Episode Details

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and the Gnostic Reformation. My brother shared with me this week an article that’s published in Scientific American, and I will post the link to that article here. The article is called, Where Does Consciousness Come From? Two Neuroscience Theories Go Head-to-Head. The subtitle is, Two Leading Theories of Consciousness Went Head-to-Head, and the Results May Change How Neuroscientists Study One of the Oldest Questions About Existence. This was published on April 30, 2025. And I’m not going to share much of this with you, except to say that neuroscientists still haven’t coalesced around one explanation of where consciousness originates, largely because it’s such a hard question to probe with the scientific method.

The article says that scientists have landed on two leading theories to explain how consciousness emerges. The first is called Integrated Information Theory, or IIT for short, and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, or GNWT for short. And it says that the frameworks couldn’t be more different, yet they rest on completely different assumptions, draw from different fields of science, and may even define consciousness in different ways.

The article goes on to explain that there have been a series of studies trying to decide which of those two theories is the right way to approach consciousness. And despite all of the scientific studies, nothing came to fruition. There were no results that proved either of the two theories.

The article says that this type of research will encourage new ways of doing studies, which is to design experiments that have the best chance of distinguishing between theories rather than finding evidence for or against one specific theory. And they explain that it’s very important to understand consciousness because it has, for example, a practical application when you’re dealing with people that are in vegetative states and comas about when to pull the plug, since no sign of consciousness shows up on the brain scans, then they feel the person is dead, even if their body’s alive, and so they pull the plug. But if consciousness is more diffuse than that, it is possible that the people are still alive and conscious, and that their bodies should be kept alive with life support.

I went back and looked at our Gnostic Insights articles and episodes to review what we have to say about consciousness. And I must say, there is no better explanation than the Gnostic explanation. And so I’m going to share with you again an episode called The Father of Consciousness, which is essentially the first chapter of A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel.

This episode was originally the first episode of Gnostic Insights that described the rollo