Adding causality to the information-theoretic perspective on individuality

Abstract

I extend work from Krakauer et al. (2020), who propose a conception of individuality as the capacity to propagate information through time. From this conception, they develop information-theoretic measures. I identify several shortcomings with these measures—in particular, that they are associative rather than causal. I rectify this shortcoming by deriving a causal information-theoretic measure of individuality. I then illustrate how this measure can be implemented and extended in the context of evolutionary transitions in individuality.