Others, like the computational neuroscientist Megan Peters [associate professor of cognitive science] of the University of California, Irvine, bristled at media coverage that reported the results as a two-horse race between GNWT and IIT rather than a field with multiple contenders. Instead of focusing on winners and losers, Peters said, it’s important to see that science advances by learning from each experimental hurdle. Still, Peters remains a fan of adversarial collaborations. During the Covid-19 lockdown, she was inspired by the Templeton process to help organize a series of workshops hosted by the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference. In these “generative adversarial collaborations,” researchers engaged in robust debate. “Watching the teams chew on stuff was instructive,” she said.

For the full story, please visit https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-a-contest-of-consciousness-theories-really-proved-20230824/.