The Curiouser – Volume I, Issue III (August 2026)

What if the most rigorous non-reductive physicalist theories of consciousness we have were pitted against each other, and not one came out on top? Well, at least not standing on two feet.

In Issue III, I take us inside the Mechanist Citadel, the most credentialed address in consciousness science campus, to examine three neuroscientific theories of mind currently alive and shining in the literature: Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and Conscious Electromagnetic Information Field Theory. Each one redefines the relationship between brain and experience in a radically different way, and together, they push the neuroscientific approach to its absolute limits. 

Now that we have clarity on the central problem the entire field orbits, thanks to Issue I and II, Issue III's job was to take some of the strongest scientific answers that challenge has generated, walks us through each one, and inevitably arrive at the same wall every time. If none of these accounts can close the Hard Problem, what does?