By its own definitions IIT is not falsifiable, for it proclaims that a computer program that gave identical behavior in all situations to another conscious system, would not be conscious. But since it has identical behavior there is no objective way to prove this assertion of IIT (that one system is conscious while the other is not).
This also implies the possibility of philosophical zombies (which IIT proponents freely admit), which also implies consciousness is epiphenomenonal, with all the problems of philosophical zombies and epiphenomenonalism entail. So is it pseudoscience? I don't know if I would call it that, but I think it is almost certainly wrong as it is currently framed. I do find some strengths in some of the ideas that have come out of it, in particular how a system must be capable of affecting itself for it to be aware of its consciousness. I also think it is right to put the focus on information. I think where it errs is in confusing a logical-informational state with a instantaneous physical state. This leads to the mistaken belief that a parallel computation is more conscious than a serial computation, even when they compute the exact same function (IIT proponents don't consider space-time symmetry). I think that if IIT corrected these problems, it would be no more than functionalism. I think of IIT is a kind of "functionalism in denial", as it makes many similar claims to functionalists, placing emphasis on the causal organization of a system, but at the last moment, it insists that a computer implementing that same causal organization would not be conscious. Jason On Thu, Sep 21, 2023, 2:08 PM John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote: > Consciousness theory slammed as "pseudoscience" > <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02971-1?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=84936ca310-briefing-dy-20230921&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-84936ca310-44221073> > > John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis > <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> > jqq > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KhiA9tJXvhos5RRSStwh6hSWm6SFVfz-vpRZDrYGM%2BA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3KhiA9tJXvhos5RRSStwh6hSWm6SFVfz-vpRZDrYGM%2BA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUiPOahXAG8hUbt1xy21caiaPze0z-r4G%2B6VmaKv3TbtDA%40mail.gmail.com.
