Integrated Information Theory

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned.
The article was commissioned by High Existence.

– Introduction
– 1. The Genetic Argument
– 2. The Abstraction Argument
– 3. The Inferential Argument
– Why Panpsychism is Spurned
– End Remarks

Originally published 15 January 2018: http://highexistence.com/panpsychism-3-reasons-why-our-world-brimming-sentience/ [note different subtitle]

Accompanying audio version: https://youtu.be/B7B_RmZQp5Q

©Peter Sjöstedt-H 2018

Weblink to full paper: https://tinyurl.com/yc9r6kys 

Abstract:

Ever since Einstein’s arrival at the forefront of science, mainstream physicists have tended to think of nature as a giant 4-dimensional spacetime continuum in which all of eternity exists all at once in one timeless block universe. Accordingly, much to the dismay of more process-minded researchers, the experience of an ongoing present moment is typically branded as illusory.
      Mainstream physics is having a hard time, however, providing a well-founded defense of this alleged illusoriness of time. This is because physics, as an empirical science, is itself utterly dependent on experience to begin with. Moreover, if nature were indeed purely physical -- as contemporary mainstream physics wants us to believe -- it is quite difficult to see how it could ever be able to give rise to something so explicitly non-physical like conscious experience. On top of this, the argument of times illusoriness becomes even more doubtful in view of the extraordinary level of sophistication that would be required for our conscious experience to achieve such an utterly convincing, but -- physically speaking -- pointless illusion.
      It is because of problems like these that process thought has persistently objected to the “eternalism” of mainstream physics. Recently physicist Lee Smolin has brought up some other major arguments against this timeless picture in his controversial 2013 book Time Reborn. Although he passionately argues that physics should take an entirely different direction, he admits that he has no readily available roadmap to success.
      Fortunately, however, over the last 15 years or so, a neo- Whiteheadian, biocentric way of doing foundational physics, namely Reg Cahill's process physics, has made its appearance. According to process physics, nature is a routine-driven or habit-based process, rather than a changeless world whose observable phenomena are governed by eternally fixed and highly deterministic physical laws. Although, in the currently prevailing view, the universe is seen as a law-abiding natural world whose entire history -- past, present, and future -- must have been "called forth by law" in one go at the big bang, process physics suggests that the universe has come into actuality from an initially undifferentiated, orderless background of dispositional activity patterns which was driven by a habit-establishing, iterative update routine.
      In the process physics model, all such habit-establishing activity patterns are "mutually informative" as they are actively making a meaningful difference to (i.e., in-forming) each other. This mutual informativeness among activity patterns will thus actively give shape to ongoing structure formation within nature as a whole, thereby renewing it through stochastic (hence, novelty-infusing) update iterations. In this way, the process of nature starts to evolve from its initial featurelessness to then branch out to higher and higher levels of complexity, thus eventually even leading to neural network-like structure formation on the universe’s supra-galactic level of organization.
      Because of this noise-driven branching behavior, the natural universe can be thought of as habit-bound with a potential for creative novelty and open-ended evolution. Furthermore, three-dimensionality, gravitational and relativistic effects, nonlocality, and near-classical behavior are spontaneously emergent within the process physics model. Also, the models constantly renewing activity patterns bring along an inherent present moment effect, thereby reintroducing time in terms of the system’s ongoing change as it goes through its cyclic iterations. As a final point, subjectivity -- in the form of mutual informativeness -- is a naturally evolving, innate feature, not a coincidental, later-arriving side-effect.

I first came across a relevant philosophical reference to the word “structure” (within an analysis of consciousness) in a work by David Chalmers. In his 'Facing Up to the Hard Problem of Consciousness' (1995), Chalmers writes that

“we can use facts about neural processing of visual information to indirectly explain the structure of colour space”.

(Note the word “indirectly”; which, in what follows, proves to be important.)

Chalmers then says that “the structure of experience will also be explained”. Nonetheless, Chalmers adds:

“There are properties of experience, such as the intrinsic nature of a sensation of red, that cannot be fully captured in a structural description.” .

Prima facie, it seems odd to say, as Giulio Tononi and Chalmers do, that “[c]onsciousness is structured”. It intuitively seems like a Rylean “category mistake”. That is, William James and Wilfrid Sellars (as well as many others) said that consciousness is “grainless”. (James also referred to the “stream of consciousness”; which is a related idea.)

In simple terms, Giulio Tononi tells us that “consciousness has composition”. That means that consciousness (or a particular experience) is composed of different things. What things? Tononi says that these things include “color and shape”. These components “structure visual experience”. Indeed it's this structure which “allows for [the] various distinctions” made in this piece.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) demands a physical explanation of consciousness. This rules out, for example, entirely functional explanations; as well as unwarranted correlations between consciousness and the physical. Indeed if consciousness is identical to the physical (not merely correlated with it or caused by it), then clearly the physical (as information, etc.) is paramount in the IIT picture.

All this is given a quasi-logical explanation in terms of axioms and postulates. That is, there must be identity claims between IIT's "axioms of consciousness" and postulates about the physical. Moreover, the axioms fulfill the role of premises. These premises lead to the physical postulates.

So what is the nature of that relation between these axioms and their postulates? How do we connect, for example, a conscious state with a neuroscientific explanation of that conscious state? How is the ontological/explanatory gap crossed?

abstract Modern science was born when physicists started studying phenomena by recruiting mathematical explanatory frameworks. Since this appears to be the direction followed in recent studies on consciousness, philosophers have to analyze the justification of this third-person methods of explaining a phenomenon that is supposed to be entirely subjective. In this paper I argue that this kind of justification could be found in a certain interpretation of the second-person perspective and I briefly sketch how one of the most promising contemporary theory of consciousness (IIT) could fit with such an interpretation. keywords second-person perspective, Integrated Information Theory, science of consciousness, embodied simulation theory

At a prima facie level, integrated information theory (IIT) is utterly Cartesian. It's Cartesianism in contemporary scientific guise; though Cartesian nonetheless. This isn't to say that IIT simply reasserts the Cogito or Descartes' seemingly deductive style of reasoning. Though, despite that, the Cogito etc. can also be said to be resurrected (in contemporary form) in IIT. However, Descartes moved from (his) mind and journeyed to his body and then to the external world. IIT moves from consciousness to the brain. At least as viewed from one angle.

