Scientist loses 25-year consciousness bet — to a philosopher

Twenty-five years ago, two academics made a bet about consciousness. Christof Koch, a neuroscientist, wagered David Chalmers, a philosopher, that the brain mechanisms underlying consciousness would be known by 2023. Chalmers thought otherwise.

When they made the bet, many scientists were busy using newly developed neuroimaging technology to search for what they called the neural correlates of consciousness, defined by Koch, in a recent interview with the Swedish science magazine Forskning & Framsteg, as “the footprints of consciousness in the organ of consciousness, which is the…