Models of Consciousness: Objections to Integrated Information Theory

Well, we, I, I, I can cover some of that, uh, with, with, uh, Michael's permission.

Sure.

Uh, Michael, who is, uh, renowned in his field, was given an invitation to submit a paper to a journal called, uh, Entropy, and, uh, they invited him.

And, uh, so he decided that he wanted to write about integrated information theory and contacted me.

I'm a mathematical nerd, he's a neurosurgeon, and so we fit together on that because the integrated information theory is a very heavily mathematical, uh, issue.

It turns out that there is a bias in reference.

Both Michael and I appeared in the movie "Expelled," and back then it was a push, push away against intelligent design.

Anything that was against intelligent design, uh, was, was good.

Anything for intelligent design was bad.

We have a similar issue here.

There are some people that believe that we are computers made out of meat, and integrated information theory is a model which assumes that we are, uh, computers made out of meat, and pushback against that is pushback, pushback against the philosophy that we are m- computers made out of meat.

So we had one reference, and the, the o- one, one of the reviewers, they kept saying, "No, yeah, you know, I don't like this.

I don't like this." Um, one of them said, and I'm quoting, "If the authors want to advance the debate, they need to edit the text to, uh, acknowledge the shortcomings of their contentions alongst the lines developed," yada yada.

But so the idea was, it said, "We must debate ourselves.

We must put in the debate." And you know there was no debate put into the original integration information theory.

There was no debate put in most of the problem-- most of the papers in Entropy.

We, we submitted a lot of the pro in, um, integrated information theory references, uh, without, without a lot of, of elaboration.

So, uh, we pushed back on that, and I got frustrated, and I wrote the, um, the editor-in-chief of, uh, Entropy, uh, Kevin Knuth.

He's, uh, he's a professor at the University of Albany and SUNY.

And I said, "Look, we need a decision here, man.

You have to, you have to decide.

You don't always go on the opinion of one of the reviewers." As a former, uh, um, as a former editor-in-chief, uh, you can't do that because there is a stochastic element in the review.

And I wrote him and I said, uh, "I wrote you on May 12th, and, uh, you haven't responded." And what I basically asked him to do is either, uh, to make a decision, yes or no, and we would respect that, uh, that decision, but we never got back a response at all.

It just died on the vine.

So with that, we decided to submit it to Biocomplexity, which is the journal that I'm the editor-in-chief of.