In 1996, Horgan published “The End of Science” where he observed that science is finite because fundamental principles of nature have been discovered while the grounding of concepts in empirical observation is lost (Horgan, Reference Horgan1996). Through excessive “complexification,” an ironic science emerges where hyperbole obscures understanding. Horgan's analysis builds on interviews with leading scientists at the turn of the century from a range of disciplines, including neuroscientists Pribram and Nobel laureates Crick and Edelman.Footnote ¹ Integrated information theory (IIT) confirms this prediction and reveals an ironic science which eschews the core values of empirical science: explanation, prediction, and pragmatic control. IIT's first incarnation was delivered in 1994 as a measure of network complexity (Tononi, Sporns, & Edelman, Reference Tononi, Sporns and Edelman1994), which was later promoted into the IIT “theory” by the declaration that the complexity it measures is actually consciousness. However, to parade descriptive metrics as explanatory concepts is a fallacy which comes with a cost: the imagined ontological status must be rationalized. In case of IIT, this leads to a Baron von Munchausen miracle pulling oneself from a conceptual swamp by one's own hair, an obfuscation (e.g., Tononi, Reference Tononi2012) which spirals into panpsychism. In this, IIT violates a 900-year-old principle of empirical science formulated by Adelard of Bath: Nature should be treated as an epistemologically and ontologically closed system. Through its panpsychism escape, IIT is unfalsifiable and outside the realm of science becoming ironic science. Ironically, seeking shelter in physics is perilous: How solid is our understanding of matter? Since Fourier and Maxwell, the physical world and its mathematical description have been uncoupled, resulting in Bridgeman's notion of operationalism where phenomena are defined through measurement operations, as IIT attempts to do. In modern physics, matter has become as complex and disconnected from a verifiable third-person description as the first person mind itself (Phillips, Beretta, & Whitaker, Reference Phillips, Beretta and Whitaker2014) providing another impetus to ironic science (Horgan, Reference Horgan1996). IIT's intellectual bait and switch evades its scientific challenge and ends up providing no answers. As for the scholastics, in IIT dogma trumps observation, and the ensuing rationalization replaces the core values of science with a tale of increasing complexity and panpsychism creating ironic science.

As the target article shows and I have elaborated, IIT is not a theory of consciousness, faces fundamental problems in its practical implementation, whereas direct empirical studies have falsified its claims (Feigin et al., Reference Feigin, Roth, Naghavi, Parmar, Krishnamurthi, Chugh and Forouzanfar2016; Noel, Ishizawa, Patel, Eskandar, & Wallace, Reference Noel, Ishizawa, Patel, Eskandar and Wallace2019; Sasai, Boly, Mensen, & Tononi, Reference Sasai, Boly, Mensen and Tononi2016). The study of consciousness, in general, appears prone to such high-risk speculative undertakings, for example, “activity-silent conscious working memory” (Trübutschek et al., Reference Trübutschek, Marti, Ojeda, King, Mi, Tsodyks and Dehaene2017) or the hypothesis that microtubules establish a link between res extensa and a quantum physical res cogitans (Hameroff & Penrose, Reference Hameroff and Penrose1996). These developments suggest that consciousness studies in a broader sense display signs of an ironic post-scientific phase rather than a pre-scientific one as the target article argues. Future philosophers of science might wonder how an idea that effectively puts science back into the dark ages could receive the attention it did in the early twenty-first century?

The main question is how consciousness studies can advance. In addition to the question of “point of view” or perspectivalness as proposed in the target article, I suggest five complementary avenues (Verschure, Reference Verschure2016): First, definitions can no longer be ignored. What is there to explain without defining the “thing” to be explained, that is, the explanandum? The often-repeated definition “we all know what it is” combined with the “neural correlate of” method has created the quagmire we find ourselves in today. In this exercise, main ideas on consciousness should not be seen as “adversarial” (Melloni, Mudrik, Pitts, & Koch, Reference Melloni, Mudrik, Pitts and Koch2021) but at best as complementary, and a conceptual basis must be defined through an integrated standard model spanning psychological and biological aspects. Second, the link between consciousness and memory needs more attention. Without memory, there is no consciousness and no “point of view” (Merker, Reference Merker2007). Indeed, a recent study of declarative memory in intracranially implanted humans demonstrated direct third person semantic decoding of declared memory states from signals obtained from the medial temporal lobe (Estefan et al., Reference Estefan, Zucca, Arsiwalla, Principe, Zhang, Rocamora and Verschure2021). Third, coding formats matter. The latter study revealed that an intricate phase code underlies declarative memory. Decoding using different formats would only have revealed “silent” or no memory. Fourth, consciousness needs to be placed in the evolutionary comparative perspective of the fitness of embodied agents, as an evolutionary transition (Barron & Klein, Reference Barron and Klein2016). Phenomenology alone is not sufficient, rather it is experience in the service of action that needs to be explained. Fifth, third-person access to the first-person states of embodied consciousness can be realized, or quale parsing, through the use of synthetic methods (Maffei, Santos-Pata, Marcos, Sánchez-Fibla, & Verschure, Reference Maffei, Santos-Pata, Marcos, Sánchez-Fibla and Verschure2015). Actually also Edelman advocated such an approach (Edelman et al., Reference Edelman, Reeke, Gall, Tononi, Williams, Sporns and Reeke1992).

IIT and its popularity indicate that consciousness studies have become a form of ironic science. Admittedly, scientific abduction requires creativity, speculation, and counterfactuals whereas some hyperbole might be considered unavoidable in vying for dominance in the marketplace of ideas. Yet ultimately evidence must be delivered proportional to the claims. Unfortunately, in IIT this proportionality is absent. This concerns us all not only because as scientists we want to get to the fact of the matter but more importantly, hyperbole erodes public trust in science. As humanity faces fundamental challenges to its sustainability, science is the last line of defence against barbarism and its core values must be protected. IIT has crossed this border. To come back from ironic science, we must return to the values of the scientific method where theories of consciousness are required to explain, predict, and pragmatically influence this phenomenon without which we do not exist.