Anil Seth: Intelligence ≠ Consciousness ≠ Intelligence

The critics of both panpsychism and integrated information theory (IIT) rely on an implicit— although sometimes explicit — strong connection which they make between intelligence and consciousness. In basic terms, then, they believe that because very basic entities can’t be deemed to be intelligent, then they can’t be deemed to instantiate consciousness either.

(i) Introduction
(ii) Thermostats, Computers and Animals
(iii) According to Seth, Chalmers and Penrose, Functionalism Fails
(iv) John Searle on Biological Brains

Without actually mentioning panpsychism and integrated information theory (IIT), the British neuroscientist Anil Seth states the following:

“This is the assumption that consciousness and intelligence are intimately, even constitutively, linked: that consciousness will just come along for the ride.”

Now let’s take an extreme version of this position.

If intelligence and consciousness (with a stress on the former) are necessarily linked, then (depending on how “intelligence” is actually defined in the first place) thermostats can’t be conscious. And neither…