Cogitate Consortium: Adversarial Collaboration in Consciousness Research is Total Nonsense

Sedona,, AZ – -If you have a theory of how human consciousness works, you may not need to do experiments to test it initially. You may not need elaborate experiments to test it in the long run, if the theory is robust enough.

If your theory is sound, proceed to a treatment home for those living with mental disorders, use your theory to explain the delusions and hallucinations, especially how the components of the brain are causing those to occur. You can use the evidence already established from neuroscience to back up some of the observations.

If you do not want to go anywhere, you can get the DSM and use your theory to explain many of the conditions. For example, in a mental illness, what components are responsible, neurons? How do they behave during episodes differently from how they behave when there are no episodes?

If the theory identifies something else aside from neurons, how does it explain disorders, and what are the already available observations in neuroscience that can backup some of the postulates?

In a new [May 1, 2025] report in Reuters, Scientists explore where consciousness arises in the brain, stating that, “In a quest to identify the parts of the brain underpinning consciousness, neuroscientists measured electrical and magnetic activity as well as blood flow in the brains of 256 people in 12 laboratories across the United States, Europe and China, while the participants viewed various images. The measurements tracked activation in various parts of the brain. However, the study did not identify enough connections that last for as long as the conscious experience in the back of the brain to uphold the Integrated Information Theory.”

The study is inconclusive because the theories are counterfeit and the application of adversarial collaboration is nonsense. The first test of consciousness is mental health or mental disorder. Mental states are consciousness too, basic explanations of those would add rigor to their theories not just the jump to consciousness.

Also, the location of consciousness is the wrong question. There are memories, emotions, movement and feelings that are possible but not experienced sometimes. When they are experienced, are the functions mechanized in the same location as the consciousness or are they in different locations?

What is needed is this, if there is a function and that function is conscious in a moment, why is that possible? To answer this question is not to look simply for location but components and the mechanisms of those.

This is similar to other states of consciousness like coma. What mechanisms are active to certain thresholds and what components are responsible?

Consciousness is not the way it feels like, or what it is like to be something, if the definition cannot be divided into a function and an attribute. If it is a feeling or an emotion, and it is experienced in an instance, the function is the feeling or emotion, and the attributes make it a conscious experience, so to speak. So if it feels like, is it memory and then subjectivity? Is it feeling and attention? So, any definition of consciousness must be divisible into function and attributes.

This simplifies the problem and proximate answers, not compounded to say what it feels like, and then turn it into something that can never be resolved to the pleasure of the obstructionists.

Cogitate consortium of consciousness research is a farce. If you want to flush money and be cute about it, give it to them. The John Templeton Foundation is already in the quagmire.

There is a new [May 1, 2025] story in BioPharma Dive, AstraZeneca quietly exits neuroscience, stating that “AstraZeneca on Tuesday confirmed it has closed down its neuroscience research group to direct resources toward more “high value” projects. Considered one of the most challenging segments of drug development, neuroscience has scared off much of big pharma over past decade. Pfizer, for instance, stopped nervous system drug discovery in early 2018. Amgen then left the space a year later. Even Biogen, which is often viewed as a pioneer in brain drug research, has spent the last few years branching into other research fields deemed less risky. To that end, AstraZeneca has scrapped three programs aimed at Alzheimer’s disease, migraine, and pain associated with diabetes or osteoarthritis. The company does still have a Parkinson’s therapy in its pipeline, though that drug is lumped into rare disease research.”