Abstract
The Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness starts from essential phenomenological properties, which are then translated into postulates that any physical system must satisfy in order to specify the physical substrate of consciousness. We recently introduced an information measure (Barbosa et al., 2020) that captures three postulates of IIT—existence, intrinsicality and information—and is unique. Here we show that the new measure also satisfies the remaining postulates of IIT—integration and exclusion—and create the framework that identifies maximally irreducible mechanisms. These mechanisms can then form maximally irreducible systems, which in turn will specify the physical substrate of conscious experience.
Highlights
Integrated information theory (IIT; [1,2,3]) identifies the essential properties of consciousness and postulates that a physical system accounting for it—the physical substrate of consciousness (PSC)—must exhibit these same properties in physical terms
Mechanism integrated information φpmq is a measure of the intrinsic cause–effect power of a mechanism M “ m within a system
We characterize three properties of information based on the postulates of IIT: causality, intrinsicality, and specificity, and demonstrate that there is a unique measure (ID) that satisfies these properties
Summary
Integrated information theory (IIT; [1,2,3]) identifies the essential properties of consciousness and postulates that a physical system accounting for it—the physical substrate of consciousness (PSC)—must exhibit these same properties in physical terms. The theory identifies five essential phenomenal properties that are immediate, indubitable and true of every conceivable experience, namely intrinsicality, composition, information, integration and exclusion. These phenomenal properties, called axioms, are translated into essential physical properties of the PSC, called postulates.
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