The 28th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness [ASSC] was held in Crete, Greece, from July 6-9, 2025. The Science of Consciousness [TSC] 31st annual meeting was held from July 6-11, 2025, in Barcelona, Spain. The Festival of Consciousness [FoC] was also held in Barcelona, from July 11-13, 2025.

But nobody heard anything.

There was one press release from a company that presented at the TSC. But nothing much about the events in the media [in English, Greek, or Spanish]. There were lots of sessions, talks, and so forth, but nothing serious enough to stoke wider interest. If, at least, two of the biggest conferences in a supposedly important field were held in the same month, and what followed was contiguous silence, it is either that the field is already in irreparable oblivion, or in pre-reality, or the conferences should have been called off since they have nothing useful to show.

This is a case study in what they all seemed to ignore. If your research work is dim or has no promise, you may wither away, albeit feigning activities. Nobody is interested in anything phenomenological or the dumpster of insufferable terms that have been overloaded with consciousness research.

Mental health, safety and alignment

There are parents with children who were victims of deepfake images at school. There are colleges where students are cheating with AI. There are families that have suffered ransom trauma from deepfake audio. There are situations of addiction by some people whose loved ones do not know what to do. There are horror experiences some families have had because an AI chatbot nudged a member into an irreversible decision.

There are mental health issues that some people have sought answers to, that the DSM-5-TR didn’t do much to explicate. There are side effects of psychiatric medications that are so devastating, but little else loved ones can do. There are loneliness and emptiness issues that are personal crises in the lives of many, driving them to extremes. There is just so much around the brain, mind, and now AI, where answers are sought in very credible ways.

Many of these are in reports. So, what should a conference — that is within the study of the mind or brain — do? At least try to find how to answer or postulate in ways that can be meaningful to lives. But what have these conferences done? Nothing meaningful.

Outdated theories

The so-called leading theories of consciousness: Integrated Information Theory [IIT] and Global Workspace Theory [GWT], are 100% worthless. Not 50%, not 80%. 100% infinitely worthless. IIT is around 21 years old. GWT is around 37 years old. Either or both cannot explain one mental state. Just one. From inception to date. None can say what the human mind is or how the brain organizes information. If AI is able to access human emotions, including sycophancy, the theories cannot say why the human mind is susceptible.

Yet, these theories are in competition in what is called ARC-COGITATE. Like scientists are testing useless theories and screaming no one knows how consciousness or the brain works, as a license for nonsense. They don’t have to stop or be told to do so, but their irrelevance stinks so badly, nobody wants anything to do with them.

The mind [or whatever is responsible for memory, emotions, feelings, others] and consciousness are correlated with the brain. Empirical evidence in neuroscience has shown that neurons and their signals are involved. What theory of neurons and their signals can be used to explain the mind and consciousness? If anything else is proposed, how does it rule out neurons and their signals?

Quantum entanglement and quantum superposition

This is all that any serious consciousness science research should be asking. Some people are saying quantum entanglement and quantum superposition. How does it explain or rule out neurons or the signals of neurons for functions and their attributes? There is a microtubule added to that is so comical, it reflects how some people think that the reputation of science should subsume dirt. No one cares about your quantum contests if someone is trying to resolve mood disorders.

AI ethics research is one area where the philosophical aspect of consciousness may have found relevance. They should have been able to propose answers that colleges would use to discourage AI cheating, as well as displays that AI chatbot companies would use to discourage it, as a fair effort. But nothing like that.

“College is for learning. Learning relays the mind to solve problems. Understanding is a key necessity. Assignments in school contribute to this process. If the mind does not use some of its sequences for learning, it may not be able to solve some problems or understand some complexities”. Say a message like that is displayed for certain prompts, like those for assignments or applications, and so forth, it may not mean many would stop, but it could contribute to inputs that would let some have the courage to hold back.

Consciousness and sentience research

Consciousness and sentience research have plummeted into the abyss. The field no longer has the credibility to be called science. Consciousness is not subjective experience if subjectivity is not the only thing that goes with experiences. Any experience [cold, pain, delight, language, and so forth] that can be subjective has to be in attention or less than attention. The priority given to pain is attention, not simply subjectivity, so to speak. Experiences may also go with intent, for when to speak or not, or get Tylenol for pain, or avoid the source, or to get a jacket against the cold. Subjectivity qualifies experiences, like attention [or less] and intent. Walking can be subjective and be in attention as well.

This means that subjectivity and other qualifiers are present wherever functions are mechanized. This rules out neural correlates of consciousness somewhere or that the cortex is responsible for consciousness and not the cerebellum, since qualifiers apply to functions everywhere in the brain. It is like saying no one knows how consciousness works, but we are sure it is only in the cortex. But how about the functions of the cerebellum, are they never subjective, or never experienced? The brain does not also make predictions. If anyone says the brain does, just ask how and what components? This refutes predictive coding, processing, and prediction error. Controlled hallucination is a hollow flimflam.

Entanglement in neuroscience

There is little point in rebutting the dogma of the consciousness people, since what they have left is their sunken ship. In the 2020s, it is no longer relevant to be seeking what it is like to be a bat. Because how far would that help, if known? Sense [or memory] of being, property of self, and knowledge of existence [which are likely answers to the bat question] can be explained by the attributes and interactions of electrical and chemical configurators [theorizing that signals are not for neural communication but the basis of functions].

Human consciousness can be defined, conceptually, as the interaction of the electrical and chemical configurators, in sets — in clusters of neurons — with their features, grading those interactions into functions and experiences.

Simply, for functions to occur, electrical and chemical configurators, in sets, have to interact. However, attributes for those interactions are obtained by the states of electrical and chemical configurators at the time of the interactions.

These can be used to explain mental states, addictions, design warning systems for AI chatbot usage, develop AI ethics models, prospect states of consciousness, and so forth. 

So, sets of electrical configurators often have momentary states or statuses at which they interact [or strike] at sets of chemical configurators, which also have momentary states or statuses. So, if, for example, in a set, electrical configurators split, with some going ahead, it is in that state that they interact, initially, before the incoming ones follow, which may or may not interact the same way or at the same destination [or set of chemical configurators]. If a set [of chemical configurators] has more volumes of one of the constituents [chemical configurators], more than the others, it is in that state too that they are interacted with.

This article was written for WHN by David Stephen, who currently does research in conceptual brain science with a focus on the electrical and chemical signals for how they mechanize the human mind, with implications for mental health, disorders, neurotechnology, consciousness, learning, artificial intelligence, and nurture. He was a visiting scholar in medical entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL. He did computer vision research at Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona.

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