Rosa Rubicondior: Refuting Creationism - Homing In On Consciousness

Landmark experiment sheds new light on the origins of consciousness - Allen Institute

Consciousness, like the Big Bang and abiogenesis, represents a gap in scientific understanding that creationists eagerly exploit as a place to insert their evidence-free deity — the classic “God of the gaps” fallacy. This false dichotomy is the lifeblood of creationism, which appeals to the scientifically illiterate and culturally chauvinistic creationists who view science as a rival to their preferred local religion. According to this view, if science cannot yet explain something, or if it has ever been wrong, then “God did it” wins by default.

However, a major new study suggests that science is closing in on a natural explanation for consciousness. The findings support the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neurophysiology, leaving no room — or need — for supernatural explanations. In a landmark 2019 collaborative experiment involving human subjects, researchers from the Allen Institute tested two competing theories of consciousness against one another. They published their findings today in Nature, claiming the study marks a pivotal moment in the quest to understand this elusive phenomenon. Further details are available in an Allen Institute news article.

What is the current scientific thinking on the origins of consciousness? The current scientific thinking on the origins of consciousness centres around several competing but increasingly refined theories, with a growing body of empirical research aiming to test them directly. The two leading theories are:

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT)

Proposed by: Stanislas Dehaene and colleagues.
Core idea: Consciousness arises when information is broadcast widely across the brain's global workspace — a network of interconnected neurons, especially in the prefrontal cortex.
Mechanism: Unconscious processes are local and modular, but when information becomes consciously accessible, it is "amplified" and distributed across the brain, allowing for deliberate thought, memory access, and verbal report.
Evidence: Supported by neuroimaging studies showing widespread brain activation during conscious perception.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT)

Proposed by: Giulio Tononi.
Core idea: Consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate information. The more integrated and differentiated the information, the higher the level of consciousness.
Mechanism: It’s not just how much information is processed, but how interconnected and irreducible the system is. IIT also proposes a mathematical quantity (Φ) to measure consciousness.
Evidence: The theory has inspired new tools for measuring consciousness in comatose patients and anaesthesia, but is more abstract and harder to test directly than GNWT.

Recent Developments
A large-scale 2024/25 study by the Allen Institute and collaborators directly tested predictions made by both IIT and GNWT using human participants undergoing brain monitoring during specific tasks. The results, recently published in *Nature*, found greater empirical support for **GNWT** — though researchers caution that this does not *disprove* IIT but rather highlights which predictions currently hold up best under scrutiny.

Other Notable Theories

Higher-Order Thought Theory: Consciousness arises when the brain represents its own mental states.
Recurrent Processing Theory: Local recurrent neural activity in sensory areas is sufficient for consciousness, without needing global broadcasting.
Embodied and Enactive Approaches: Consciousness emerges from the dynamic interaction between brain, body, and environment, challenging purely brain-centric views.

Summary
There is increasing scientific consensus that **consciousness is an emergent property of the brain’s complex, dynamic, and integrated neural activity**. No supernatural explanation is required, and ongoing research is refining our understanding through testable, falsifiable experiments — a hallmark of science.

Landmark experiment sheds new light on the origins of consciousness
Findings suggest it may be about sensory processing and perception, with possible implications for diagnosing and treating comas or vegetative states.
An experiment seven years in the making has uncovered new insights into the nature of consciousness and challenges two prominent, competing scientific theories: Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT).

IIT suggests that consciousness emerges when information inside a system (like the brain) is highly connected and unified; and as long as the information remains unified, it will be consciously perceived.
GNWT suggests a network of brain areas spotlight important pieces of information in the brain—bringing it to the forefront of our minds—broadcasting it widely the moment it enters consciousness, and this produces conscious experience.
Researchers tested the two competing theories against one another in 2019 in a collaborative experiment involving human subjects. They published the findings today [20 Apr 2025] in Nature, and the study marks a pivotal moment in the goal to understand the elusive origins of consciousness.

