The Problem
Consciousness has been a unique holdout for science. The past decades have produced hundreds of neuroscientific theories of consciousness, and yet empirical research has ruled out none of them.
Even the most well-funded and well-intentioned adversarial collaborations have publicly failed to falsify a single theory. Meanwhile, urgent questions, like identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for artificial consciousness, remain stuck in assumption-dependent quagmires.
The standard academic approach of pet theories, one-off papers, and testing in small-scale neuroscience labs is not progressive or focused enough to solve the most difficult problem in all of science.
The Breakthrough
Our recent research has shown that the strict requirements for falsifiability create narrow bounds that a theory of consciousness must meet, which in turn constrain theories significantly.
In other words, most current theories of consciousness are unfalsifiable, or trivial, or there exist known mathematical theorems that can be used to construct “counterexamples” in the form of hypothetical systems that falsify the theory.
The majority of theories of consciousness are not even wrong. But this is actually good news. A class of theories that are falsifiable, and testable, and non-trivial, do exist, within narrow bounds that we can identify.
The Vision
We are going to make those bounds for theories of consciousness even narrower. And narrower. And narrower. Until most theories have been ruled out, and the shape of a final scientific theory of consciousness reveals itself.