Reference

Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms

Tononi et al. (2025). Consciousness or pseudo-consciousness? A clash of two paradigms. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-025-01880-y

Abstract

Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from consciousness, which is subjective, and accounts for its presence and quality in objective, testable terms. Attempts to label as ‘pseudoscientific’ a theory distinguished by decades of conceptual, mathematical, and empirical developments expose a crisis in the dominant computational-functionalist paradigm, which is challenged by IIT’s consciousness-first paradigm.