I'm tagging some people who may be interested in this paper. Feel free to rt! @singhal.bsky.social @johanneskleiner.bsky.social @davidchalmers.bsky.social @ksks.bsky.social @zefanzheng.bsky.social @jaanaru.bsky.social @wanjawiese.bsky.social @matthiasmichel.bsky.social @smfleming.bsky.social

I'm tagging people who may be interested in this paper. Feel free to rt!!! @birchlse.bsky.social@heddamorch.bsky.social@liangqianchen.bsky.social @kathrynnave.eurosky.social@lalumera.bsky.social @matteograsso.bsky.social@saiayachit.bsky.social @frosas.bsky.social@sfink.bsky.social@clist.bsky.social

I'm tagging some people who may be interested in this paper. Feel free to rt!! @niccolonegro.bsky.social @robertchisciure.bsky.social@keithfrankish.com @anilseth.bsky.social @algarwegian.bsky.social @liadmudrik.bsky.social @timbayne.bsky.social @rhlvenugopal.bsky.social @andrewhaun.bsky.social

Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science Contemporary consciousness science faces an impasse: competing theoretical frameworks—structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, intrinsic versus extrinsic—appear to be inducing philo...

So one hope of the paper is to offer a clearer map of the field:

not to declare a winner, but to show where research programs genuinely diverge, where they may still converge, and where comparison has been confused from the start.

Would love to hear thoughts, objections, and feedback!

10/10

These issues are not only abstract.

They matter for how we think about consciousness in animals, AI, infants, brain-injured patients, and other borderline cases where theory has practical and moral consequences. Cases where consciousness should neither assumed or prematurely discarded.

9/n

Furthermore, we also argue for disciplined pluralism.

Not “anything goes,” nor premature unification.

But rather a research culture where competing approaches constrain one another, where translation across frameworks matters, and where assumptions and disagreements are made more precise.

8/n

Yet we are not pessimistic.

We think that treating these debates as a single one can turn apparent deadlocks into more tractable disagreements by making hidden assumptions explicit and enabling more systematic comparison across theories.

7/n

We describe this dynamic as schismogenesis:

a self-reinforcing process in which debate sharpens divisions instead of resolving them.

In that sense, polarization in consciousness science is not just sociological noise but the product of different choices in theory-building assumptions.

6/n

This helps explain why researchers often seem to talk past one another.

The disagreement is not always about data.

It is often about background commitments: what consciousness is taken to be, what would count as an explanation for consciousness, and what a theory is even supposed to cover.

5/n

Our main claim is that these are not 3 separate debates.

Together, they define an integrated problem space that shapes:

1) what counts as evidence,
2) how findings are interpreted,
3) which research programs get prioritized.

4/n

We focus on 3 meta-theoretical debates:

Explanation: is consciousness better explained in terms of structure or function?
Scope: should a theory be universal, or restricted to systems more like us?
Perspective: should consciousness be approached intrinsically or extrinsically?

3/n

In the past 35 years, consciousness science has made much empirical progress, but the field still often feels stuck.

Why?

We argue that some of the deepest disputes are usually discussed in isolation, even though they are tightly connected and determine how we understand "consciousness."

2/n

Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science Contemporary consciousness science faces an impasse: competing theoretical frameworks—structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, intrinsic versus extrinsic—appear to be inducing philo...

New open-access paper out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences:

Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science
Francesco Ellia & Naotsugu Tsuchiya

A thread 1/n🧵

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Looks very cool!

New preprint by @niccolonegro.bsky.social !

We are very excited to share this new preprint @yutogashi.bsky.social @oizumim.bsky.social with the excellent video providing the idea! The paper explains how this approach actually goes into more details in revealing subtle individual difference and complex structures of color qualia.

Every time I upload a paper to #bioRxiv, I wonder why it can't be this easy at every journal 🧪

wonderful!

This paper and lecture by @wgpm.bsky.social address a long standing question about #IIT: if #consciousness is intrinsic, how does it relate to its #environment?

From our @qualiastructure.bsky.social Qualia Structure & IIT Summer School 2025!

(PDF) A dynamic stimulus distribution methodology for efficient large-scale pairwise relational data collection PDF | On Dec 3, 2025, Z Chuyin and others published A dynamic stimulus distribution methodology for efficient large-scale pairwise relational data collection | Find, read and cite all the research you...

If your stimulus set is so large that each participant can only use a part of it, do you know random selection is not a good way to distribute the stimuli? We introduced a methodology to collect data efficiently. @naotsuchiya.bsky.social @qualiastructure.bsky.social doi.org/10.13140/RG....

Be mindful of the subjectivity of conscious experience!
Our poster "Free descriptions reduce friction between report and visual experience" at 2025 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Society Conference @ellia.bsky.social @naotsuchiya.bsky.social @qualiastructure.bsky.social
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Identity theory 2.0

Of course, if this model would be able to explain why a human brain is conscious in the way it is, why certain parts of such brain don’t look conscious, why consciousness seems to go away during certain physiological states, then I could take it more seriously.

I disagree, it’s an hypothesis that you cannot test and that it’s not embedded in an explanatory framework..

Goff position is not a theory nor explains anything. In fact, it’s no more a solution to the HP than claiming that there’s some magic involved.

[Qstr-IIT summer school 2025] Day 1 Matteo Grasso: Introduction to Integrated Information Theory YouTube video by Neural basis of Consciousness & Qualia Structure

[Qstr-IIT summer school 2025] Day 1 Matteo Grasso: Introduction to Integrated Information Theory youtu.be/cwPGZ1CacVU?... Highly accessible!

[Qstr-IIT summer school 2025] Day 1: Christof Koch: Introduction to the consciousness research YouTube video by Neural basis of Consciousness & Qualia Structure

[Qstr-IIT summer school 2025] Day 1: Christof Koch: Introduction to Consciousness and Brain youtu.be/rfYX8YVK7HQ?... via @YouTube

I will check this reference out! My understanding is that you can always push functions a bit further till the point you have a description of the substrate. Then either it collapse in identity theory or become a substrate relevant framework, such as the one proposed by @anilseth.bsky.social.

Congratulations!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Happy to share this new paper (open access) on the logic of extrapolations in consciousness science, written with @liadmudrik.bsky.social