Integrated Information Theory (IIT)?

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What should we make of ITT? ITT is basically a way that people try to come up with theories that everything has consciousness. How can this be refuted?

Here is the wikipeida page with some information on it below.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory

–Neuroscientist Christof Koch, who has helped to develop the theory, has called IIT "the only really promising fundamental theory of consciousness.”[13] Technologist Virgil Griffith says "IIT is currently the leading theory of consciousness.

Critics of IIT argue that the theory fails to explain where consciousness comes from. Science writer John Horgan argues, “you can’t explain consciousness by saying it consists of information, because information exists only relative to consciousness.”

Cause-effect space[edit]
For a system of {\displaystyle N} N simple binary elements, cause-effect space is formed by {\displaystyle 2 imes 2^{N}} {\displaystyle 2 imes 2^{N}} axes, one for each possible past and future state of the system. Any cause-effect repertoire {\displaystyle R} R, which specifies the probability of each possible past and future state of the system, can be easily plotted as a point in this high-dimensional space: The position of this point along each axis is given by the probability of that state as specified by {\displaystyle R} R. If a point is also taken to have a scalar magnitude (which can be informally thought of as the point’s “size”, for example), then it can easily represent a concept: The concept’s cause-effect repertoire specifies the location of the point in cause-effect space, and the concept’s {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}} {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}} value specifies that point’s magnitude.

In this way, a conceptual structure {\displaystyle C} C can be plotted as a constellation of points in cause-effect space. Each point is called a star, and each star’s magnitude ( {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}} {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}}) is its size.

Central Identity[edit]
IIT addresses the mind-body problem by proposing an identity between phenomenological properties of experience and causal properties of physical systems: The conceptual structure specified by a complex of elements in a state is identical to its experience.

Specifically, the form of the conceptual structure in cause-effect space completely specifies the quality of the experience, while the irreducibility {\displaystyle \Phi ^{ extrm {Max}}} {\displaystyle \Phi ^{ extrm {Max}}} of the conceptual structure specifies the level to which it exists (i.e., the complex’s level of consciousness). The maximally irreducible cause-effect repertoire of each concept within a conceptual structure specifies what the concept contributes to the quality of the experience, while its irreducibility {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}} {\displaystyle \varphi ^{ extrm {Max}}} specifies how much the concept is present in the experience.

According to IIT, an experience is thus an intrinsic property of a complex of mechanisms in a state.
 
It’d be much easier to read your post if it didn’t have all the HTML visible in it.

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I was reading more into it, and here is a more simple way to explain it.

Basically they are saying that information is consciousness. Since everything contains information, that means everything is conscious. The amount of consciousness is dependent on the amount of information something has.

I don’t know if I figured it right. Here is an article that explains it more professionally.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4574706/

To begin his argument for information exclusion, Tononi explains that “integrated information theory (IIT) starts from phenomenology and makes use of thought experiments to claim that consciousness is integrated information” . He claims IIT is justified from “realizing that information and integration are the essential properties of our own experience” . Tononi asks us to imagine a single photodiode and a person both looking into a dark room . We usually don’t think of a single photodiode as having any consciousness, while we assume that if the person is awake, they are having significant conscious experience. To explain this difference, Tononi theorizes that when the photodiode “looks” at the dark room, it is only able to rule out one state, i.e., the room being light instead of dark. In the case of the awake person, Tononi states:

*When you see the blank screen turn on, on the other hand, the situation is quite different. Though you may think you are performing the same discrimination between light and dark as the photodiode, you are in fact discriminating among a much larger number of alternatives, thereby generating many more bits of information. *

In other words, what makes the experience different is that when the person looks at a uniformly dark room, in addition to registering that the room is dark, they are able to rule out every other state they are capable of perceiving. Tononi then describes this difference in the two systems in terms of information:

*According to the IIT, the difference has to do with how much information is generated when that distinction is made. Information is classically defined as reduction of uncertainty: the more numerous the alternatives that are ruled out, the greater the reduction of uncertainty, and thus the greater the information. *

**Unlike the photodiode, the person determines that there are not blue elephants running around the room nor anything else they could ever imaging seeing. All these things the person is not seeing amount to a very large amount of information. **
 
This is way above my pay grade, but I don’t buy that information is consciousness. If that were so, my computer could become conscious, which I don’t see happening. Consciousness implies an awareness of the self, which inanimate objects don’t possess. Or if they do, they have no way to convey that to us, so for our purposes they don’t.