Adversarial collaboration fits within the Allen Institute’s mission of team science, open science and big science, in service of one of the biggest, and most long-standing, intellectual challenges of humanity: the Mind-Body Problem. Unravelling this mystery is the passion of my entire life.

Dr. Christof Koch, Ph.D., co-author.
Allen Institute
Seattle, WA, USA,

Participants identified specific targets (like a face or letter) in sequences of high-contrast images. Each trial included three types of images: targets (red), task-related images (orange-red), and unrelated images (purple).

Images are courtesy of Michael J. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University.

The Findings

Research showed that there’s functional connection between neurons in early visual areas of the brain (the areas that process vision, which are at the back of the brain) and the frontal areas of the brain, helping us understand how our perceptions tie to our thoughts. The findings de-emphasize the importance of the prefrontal cortex in consciousness, suggesting that while it’s important for reasoning and planning, consciousness itself may be linked with sensory processing and perception. In other words, intelligence is about doing while consciousness is about being.

The study also found that the back of the brain seems crucial for holding the specific details of what you see, like orientation. While the front part is also involved, especially in identifying the general category of an object, it might not be the main hub for all the visual specifics. This challenges the idea that the front part of the brain holds all the detailed content of our visual experience.

These discoveries have implications for how we understand consciousness. Furthermore, they may shed light on disorders of consciousness such as coma or vegetative state. Identifying where the footprints of consciousness are localized in the brain could help detect “covert consciousness” in unresponsive patients with severe brain injuries—a condition known to occur in about one-quarter of cases as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last year.

This supplementary figure shows Results of the LMM on the ERP signal in the task irrelevant condition. The location of the electrodes found to be consistent with the theories’ models are shown on the brain surface, with the prefrontal and posterior ROIs depicted in green and blue, respectively.

Neither Theory Came Out on Top

IIT says consciousness comes from the interaction and cooperation of various parts of the brain as they work together to integrate information, like teamwork. The study, however, did not find enough sustained connections in the back of the brain to support this idea. GNWT supports the idea that consciousness happens in the front of the brain, but the study didn’t find enough support for this idea either.

It was clear that no single experiment would decisively refute either theory. The theories are just too different in their assumptions and explanatory goals, and the available experimental methods too coarse, to enable one theory to conclusively win out over another. Having said all this, the findings of the collaboration remain extremely valuable – much has been learned about both theories and about where and when in the brain information about visual experience can be decoded from.

Professor Anil Seth, Ph.D., not involved in the research
University of Sussex, UK.
The study involved 256 subjects, which is unprecedented for this kind of experiment. Researchers showed them various visual stimuli and then used three common human brain measurement tools that track blood flow as well as magnetic and electrical activity to study their brains while they looked at the stimuli.

The highly collaborative experiment is the result of a large-scale, open science collaboration that began at a workshop at the Allen Institute in 2018. This innovative approach brought together researchers with differing perspectives to test two theories in a collaborative, yet critical, environment aimed at reducing confirmation bias and accelerating scientific progress.

Adversarial collaborations are a powerful social process, little used because of their challenging nature, seeking to coordinate the research and associated protocols across many, independent laboratories, and competitive individuals. The bio-medical field could hugely profit by more such ‘friendly’ competition among theories—neurobiological or others. But it requires a great deal of cooperation and constant work to keep everyone aligned.

Dr. Christof Koch, Ph.D.

