Category Theory of Consciousness:

A Critical Perspective

Abstract

 Category theory was born within developments of algebraic topology in the midtwentieth century, and soon thereafter endorsed as the avant-garde, structural foundation of mathematics that liberates her from material set theory (or its ‘pernicious idioms’ as Wittgenstein calls them). Today it serves as a transdisciplinary foundation of the sciences, including, inter alia, physical, computational, and some social sciences. Despite the striking success in AI and NLP, applications to the life and cognitive sciences have been limited for various reasons. Here we present a critical perspective on an allegedly categorical theory of consciousness, yet another case of ‘fashionable nonsense’or a ‘new kind of science’, and in doing so, we elucidate what it consists in to define consciousness and alleged categories of it. We conclude with the moral of the discussion drawn in light of the epistemology of interdisciplinary studies whilst repurposing the Sokal/co-Sokal affair for a healthier ecology of discourse transgressing the boundaries.