{"id":26875,"date":"2025-04-30T15:00:53","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26875"},"modified":"2025-04-30T15:25:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T15:25:24","slug":"two-theories-of-consciousness-faced-off-the-ref-took-a-beating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=26875","title":{"rendered":"Two Theories of Consciousness Faced Off. The Ref Took a Beating."},"content":{"rendered":"
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What makes humans conscious? Scientists disagree, strongly, as one group of peacemakers discovered the hard way.<\/p>\n

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Consciousness may be a mystery, but that doesn\u2019t mean that neuroscientists don\u2019t have any explanations for it. Far from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the field of consciousness, there are already so many theories that we don\u2019t need more theories,\u201d said Oscar Ferrante, a neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a theory to explain how our brains give rise to subjective, inner experiences, you can check out Adaptive Resonance Theory. Or consider Dynamic Core Theory. Don\u2019t forget First Order Representational Theory, not to mention semantic pointer competition theory. The list goes on: A 2021 survey identified 29 different theories of consciousness.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. Ferrante belongs to a group of scientists who want to lower that number, perhaps even down to just one. But they face a steep challenge, thanks to how scientists often study consciousness: Devise a theory, run experiments to build evidence for it, and argue that it\u2019s better than the others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe are not incentivized to kill our own ideas,\u201d said Lucia Melloni, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany.<\/p>\n

Seven years ago, Dr. Melloni and 41 other scientists embarked on a major study on consciousness that she hoped would break this pattern. Their plan was to bring together two rival groups to design an experiment to see how well both theories did at predicting what happens in our brains during a conscious experience.<\/p>\n

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What makes humans conscious? Scientists disagree, strongly, as one group of peacemakers discovered the hard way.Consciousness may be a mystery, but that doesn\u2019t mean that neuroscientists don\u2019t have any explanations for it. Far from it.\u201cIn the field of consciousness, there are already so many theories that we don\u2019t need more theories,\u201d said Oscar Ferrante, a neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham.If you\u2019re looking for a theory to explain how our brains give rise to subjective, inner experiences, you can check out Adaptive Resonance Theory. Or consider Dynamic Core Theory. Don\u2019t forget First Order Representational Theory, not to mention semantic pointer competition theory. The list goes on: A 2021 survey identified 29 different theories of consciousness.Dr. Ferrante belongs to a group of scientists who want to lower that number, perhaps even down to just one. But they face a steep challenge, thanks to how scientists often study consciousness: Devise a theory, run experiments to build evidence for it, and argue that it\u2019s better than the others.\u201cWe are not incentivized to kill our own ideas,\u201d said Lucia Melloni, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany.Seven years ago, Dr. Melloni and 41 other scientists embarked on a major study on consciousness that she hoped would break this pattern. Their plan was to bring together two rival groups to design an experiment to see how well both theories did at predicting what happens in our brains during a conscious experience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26877,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26878,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions\/26878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}