Abstract
Different theories explain how subjective experience arises from brain activity1,2. These theories have independently accrued evidence, but have not been directly compared³. Here we present an open science adversarial collaboration directly juxtaposing integrated information theory (IIT)^4,5 and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT)^6,7,8,9,10 via a theory-neutral consortium^11,12,13. The theory proponents and the consortium developed and preregistered the experimental design, divergent predictions, expected outcomes and interpretation thereof¹². Human participants (n = 256) viewed suprathreshold stimuli for variable durations while neural activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography and intracranial electroencephalography. We found information about conscious content in visual, ventrotemporal and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses in occipital and lateral temporal cortex reflecting stimulus duration, and content-specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas. These results align with some predictions of IIT and GNWT, while substantially challenging key tenets of both theories. For IIT, a lack of sustained synchronization within the posterior cortex contradicts the claim that network connectivity specifies consciousness. GNWT is challenged by the general lack of ignition at stimulus offset and limited representation of certain conscious dimensions in the prefrontal cortex. These challenges extend to other theories of consciousness that share some of the predictions tested here^14,15,16,17. Beyond challenging the theories, we present an alternative approach to advance cognitive neuroscience through principled, theory-driven, collaborative research and highlight the need for a quantitative framework for systematic theory testing and building.

Main
Philosophers and scientists have sought to explain the subjective nature of consciousness (for example, the feeling of pain or of seeing a colourful rainbow) and how it relates to physical processes in the brain^18,19. This quest has led to various theories of consciousness evolving in parallel^1,2,3 and often providing incompatible accounts of the neural basis of consciousness^1,2. Furthermore, empirical support for a given theory is often highly dependent on methodological choices, pointing towards a confirmation bias in theory testing³. Convergence on a broadly accepted neuroscientific theory of consciousness will have profound medical, societal and ethical implications.

To advance this goal, we tested two theories of consciousness, through a large-scale, open-science adversarial collaboration^{11,12,20,21,22} aimed at accelerating progress in consciousness research by building on constructive disagreement. We brought together proponents of IIT^4,5 and GNWT^6,23, in addition to theory-neutral researchers. The group identified differential existing and novel predictions of the two theories and developed an experimental design to test them (Fig. 1a). We preregistered these predictions, including pass or fail criteria, expected outcomes and their interpretation ex-ante^11,12. We focus on IIT and GNWT, among other widely discussed theories (for example, recurrent processing theory and higher-order theories^1,2), because they feature prominently in consciousness science, as demonstrated by a recent systematic review of the literature³.

Fig. 1: Predictions and experimental design.

a, Predictions of IIT and GNWT. For prediction 1 (decoding of conscious content), IIT predicts maximal decoding of conscious content in posterior brain areas, whereas GNWT emphasizes a necessary role for the PFC. For prediction 2 (maintenance of conscious content), IIT posits that conscious content is actively maintained in the posterior cortex, whereas GNWT predicts brief content-specific ignition (approximately 0.3–0.5 s) in the PFC at stimulus onset and offset, with content stored in a non-conscious silent state between these events. Waveforms (left) and temporal generalization matrices (right) illustrate the predicted amplitude-based and information-based temporal profiles: coloured rectangles indicate the three stimulus durations for PFC (GNWT) and posterior cortex (IIT; left); the arrows mark stimulus onset (brown) and offset (red), whereas predicted temporal generalization is depicted in green (GNWT) and blue (IIT; right). For prediction 3 (interareal connectivity supporting consciousness), the stars and arrows on the brain diagram illustrate predicted synchrony patterns, with green representing GNWT and blue representing IIT. Brain surface is from Freesurfer. b, Conscious experience is multifaceted. For instance, viewing the Mona Lisa involves experiencing it as occupying a specific spatial location, categorizing it as a face, recognizing an identity and noting its leftward orientation, with this complex experience maintained over time. c, To manipulate conscious content, stimuli varied across four dimensions: category (faces, objects, letters and false fonts), identity (different exemplars within each category), orientation (left, right and front views) and duration (0.5 s, 1.0 s and 1.5 s). Example stimuli are shown. d, Experimental paradigm. Participants detected predefined targets (for example, a specific face and object or a letter and false font) in sequences of single, high-contrast stimuli. Each trial contained three stimulus types: targets (red; coloured frames for illustration only), task-relevant stimuli (orange-red; same categories as targets) and task-irrelevant stimuli (purple; other categories). Blank intervals between stimuli are not depicted. Object stimulus images in panels c,d are courtesy of Michael J. Tarr, Carnegie Mellon University, http://www.tarrlab.org/; face stimuli were created using FaceGen Modeler 3.1.
IIT and GNWT explain consciousness differently: IIT proposes that consciousness is the intrinsic ability of a neuronal network to influence itself, as determined by the amount of maximally irreducible integrated information (phi) supported by a network in a state. On the basis of theoretical and neuroanatomical considerations, IIT suggests that a complex of maximum phi probably resides primarily in the posterior cerebral cortex, in a temporo–parietal–occipital ‘hot zone’^4,5,24,25. GNWT instead posits that consciousness arises from global broadcasting and late amplification (or ‘ignition’) of information across interconnected networks of higher-order sensory, parietal and especially prefrontal cortex (PFC)^6,9,23.