On the one hand, IIT inverts many 20th century (Anglo-American) ways of dealing with consciousness in that it's said that it moves from consciousness to arrive at the physical; rather than starting with the physical in order to attempt to arrive at consciousness (or to reject it!). It can also be that IIT moves to the physical only after it's got its Cartesian house in order.

The Cogito was the starting point of Descartes' enterprise.

On the other hand, what is certainly not Cartesian is that it's also said (or implied) that IIT begins with neuroscience/the brain and then journeys to consciousness.

[Draft] Forthcoming in Journal of Consciousness Studies
Please cite published version

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Consciousness is becoming an increasingly popular neuroscientific account of phenomenal experience. IIT claims that consciousness is integrated information in a system. I set this theory against the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1996, 1995) as the goal for a theory of consciousness to meet. In this essay I look to examine and ultimately critique IIT's use of the notion of information to base a theory of consciousness. I argue that the notion of information in IIT is a purely structural-dynamical notion, and so falls afoul of the structure and dynamics argument (Chalmers, 2003). I bolster these claims by appeal to the explanatory gap argument and show how IIT succumbs to this argument as well. For these reasons, I call into doubt IIT's ability to answer the hard problem of consciousness. Although this paper argues against the notion of information in IIT, in a broader context the criticisms which I raise here can be brought against any theory that attempts to explain consciousness as an information-theoretic phenomenon.

Ch4. Life and Consciousness
Process Physics, Time and Consciousness: Nature as an internally meaningful, habit-establishing process

Ever since Einstein’s arrival at the forefront of science, mainstream physics likes to think of nature as a giant 4-dimensional spacetime continuum in which all of eternity exists all at once in one timeless block universe. Accordingly, much to the dismay of more process-minded researchers, the experience of an ongoing present moment is typically branded as illusory.
Mainstream physics is having a hard time, though, to provide a well-founded defense for this illusoriness of time. This is because physics, as an empirical science, is itself utterly dependent on experience to begin with. Moreover, if nature were indeed purely physical – as contemporary mainstream physics wants us to believe – it’s quite difficult to see how it could ever be able to give rise to something so explicitly non-physical like conscious experience. On top of this, the argument of time’s illusoriness becomes even more doubtful in view of the extra-ordinary level of sophistication that would be required for our conscious experience to achieve such an utterly convincing, but – physically speaking – pointless illusion.
It’s because of problems like these that process thought has persistently objected against this ‘eternalism’ of mainstream physics. Just recently, physicist Lee Smolin even brought up some other major arguments against this timeless picture in his controversial 2013 book ‘Time Reborn’. And although he passionately argues that physics should take an entirely different direction, he admits that he has no readily available roadmap to success.
Fortunately, however, over the last 15 years or so, a neo-Whiteheadian, biocentric way of doing foundational physics, namely Reg Cahill’s Process Physics, has been making its appearance on the scene. According to Process Physics, nature is a routine-driven or habit-based process, rather than a changeless world whose observable phenomena are governed by eternally fixed and highly deterministic physical laws. Counter to the currently prevailing view of such a law-abiding natural world, Process Physics suggests that the natural universe comes into actuality from an initially undifferentiated, orderless background of dispositional activity patterns which is driven by a habit-establishing, iterative update routine.
In the Process Physics model, all such habit-establishing activity patterns are ‘mutually in-formative’ as they are actively making a meaningful difference to (i.e. ‘in-forming’) each other. This mutual in-formativeness among inner-system activity patterns will thus actively give shape to ongoing structure formation within the system as a whole, thereby renewing it through stochastic (hence, ‘novelty-infusing’) update iterations. In this way, the system starts to evolve from its initial featurelessness to then branch out to higher and higher levels of complexity, thus leading to a neural network-like structure formation.
Because of this noise-driven branching behavior, the process system can be thought of as habit-bound with a potential for creative novelty and open-ended evolution. Furthermore, threedimensionality, gravitational and relativistic effects, nonlocality, and near-classical behavior are spontaneously emergent within the system. Also, the system’s constantly renewing activity patterns bring along an inherent present moment effect, thereby reintroducing time in terms of the system’s ongoing change as it goes through its cyclic iterations. As a final point, subjectivity – in the form of mutual informativeness – is a naturally evolving, innate feature, not a coincidental, later-arriving side-effect.

'Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality.'

Philosophy Now, no. 114, June/July 2016, pp. 22–23

I was asked by Philosophy Now magazine whether I'd like to contribute an article on speculative realism. I offered instead this article on A. N. Whitehead's organic realism. Consequently the overview of Whitehead's philosophy emphasises the realist aspects—more theological aspects are avoided. Peer-reviewed.

www.philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Organism

I investigate the implications of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) for the problem of subjectivity. This leads me to examine if IIT can answer the hard problem of consciousness. On itself IIT does not seem to constitute an answer to the hard problem, so it should be supplemented by panpsychism. Panpsychism gives IIT the needed ontological machinery and IIT could perhaps in return solve the panpsychist's combination problem. If Information Integration is interpreted as subjectivity IIT could answer the unity/boundary problem. I argue that Integrated Information is not enough for mineness or subjectivity.
Early Draft: Comments are welcome!