@8599d6ab Yes, there's definitely that aspect to it too! I was thinking of these two complementary lessons: 1) Science advances in improbable ways; we should be aware of this and so be as precise and limited as possible when it comes to judgment of scientific practice.

BUT: 2) Reality nevertheless remains the ultimate test zone, and no matter how elegant one's initial model/hypothesis may be, ultimately theory and not reality must bend. 

 @8599d6ab What I meant by "pseudoscientific" (including the scare quotes) is that the model/hypothesis Kepler initially conceived, and never in fact fully relinquished, was a completely false description of the solar system, based on an epiphany he had that the relative distances between the orbits were explained by a celestial arrangement of the five platonic solids. The sun was indeed at the centre of it though! 🙂 

 @8599d6ab @14e9d346 I only read the section on pseudoscience so far. I wasn't overly impressed, but I also had my priors adjusted with regards to the reliability of the main authors by reading this line-by-line, source-by-source dissection of the original letter from Erik Hoel:
https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/ambitious-theories-of-consciousness

I may have a look at the rest of Hau's paper later, but once things get to a stage where I'm not even sure whose intentions are genuinely for good, as opposed to "being right", it's saddening. 

 @8599d6ab Let's say that if an advocate of a theory does not hold a concept of a potentially falsifying test, then that theory has the cognitive value of a pseudoscience for that person. If none of its advocates hold such a concept, then it is a de facto pseudoscience.

I don't want to be dogmatic about what a pseudoscience is though. What's important here is that someone claiming a given theory is pseudoscience must make explicit the criteria being used to make that claim. 

 @8599d6ab A hypothetical ideal empirical researcher is one who, for every scientific belief they hold, can tell you which result from an empirical test would lead to them abandoning that belief. An advocate of IIT should be able to tell us what emp result would convince them IIT does not hold (even if the test is not currently practically possible). If none of them can do this, then state so clearly and base the pseudoscience claim on that rather than vague "until it is empirically testable." 

 @8599d6ab They're absolutely right to raise the points they do. But the point about certain advocates and media taking demonstration of auxiliary elements for proof of the whole (something that unfortunately can + does happen even with solid theories) is independent of the question of IIT being a pseudoscience. To clearly communicate the latter claim, a minimum would be: a) What is IIT? b) What is a pseudoscience? c) Does IIT meet these criteria?

Definitions matter; otherwise we end up here! 

 @8599d6ab Letter feels oddly light in informational value. Would have been useful to lay out core ideas of IIT, its definition of consciousness, etc. Indeed, we get to the end without any concrete idea what the crux of the disagreement is, just that the theory hasn't been satisfactorily empirically tested. For me, a theory is not a pseudoscience "until" it has been empirically tested. A theory is a pseudoscience if it *cannot* be satisfactorily tested. Is this the case? Letter vague on this. 

 @8599d6ab It's such a treasure trove! So handy too that you can directly Zotero an Internet Archive item! 

 @8599d6ab Claude Bernard was very pioneering. Georges Canguilhem has a great text centrally featuring Bernard which is called "Experimentation in animal biology" (can be found in the book of collected Canguilhem texts 'Knowledge of Life'). Absolutely worth adding to your certainly already very long reading list! 🙂