Both theories have a mathematical or computational core (integrated information for IIT and global workspace for GNWT) and proposed biological implementations (posterior cortex versus PFC and associated areas, respectively). Although it is difficult to test the mathematical or computational core of either theory directly, their competing biological implementations are empirically testable with current methodologies. Thus, our study focuses on brain regions where the predictions diverge most notably—posterior cortex for IIT and PFC for GNWT, rather than the associated areas in higher-order sensory or parietal cortex—to facilitate maximally diagnostic experiments.

One consequence of this biological focus is that theorists could respond to challenging data by modifying the proposed biological implementation while retaining the mathematical or computational core of a theory. Another consequence is that some predictions (and their associated consequences) may overlap with other theories of consciousness that share similar biological bases, such as higher-order theories^16,17 in the PFC and local recurrency theories^14,26 in the visual cortex. Although these are inherent aspects of studying theoretical proposals about neural mechanisms of consciousness, the results are expected to help the community make more informed judgements about the tested theories (for rationale, see the preregistration document²⁷).

Cogitate Consortium., Ferrante, O., Gorska-Klimowska, U. et al.
Adversarial testing of global neuronal workspace and integrated information theories of consciousness. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08888-1

Copyright: © 2025 The authors.
Published by Springer Nature Ltd. Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

This study delivers a significant blow to one of the last bastions of creationist rhetoric: the claim that consciousness is inexplicable without invoking a god or soul. For decades, creationists have exploited the mystery surrounding consciousness to insert supernatural explanations, arguing that the subjective experience of being aware — of having thoughts, feelings, and a sense of self — cannot possibly arise from mere matter. This is a textbook example of the “God of the gaps” fallacy, which asserts that if science hasn’t yet explained something, the default explanation must be divine.

But science, as it often does, is catching up. This study doesn’t just offer speculative philosophy; it directly pits two competing, empirically grounded theories of consciousness — Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) — against one another in a rigorous experimental context. The results support GNWT, which frames consciousness as an emergent property of neural processes — specifically, the global broadcasting of information across brain networks. In doing so, it demonstrates that consciousness is neither immaterial nor untestable; it is increasingly within the reach of scientific explanation.

For creationists, this development is inconvenient. If consciousness can arise naturally from complex but measurable neural activity, then there’s no need to invoke a soul or divine spark to account for it. The explanatory power shifts decisively towards naturalism. This isn’t just a philosophical shift — it undercuts a common creationist tactic, which hinges on exploiting awe and ignorance rather than evidence. As the gap narrows, their god has fewer places to hide.

Ultimately, this study reaffirms a consistent pattern in science: the more we investigate phenomena once deemed mysterious or “beyond science,” the more we discover natural explanations rooted in evidence. Consciousness, long a perceived stronghold of spiritual or dualistic thinking, is turning out to be just another part of the natural world — wonderfully complex, but not immune to scientific understanding. And that, for creationists, is very bad news indeed.

Advertisement

Amazon