Here’s an article which basically says we don’t know what produces consciousness, but the author theorizes that "In theory, awareness is the brain’s simplified, schematic model of the complicated, data-handling process of attention. "

I don’t buy that either, however. I think consciousness is related to the soul, which God infuses in each of us at conception. But that we’ll never find.

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I was reading more into it, and here is a more simple way to explain it.

Basically they are saying that information is consciousness. Since everything contains information, that means everything is conscious. The amount of consciousness is dependent on the amount of information something has.

I don’t know if I figured it right. Here is an article that explains it more professionally.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4574706/

To begin his argument for information exclusion, Tononi explains that “integrated information theory (IIT) starts from phenomenology and makes use of thought experiments to claim that consciousness is integrated information” . He claims IIT is justified from “realizing that information and integration are the essential properties of our own experience” . Tononi asks us to imagine a single photodiode and a person both looking into a dark room . We usually don’t think of a single photodiode as having any consciousness, while we assume that if the person is awake, they are having significant conscious experience. To explain this difference, Tononi theorizes that when the photodiode “looks” at the dark room, it is only able to rule out one state, i.e., the room being light instead of dark. In the case of the awake person, Tononi states:

*When you see the blank screen turn on, on the other hand, the situation is quite different. Though you may think you are performing the same discrimination between light and dark as the photodiode, you are in fact discriminating among a much larger number of alternatives, thereby generating many more bits of information. *

In other words, what makes the experience different is that when the person looks at a uniformly dark room, in addition to registering that the room is dark, they are able to rule out every other state they are capable of perceiving. Tononi then describes this difference in the two systems in terms of information:

*According to the IIT, the difference has to do with how much information is generated when that distinction is made. Information is classically defined as reduction of uncertainty: the more numerous the alternatives that are ruled out, the greater the reduction of uncertainty, and thus the greater the information. *

**Unlike the photodiode, the person determines that there are not blue elephants running around the room nor anything else they could ever imaging seeing. All these things the person is not seeing amount to a very large amount of information. **
And, do these guys say how many bits of information are required to make a consciousness like ours?
 
Basically they are saying that information is consciousness. Since everything contains information, that means everything is conscious. The amount of consciousness is dependent on the amount of information something has.

I don’t know if I figured it right.
I think it’s not information as such, since an unconscious mind still contains the same amount of information. Then as it wakes up, it’s the degree of *integration * of the information which produces consciousness, hence the name of the theory.

Found a non-technical explanation here - nytimes.com/2010/09/21/science/21consciousness.html?pagewanted=all
 
What should we make of ITT? ITT is basically a way that people try to come up with theories that everything has consciousness. How can this be refuted?



According to IIT, an experience is thus an intrinsic property of a complex of mechanisms in a state.
It does not have to do with having a soul. Integrated information theory (IIT) is a theoretical framework for understanding consciousness developed by Dr. Giulio Tononi and collaborators at the Center for Sleep and Consciousness at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Giulio Tononi (University of Wisconsin in Madison) proposed in 2008 that a system demonstrating consciousness needs:
  1. to be able to store and process large amounts of information
  2. the information must be integrated and indivisible
Later developed into ITT version 3.0 with eight axioms.

And the information exclusion, that is, the amount of perceptual possibilities ruled out by the system is related directly to the level of consciousness. The fifth axiom is the axiom of exclusion.

Refutation:
  1. challenge that integration is important for complex systems.
  2. if the principle of information exclusion were correct, it would only indicate that integrated information is necessary but insufficient for consciousness.
 
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