-of-consciousness-is-scientific.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A letter by distinguished scientists directed at Integrated Information Theory sought to discredit a leading theory of consciousness as pseudoscience. That, argues Erik Hoel, was a mistake.<\/p>\n<p>Hoel contends that as no theory of consciousness is currently empirically testable, it\u2019s impossible for any of these theories to be scientific.<\/p>\n<p>Hoel is a neuroscientist, neurophilosopher, and fiction writer. He\u2019s been a close collaborator of Giulio Tononi, and a Forbes 30 under 30 in science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cConsciousness, according to IIT, might be more widespread than we think, but it is neither universal nor arbitrary,\u201d writes Hoel.<\/p>\n<p>Tap the link to read more now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A letter by distinguished scientists directed at Integrated Information Theory sought to discredit a leading theory of consciousness as pseudoscience. That, argues Erik Hoel, was a mistake. Hoel contends that as no theory of consciousness is currently empirically testable, it\u2019s impossible for any of these theories to be scientific. Hoel is a neuroscientist, neurophilosopher, and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230838","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}