Consciousness is not a philosophical problem. The field of philosophy no longer has anything new or useful to offer the science of consciousness. Philosophy of mind has explored consciousness for so long, yet there is neither promise nor answer from the field.
The study of consciousness is supposed to be the most important research on earth, because of the determinations that consciousness makes for life and experiences. Yet, there is no draw to the work because the research has been muddled with tons of nonsense, including deceased theories of consciousness. [Computational functionalism and moral patienthood have nothing to do with the brain science of consciousness].
Even if consciousness remains unsolved, there are serious prospects that research in the field would offer that would attract major support from the industry. But this is not the case. Consciousness research is at the mercy of foundations. Simply because the studies are not serious, not promising, not updated, not applicable, have no market value, and the so-called leading researchers in the field brandish ‘no one knows how consciousness works’ which they are never self-aware [that it] discredits them because it is not about working on a difficult problem, but about knowing where to look.
Consciousness is correlated with the brain. So, what components, within the brain can be said to be responsible and why or how? This is the consciousness question. If it is neurons, how? If it is neurons and their signals, how? If it is just the signals, how? What is the promise of the postulated components and their mechanisms for mental health research and psychiatry? What is the promise against brain disorders? How can concepts [components and mechanisms] of consciousness be developed within empirical evidence in neuroscience?
Consciousness and animal welfare
If animal welfare is the objective, it would be difficult to establish any major animal welfare policy [nationally or globally] without clear explanations from brain science. Animal cruelty is still rife around the world. It is a major problem that needs serious scientific research backing, but what seems to be obtainable are jokes from these “jokers”.
There is a recent [July 12, 2025] report in The Guardian, New research centre to explore how AI can help humans ‘speak’ with pets stating that, “The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, based at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), will begin its work on 30 September, researching non-human animals, including those as evolutionarily distant from us as insects, crabs and cuttlefish.”
“Harnessing a wide range of interdisciplinary global expertise, the £4m centre’s work will span neuroscience, philosophy, veterinary science, law, evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, behavioural science, computer science, economics, and artificial intelligence.
“One of its most eye-catching projects will be to explore how AI can help humans ‘speak’ with their pets, the dangers of it going wrong, and what we need to do to prevent that from happening.”
How several of these foundations became casualties of the benefit of so-called experts, remains baffling. Like, how do you not know how consciousness works, but you want to speak to pets with AI and then have all these other fields, without at least postulating something from within the brain?
Do foundations just hear that these people are experts, and they get hoodwinked without the likelihood of real impact, or do the foundations also lack vision? There seem to be many veterinary teams that care more about animal welfare and sentience than these consciousness dictators.
Animal welfare is preliminary a science problem before anything else. Animal sentience is a neuroscience problem. Those are the springboards for useful progress. The best that all these people would ever achieve is useless publications. Their lack of potential at the start has already doomed their attempt.
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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