By David Stephen
May is Mental Health Awareness Month for 2026. What has the study of consciousness contributed to the advancement of mental health research at any point?
David Chalmers and Christof Koch are not good enough. Their refusal to get out of the way, given their lack of capacity to stoke progress, effectively stagnated consciousness into a useless problem.
What exactly makes consciousness difficult to solve? There’s the brain. There are neurons involved in functions. There are electrochemical signals at work with neurons. If there won’t be a neural theory of consciousness because neurons are cells, then there can be an electrochemical theory of consciousness, because they [ions-derivative and molecules] are pliable enough to configure numerous functions — with specificities.
This means that subjectivity, attention, free will or whatever will be postulated has electrochemical processes, along how and where they mechanize functions.
This is the credible pressure point for progress. It is not about some dogmatic attachment to some label but how the brain works, looking at the components and extrapolating mechanisms from empirical evidence.
Anything else means they are no longer trying to solve an electrochemical problem — which is the scope. Modeling consciousness [like mental disorders, addictions, human intelligence and nurture] is an electrochemical problem. It is not even an all-brain problem, a gene problem or an astrocyte problem.
If evidence has said neurons — and electrical and chemical signals, why has no one done anything about both, thoroughly, at least?
What is the point of having an abstract theory of consciousness that cannot use the associated mechanisms and [electrochemical] components of the brain? What is the point of saying consciousness is tough to solve if the [electrical and chemical] signals are ignored? Given all that the brain does, what should be more important, consciousness or how the brain works?
Consciousness, some said, has neural correlates, or might be happening at the posterior hot zone. OK. Assuming that today, in research labs in the United States, Europe or Asia, it is confirmed that consciousness is somewhere in the brain, would that actually mean how the brain works is solved?
There have been several discoveries about centers in brain that are linked with functions like memory, vision, spatial, and so forth, yet the brain is unsolved. So, if consciousness is somewhere and that circuit is found, then what?
Addictions remain unsolved, mental disorders are perplexing, human intelligence is undefined, and so forth, so what would consciousness do, even when solved, given its insulation?
Someone may argue that coma and anesthesia get understood. Well, no. The subjective experience as consciousness that they want to solve guarantees nothing for anything useful.
It is this obvious uselessness that has closed the field and not made it interesting to try [by much more] or vigorously fund or anything else.
There is no difficulty in modern medicine that advances have not peeled away, to great degrees. Oncology and diabetic endocrinology have seen a lot of progress. Even psychiatry, with depression and others, continue to have new attempts at therapies and medications, however imperfect.
This means that if the problem is important enough, possibilities abound to make great strides. For example, artificial intelligence has prospered — even though with vulnerabilities — its capability to augment human intelligence that made it a relevant problem induced marathons at advances.
Consciousness offers no such path. It is subjective experience. It is a hard problem. It is useless. What has been established exactly, in mental disorders, addictions and human intelligence as a problem of subjective experience, such that by solving consciousness — as subjective experience — the problem gets solved? Simply, is there any problem that would be clearly solved if subjective experience is solved that would not make solving it useless? What even makes it worse is that there are so many bonkers stuff ascribed to consciousness.
Some would say consciousness is fundamental to reality. OK, is that in the brain or what, can neurons and signals process it, is it linked with mental health?
Some would say, quantum superposition, entanglement or wave function collapse is linked with consciousness. OK, can that solve addiction? Some would say consciousness is in the universe, or spacetime, OK, can that explain the mechanism of human intelligence in the brain?
Some would say that why do experiences happen with consciousness at all? OK, but there is no case of any human — socially or in an occupation — without any consciousness for that hypothetical question to merit relevance. And if it is not an electrochemical question, it can be sure disregarded.
It is like saying someone is a philosopher of seismology pelting unproductive and opaque questions at seismologists.
David Chalmers
Any philosophical blockade to a neuroscience problem is voided. Any neuroscientist that accepts a philosophical order has never known the brain and unlikely to ever know.
If consciousness is subjective experience, then what are all the functions that are subjective? Are there functions that are never subjective under any condition? Are there functions that are selectively subjective? Are there functions that are consistently subjective?
Now, what is the difference between the mechanism of a function, and the mechanism of subjectivity?
Does subjectivity of all functions happen in one neural cluster in the brain, or does it happen across neural clusters?
If it is in one neural cluster, then there must be relays to that cluster [and activity] every time there is an experience that is subjective.
But fMRI evidence has shown that this is not the case, because during studies, there is never a universal activity center in the brain, for all kinds of functions.
Simply, assuming subjectivity is in one spot in the brain, with all the fMRI studies over the years, there would be a constant spot that would always show activity, and then that could be the cluster or the neural correlate. But this is not the case.
fMRI often shows respective activity centers across functions, without a universal one, including for activities where attention is required.
This means that the consciousness proposals should be modified to presence of subjectivity, wherever functions are found. This would indicate that if subjectivity accompanies functions, then it can be called an attribute or a grader of functions. And it would occur in a definite way that will not interfere with the mechanism of functions — whatever the type. Also, it is there from the jump, even as functions are acquired and adjusted.
This is where electrical and chemical signals come in too. So, if they mechanize functions, then in the way they do, they effect subjectivity, just like they [say] effect attention, or possibility for control or intent in some functions, conceptually.
This is at least the direction to go, in postulation, not just the stalemate of a hard problem.
David Chalmers did an interview, where he said, “Every physical theory ever devised leaves a gap to consciousness. So I banged my head against the wall for years trying to come up with a physically based theory of consciousness. Every week I had a different physical theory of consciousness. None of them worked and eventually I came to see this is for systematic reasons. There are reasons why no purely physical theory will ever give you consciousness. It’ll always be an objective theory of objective functions. None of that ever gives you subjective experience.”
After the events, David Chalmers should have stepped aside. He should have moved on to philosophy of mental health, philosophy of addictions or philosophy of human intelligence. He should have abandoned consciousness.
He tried. He didn’t solve it. But he kept publishing, speaking, debating, rebutting, dangling his dead ideas, refusing to allow anything else [likely] feel sensible, such that what was left were chaff, with people trying to answer his fake puzzle.
Now, the next turn is AI consciousness for those that have not answered human consciousness. It is digital minds, for those that have not defined the human mind.
AI will not save consciousness. All the talk of AI rights, welfare and morality are dud because of data centers. There are several humans living on earth today that AI data centers have more rights, welfare and moral considerations than, by far. Also, if AI consciousness will even be considered, language is the candidate, for now.
Those who do not have anything to offer within theorizing electrochemically about human consciousness, cannot have anything to offer about AI consciousness or digital minds, no matter what fancy places they work or where they gather or what they write or what they promote.
David Chalmers became an obstacle to progress in consciousness, and while he has a network of lackeys, they will not be able to remove sour from his legacy, if he’d have one.
Christof Koch
Christof Koch has, and in part, proposed neural correlates of consciousness, 40 Hz gamma oscillations, claustrum, posterior cortical hot zone, causal power, quantum superposition, and so forth.
None of these has or will solve mental disorders, addictions and human intelligence. All of those are not efforts of someone who was plowing, they are efforts of someone that is conspicuously dim. Strange that someone that could not provision progress in neuroscience gives verdicts on the works of others.
At some point, after close to forty years working on the same thing without headway, Christof Koch should conclude to himself that he’s not smart, at all.
And this inability should, rationally, result in him allowing other works meet light, with him not being a kingmaker on what theory should be seen or heard.
This has not been the case. While there are lots of more foolish theories than his, in consciousness, his works, all of it, are completely irrelevant to central brain problems, anywhere. Christof Koch said IIT starts first from consciousness. It is such a stupid thing and no different from people that keep saying that mental health problems are situational, not the brain. Maybe because they do not have an electrochemical postulate for psychiatry. What is the new world for neuroscience, it is electrochemical: the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize functions. While some people can stick with defining new labels, the explanation of the brain for electrical and chemical signals, holds the wheel.
Christof Koch has been a complete disappointment for science, particularly consciousness. Anyone anywhere who has never done or contributed anything to consciousness research is better than Christof Koch, by far. It means his work is not just a waste, at least that would go away, his work clogged the pipe.
In the sight of an individual in a schizophrenic episode or someone who is going to overdose in an addiction, nothing that Christof Koch has ever done is of any relevance, promise or insight. If he claims that he’s not working on mental health, that caveat is the evidence of his consciousness work being useless.
Even bringing his work where there are serious problems will be like a mockery of the condition or a joke. A joke, really, is how to describe his oeuvre.
While he has said that AI won’t be conscious, Christof Koch is quite sympathetic to panpsychism. Another thing that should make people run far away from him, as far as possible. He would say that consciousness is different from intelligence. Someone who does not have a model of how human intelligence works is saying one is surely not the other.
He has misused the reputation of science. He has used the scientific process and method to back nothingness. The extent of his contributions to lost time and resources may never be fully known.
Consciousness sunset
There are several interesting problems about the brain across research divisions like neurology, psychiatry and now, human intelligence, that consciousness has no place.
There would have been times that it would be easy to sell consciousness as some problem, but that time has passed, and will never return.
If people that are clearly not bright have made themselves supreme leaders, where evidence and problem-solving [objective] are not keys to progress, then it is no longer science, but a one-party banana republic. How is it even possible to be working in a field that they are certain that the problem will not be solved in years to come? That conflict of interest from them says that they are effectively saboteurs.
At the end of the day, they failed themselves, and their adherents look like covering up for them. Yes, society has had losses, but their legacy — with consciousness staying irrelevant — is dirt.
Their consciousness quest will remain unsolved, worthless, useless and an infinite embarrassment. The world has passed them by.
There is a recent [April 30, 2026] letter on The Newtown Bee, May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
1 Comment
It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow